Fox Hurries On Alone

Fox hurries on alone,
wearing a night coat made of indigo memories.
She is solitary and keeps out of sight,
but the moon that finds me, finds her, and says no word.

Here, the lizard on his rock,
head cocked to hear the mandolin the grocer plays
when the lock is on the door
and the bottles hung on yews gather spirits from his tunes.

A desert bird speaks your poems
along the edges of a sunset, and once again 
I hold my breath to hear them
as the fountain with its coins lulls the fox with Spanish songs.
________

for Play It Again at Toads.

I chose Susie's Amber Tamblyn prompt from 2016.

Courtship On The Edge Of The World

The girl whose face was time
was sought after for love, though she was immune.
Sailors dashed their splintering ships at her feet
and crawled the carapace of the rising moon.

Beauty is the star-marker, the sailors called,
and your visage the horizon we perish to unfurl.
She scoffed and said, my face is a mask
and you a troupe of clambering fools.

Behold, behind you, infinity spread!
cried the sailors as one, then fell down dead.

Dropping the guise, the girl confessed
my face is a cipher, the void my nightdress.
__________

for Sunday Muse #88. I have the flu so be kind, please.

A Message For Dumb-O-Crats

No need to fret about climate change.
You silly twit, you're just Trump-deranged.
"So what?" about fires, storms and floods,
"Thoughts and prayers" are more than enough.
If the water is rising right up the stairs,
relax, my friend, it's "alternative air."
We're sending cows--because we care!--
to the Arctic to be "alternative bears."
POTUS, most powerful man in the world,
takes no crap from a teenage girl.
So rest your mind, don't listen folks,
it's all a radical Democrat hoax.
________

Hoping you feel all better now, for Wordy Friday.

Behold

Behold my steed.
Behold my steed which I have brought into the house.
"Caroline," says my life partner.
"Caroline, for chrissakes," my life partner says.

Behold my steed's noble mien.
Behold his handsome visage,
a grosbeak upon his broad back,
eternity in his untroubled gaze.
"Caroline," says my only darling.
"Caroline, you clueless cow.
Get it out of here before it craps on the carpet."

Behold my armored breastplate.
Behold my pennant and standard.
Behold my raised sword, heavy and final.
"Caroline," says my flawless beloved.
"Caroline, what the exact fuck, honey?"

Behold my steed rearing up.
Behold the flashing of his mighty hooves.
Behold Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret
urging us on, invoking the grandeur of the Divine.
"Caroline," says my heart's other half.
"Christ on a pogo stick, Caroline." 
Behold the dear familiar lips.
Behold my knees sweetly buckling as I go weak at every word.
__________

for Sunday Muse # 87.

Book Review : "Forty Stories"

Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been reading a lot of surrealist-type writing lately and all of them harken back to that master of the form, Donald Barthelme, so I have pulled out this volume. I mean, why not just go for the Real Thing?

I bought a collection of Barthelme's stories off a paperback rack as a teenager and loved it. My favorite was a story about a human fly scaling a tall building with the help of two plumber's helpers (plungers). It was hilarious and different and as someone has said, merry and melancholy at the same time. I've been a fan ever since, and Barthelme has influenced my own writing more than any other writer.

In this collection, we encounter a trail drive of porcupines onto the grounds of a university, a group planning to hang their friend Colby for "going too far" with marvelous attention to music and refreshments, and a contemplation on what goes on the mind of a bodyguard. No two of the stories are alike, all are written with intelligence and style, none of them drag, and all of them are suffused with bizarre details and/or premises. That's the marvelous thing about Barthelme as compared to his imitators--he knows how much of that sort of stuff is enough, and doesn't wear out the reader with a barrage of it. He uses just enough acid-trip nuttiness, with just this thing or that things crazily out of place, to make it fascinating and readable and funny and even revelatory. Barthelme was one of a kind. Don't be fooled by cheap imitations. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

Never

Never been sinful.
Never been kissed.
Just violets and daisies
in my little fist.

