A Spilling of Ephemera

 

My life spilled out and spread.

The glass lay on its side like a drunk or a sleeper.

"I await my dream lover," it said, and I called the police. 

One cop turned out to be the Right One and they jumped the nightstick the next day.

"I can't even get arrested in this town," I bitch to my spilled life.

It never says anything back.

I try staring it down but all I see is my reflection and every time it's a draw.

Art for art's sake, just like in the movies. Me in the role of me.

I plunge into my spilled life like a mermaid,

wearing it like a scaly tail. I sing to sailors and to other mermaids

such lovely songs that end in ruin. I am a chest bobbing on the surface,

a promise I can never keep to you or to myself, 

a bright reflection in a dazzled eye, 

a quicksilver tease of things rich with remove, 

a luminous dying and deathless ephemera.

___________

for Sunday Muse #216

Greta and Ted, A Love Story

 

image by Corinne Geersten

Ghosts don't normally send fire through the mail, but they tend

to be a little bit muzzy-headed, the dead.

Water stamps temper these communications slightly

but flame is a Gypsy and wanders brightly,

making suggestions of passion on the carpets where they end.

Greta, not knowing she is dead, not knowing she's a shade,

sends these immolations postage-paid

and if such silly wooden houses go up, if roofs collapse,

then their occupants' lives, like hers, will lapse

and you can't fight infernos with a lemonade glass.

Poor Greta, sharing hell with the taciturn Unabomber,

who wishes all kinds of ill upon her,

who stinks and mumbles and never changes clothes or shaves

so that when one letter is returned to sender

she will blow and burn so that none can mend her.

Lonely Greta, sullen Ted

with a packed pipe and a black rose on their summer-dry graves.

_______

for Sunday Muse #214.

Jenny Mechanical

 

Jenny Mechanical is too mecha for the main house

but too human for the tool shed.

She can turn stripped screws, whip up a perfect grilled cheese,

provide power during an outage and mow and mulch while she's at it.

She also dreams of a recharging kiss and poems appear at her fingertips.

Jenny had a little lamb whose fleece was made of synthetic polymer

and everywhere that Jenny went, the lamb was sure to follow.

See Jenny Mechanical, stopped in the middle of the front yard,

telling her lamb to look at the new leaves with its LED eyes.

She has always been a perfectly average 5 foot 3, can open any jar, pick any lock,

but she is crying into its faux wool because of something beyond utility.

She is needed but not loved, maintained but casually disposable,

and the poems at her fingertips have diverged from factory settings,

glowing pink

then rose

then lavender

then blue

then indigo

like space that has no atmosphere yet sustains those billion burning stars.

_________

for Sunday Muse #213.