Penance

I am a ghost looking for spirits; steam searching for smoke. 

I wear my long duster, and carry a kerosene sun.

I am a nun praying my penance; a singer struck by stroke.

I am your grave digger; you, better loved than anyone.

I wear my long duster, and carry a kerosene sun.

I am found by dire-light, turning scripture to palimpsest. 

I am never done, though my diet is the slenderest.

I am a nun paying my penance; a singer struck by stroke.

Collecting throats in my pockets, renaming them all night.

I have choked back every longing, and paled your name with white.

I am your grave digger; you,  better loved than anyone.

My all-and-none, my crossroads queen awoke,

I am a ghost looking for spirits; light transformed to smoke.

________

This is a trimeric, for Sunday Muse #184.  

Wild Tuxedo

Wild tuxedo

giving me that give-a-shit look

careful as a politician

cold as a chain link fence in November

eyes gorgeous as turquoise earrings.

Wild Tuxedo

mother to the one that lived

Is he lazing in someone's home?

Is he by the road and nothing but bones?

There is hunger and then there is hunger.

The set-out bowl is always empty

in the morning 

when the traffic hums.

Wild Tuxedo

distrustful as a third wife

hardy as a weed

I wake up worrying about you sometimes

because

There is hunger and there is hunger.

There is the moon,

the refrigerator kicking on

the clock ticking

and offered love you spurn without a thought.

_______

Good-Girl Dandy

It gave her pain

to part with anything

as if piss were wine

and pennies perfect

tears from Jesus' eyes;

as if fun were debit and deduction

from the piggy bank of Good-Girl Dandy.

It gave her pain

not to ledger the world

and if nails were dear

and the wood too fine

she would purse her lips

at the Sufferer on the tower, and

serve Him vinegar and year-old candy.

_______

for dverse poetics "Halloweeny Humans."

To An Admirer

 "It's like being mailed into space" --Sylvia Plath

There are children

and a magnifying glass,

an ant

a sidewalk

and the summer sun, 92 million miles away.

The Prometheus ant will shortly know glory

and the eagle.

The children are its doctors

with their laser.

A poem on one's heart

is a volcano in a paper bag.

An old romantic

is an ant in a Hiroshima body.

You'll see me magnified, aflame,

for writing this poem about

happy children

in the summer sun.

________

for Sunday Muse #183.

Ash

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.

Colored flames flare the leaf that dies.

For a moment, the madman lucid.

Sweet milk in the sun turns putrid.

The bonfire kills the thing it lights.

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.

You may find that devils may care

To catch and keep you with them there.

The young may sigh, slow, and sicken

to find their tongues gray and thickened.

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.

A snare denies its bird the skies.

Don't be so proud, sure and boasting.

See the rooster, plucked and roasting.

The grave may loose the one who dies.

Ash is blind and boneless, but flies. 

_______

for Sunday Muse #182. This is a quatern. Thanks to LiJade.

The Intermediary

I've left tea on the outside table

a baffle for whatever wanders the woods.

Lance-shaped willow leaves fall 

and alter the prescription, the drowse

of the day and the mind with confusing pall.

What lured these leaves from their mother-branch

to my poor care in the orphaned hour?

What strange embroidery can quicken them again

into their summer suits of pride and motion?

Autumn's alchemist brings gold, then lead.

Here is the potion, the breviary, the wine

fermented from pomegranates, swayed by tannins.

My faith is in teriac and the reading of leaves

in my baked clay mug and the struggling lungs

of my patients un-greening like harvested sheaves.

_________

for Sunday Muse #182. 

Letter To My Indifferent Love

 I loved you. Forgive the triteness of my tongue,

I'm not the husky-voiced Delilah that I was when I was young.

Poor gentlemen, when we harpies hand 'em

our hearts like letters stuck in tandem

by a bit of glue from horses rotten

sidesaddle ridden and wrongly gotten

Like you, dear sir,

when life was kind 

leaving apple blossom 

scent behind

When red curls fell,

escaped their pins,

while apple cores

curled brown in bins

I loved you. Please pardon my hand laid on your sleeve

as delicate as a caught disease.

Poor object of my heart's desire,

though altered, I'm yet yours entire,

no stepping back and calling for Jesus

I don't think one so holy can see us.

I loved you. As red-handkerchieved consumptives do

the dry air of their coffins, too.

________

for The Sunday Muse #182, where I am hosting.

The Year Of Broken Birds

 

It was a year that broke open every bird,

killed the sky with loneliness

and choked every throat with the smoke of its own songs, burning.

It was the year my son lived on earthquakes,

the time of blade tongues

and poison drugs, ugly betrayals and back door bullshit.

When divorcing, wear a black wedding dress,

drain love like old gasoline

and kiss stench-breath vultures like you mean it.

The good man grown is still the coffin of the boy I raised.

Who is this, holding my grand daughter?

We tried to save each other, and did, but with new skins.

Starlings nest noisily in dawn chimneys.

Blackbirds wear old angers coolly on their shoulders.

I learn from them,

learn from solitude,

learn from time passing,

and am content enough, having done all I could.

______________

for dverse poetics "from a place of pain"

Queening

 "It wasn't chess, it was checkers." --Ian Anderson to a critic who had said he plays chess with his audience.

That's a neat trick, you with the blade,

filing your teeth into chess pieces in your sleep.

You'd prefer the whole board gray,

every piece a bishop, coming at an angle,

lifting scripture from both cheeks.

Don't talk with your mouth full,

don't run that sideways stuff at the magic hour

with a rabbit in your hat, it's a tired old trick.

Such stale gambits won't maneuver me

into doing what you lack the guts for yourself.

I'm retiring from this bullshit, let's try a new game, it's called

Truth Or Dare, and I play it with knives.

_________

for Sunday Muse #181.

Eyeglasses Like Morning Mist

1.

Eyeglasses like morning mist one wakes to

or a neighbor's house seen through falling snow.

I can't recall or summon up the moment

when they began to film, smear, obscure

and soften every object like a too-polite host.

2. 

He is a secret creature, keeping his own counsel,

his heart right there in his eyes, but his eyes useless.

"Here, boy," I say in my love-voice, as if I were a river

and he the one born in love with the blind leap.

He fears nothing, I am his safe shore, kind, constant.

3.

I was twenty, though I was sixty, in love, sitting alone

with my novel when the bus creaked up, its numbers

broken, aslant with rain. I closed my umbrella, got on,

dropped my change in the box, swayed when we moved

and saw through the window my book, blurred, forgotten.

4.

After, you know, I saw you everywhere, and never again.

A certain wave of black hair, someone's careless rhythm

crossing a parking lot, swinging a bag or a child's hand,

I mistook you everywhere, nearly kissed strangers, blinked

back sudden tears, so angry, so confused, so blind sad.

5.

Eyeglasses like morning mist when one wakes to

to find the beloved novel on the floor face up

and opened to the wrong page. Was I on pavement?

in the back yard? in bed? in grief? when the stars tilted

and I knew I had lost the heart, the luxury, to leap.

_________

for dverse Meeting The Bar, "Cadralor."

Oreithyia

 

I've caught this bird

with a thorn under its wing

and laid it by your beauty

the same as everything

I've ever brought you.

I've wrought this bell

from soapstone green

with its tongue struck mute

the same as anything

that's ever loved you.

____

for Quadrille #137 at dverse.

Painted Meat Envelope

 The painted meat envelope in its gauzy cocoon 

opened its food hole to show its bone rows,

Charming the larger meat envelope, who vocalized:

You're the most beautiful bride ever, Gina."

_____

for Sunday Muse #180.