Never been angry.
Never been rude.
Never been flippant.
Got that, dude?

Always been quiet,
devoted, demure.
Always been pious,
patient and pure.

Never been sorry
cos I never been wrong.
Understand that,
and we'll get along.
_______

for Sunday Muse # 86.

Die Reise

Does it burn, dear, does it trouble you
to see these dropped stitches letting the wind in?
Walls disappear even as they shelter,
hollow as bird bones or violins
stacked each upon each like the worst regrets
of ghosts bewildered, emigrating
with dust of memory gilding frayed keepsakes
as we hold each other, advancing, disintegrating.
_________

the opening line is by Kerry O'Connor, used by permission as part of the mini-challenge at Real Toads, where she presides.

image: one of the lost suitcases of Willard Asylum

The Strobe Of Time

The strobe of time will knock your old stories right out of your mouth,
those laments and war stories you think you're made of.

The strobe of time dazzles you blind to anything not smack in front of you--
you'll smell oranges,
spin dizzy,
and slave yourself to the dance beat of

now now now now now now now now

at the Disco of Indeterminate Duration.
_____

just some quick nonsense for Poets United: The Moment.

Consummation

I would tell you absolutely anything
if my mouth did not fill with pebbles,
my teeth to a breakwater,
my tongue to a dying whale
each time I try.

See how the sun hangs in the sky, lugubrious as a defective,
lighting our possibilities with its dusty shine?
I would dance for you
except that ravens have collected my shinbones and tarsals
as trinkets for their nest.

Still, joy is possible.
You shove the Universe, I'll pick its pocket
and we'll set up the world's most elaborate lie
to stun ourselves into devotion.
That's when you'll guess my name, Mary of the Maritimes,
and skip yourself over my body like a thrown stone.
_______

A second poem for camera FLASH! at Real Toads. Again, I was inspired by the lighthouse card, already posted on this blog with my first effort.

Cat In Communication With Distant Planets

Cat in communication with distant planets 
thinks you would be more interesting if you were
a fish
or a cardboard box.

Distant planets communicate that personal transformation is possible.
Fins or corrugation become you.
Get cracking. 
__________

timely feline advice courtesy of Sunday Muse #85.

Bonus advice: don't settle. Become a fish IN a cardboard box. Your cat will thank you.

Pharos

There has been terror, walls of water, nightmare monsters!
Our hands around splintered oars.
Our hands around twisting lines in desperate storms.
Our hands around our bodies in the freezing nights.
Our hands around each other's throats in frenzies of despair.

There has been light, safe haven, mighty walls!
Light from a sturdy tower.
Light revealing gray-white gulls.
Light in our captain's steady eye.
Light at dawn, on a rocky shore.

Strange, the solid ground our legs shift upon.
Strange, the women bringing children to the docks, who call.
Strange, the endless streets, the many doors, odors, sounds.
Strange, the urge to sail again, to leave this tranquil harbor.

No wonder we stagger in the street, thought mad by both priest and whore.
We are mad.
Only the swell and fall of the sea can receive our pitching souls.
_______

for camera FLASH! at Real Toads.

"Pharos" image created and provided by the mystic and magnetic Kerry O'Connor.

Future Imperfect

A poem appeared, saying it was sent by the horizon.

Naked except for a hibiscus bloom in its hair, it danced upon a pile of old tires burning behind the strip mall.

"A signal fire," it said.
The smoke became blackbirds, their beaks a collective compass needle.
The poem was itself a flock.

Looking up, I said, "Curiosity killed the cat.
Satisfaction brought her back."

That was the last I saw of the poem,
but its hibiscus bloom hangs from a chain I wear on my wrist
like a false hand 
with a true ring
in lambent light that doesn't show the blood.
_______

for Skylover Word List.

Do What You Can

After a storm knocked over the circus, Tom Thumb watched Boris the Strong Man set his Royal Carriage right side up again and said,

"Fuck you anyway. I can't even handle cutlery if it is too heavy. House cats bump against me and I'm on the damn floor. When the storm came, I had to climb inside a steamer trunk and pull it closed over my head so I wouldn't be carried on the wind to Cleveland or Des Moines like a damn leaf. So to hell with you, Boris. You could take Yankee Stadium and toss it in the Atlantic if you felt like it."

