There You Are, Little Sparkler

 

"You are everyone to me,"

said Caligula, and he gave me a scarf

to hide the hickeys--

when you split with a devil

it gets tricky

not to fall apart.

Spending Christmas at Joan of Arc's

with real saints, a faux fire

and presence under the tree--

I can't think exactly which to do

for truth or dare

except to keep my tail clear of the rocking chair.

Joan's guest room smells like

balsam and baguettes

and oh you crusty evergreen--

who's the fairest

of them all?

Who's so full of shyness

that she can't steal on down the hall?

That Frenchy firework, me

mais oui. 

____________

for Word Garden Word List--The Smiths. The middle section has been edited.

Music: The Smiths Ask 

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.

The November Eye Of God

Born with a Fleur-de-lis birthmark,

I said, "De la paix du ciel, 
je suis venu pour la guerre."

Men who spoke against me,
who minced and mocked,
have seen their teeth and tongues curl and fall
like leaves under the November eye of God.

Now, as rodent churchmen scurry to lay a puny trap,
I light candles for those I pray for,
and dance on the graves of the rest.

I am not afraid; I was born to rise in righteous flames untouched
to Heaven and there be judged--
leaving behind the clever, the craven,
and just my body's dust.
________

This is a rewrite of an earlier poem "Novembre" which I have reworked for Brendan's "hero" challenge at Toads.

 "De la paix du ciel, je suis venu pour la guerre." = "From the peace of Heaven, I have come for the war."

 

Catholic Girl On The Loose

Sans shoes,
sans pants,
I am Joan
saving France.

Behold my pennant, my purpose, Saint Margaret and Saint Cat;
bold as bread made from molasses, unshorn hair as plain and black.

Bonjour English
A bientot--
teach you Francais
when I grow.
_____

Ten lines for Kerry's micro-challenge at Real Toads.

Image: "The Flag" by Thomas Cooper Gotch, 1910.

"A bientot" = "see you soon"

 

Novembre

Born with a Fleur-de-lis birthmark,
I said, "De la paix du ciel, 
je suis venu pour la guerre."

Lamb, lioness, God's own girl.

Now, in autumn,
I light candles for those I pray for,
and dance on the graves of the rest.

A strong heart waits for you,
My Love,
here in my body's dust.
_____

A 55 for Kerry.

"De la paix du ciel, je suis venu pour la guerre." = "From the peace of Heaven, I have come for the war."

 

The Nun Clock

In the abbey,
over the arch
with the hooded fleur-de-lis at its apex,
is the Nun Clock.

The black arms,
the white tips which circle the numbers,
turn time French,
and the cat--whose favorite is quatre,
speaks the mother tongue both rough and sweet.

La chatte is at the heart of everything I care about,
and she is the darling of the abbey,
unconcerned and calm
as the Nun Clock chimes these poems--
Ma soeur, je t'aime, je t'aime toujours...
________

For Mama Zen. Words Count. 80 words on the button.

 

Bucket & Brush

After God dashed Himself against the world,
those looking for Him were fooled.

"Seraphine, why haven't you made the tea?"
"Seraphine, get busy on the floors."
Seraphine, take up your bucket and brush,
on your knees, facing backward on the second stair,
seeing wild blooms in the harsh lye soap.

After God dashed himself against the world,
He became as tiny as a seed.

See Seraphine, the lunatic, kneeling in awe before the Virgin,
filled with gratitude for her materials--
the Resurrection in candle wax and sheep's blood.
"Seraphine, when you're done in the kitchen...
the hallway...
the upstairs..."
"Seraphine, when you're done...."

All night, on the hard boards of her room,
knees shrieking, back locked up, shoulders cramping,
Seraphine paints with brush and fingertip
the natural visions she sees.
At these times, her smile is drawn by the Divine.
"Seraphine is a mooncalf, a loon, a half-wit."
In the morning, on an hour's dream-soaked sleep,
she returns to her drudgery.

