Visions of Code-y

 

Sitting in a coffee bar, I was hit on by a Kerouac simulation.

I am the nightbird genius mix, said FauxJack,

clearly hopped up on lollipops. 

Do tell, said I. 

So babe, what's on your emotional jukebox?

Some kind of dubious doo-wah Dada bop?

Maybe.

You're like smoke, there's rise in your eyes.

And you try too hard.

Auughh! Gutshot, right in the LOLcode. Want me to fade?

No, as a matter of fat, I've read all your graphic novels, FakeJay.

You're a real Ker-Ker-Karma Chameleon.

They call me Cat George, mama. Imma thicc throwback skellychaser!

You don't say.

Don't armadillo me, hard candy. 

This is love-a-rooni, jive jazz Nirvanaville, hep kitty.

Hep. Oh, I like that.

The double yellow asphalt ribbon is callin', Gypsy Rose.

To-go that java and jump immediate!

You're on, daddy.

Ergo the ersatz ecstasy, holo-hipster. 

Aw Athena, now you're blowin' a sweet riff! 

That's me, Riff Tin Tin. Awoooooooo!

You are off the leash! 

Faux man go. Let's split before the squares hack your dome, Jack.

____________

for Word Garden Word List--Janis Ian. 

Music: Eddie Harris Sham Time

Word Garden Word List--Janis Ian

 

Hello friends, and welcome to this week's List! There is a book of poems I bought for a buck and a quarter used (it was a whopping dollar ninety-five new) when I was just in high school. It has traveled with me from my childhood bedroom to every place I have gone since, and I have it still. It's Who Really Cares by Janis Ian. My copy has a bright green cover with just the title in black, but newer editions have her picture and the addendum "childhood poems." Fair enough. I was a childhood fan.

The back cover of my copy has a picture of her wearing a hat I liked so much that I looked until I found one just like it and bought it. Fangirl much, Shay? Oh yeah. Here is a snippet from one of the poems in the aforementioned collection; it's the end of a piece called Poems For The Young Psychologist.

we were eating when daddy came

home from a long tiring day and

started complaining how come the

food wasnt hot and the

house was all dirty and he

turned to me and

opened up his mouth and

i said

dont take your frustrations out on me

baby

Those who know me will surely be mystified why I liked such stuff. *cough* 

Janis Ian is, of course, most well-known for her music. Three of the words on this week's List are taken--one each--from the songs Society's Child, At Seventeen, and Boots Like Emmylou's.  The rest are taken from her book Who Really Cares. 

What we do here is to take at least 3 of the 20 words provided and use them in a new original poem of our own, Then just link up, visit others, and adopt an air of sweet accomplishment that will surely attract money, mates, and mysterious boons your way. Enjoy.

And now, your List:

absurd

anymore

armadillo

boots

dubious

formal

genius

interfere

jukebox

Kerouac

mix

nightbird

ribbon

simulated

smoke

soap

society

starched

superstar

train

Snowblind Jane

 

I have thought of the gray cat for years now,

though the gray cat thinks of me

no more than a gray cloud would,

or a window pane,

or a key chain.

I leave my life in a dish for the gray cat to find,

but the gray cat is gone

like yesterday's breath.

Who knew I could hurt like this?

If I drop the dish, it doesn't even shatter.

The gray cat's main concern is the moon

and garbage and gray cats and food.

I was sick once,

and became more beautiful.

The fever fell in love with me, poor thing.

Outside myself at last, I hover,

asking what's wrong.

"Bring me my gray cat," I whisper, crying like a child.

Other Me laughs,

says you'll never come back

and were never gray,

                           never gray,

                                      never gray,

but black, dear, black.

______

shared with Sunday Muse #243. 

image at top by Jocelin Carmes

music: Once Blue Now That I've Disappeared

American Girl In Euro Kicks

 

After midnight on the narrow street

high on a memory magnolia sweet

like a magnet where you don't belong

smiling lady sings a lonesome song

Across the plaza, under the bridge

where the cognoscenti live

down where a butterfly becomes a dove

what in the devil are you thinking of?

No mashed potato, no lime and gin

where the crows get black

sleep on the foxglove, dream of a peach

on a honey stack.

Hands like a swan's wing, feet like a hoof

slip the landlord, sleep on the roof

and in the morning, fleece the mark

mix with the rando's who live in the park

No chocolate candies, no baseball game

where the crows count six

collect the cats eyes, call off the dogs

keep the licorice sticks.

______

for Word Garden Word List--William Wordsworth

Word Garden Word List--William Wordsworth

 

Hello poets! This week we're going to delve into the realm of dead poets so get your shovels and follow me. Ah, here we are, William Wordsworth! Haul him out of there, come on. Hey Bill! 