"Zees upsets you," said Boris, who was not really Boris but rather a Frenchman named Marcel L'Amoreaux. "I tell you some-sing mon ami. When I see zee tight rope walker smile and she scoop you up, zat make me so jealous! She not do that ever avec moi. So, Le fuck to you aussi."

Then they were both sad. 

After a minute, Boris clapped a huge paw across Tom Thumb's little fairy-ass shoulders, but with care. "Leesun, my fren. In life, we all do what we can do." Raising a finger importantly, he added (from beneath his impressive mustache), "What we don' do ees do what we can't do. Dat shit make you fou. Crazy. So fug dat. Like, I never gonna be tightrope walker, eh? So why I worry bout dat? I don'. And you should not be the worrying about lifting heavy sheet. So don'." 

Tom Thumb started laughing so hard that he fell over on the ground and rolled there in merriment like a drunken pill bug. "You! A tightrope walker!" And then the real tightrope walker came by and, smiling her gorgeous smile, scooped Tom up and love-mugged him with noisy kisses.

Boris watched them as they moved toward the breakfast tent. He shrugged, then looked up at the sky, wondering if he could lift it if he really tried.
_______

Written for Words To Live By at Real Toads but my link was deleted for not being poetry.

I don't now recall who the wise soul was who said it to me, but they said, "Do what you can, not what you can't." I must say this to myself twice a week, and it lets me feel good about the cans and not fret about the can'ts. 

Butter Shoes

Exploring abandoned places is not for those too firmly anchored in the present.
One must wear butter shoes to slide across the temporal griddle.
Here, we have a record player inside a pink carrying case.
Over there, a cane and a broken mason jar.
And in the basement, a figure mummified inside a rolled-up rug,
stored carefully underneath a work bench.

Investigating further, we find mismatched dishes.
Red for the furious wife,
green for the husband submerged in murky dreams,
and yellow for the children churned by hand under a butter sun.

Afterward, we are hungry, for food and for the physical.
We slap each other playfully, clomping on peg legs across the wooden floor to the bedroom, 
where we hop like Russian dancers upon the griddle of our love.
You suggest we should buy cows,
Guernseys to provide us with milk and children already grown,

Who have their own houses devoid of plywood and yellow tape,
the emblems and talismans of our journey into urbex mystery.
_______

for Sunday Muse #84.

Beauties

There is no reason for us to fight.
Here is a ticket,
exempting you from fighting.
A ticket
out of town, praise whatever gods there are.

We fight in the town.
We sell tickets beforehand.
We call each other bitches and all sorts of things.
Every woman is a god(dess.)
Don't forget to tick the box.

Whatever.
There is no reasoning with you.
God knows why God(dess) made a great honking bitch like you.
I exempt myself from all this.
Let us now praise famous men.

Men like us when we fight.
In the town, by the fountain, glittering with coins.
Fight, fight, that's the ticket
to a life filled with famous men swooning over our dumb butts.
Whatever god(desse)s there are
can't cope, they lie down in a bed made of doves
as we fight, under the imprimatur some bitch, in a box, atop a pole

That the famous men have put there, and we appease, to great applause.
_______

for Weekend Mini Challenge at Toads.

The Troublesome Book

I am done with a book, but it is not done with me.
I go to the movies.
There is the book, hanging over the back of the seat in front.
"I was better," says the book, bitterly.
"But I am done with you," I tell it. 

I start a new book.
The old book falls off the shelf and knocks the new book aside.
"Motherfucker!" we say simultaneously.
I throw the old book into the fire,
but it just looks darker and more dangerous.

I enjoyed the book, at the time.
(The book and the clock got along famously.)
I took the book into my bed, into my heart.
But now I am done with the book and there are so many other books.
On this, the clock and I agree, which makes the book crazy.