After God dashed Himself against the world,
He rode in the cuffs and pockets of the ones He chose,
as humble and unseen as a grain of salt.
"There's Seraphine, talking to the trees."
"Seraphine, stop that singing!"
"As mad as seven cats, that one."

After God dashed Himself against the world,
He sent his Saints to speak to Saint Joan.
She heard, and led an army against the English.
She saw a king crowned.
Every French schoolchild knows her name,
but she was just an illiterate village girl.

The proper,
the practical,
the privileged and the pretenders
gather in pews on Sunday in Senlis.
They fill the basket and recite the familiar words,
speaking uninflected to Someone not evidently there.

Seraphine took up her bucket and brush
as Joan did her sword.

In the face of every flower,
every leaf,
every bright miraculous fruit,
see the recreated face of God, in Holy magnificence.
See the drudge, the madwoman, the painter,
her face lit up,
singing to nobody anyone can see,
out of her mind,
and filled with a beautiful unwavering faith as simple as seed and bloom.
_______

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads: the art of Seraphine de Senlis. The painting at top is hers.

How To Write A Poem

Learn to distinguish
Voices
from voices.

Don't say, "who, me?"
Yes, you
with the whole of Heaven at your back.

Call out
mockery,
injury,
flattery,
churchmen...

Love the truth.
Light your own flame.

Burn hard.
_________

At The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, the fiercely fabulous Mama Zen wants us to peez shut mouf, stuff a sock in it, and stfu already! 35 words or less, she says, and I made it in right at 35.

_____ 

Summer Came

Summer came, and I
Hardly cared.
I rode my dapple gray across the market lot
Past a woman in a sundress,
Loading an SUV with more shit than the Vikings ever carried off from flaming England.

She put her hand to her mouth when she saw me.
She stood between me and her child,
Between calm sanity and a wandering, moaning spirit.

I am not much to look at.
Dried blood on my cheek serves as blush.
My scent is natural.
I have come across deserts and fever-borders.

There is a cafe near where I am--
I remember it.
A girl must declare herself butch or femme, and I am neither.
I am the crimson rose, fresh from the rain.
I am the bone hammer,
And also the drum.

I have been shattered, wounded,
Laughed at,
Set on fire.

I burn still.

Is there an opium for this kind of ache?
Is there a stall for my horse?
A bed for me?
Could there ever be sandalwood, patchouli,
All the cheap, perfect aromas of dollar-store serenity?

Could there be
Your arms, bare, except for your silver serpent cuffs?
Your breasts, that my cheek has dreamed of?
Could your thigh between mine
Split me softly, like a river deep and sweet?

Summer came,
And so I traveled across the dust and ruin
Back here,
To you.
I lied before, when I said I hardly cared--

I care for these:
Your face.
Your heart beat.
I care, and I hope that all that I have done and not done,
All the places that I have been or left behind me,
Have made me good enough
To say it.
________

for Monday Melting #21


picture: Rhona Mitre



 

Crusade

It was during the blackout,
In the time of the plague.
I came back to our apartment, leading my exhausted horse,
The cross on my chest dotted with sprays of blood
Like funeral flowers.

You never understood,
When I spoke of slaughter.
Yes, you let me tremble, bare-skinned, in your arms, in the dark,
My heart the very last thing unsheathed;
But I think you still pictured the dead, if you pictured them at all,
Laid straight and pretty in fragrant new rosewood coffins
Unmarred, like asparagus stalks upon a plate.
In your version, they do not lurch,
Cradling their guts in their hands,
Grown men, dying, calling for their mothers.

It was during the scaly week,
The interminable seven days without you,
That hopelessness seeped into me, like poison through a corrupted membrane.
I am your prickly girl, laying my dented helmet
On the counter at the 7-11, embarrassing you.
Haunting the kitchen, I touched my fingers to your copper pots,
So emblematic of the order, the care, the warmth that is you, baby.
I wept. I did.
Then, I lit smudge sticks to banish myself
From this good place where I no longer belong.