There are certain poems of his that move me and that I love, or at least like a lot. Here is one of them:

However, I often find Wordsworth to be a bit precious and pretty. Daffodils, did I take my pills, did I sign my will, time to take up my quill and be brill. 

Nevertheless, William has kindly provided us with a wonderful word list! 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, and steep in the marvelous tea of your accomplishment! One lump or two? 

Your list!

bewildered

blackbird

doleful

dotage

fleece

foxglove

harmony

hoof

inmate

insensate

language

lucid

magnolia

obscure

overgrown

random

stately

surveyed

tired

yellow

As I Said

As I said

in confidence

as i said 

from a holy book

as i said

at the emegence

as I said 

but could not look

These are the days of the Autumn's fall

These are the days of lead.

As i said

when we heard the trumpet sound

as i said

as i held your hand

as i said

as we knelt to kiss the ground

of this long-abandoned land

These are the days of the flying bird

These are the days of gold.

As i said

in bent and rusty words

as i said

with fingers crossed

as i said

to saints and conjurers

as i said

when  all was lost

These are the days of the swollen bud

and the bloom of scarlet red. 

_______

I dreamed this poem last night, or the main part of it anyway. 

Shared with The Sunday Muse #242. 

The Legend of Large Larry Lilliput

 The Hollywood heavy left the bughouse

to become a public gangster,

then dynamited the studio

out of some imagined rancor.

"I am the King of the Eskimos!"
he declared with eyes gone glassy

and wore in his hair a plastic rose

convinced it looked quite classy.

His career was a catastrophe

playing ghouls and goons

but they say he gained some mastery

in the place where they count the spoons.

After a time, he married a mime

who made crickets seem loquacious.

They had nine kids--one sublime

and the other eight pugnacious.

He coughed and keeled and passed away

in the middle of his biggest caper.

You can't even visit his grave today--

he vanished into vapor!

______

posted with profuse apologies to Alicia Suskin Ostriker, the subject of this week's Word Garden Word List. 

The image is of Lon Chaney Sr. 

Music: Betty Booom & Ashley Slater Spooky Scary Skeletons

Word Garden Word List--Alicia Suskin Ostriker

 

Hello my loves, you marvelous rabble you. It is time once again for your Word List, and this time the words are all taken from the poetry collection The Crack In Everything by award-winning poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker. 

The title may well sound familiar. It is taken from Leonard Cohen's magnificent song Anthem, and Ostriker quotes and credits it at the beginning of the book. "There is a crack, a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in." (I have seen this quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but that's inaccurate. Hemingway did write "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places." I am well familiar with this quote because I have it framed on my living room wall.)

Ms. Ostriker has been called "America's most fiercely honest poet" and collects awards like your Aunt Mildred collects Hummels. She is a Jewish feminist poet whose writing once prompted a visiting professor to sputter, " You women poets are very graphic, aren't you?" I suppose it made him twitchy for a woman to tell the truth about her life, her body, her experience, and to do it without sugar coating. A woman after my own heart!

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of one's own. Then just link, visit others, and sit back in smug satisfaction. Enjoy!

And now, your list:

bees

bughouse

catastrophe

cerulean

cottonwoods

cricket

dynamited

Eskimo

feathery

flamenco

foam

glassy

goons

gorgeous

mime

public

razor

samba

sicko

zinnias

Space Shuttle Challenger

 

"You always have to be different." --my mother's bitter complaint.

My tricycle mind,

up to its seat springs in rocket fuel. 

That will make you different

and confused

and terrified. 

'What do you see at night when you close your eyes?" I asked my older brother. 

"Nothing. What do you see?"

Oh, colors, crazy colors, a shifting kaleidoscope

and sometimes 

scary things.

I can't make them stop

and I lay awake to escape the turning, appearing, revolving, staring.

Later, older, I tried dragging and drugging

my heels, alcohol,

but Challenger blew up and sprayed across the sky.

I watched on tv and saw my inside outside.

I was a baby writer

and once upon a pair of wheels

I wrote crazy stories for friends who asked if I wrote them high.

I wrote them sober,

then got high to stop.

Later still, I set down the drink and slept with the light on for years,

prone to night terrors and ptsd.

I embraced the Church of Regular Meals,

subscribed to the doctrine of Keep Coming Back.

Slowly, my world came into phase

with a job

a spouse

a child

but, tame as a housecat, no more bright crashes to watch at night.

Even later, single again, child grown, lost in my own skin,

I set out to find out if it's really like riding a bike.