I tell the book to forget me,
though, as is sometimes the case, I am unable to follow my own advice.
I will recommend the book to my friends.
I will review it favorably.
But the book is full of hate and wants to kill me and my new book, both.

After a few days, my new book becomes an old book also.
They join forces,
follow me down the street,
troll my place of employment,
spread lies about me.
I tell my troubles to the tv. It says, forget books, I love you, you're home.
_______

for Bits Of Inspiration at Toads.

Book Review : "Enormous Changes At The Last Minute"

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't enjoy this collection as much as I hoped I would. I like offbeat stuff sometimes but most of these stories didn't grab me. One big complaint I have is that in most of these stories, Paley doesn't use quotation marks to denote conversations, which makes it difficult to follow conversations. When I have to repeatedly re-read sections to figure out who is saying what, it bugs me.

Some of the writing is busy and dense, adding to the difficulty in getting through it. I've read that Donald Barthelme, a favorite of mine, was her mentor. Barthelme certainly knows how to add the absurd plot, crazy detail, and nutty dialogue but he does it more sparingly. He brings you along on a raft of normalcy before springing some jack-in-the box on you, and it's more effective for that. Paley throws whole sentences of one clever but odd thing after another until the reader is going down for the third time, to stretch my metaphor. The worst story was called "Come On, Ye Sons Of Art" and if you can figure out wth *that* was all about, good for you.

All that is not to say I didn't alike any of the stories. One of the longer--and oddest, in its way--is "Faith In A Tree" about a recurring character who literally goes up a tree to observe and converse with numerous other characters in a park. Sounds nuts, but I liked it. She pulled off her crazy style in that one. "Samuel" is, dare I say it, a well written straightforward story. And "The Little Girl" was really sad but really well done.

Imagine my surprise when, in the story "A Conversation With My Father", the character's father complains of many of the same things that bugged me about this collection, imploring his writer daughter to just tell a simple straightforward story in the manner of Turgenev or Checkov (two of my own favorite story writers.) I was thinking, "I'm with you, pops."

So anyway. The stories are unique, certainly original, and portray a certain personal impression of New York City in a certain period of time. But I don't really recommend this book, though I do recommend "Faith In A Tree" by itself.

View all my reviews

Charon's Obol

November sun is June's grown older.
It makes its nest in my eyes, no brim on my hat.
My dog trots through leaves the color of rusty wheel wells
as the light goes low like melting butterfat.

I will stay with him as he will stay with me,
each of us faithful, finite and flesh-fragile
until the dusk-time when we both sleep at last,
he with his red collar, and in my hand his leash and Charon's obol.
_______

for Sunday Muse #83.

Charon is the ferryman who demands a coin, or obol, for passage from this life to the next.

Song Lyric Sunday : food

The theme for Song Lyric Sunday this time is, naturally, food. My choice is Sarah McLachlan's "Ice Cream" from her 1993 smash album "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy." 

I have a quite ginormous desk with lots of shelves and stuff and one feature is a couple of small racks for cd's that hold about a dozen each. Out of those few--which include a lot of modern swing, a couple of Belle & Sebastian, and some crooners like Sinatra, Peter Cincotti and James Darren--there are two Sarah McLachlan including this one. All these are close at hand because, although I have a large music collection, these are my go-to's. 

Sarah wrote "Ice Cream" as well as all the other tracks on "Ecstasy" except one, though my source for the lyrics erroneously gives credit to someone else. I love how sensual the song is, and how it contrasts this love with how "everyone here knows how to cry." I'll take two scoops please.

Lyrics, by Sarah McLachlan:

Ice Cream

Sarah McLachlan

Your love
Is better than ice cream.
Better than anything else that I've tried
And your love
Is better than ice cream
Everyone here knows how to cry

And it's a long way down
It's a long way down
It's a long way
Down to the place where we started from.