In war, in the smoky mornings,
We would sift through the dead and maimed, taking their coins, their shoes,
Anything we could use and carry.
In the dawn, riding slowly along the freeway ramp east of town, with the rising sun behind us,
Our horses' hooves made a jarring racket,
And we shocked the early commuters with our taken scalps
And the heads of our enemies on skewers.

Over time, I know, Love,
That I have become foreign and hard.
Your friends hate me, they say I smell like a stable;
They exchange looks and discuss the white scar
That runs jagged through my short-shorn hair.
So, bless you for coming back,
Like undeserved, untenable salvation.
You hold my head as the television drones, now that the power is back
And the plague has gone.
You kiss my scar as if you were a mother
And I were good, and worthy, and beautiful.

_____

for Monday Melting #14. I had to use these words: tremble, prickly, lurch, asparagus, blackout, copper, scaly, smudge, skewer, sift, membrane and slaughter. Also linked to dverse open link #41.

Orleans

Note: the Cherry Road deli first appeared in my poem Creatures Of The Sea.

On Cherry Road, near Catalpa,

Is a little deli.

Joan of Arc leads her horse inside and down the narrow space between the counter and tables;

He is white and magnificent.

His hooves are loud on the tiled floor, his eyes large and brown, and he snuffles and tosses his head once

As if to say,

Yes,

I am beautiful in my blue blanket with the gold fleurs-de-lis,

A fine steed for knight or saint.



Joan of Arc herself is tired and wounded, but her gentleness with her mount never fails,

And it hurts her to tie him up out back

Near the dumpsters.

When she comes back in, the Pretty Girls having lunch there say,

Look at her,

That haircut.

Those clothes.

She smells.

Omg.



Joan of Arc cannot read the menu.

She pauses uncertainly, and the Pretty Girls giggle, just loud enough to make sure she hears.

Rod McKuen, the famous poet, owns the deli and he smiles as if he were a love poem himself;

When she hesitates, he suggests the roast beef on French loaf.

Certain breads

(he says)

Rejuvenate the soul.

Certain cheeses

(he continues)

Revive flagging spirits.

He points to each one as if touching the well-loved skin of a long-time partner,

Describing each

In gentle words that would make the hardest churchman weep.



The Pretty Girls are scandalized.

Open-mouthed, they look back and forth to each other.

He's talking to her.

Horse chick.

With the weird hair.

Omg.



Joan of Arc sheds holy tears.

Her wounded shoulder bleeds.

The drops fall to the glass of the deli case and form shapes--

St. Michael.

St. Margaret.

St. Catherine.

Rod McKuen fixes her a sandwich with the same reverence he would use in composing verse,

Then slides it on a plate across to her

Along with a cherry Coke

As if it were the Host.

He adds an apple

"For your friend."



The Pretty Girls all get up and leave,

Their matching shoes and handbags from London making them look just like

A defeated army

In astonished retreat.

_______

The Heretic

The trouble with loving gypsies

Is that gypsies always leave.

Oh Mama,

I have been leaving since the day I was born,

And yet I am not a gypsy--

Just a restless soul.

I stood in the fields

Trampled and red--

Put my hand to my shoulder

On the place that it bled...

I wish to be as brave and beautiful

As my horse draped blue and white,

But I am just a wanderer

And fodder for the fire.

I can tell by the way you're looking at me,

You've heard and you know

About the saints mysteriously whispering

Selectively and low.

I heard them

In her perfect voice so sweet,

As she told me

That I was, and I believed.

The trouble with loving gypsies

Is that gypsies always leave.

Oh Mama,

I have been leaving since the day I was born.

My dreams are all of gypsies,

But my life is endless war.

I wish to be as brave and beautiful

As pure and fierce desire,

But I am just beloved of God

And fodder for the fire.