"Give me all of your dreams, you dreamer," said Langston Hughes

and I met myself 

in the interstices

between this world and some other.

Totally amazing mind

as my Cranberries fan friend said of me

and helped me learn to ride the rocket

to these lines

and this life

where I dive into the deep end

fearless

A

F.

_____

I'm floating in a most peculiar way/

and the stars look very different today 

for Dverse Poetics: Visionary Poetry, hosted by Ingrid. 

find The Dream Keeper by Langston Hughes HERE. 

Music: the Cranberries "Dreams"

The Boffin

 Of course, we all fumble at first,

doofing up out of our childhood like baby turtles.

There it is, all at once, 

the Sea of Love,

and we scramble for it, driven by

instinct

movies

pop songs

and our own bodies bolting away with us.

But that's kid stuff.

At some point we think we've got it,

that we've become some sort of love boffin

smug in the sugar bowl of partnered mid-life.

Look! No hands! 

Up on the two-wheeler and thinking NASA needs us.

Oh, little turtle, little turtle rules the waves. 

Hang your heart on the sawtooth coat hook a few times

and all that changes. 

You find out you married a Matryoshka,

a total stranger.

Big and slow, you're back out there among the hatchlings,

drinking too much

doing stupid things to your hair,

fumbling again, tangled in the seaweed,

wishing you were dead.

Oh little boffin, doofing up out of Love's trash can,

now you know how much you never knew.

What was it all for?

You'll find the answer to that when your own grown child

sits crying at the kitchen table, saying mom it hurts so much.

You'll reach out, try to wick away their pain, and helplessly say,

I know,

honey,

I know.

_______

for Sunday Muse #241. 

Music: Tom Waits Sea of Love

Crescent Moon

 

There is a crescent moon beneath my heart

and a thorn placed by Saint Genevieve

wrapped in tissue paper and delivered 

by her hand from a golden sleeve. 

The orchards stand a foot in flood

and the sun denies the vines

as crowns deny Saint Genevieve

to wander dumbstruck blind.

The crescent moon beneath my heart

reflects in switchgrass reeds

and rolls like fog across the stars

that sent Saint Genevieve.

______

unprompted but shared with Dverse OLN hosted by Linda Lyberg

Saint Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris and her feast day was this past week, January 3rd. 

Word Garden Word List--Keith Reid (extended for an encore engagement!)

 Hello friends and welcome back to Word Garden Word List after our collective Christmas break! Let other prompt sites continue to slumber and laze, we are ready to write!

As the old year wanes, my mind turned to thoughts of the many marvelous people we lost in 2022. One of these was Procol Harum lead man Gary Brooker, famous for the song "A Whiter Shade of Pale.' The song is unique in many respects, not least of which are its Bach-like organ lines, Gary Brooker's weathered, weary-sounding singing, and the intelligent, poetic lyrics by this week's featured writer, lyricist Keith Reid. 

I had not realized that Gary Brooker didn't write the intriguing lyrics for his band's songs; this was done by Keith Reid, who--like poet Peter Brown with Cream--was not a playing member of the band he wrote lyrics for, but whose words left an indelible impression when heard. As regards the famous "Whiter Shade of Pale", Reid has said that he heard someone saying to another person at a party, "You've turned a whiter shade of pale." The rest, as they, say, is history. Furthermore, name me another pop song that references Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale." Bubblegum this is not. 

What we do here is to take at least 3 of the 20 words I've taken from the lyrics of Keith Reid and use them in a new original poem of your own. Then link up, visit others, and bask in a smug feeling of stellar accomplishment! 

And now, your list!

blade

cartwheels

cuffs

descended

explore

ghostly

Homburg

humming

jeer

maze

mortal

multilingual

overcoat

purity

replace

seasick

stallion

tale

wandered

wept

Hymn For Homeless Ghosts

 If I could lay hands on a visa 

issued by lost grandfathers--

some kind of ticket scented 

with summer dirt roads--

then I would wear a hat made of dandelions and leave.

The present moment

is just a rented room. 

Poor child, 

yesterday has vanished,

today was born already packing its case,

and tomorrow is asleep in a distant curtained chamber.

It was just a moment ago,

just a breath, when I was

new in the world and believed the world new as well.

Whose hand was on the door

that was closing even as it opened,

wearing the vanishing morning like fleeting fashion?

If I had a passport

made of more than shifting memory,

I would take a hired car

to shores where the waters say,

"Where have you been

delayed so long,

and why dear heart do you ask, through tears, 

                                                     to be told your own name?

_______________

for Six Sentence Stories, "visa". 

Music: Cesaria Evora Sodade