Your love
Is better than chocolate
Better than anything else that I've tried
And oh love is better than chocolate.
Everyone here knows how to fight

And it's a long way down
It's a long way down
It's a long way
Down to the place where we started from.

https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2019/11/23/no-other-holiday-tops-thanksgiving/

Sandy

Sandy put a wedge of lemon in the corner of her eye
so that she might seem more exotic.
Informed of this, the warden had her taken
out of gen pop and placed on risperidone and light tasks such as
arranging
her origami family figures
across 
her 
desk
in order of which she loved best down to least.

The thing about Sandy is that she took elocution lessons
in order that she might curse more clearly
at her celly and the matrons.
The more florid her language became, 
the more she sounded like a potty-mouthed Helen Mirren.
The warden was forced to remove Sandy's tongue and hide it
high on a shelf in her office
where onyx birds
sang songs from pyrite throats
all about which of her inmates she loved most, down to least.

Finally, Sandy and the warden came to an understanding
which involved a Catholic bishop and a solemn promise by Sandy 
not to cuss anymore.
"I shan't," she said,
assuming Helen Mirren's place in the warden's roster of recoveries
and walking straight out of the women's pen into origami domesticity
where black birds fold their wings 
into Oriental characters
depicting the most amazing transformations from best down to least

with Sandy's at one extreme end like an egg or a bomb or a glitter ball.
_______

for Get Listed at Toads. I used onyx, lemon, elocution, shelf(ves), risperidone, and warden.

Thirteen Days I Remember Well

For Thursday 13 this time, I am making a list of 13 days I remember clearly. My list starts with a couple of universals, then gets more personal.

1. Nov. 22, 1963. My mother and older brother (by 9 years) picked me up at elementary school and my brother told me that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. He was always tricking me and so I didn't believe him. I asked our mom and she said it was true. I'll never forget how unemotional she was about it. 

2. Nov. 24, 1963 I was parked on the rug in front of our old cabinet tv watching Lee Harvey Oswald be led through a narrow passageway when it appeared to me that he twisted and tried to escape. I didn't understand at first that he had been shot. I was 8 years old. I'll never forget it.

3. Sept. 11, 2001 I was at work at the post office, sorting my route when we heard that an airplane had flown into one of the twin towers. The carrier at the case next to mine had a radio, and when a second plane hit the other tower, I said, "We're at war." The supervisor said, "Get back to work." Of course she did. I didn't really get to find out what had happened until I got home that evening.

4. Jan. 28, 1986  I had been working as a postal carrier for only a few days when I returned to the office from making my deliveries to find a television on and the news of the challenger disaster being reported. 

5. Feb. 20, 1988 My wedding day. We lasted 13 years and the second half of those was not fun, but we began well and this day was perfect.

6. Feb. 10, 1993 My dear beloved Belgian shepherd dog Sundance had to be put down at the age of 15. It isn't overstating it to say that he taught me everything I needed to know about love. He saved my life in so many ways. When he died, the color went out of my world. I kept listening to Neil Diamond's "The Story Of My Life" and Peter Paul & Mary's "Puff The Magic Dragon" over and over and crying my eyes out. I still miss him. 

7. Aug. 2003 I don't now recall the exact date but I am recalling the day when I decided this was the day to get a new dog. I just got the feeling and knew it had to be. I went to the mall pet store (all six of my others have been rescues) and there I met an Aussie Shepherd I bought and named Bosco. I carried him through the house and out the side door and plunked his 4-month old little butt down to meet the other two resident pooches. It became clear he had never had room to run, but soon picked it up. Before long he was herding his new brother and sister, much to their chagrin. I came to love this guy as much as my dear Sundance, referenced in the preceding paragraph. My two Number Ones. I had Bosco for 11 years and God how I still love him even though he has gone on to the Rainbow Bridge.

8. April 7, 1984 I am and have always been a huge baseball fan and the Detroit Tigers are my team. From 1978 until May of 1984, I was living in San Antonio Texas, and rarely ever got to see my Tigers in that era before cable. Moreover, I hadn't even owned a working tv for a couple of years, but I knew the Tigers were going to be on the Game Of The Week, so I dragged out a small tv that hadn't worked in all that time, and lo and behold it came on and I got to watch Jack Morris's no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox. Within an hour after the game ended, the tv conked out again, never to come on anymore. Thank you, Baseball Angels, for letting me see that game.

