I tell my students to trust their boredom, it’s good guidance, better than any outside feedback or creative writing precept can be, when attended to rightly. When I found I was, at a recent reading I was part of, bored by parts of what I read, I practiced what I preached. And so, a new preface to Dumuzi.
Out of Sumer,
Dumuzi, god of the new, the new green, to be drawn down broken. Flees gazelle to his sis & she reads his dream. Bro she says don’t tell me that dream. Okay so well fire gone out in yr hearth’s desolation of yr green fields she says. The rushes thick round you galla says. The tall firs in terror round you galla says. Run says.
Sent by Inanna the demon galla hover an inch over the earth bright drought angels pursuant. Justice an in-law turns Dumuzi snake & hands & feet the hands & feet of snakes he runs.
Galla working undercover offer sis a water gift a grain gift a corner office gas & groceries for life to give him up nope. They strip her rape her pour in orifices hot pitch nope. When has a sister ever given up a brother they giggle little to large.
A friend upgives Dumuzi & galla fat & thin harvest him. Scale the perimeter barricades & throw down & perforate that face with nails & smush with shepherd crooks that skull. Shit, you’re not even sleeping, nuff faking say. Get the sweet bloody fuck up they say. Hands bound & iron round his neck with aspect of a warrior caught pressed in clay & proud downed head & spade beard okay says show the way.
Some later find his body in a roadside ditch outside the city. An holy fly tells them where. Son my son mother says as mothers must in wars of sons the face is yours the spirit’s gone from. Deal is, fly gets to hear any quarrel any bar diner bedroom anywhere. Come spring, comes Dumuzi, arrogant, wistful. Your broad hand lover Inanna says is manna & your sweet little wee toe’s nectar. I stroll with him sings among the standing trees & stand with him sings among the fallen trees.
& their life is orchard. & he wants to want nothing but take joy in her joy. & he’s to be milled packaged traded shipped bought & sold soiled broiled roasted baked & eaten.
At the king’s lap stands the rising cedar.
Plants grow high by their side.
Grains grow high by their side.
When they tire of riding the holy hard-on Inanna gathers her me together for an excursion. The me are powers won from her drunken father Sweetwater back in the day. Dagger & sword & descent to the kur & measuring rod and line & dark bright dress & unbinding her hair & cocksucking assfucking lovemaking weeping & consolement terror dismay & passing judgement conferring power animal husbandry plundering cities & running away & ascent from the kur & spear arrow quiver bow knife AK47 RPG ICBM crows eating eyes on village greens town squares redbrick college plazas faceless high glass offices & lamentation purification bare attention compassion smack acid crank & scribe & stylus & cylinder seal ironwork carpentry leatherwork star of morning star of evening sacred mountain caduceus rosette a fistful of river & bull sheep scorpion apple tree kindling fire extinguishing fire gathering family dispersing seed voice of the whirlwind broken to voices & crown of the grasslands & a black seducing eye-paint & a friend taken too with her partway.
She takes a road no one turns on to the kur underearth where names go to die & her way crosses his every moment at right angles. What says is this as the guard strips her down. Shut it dirt bitch says our ways are perfect immaculate metamorphosis. Shorn of her me. Crown of the grasslands. Double strand of small beads. Wedding gold. Lapis measuring rod & line.
Naked to throneroom where Queen Thing Mind kicks & slaps punches & cuts & hangs her dear sis up on a wall. Slab of rotting meat hung on a hook.
That sad friend calls 911 gets the dad-man on the line & not too sauced for once he flicks dirt from under his nails & beings of his fashioning, kurgarra (moth), galatur (bee), descend from on high to sprinkle pharmaceuticals on the corpse.
Inanna ascends behung with galla. Comes in turn on her faithful friend her grieving son her other grieving son. I shan’t give up who serviced me well says & with her galla walks on. In Uruk comes upon Dumuzi sitting under an old apple tree. Lost in a thought. Enthroned & he don’t bow. Anagram, enthorned. Take this one says. Whatevs he says & flees &c.
Ineluctably ariseth. Anagram, hastier, raiseth. I’m shaking why.
This all got broken up & put through 7 transforms.
The Art of Compost 