Hobby Horse

 

I should have known

when I offered Hobby sweet, lovely sugar cubes

and she just sat there

like, lobotomized or something.

Sing a song with me Hobby!

Tell me a story about horses!

Recite a fun rhyme!

Dance with me!

Or, just fall over on the floor. 

~sigh~

Doctor Dollie, Hobby seems sick.

She won't eat anything,

she hasn't used the bathroom, like ever

and seems out of touch with her body.

Neigh if you can hear us, Hobby!

Stamp your hoo--

Oh, right. 

Wink, then! 

Oh Hobby, I love you

even though you don't do anything

or say anything

or even seem to know I'm alive

just like Mommy loves Daddy!

Hobby, we shall ride the range

even though you're passing strange

I will love you, love you true

and never make you into glue

Hobby, wild horse of the western bedroom!

with a head full of fluff

and a body like a broom!

Hi-yo, hi-yo Hobby! Awayyy!

I will do everything!

Do for you and talk for you 

preparing me for marriage 

somedayyy! Hoorayyyyyy!

____________

for  Poetics: "Running  With Horses" hosted by my friend Queen Cool Dora!

The adorable hobby horse pictured is available on Etsy from HappyHobbyHorsesHH. 

Music: Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band Equestrian Statue.

Flight of the Arctic Tern

 

Come on this polar expedition

they said.

It'll be fun.

You might meet someone

bring a gun

they said.

Where are they now, those golden friends

with their golden 

spilt ends

and their friendship that never ends

written on a napkin

in pencil?

Oh, wire cage towel mother,

how about a hug?

How about a rug to take a nap on?

All of this pretty blue ice

seems to be getting the best of me

lo these

many years on the floe. 

Oh, furious angry white bear with your

cotton-ball cubs

somebody loves you, don't they?

I could tell

as you were shredding me all to hell

that you were the white carpet type

with the correct wine

a smart address

and annual membership at the wishing well.

I'd like to be an Inuit with a movie library

here on the hard-pack.

Given six months of sunlight,

I could repair the damage from the constant calving

and get right. 

I'd go home, with my raging PTSD carefully cradled

in a nest of newspapers 

inside my luggage. 

The airline would charge me extra to carry it

and make me jump out

after calculating

altitude and windage.

Hello dear friends, I'm back

I would say

landing hard at Cuckooville Subdivision

in a spray of

wing ice and duty-free fragrances

direct from nowhere

where your children are doing well,

your husbands are golf course gods

and you,

oh you,

pretend not to notice that I'm sliced to smithereens

hanging unfashionably upside-down

like the tongue 

who once brought music

to your bell.

______

for Word Garden Word List--Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Music: Donna Lewis Agenais

Word Garden Word List--Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

 

Hello my little eccentrics! I am running a little bit behind getting the List up for you this afternoon but am working my happy behind off to deliver it to you in good order.  This week our source is a 2012 novel by Maria Semple entitled Where'd You Go, Bernadette?  (There is also a movie version.) 

Maria Semple

The book is quite a hoot, and worth it just for the bit about the blackberry vines. You'll see, if you read it! 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others and then bask in the perhaps unexpected place where your poem took you. 

And now, your List!

annoyed

bitch goddess

brooms

cow

cuckooville

elegant

furious

hostage

library

music

parkas

pencil

polar

politely

PTSD

puppet

robot

sadness

shocked

unhinged

The Way It Looks

Oh your friends call you Lily Faloma

but that's not the way that you are

It's too much of a gentle misnomer

for a shooting star

                                                 --Al Stewart

It's not the way it looks

the moon in the sky

your face in the mirror

the thing that was done or not done. 

It's not the way it looks

the moon, lonesome rock out in space

ask the fascinated tide

about the gravity of lit soul

It's not the way it looks

your face in the mirror so lined

ask the devils, those angels that free you

from a birdcage of bones 

The mirror limits vison

the moon limits sense

and everything you are or are not

will, in time, incandesce. 

____________

This song has been on my mind for days now. The woman he's singing about reminds me of me.

Al Stewart Song On the Radio

 

Word Garden Word List--Richard Wilbur

 

Hello again my versifying valorous flock! This week our source is the poems of Richard Wilbur. Find copious information about him, as well as many of his poems HERE.

I have chosen him because I feel a sharp thirst for poets who employ rhyme and form in their work and Wilbur fills the bill very nicely, though I have a stupendous example to use in a future List once her books arrive and I have read them! Shh, it's a secret!

"Wilburrrr!"

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and then sit down for an enjoyable episode of your favorite old tv show! This prompt remains active through next Sunday.

And now, your List:

airy

ashen

bells

ceremony

cheat

city

dead

grackle

hasty

mix

motors

natural

office

oven

sand

shells

speech

tigers

toxic

voices

Bird Watching

 

grackle, expounding

A cowbird and grackle were in disagreement

over a definition of terms.

Astride a dead sparrow, its small breast pierced,

the grackle explained this action

in terms of disbursement of seeds. 

The cowbird objected, arguing that the grackle

was a cheat, ending a life

already in progress and pointed to the ashen sparrow,

non-renewable, lying still

as a stone and twice as useless. 

Don't get holy with me cowbird, scoffed the grackle.

You're nothing but a flim-flam bird

and a deadbeat parent, letting the other raise your brood

by knocking the originals

out of the nest like so many shucked hulls.

Murderer! they both cried, each to the other with scorn.

The grackle strutted about,

proud and righteous, while the cowbird sang the faux

river in its throat,

that beautiful false flow from which none may drink.

I saw all this from my window, an avian stage play

with knives and subterfuge.

All day until dusk I turned over the problem of who

was in the right, but was interrupted

by a million starlings screaming for either, or both,

or just to hear their own voices in cacophony as the

weary sun gave up the yard to shadows and moonlight.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Richard Wilbur.  

The cowbird leaves its eggs in other birds' nests; the hatchlings shove the parent bird's eggs out and run the parent ragged feeding the cowbird chicks who are often much larger than the bird's own chicks would have been. Also, the adult cowbird can make a sound that sounds like gurgling water. You can hear it here:

As for the grackle, they are sometimes bad neighbors at the feeder, stabbing smaller birds with their beaks or raiding other birds' nests and killing the babies. They don't always do this, but sometimes they do. I have been feeding the birds for over 20 years and there have only been one or two years when the grackles were like that, but when they are, they're relentless. 

Black Blooms

 

If black flowers gave the earth its bones

and with their roots made purpose for a heart

could they--in profusion--each bloom alone

when innumerable leaves keep petals apart?

I bring you black blooms

which in dreams were red

strewn on a grave

which must do for a bed.

If black flowers' heads nod with heat

as a lover's will when told it's over

will frost only make them more discreet

and scornful of the simple clover?

I bring you black blooms

which October will kill

with inevitable, merciful

pitiless skill.

If black flowers die in a devil's vase

will November lament it's empty sill?

And will I curse your indifferent face

like black blooms preserved in a frozen rill?