9. Oct. 10, 1968 There is nothing in the world like being a baseball-loving youngster and seeing your team win it all. On this date, the Tigers completed an amazing comeback from a 3 games to 1 deficit against the mighty St. Louis Cardinals to take the championship. Bliss!

10. July 23, 1967 My parents had rented a beach cottage for our vacation and I enjoyed it so much! There was a paddle boat I could use, and paperback books all over the place (I spent an afternoon reading a sci-fi thing called "The Joy Makers" if I recall the title correctly.) I loved the cottage and the lake and the games we had with us. So, it is memorable for all of that. But then on July 23rd, my father, who was a newspaperman, got a call from Detroit saying a riot had broken out and that he had to come back to work. So our vacation got cut short. I can still remember looking up Woodward Avenue from our 'burb and seeing the smoke rising over Detroit.

11. April 18, 1996 At the post office we had to have what were supposed to be annual route inspections, where a supervisor from another office would go around with us all day and write down all our times and stuff. These inspectors were usually taciturn and the day of inspection involved counting everything from pieces of mail to minutes spent doing each task. Ugh! So imagine my surprise when my inspector and I hit it off like crazy and spent the most unlikely and most wonderful day together. I was married at the time, and so it was just one perfect day, but oh my. And the thing is, we took one look at each other and bam, the lightning bolt. That had never happened to me before and never has again. 

12. Aug. 15, 2001 My divorce became final. It was no fun, to say the least. But though I didn't know it at the time, it set me free for a better life that came after. 

13. Sept. 29, 1985 My sobriety date. Everything that has happened since has only been possible because God answered my prayer and removed the compulsion to drink. 34 sober years and counting, one day at a time.

What Happened To Aunt Flossie

Arsenic in the wallpaper killed Aunt Florence,

her demise hastened by her habit of banging her head into the wall

at the slightest provocation.

Last time we visited,

my sisters and I chimed "Hello, Auntie,"

followed immediately by our polite curtsies

and more thundering head-bangs

which shook the house and dazed poor Aunt Flossie.

At tea, she spoke of being haunted by the spirit of a skunk

which had been living under the back stoop.

Her dog killed it, but the striped stinker in its anger

sought revenge.

We held our napkins to our faces in order to endure it. 

"How awful," we remarked,

upon which Aunt Flossie let her tea cup drop

from her fingers, and would have

banged most ferociously into the wall had we not instantly intervened.

My sisters and I are pious girls and we have faith

that the stinker will not be permitted to follow Aunt Flossie

into the golden gates of Heaven.

We shall miss her.

_____

for Poetry Pantry and Real Toads "scent."

Do The Do

Let's have some fun. Today I'm participating in Song Lyric Sunday, which can be found HERE. This week the theme is "Done With The Verb Do" and you can choose to feature any song with any variant of "do" in it. I've chosen Tim Hardin's "Do The Do", a lively dance tune, pretty atypical for the moody, introspective Hardin.

"Do The Do" was written by blues man Willie Dixon, a favorite songwriter of late 60's blues rockers. He also wrote "Backdoor Man" popularized by the Doors, and "Spoonful", memorably recorded by Cream and also Etta James. "Do The Do" was recorded by several people (according to internet research--I have never heard any other version but Hardin's) and the lyrics I will add at the end of the post are from Howlin' Wolf's version. 

I can't listen to Hardin's recording of "Do The Do" without wanting to get up and move, and it always puts a smile on my face. That it should have been recorded by Tim Hardin is surprising. Hardin is best known for writing and singing amazing ballads such as "If I Were A Carpenter" (made famous by Bobby Darin), "Reason To Believe" (which charted for Rod Stewart) and "How Can We Hang On To A Dream." His voice is expressive and unique. In fact, he disliked others covering his songs so much that he began making them more complex and hard to copy. The closest voice I can think of to Hardin's might be Ron Sexsmith's, but that's like saying a Focus and a Ferrari are both cars.