_________

Photo: Evelyn Nesbit

Saint Joan Of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc returns from the battlefield.

Inside her armor, she is filthy and bloody.

An arrow has been removed from her shoulder--

It throbs and she is so tired that she would like to lay down in the tall grass and sleep for a week.

Senior commanders, all men, have dismissed her, humored her, and smiled behind their beards at her.

She has broken the siege of Orleans in nine days.

They do not ask her to be a dear and go fetch coffee anymore.

Saints Margaret and Catherine speak to her, as does Michael the Archangel.

When she gets home, she tosses her sword in the back seat of her old Renault with her good arm,

And anticipates that her lover will wash her hair for her, kiss her injured shoulder and whisper, "Never mind. You are my Joan and you are home now."

That's when she sees that someone has spray-painted "dyke" across the driveway.

That's when she sees the ecclesiastics peeking out from behind their curtains all up and down the street, like so many old biddies.

It is the fifteenth century.

Saint Joan of Arc is nineteen years old, and there is a rainbow flag next to her front door.

She has done her duty, given to her by God.

She has saved France from the English.

She has a girlfriend waiting inside, and a wounded shoulder.

She burns.

__________

Joan of Arc (Again)

Joan of Arc goes to a casting call.

They tell her she can be The Girlfriend.

She blinks.

Her armor reflects the harsh lighting as she says,

"I am a French national hero, and a saint besides.

I have led men into battle to fight and die.

I have been wounded and burned,

And you offer me the part of The Girlfriend?"

The man before her is bored.

There are a million young actresses who would leap on this job like rabid minks.

"So do you want the part or not?"

Joan of Arc rides her noble steed past Starbuck's.

Someone driving past in a pick-up truck honks the horn, yells "hey baby!" and whistles.

It is raining.

Joan of Arc sees her ex-girlfriend coming out of a women's bar on Harrison Avenue.

The same one who told her to take her "funky frog ass back to Quebec."

Joan of Arc is not Canadian.

Saint Teresa of Avila appears and finds Joan sitting on a bus bench, devouring a huge chocolate brownie.

She says, "Hiya, Toots. Nice horse. So...talk to me."

"Life sucks," says the Maid of Orleans.

"I'm unemployed, single and hormonal;

Everything around me seems trivial and unkind.

I feel that I was meant for more than this,

And that, perhaps, I have been born in the wrong time."

"Listen, chica," says Saint Teresa,

"You are more than your circumstances, finer than your failings, and there is honor and purpose in every breath you take.

Besides that, you are loved, more than you know."

"Aw g'wan," says Joan of Arc.

She raises an eyebrow.

"You're not going to start in about Jesus, are you?"

"Nope," says Saint Teresa of Avila. "It's just us girls here. Now fork over some of that brownie. You're such a pig."

Joan of Arc laughs around a mouthful, and breaks off a gooey hunk for Saint Teresa of Avila.

"Fuck you," says Joan of Arc, but she is smiling.

_____________

Joan Of Arc

Joan of Arc

I wanted to just play my silly-girl part,
But I'm heavy with visions, old from the start;
I wanted kisses, dresses, a canopy bed--
But I am holy and lonely Joan instead.

I hear voices, which are my poems.
I see saints, which are my better impulses.

I have my horse, whose soft brown nostrils flare,
My sword and my cross and my short-shorn hair;
The sun bakes down, my saddle creaks
And it goes on like this for weeks...and weeks.

I know the night, which is my sister.
I know the want for a woman, which is my sentence.

What can anyone do to me, or do for me?
They've already reduced me to smoke and glory;
But inside my armor, I've re-formed and I sear
And I'll smoulder like this for years...and years.

I love the high grass and the red-winged blackbird.
I long for a French girl and la fin de la guerre.

I only wanted some charm and some looks,
Never my face in old history books;
No statue all pigeon-shit, stood in the park,
Not this lonely and burning sweet bitch Joan of Arc.