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In A Room-Box

In a room-box with unmade bed, you bloomed
(in time, ajar)
In a room-box with night-sign light, you bloomed
(a venom star)
On the wall, shadow of your swaying head
(crepuscular)
Your odd gift of what is shown, then vanished,
In after-image of gorgeous damage. 
_______ 

for Fussy Little Forms--cavatina.

untitled 55

Sound isn't what you think.
Your boot soles flat on the wooden floor
is how your feet make fools of your ears.

"Forever" is the froth
offered up by every stranger I have loved.
I turn to it like a bloom,
but fissures up my back 
is how time finds the fool in the room.
______

A 55 for Kerry.

Maureen

Maureen tied summer to her wrist with a shoelace--
now the sun rises and sets in her sleeves.
Maureen left home at age 8, became a nun, quit, joined the army.
Now she wears her hair loose, 
knows the algebra of your every word before you sigh it.

Maureen talks to the Holsteins in the pasture,
contemplates the squares of the fields as seen from the air in planes
taken from high school geometry and woodworking class. 
"This was all a salt water sea," she tells the cows with a wide gesture,
sun spilling across the sloping green with the arc of her arms.

Maureen likes her milk frothy, her paintings surreal.
She likes you when you tell her she's a habitable planet in a colorform sky.
"We are rapidly approaching a tipping point," she opines dramatically
as you roll her over, then she rolls you, you haystack fool,
stood up on a stick with a silly grin because summer, because crows, 

because Maureen.
_______

for Wordy Thursday at Toads. I have used vintage jellies' word list for reasons explained in the comments there. Just as a nod to the original intent of Sherry's prompt, there is a Grover Lewis reference hidden away here. 2 points for finding it.

Back in the 80's I had about a dozen buttons pinned to my jean jacket. One of them was Nena, who I thought was just the coolest ever. I also had Chrissie Hynde. I still have the jacket, and it still has a couple of buttons but not those. The one everybody likes is a crayon face with a big smile that says CHEER THE FUCK UP. 

MY NEW BOOK IS OUT ! ! !

Hey friends, my new book "Nickel Remedies" is out!!!

Get it on Amazon HERE.
 

Lily

Direct sun is bad billet for cuttings.

Lily was long-stemmed, 

half drunk

half honest

night-starred

giving head to a bottle in a graveyard.

She never chose her own tattoos--

just once born, once baptized, 

seven times left crying  by the roadside.

Lily likes her Ginny with Georgia lime.

O Lily fair, Lily bright,

gives all her love 

to a runaway cat

and salts her bath with anything white.

Lily used to pose on a coffin lid

half sweet

half willing

 half live, half dead.

Long-stemmed Lily talking out of her head

to the peonies out by the garden shed. 

Of course she loves you,

tap-water blank with soft pale hands.

Lily fair, Lily bright,

long-stemmed Lily in your circle stands

almost straight

almost strong

almost saved, and almost 

gone.

_____ 

for Camera FLASH! at Toads.

Untitled Experience

I fell asleep in the bath and shed my skin.
Waking, I had no idea at all
where I was or
who I was or
when I was.

At first, the drawn curtain gave me a panicky moment feeling entombed. Was I in a box? The back seat of a car?  A bed? No...in water. OK. Then I thought I was back in San Antonio, in my 20's, never having left or aged. I expected, for just a moment, that my old dog would be sleeping just outside waiting for me. I cast my mind about, and finally--finally--placed myself in space and time. It was a very odd, naked, fearful feeling, to lose my bearings like that. 

Now I'm back--in this life--
but did some other me, my doppelganger, 
wake in the old green tub in Texas, 
without a clue, having imagined that she was much older, calmer, not so poor,
and did she--this other me--
get up, towel off, and say to that big sweet dog, "I knew you'd be here" ?
_________

Not sure if this is a poem exactly, but it's a true story. They say that when you wake up disoriented like that, it means that your spirit has been out of your body, traveling. All I know is that I woke up as a blank slate for a few moments. 

for Susie's "Bits of Inspiration: Doppelganger" at Toads.