Tim Hardin's story is a sad one. Picking up a heroin habit while in the Marines in the early 60's, it eventually ruined his life. He had a rebellious and contrary nature, often claiming a relation to the outlaw John Wesley Harding, but there's no facts backing that up. Like Harry Nilsson, Hardin disliked performing live, even though he did release a live album. 

In the end, we are left with his hauntingly beautiful songs, voice and music. As a result of factors noted in the preceding paragraph, his album Painted Head did not contain any self-penned songs, but did include the funky, fun "Do The Do", presented here with all due flourishes and fanfare. Dig it!

the mildly sexist and beside-the-point lyrics, by Willie Dixon:

 Well I know

I've got a babe
And I know her
Love is true
But you ain't seen nothing
'Til you see her, see her
Do the do
Do the do

Shake her shoulder
Take her time
Mover her body
Like I move mine
When she's dancing
You'll love her too
When you see her
Do the do
Do the do

34 bust
22 waist
Everything
Right in place
Cool disposition
Love her too
When you see her
Do the do
Do the do

Well, well there
Ain't nothing like
When you see her
Do the do
Do the do

Well I know
I've got a babe
And I know her
Love is true
But you ain't seen nothing
'Til you see her, see her
Do the do
Do the do

R.S.V.P.

Thanks for the invitation, but last time you wouldn't let Molly past the front door. She hasn't forgotten and neither have I. 

What was the big thing with making me take my boots off?

Ooooh, imported rugs,

and everybody making a big deal out of your barfy tea.

Bitch, please.

Next thing you'll build a she-shed with paper walls.

Nope, me and Molls will be nine miles from here,

Molls with her ear buds in.

(She likes western swing.)

We stop and doze any time we want,

Molly dreaming of a bag of warm oats

and me dreaming that I'm dreaming, which will be true.

So go step in a gopher hole, girl.

You can post it on social media and call it a wine grotto.

_____

for Sunday Muse #82 where I am hostessing. Bring your pony.

First, There's A Dead Guy

First, there's a dead guy.
(There always is.)
Who cares? 
They'll figure it out in an hour.

The actress has red hair. She's quiet, but
simmering, like Emily Dickinson stirring chili in the afternoon
with wavy-glass windows steaming up
and a clock ticking in the hall behind her.

It's her hair, you know.
And her face.
I can feel it, that shift inside, sliding me into a time-fall.

I had forgotten the sensation on the sides of my fingers
as they curled around your green Henley at your hips.
They had never been born before that.
I had never been hungry before that.
My desire for you created me entire, on the spot. 

You had red hair. It was quiet in your dorm room,
like the air before a rare fall funnel.
I lifted your shirt up over your head,
lifted out of any life I ever lazed through up until then.
I never knew I could kiss someone
and carry that kiss like true north under my skin.

All day, I'll be thinking about
your scent,
your easy smile,
a time, place, and two girls
who stopped existing years ago, 
but who drop by unannounced and find me out.
_______

For Bjorn's flashback prompt at Toads. Last night I had the most intense dream about someone I knew when I was at college the first time (I went back later). But though I knew who it was, she had morphed into actress Julianne Nicholson, who played Detective Wheeler on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I probably need years of therapy.

Thirteen Things

1. Snow, everywhere, heavy as old boots, bright as a policeman's flashlight.

2. Night. Then day. Then night again. Dizziness. The carpet's range of aspects.

3. Birds bringing messages. Their particular songs. The feeder swaying.

4. An ambulance. Someone on the floor, then not. 

5. Day, then night, then day again. A shifting array of shadows on the roof of an empty house. 

6. White, everywhere. Sheets laundered a thousand times. An intrusive light, concentrated to a pinpoint.

7. Birds on the sill. Their particular coloring. The feeder still, on its pole.

8. Snow, everywhere. A new ramp, smelling of sawn pine.

9. Lights in the windows of a house. Lights like the golden skin of french fries on a plate.

10. Birds on bare branches in the yard. Silver wheels. The feeder taken down and filled.

11. All day, television interview programs. Dr. Phil right back after this break.

12. Snow, disappearing like memories. Afternoon sun, bright and harsh as temps from the agency.

13. Birds in flight over a house. Someone's photograph in a frame. An orange cat sunning itself, then nothing.
_______

for Thursday 13 and Midweek Motif--"winter."

