Two Sharks

 

I have two sharks inside me

swimming in tandem and holding my heart

between them like a little family 

walking in the dark.

I send them gulps of air from outside

as if I were some sort of oxygenated charity

with a face and feet, operating in the world

on their behalf like a proxy or prosthetic.

Oh fishies, confined and angry in the bowl of my ribs,

here come those old blues again.

Why does life go on so long, demand so much,

slowly dribbling out the cracked glass of years?

I have had ideas all along, fine ideas

to open a ministry in a dumpster,

a ballroom in an attic, a cemetery 

on a space station with the whole Earth for Ouija board.

I'm scared, fishies. Will the moon call you

and will you answer her tidal madrigal?

Will she require three voices, you and my heart?

Will you rise in glory, leaving me hollow, in salt and sorrow?

_________________

for Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

 

Hello my little puppeteers and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! I recently finished a novel by Grady Hendrix entitled How To Sell a Haunted House, and I loved it.

It's about a brother and sister whose parents have both died in a traffic accident, leaving them to sell the family home. The trouble is, there's a haunted puppet named Pupkin in there. He's very charming unless he's turning you into his zombie slave or trying to kill you. Trouble is, he's almost always trying to do either or both. 

Grady Hendrix

The novel is half family dynamics and half horror, with a liberal dash of humor as well. I can't stop thinking about it. Hmm, could it be Pupkin taking over my mind???

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then be sure that new house of yours is really, actually vacant before you move in! This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

attic

bright

clown

cousins

dolls

dumpster

friends

hammer

haunted

jealous

jumbled

ministry

moon

puppet

remote

safe

scared

snotty

squirrels

thirsty

Peace & Quiet

 

Late for work third day this week

boss say my ice is thinning

can't find my paddle I'm sure up the creek

and I'm not too hot at swimming

Crashed my car late last night

that pole jumped right out at me

I signaled left but the world went right

and bent like origami

If I could only find a little peace

some place that's sweet and quiet

I'd get up off the floor, not do stupid anymore

at least I'd like to try it

My one true love says they've had enough

and got a judge to sign it

If I could get Jesus and still do my stuff

I might really get behind it

All I want is just a little peace

like a room in the Vegas Hyatt

I'll pray from the floor, spray tags on the door

and do the desk clerk to keep it quiet.

______

for "Yearning For Peace" at What's Going On?

Love Song For Donny

 He calls himself a cheerer upper

that drooling simp,

that cretinous, sludge-blooded

syphilitic pimp.

"Come on get happy

and make it snappy

or just shovel shit

if your hair is nappy."

We've had enough

of fatty with the golf cart

with the cabinet he got

on sale at Walmart.

The baby in chief

is just illusion super sized

whose stupid cryto coin

has 'em all hypnotized.

He's filling his diaper

at his ghost town parade

afraid that we're hip to

his strongman charade.

He's a crying, crapping, superannuated fake

with his spineless, goggle-eyed, parroting rummies

who will blow themselves up like fingerless rubes--

his red-hatted cosplay crash test dummies.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In the Rye

Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In The Rye

 

Hello my little outsiders, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! This week we have a source novel that needs no introduction--The Catcher In the Rye  by J.D.Salinger.

I first read it in high school. My best friend had to read it for class and it sounded interesting. Now, at that point in my life, I was reading less than I ever had before or ever would again, but I read this novel and loved it. I loved Holden tap dancing on the floor of the dorm bathroom, crowing, "I'm the goddamn governor's son!" I thought it was tremendously funny and also poignant.

I read it again when I was around forty, married, and raising a son. This time, it made me want to help Holden in all of his confusion and hurt. I wanted to mother him. I had been where he was once, and hadn't forgotten. I read the book a third time last year, and once again it hit me differently than the first two times. I kept thinking of the song Ripple  by the Grateful Dead.

There is a road, no simple highway

between the dawn and the dark of night

and if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own, Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then make your wandering way back home. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

aspirin

bores

celebrity

cheerer upper

clock

corny

drooling

entertaining

glued

incognito

limping

madman

museum

nervous

record

school

sleepy

snappy

terrific

wuddyacallit

Travel Advisory

 

In Denver, poems stay up in the Rockies at night

only rolling down Colfax Avenue in bright afternoon,

hanging out in the vanished record store with

Allen Ginsburg, waiting for night to howl at the moon.

In Toronto, you can catch a touristy rickshaw

or hustle some change at night on Yonge street

depending where on the grayscale you fall,

and the poems there wear boots and are desperate/sweet.

In Manila you can take your poem to a fine hotel

or share Italian in a restaurant where they let you write on the wall,

then get starry/holy at one of the cathedrals

and set out before dawn to hunt up some warm pan de sal.

But in London there are no poems, they've all

fallen into the gap, been run over by trains,

gotten rat-tired of curry and black-coat robots.

Nerves fried, orphan-empty, they sick in the streets, 

cut out their tongues, and die whenever it rains.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

Music: Leo Kottke Eight Miles High

Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

 

Hello my little travelers across space and reality, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List. This time our source is Allen Ginsberg's Iron Horse. The poem is part of his The Fall of America: Poems of These States sequence of poems, and uses the locomotive as a symbol for the destructive nature of modern society and the loss of individuality.

Allen Ginsberg

My copy was published in 1973 by Coach House Press of Toronto, Canada, but I bought it on a swing through California at about that time. In 1992 I met the author and he signed my copies of Howl  and Iron Horse. He asked me where I had gotten the latter and then went through it and corrected three mistakes with the same pen he had used to sign my book. He knew exactly where they were. I still have both of the collections he signed.  In fat, I still have every poetry collection I ever bought, that meant something to me, and I bought a lot of them when I was young. Not much has survived with me through all the years, but my poetry books have. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then travel by train across America. 

And now, your List:

actors

baton

bulletins

busted

electronic

empty

hamburgers

leafy

nap

nerves

orphan

phantom

poem

public

robots

slag

stale

starry

train

voice