Smoov

Hey Smoov,

talking out both sides of your mouth,

tell HER, she's got the rabbit ears for ya;

me, I'm deaf, don't waste your breath. 

All night, she toss and turn if you don't call;

me, I dance all night,

kick the phone right off the wall.

Smoov, you think I'm stupid?

Think you not made of glass, I can't see through ya?

Save your bullshit tap dance for HER,

she hear ya but can't see a damn thing.

She the sweet child, 

I'm the stone bitch.

Everywhere I go, she got to follow me,

crying the blues over you.

She's in my ear,

under my skin,

out to double every losing bet.

Tell HER whatever made-up fairy story you got.

Tell HER how it's gonna be different from now on.

Tell HER, you whiney-ass pencil-dick motherfucker.

Tell HER, not me,

Cos she's the one who loves you.

_____

 for The Sunday Muse #5

The November Eye Of God

Born with a Fleur-de-lis birthmark,

I said, "De la paix du ciel, 
je suis venu pour la guerre."

Men who spoke against me,
who minced and mocked,
have seen their teeth and tongues curl and fall
like leaves under the November eye of God.

Now, as rodent churchmen scurry to lay a puny trap,
I light candles for those I pray for,
and dance on the graves of the rest.

I am not afraid; I was born to rise in righteous flames untouched
to Heaven and there be judged--
leaving behind the clever, the craven,
and just my body's dust.
________

This is a rewrite of an earlier poem "Novembre" which I have reworked for Brendan's "hero" challenge at Toads.

 "De la paix du ciel, je suis venu pour la guerre." = "From the peace of Heaven, I have come for the war."

 

Thought Broadcasting

"Nobody gets me"
is something the thought broadcaster never has to say.
She's a noisy spill, despite still lips.

She thinks, "I'm a bitch today. I need to get laid"
and some guy in China crashes his bicycle.

Diogenes meets her at the diner--
no texted invitation necessary.
She's his bae
bending spoons with hello.
_______

A 55 for my BFF.

Moonset of A Working Girl

"Gathering Wood" by Edward Emerson Simmons

"I said this can't be me
Must be my double
And I can't forget, I can't forget
I can't forget but I don't remember what"--Leonard Cohen

 

Gathering kindling, wearing wooden shoes

is work that makes the sun slip

and the dust rise

in stupid excitement under the wheels of that chariot.

I pull bones like branches slowly

from body to berm

until there sits the new me, blinking,

carefully arranged, expendable, ready to burn.

I am a moonset, walking, blathering,

obscured in a bonnet of overcast and dry leaves.

My effigy with her soft hands rises,

ascends, lights brightly my obligatory entropy.

_______

for my own Fireblossom Friday

 

 

Devolution In Akron

When I devolved,

it was late afternoon.

I lined old nickels along the window sill,

vending extinction and electrical deluge

from the absurd Akron sky. 

I'd had enough.

Rubber companies once existed here.

So did enormous bird-creatures

who spoke languages no automobile can mimic.

I leaned out,

watching the BP sign on the corner seize in the wind.

Behold the power of natural vocabulary. 

Akron is the birthplace of the soap box derby--

gravity-driven containers carrying children at high speed.

When I devolved, I grew a shell

and time propelled me backwards

past divorce, failures, rejections, geographic landmarks,

changes in bone structure, loss of logical reasoning and 

vestigial tail.

You cannot find me where I've gone.

What was your name?

Why did your skin matter to me?

Why us, and not someone else?

Why not birds,

insects,

volcanoes,

earthquakes,

fireballs,

oblivion?

When I devolved,

it was late afternoon.

By evening, huge, stupid and dying,

I discovered that it hadn't mattered at all--

I'd lost time, nickels, everything Akron could offer,

but retained the ability to cry.

 

When The Circus Boat Sank

When the circus boat sank

there in the sound,

both schedule and physical limitations were suspended

and everything slowed down.

Children dove to us as falling leaves

with apples in their mouths for our horses; 
manes like the arms of women whose chests hum with lullabies 

remembered from the drowsy south.

The tiger and I dance as months go by

and rescue loses meaning, light its immediacy.

One child has kept with us, here,

and looks to me for starfish and story.

"Once upon a time," I say to her,

"there was blue tiger, blue water, drowsy you, dreamy me." 

And so the story goes,

ever blue,

ever more,

everlastingly.

_____ 

for Sunday Muse #4

The Other Sister

Born in a house of wind,

I leaned hard, a little animated stalk.

In a house of rain and mud,

Mother Rot stuffed endings in every word.

The Other Sister, the One Denied,

set the fields on fire

as signal and salvation.

Catching her scent on the gale,

I ran hell-for-Sunday

into the burning wild.

_____

A 55 for my BFF.