Autobiography In Miniature

It was in Oregon at the sliding icing end of the 70's.
A bus had brought me there,
barfing me up a block from a cafe where my boots dried out and so did I, more or less.

"Danny's" it was called. The goth chick looking out-of-it in the back corner claimed to be a succubus.
Whatever, honey.
We all suck at something.
It might as well be souls.

I scammed a tampon off of her and swore
that if I were still here by Wednesday I'd be a different woman,
open a kissing booth at the county fair or
marry a soccer star from Brazil and crank out kids.
I was certain it could be easily done, here on Highway 61.

So, how did I ever get from there to here, you ask,
spinning at my keyboard loom, all these poems and whatnot?
It was when I winged a napkin holder at my imaginary friend
there in Danny's Coffee Shop, Anytown, USA,
bruising her imaginary eye and changing the look of myself,
that I found The Way.

Blurring the edges is all I've done,
but the gray in my hair elicits assumptions
that I'm basically good,
can bake,
and have fifteen cats at home destroying the sofa.

You know what, Bo Peep? Two of those things are true--
Three guesses which.
______

From a word list kindly provided by *. I used most of them and gave the rest to The American Haiku Foundation.

Oregon

61

kissing booth

sapphire 

foursome 

keyboard 

cafe 

blurring the edges 

tampons 

bruising her eye 

candles in the rain 

soccer shirt 

Single Parent Adventures

A man gives birth to a pair of pliers.
The first thing that happens is his friends punching him in the arm and calling him "mommy", followed by snorts and guffaws.

Doctors repair his dignity and hand the pliers child to it.
The man's dignity gets its own apartment.
The man's friends deride his singleness, call him "Lonesome."

One night while fending off bro punches, the man's doorbell rings.
His pliers child is at the door, remarking that it never asked to be born.
The man phones his dignity, and is advised to deal with the situation himself--it is his dignity's kickboxing night.

Fleeing his friends, the man carries his pliers offspring out to the garage and hangs it on a pegboard with the other tools.
"Goodnight," he says, and closes the automatic door.

His dignity calls, as if it had eyes all the way across town.
"What kind of father are you?"
"I've tried to be both mother and father to the pliers," he begins,
but his drunken friends start swinging golf clubs inside the house. 
There is arguing, shouting, police involvement.
He hopes the pliers won't wake up, hear, and speak badly of him later to his dignity. 
_____

for "Let Us Labor" at dverse

Book Review : "The Tormented Mirror"

The Tormented Mirror by Russell Edson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

MANY years ago, I found Edson's "The Wounded Breakfast" in a used book store and loved it. His crazy-quilt surrealist poems really influenced me in my own writing. He and Donald Bartheleme were my early off-the-rails mentors, though I never met either one.

And so, now I come--belatedly--to "The Tormented Mirror", expecting more of the same delight. Well, life is full of disappointments, isn't it? I'm not sure if it's him that's different, or if it's me, but while this collection had its moments, it dealt too repeatedly with the themes of old men and women, babies, and bodies and bodily functions. Was he getting soft in the head?

To be sure, there are some wonderful lines, like this opener from "The Stuff of Dreams":

"There was a man who had distilled a tiny woman from several dreams."

With disheartening frequency, though, Edson keeps wandering off into stuff about breasts, rectums, "deltas" and so on. It had me picturing some fogey in the rest home, writing this stuff down, contemplating his regular-or-irregularity, and waiting for 4 o'clock so he could eat Salisbury steak in front of "Matlock" in the day room.

Not really recommended.

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