Green House, Black Trim

 My house is lime green

with black trim

like a garden

for grave diggers.

Surrounding it on rainy afternoons

are rings of brilliant jade leaves

on shiny black trunks

swaying like boxers.

One of the spindles

has come out from the porch rail.

It holds steady, but

I don't trust it like I used to

when the noisy morning starlings

and the raucous ones in evening

sounded and numbered

the same. 

Mean Dog

 She's gotten loose again.

I'm talking about the mean dog I keep

behind the rickety fence

of my better sense. 

She's all mouth and teeth, 

dumb as a box of rocks.

Careful walking down my street--

first you're someone, then just meat.

Down in the viney valley, fragrant and wild,

came a mist-born baby, a minstrel child.

Down the bramble run, in the muddy black

that sweet babe wandered and never came back.

Down the alley, off toward the stacks

my mean dog rambles to hell and gone.

She lives on my tongue, not cute, not young

and I'm sick and sorry, whatever she's done.

Dying Man in a Yellow Suit

 

October, you are a dying man

wearing a yellow suit

voguing down the boulevard

pretending that cane is just a prop.

Step inside the boulangerie.

Sugar melts, cakes grow stale,

but being in the case is like being on stage--

it's "let's pretend" in the sweetest way.

Summer hasn't been kind to us.

There is chewing gum on our soles,

our skin is a disaster, our regrets numberless,

yet we reflect in store windows as clearly as royals.

October, offer me your arm and no one will know

that you are not just being gallant.

With each step, another day ticks away

and when you lie down with me it will be as a near-ghost.

No matter, don't give it another thought.

I am here, once almost-pretty,

my spirit a genuine drop dead knock-out babe

and all yours until November arrives

in its ferryboat, and if you brought no coin

I've got you, allow me, you with the kindly moon in your eyes.

______

for my dear friend Dora at Dverse Poetics: Tripping the October Light Fantastic

In the Rhambangle (new version)

 In the Rhambangle, the climbing vines

looped themselves up and through the latticework
like emotions falling from a dream.

You loved the hour-bound birds who made their nests
in the high corners; feathered keepers
without ceremony, counters of our soft seconds and all the rest.

I liked your boots, especially tucked beneath a wicker chair
in the moonlight, lost to your feet
but called a curious thing by the avante garde among the moths of local wing.

I haven't said it well, I realize. My irises kept the words
after I first saw them in morning light.
It's a fool's errand, so they say, making these sounds no string nor key would own,

but I keep trying, because I love you down to the detail, the divinity, the dissonance, and the bone.

____

original version HERE. It was written for a prompt demanding made-up words. Here I have replaced them all except for the title word. 

Four Leaf Clover

 Four leaf clover, talk to me

Tell me how my luck will be.

In the rain 

I'm the girl

with a flower garland in her hair

I'm the ball 

that someone left

dangerously on the stair.

 Four leaf clover, talk to me

Tell me how my luck will be.

In the fall 

I'm the girl

with a jack-o-lantern for a face

I'm the book 

on the bed

but I never think to mark my place.

 Four leaf clover, talk to me

Tell me how my luck will be.

In the night 

I'm the girl

with a yellow candle burning bright.

I'm the stray 

in the road

watching all the passing pretty lights

 Four leaf clover, talk to me

Tell me how my luck will be.

_____

I Heard That Song Today

 I heard that song today,

the one I played a thousand times

in the days after you died. 

I was a seed on the wind,

you were the river and the shore

the border that my heart was heading for.

I heard that song today

and it all came rushing back--

the shine of the face I loved

and the ache of missing that. 

______