Minutes of The Marvell-Herrick Society

Everybody talks about
miasma
buboes
mass death
like it's a bad thing.

Gray skies are gonna clear up--
put on a bird-mask face
with roses 
under your noses--
yeah that's the way.

Everybody talks about
crops
cows
heads with crowns
like that shit really matters.

Kiss me, honey,
Old Time is still a-flying.
It's not love
but it's not bad,
and what's the dif if we're dying?
_______

Gathering rosebuds while I may, for Mama Zen's "Words Count." And yes, I really drew the Death card. You expected I would get the six of cups?

 

 

Paperless Office

I saw her once, months
ago. Thought she was cute. 
Now she's back around.
She told me, in the morning, early
about the ditz where she's a paralegal
shredding all the hard copies cos "it's a paperless office."
There's people too dumb to live,
but it made a funny story.


My original heart is just a memory,
but talk to me, girl,
anyway.
______

56 words for Mama Zen's "Words Count."  Yesterday morning at the bus stop, my friend told me this story about some chick's major dumbass moment where she works. 

My Mask

My mask
cleans up nice.
Guys talk rot to it,
and it talks back.

My mask 
goes to work,
spouts input,
yaps at clients.

Punks
get in my mask,
tell it we're a bitch.
My mask changes parking lots.

Let's sit here, mute as dummies you and I.
We'll watch our masks
talk
smile
kiss
tongue
more real than we have been in years.
______ 

for Words Count with Mama Zen.
 

The Lost Art of Archery

The lost art of archery
can be practiced at seaside
in rented cottages.

First, open all windows.
Then, enlist a confederate.
(Fashion wig optional.)

One of you must be an artist;
the other, a patient on day pass.
The difference is slight.

Break boredom.
Impress crushes!
Secure random objects to pastel walls 

at will, at all hours of afternoon. 
______

for MZ's words count

The Lion In The Goldfish Bowl

"Poor great dull thing," they said about the lion in the goldfish bowl.

"She's out of place," they said about the lion on Main Street with bowl shards in her skin.

"Wtf?" they said about the lion at the dinner table, the date who won't be back.

"She's cool as fuck," said another lion, with golden eyes.
_____

Off the top of my kitty-cat head, for MZ's challenge at Real Toads. 48 words. There were two more but I ate them.

Buy Curious

Your heart is held in a rose's petals--
a ghost holds the past in an empty room;
You ask me to speak what the cards reveal--
your life laid out in pasteboard cartoons.

Go home.
Ask someone to smack you, hard.
Or stay, but it's gonna cost you, sister,
to move my hand from the back of the card.
_____

For Words Count with Mama Zen.

 

Between Angels and Elephants

Between angels and elephants,
sparrows atop the tent poles
and tigers on two-foot stools,

is the acrobat.
Not bird, nor magician,
she starts in sawdust,
but circuses have ladders.

Every act involves a first time
and a thousandth.
Smell the blood and popcorn;
believe it matters what you do--

the merest sparrow is one part angel;
women and tigers...two.
_____

Exactly sixty words for Mama Zen's "Words Count."

Image: "Circus Girl Smokes While Rehearsing Her Stunts", Nina Leen 1949. 

The picture made me think of the film Wings Of Desire ("Der Himmel Uber Berlin") in which two angels wander post-war Berlin. One of them falls in love with a circus trapeze artist, and wishes to become mortal so that they can be together. Because of copyright restrictions, I can't post the trailer on the blog, and so I provide a link HERE. It will open in a new window, so you don't have to leave this page in order to view it.

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.

 

Finishing School

Susie brought a pineapple
or perhaps a hand grenade--
Bernice barks and continually tries
to spit in the lemonade.

Linda likes to play 
with matches
and to sprinkle her gruel 
with sand and ashes.

It's not that we want to disappoint--
oh mother, teacher, lofty god;
but Susie is violent, Linda is mad,
and I am feral, mute, and odd.
_____

60 words on the nose for Mama Zen's Words Count at Real Toads. I avoided using "thou" and "ye". You're welcome.

 

Dumb Beasts

There was mud--
but that was far from the worst of it.
Hooves sank, jerked up, sank again--
flanks heaved, nostrils flared and burned like the air itself.

There was blood--
but that was not the worst of it.
Each time a shell exploded, limbs, ears, nerves, souls came apart,
ragged, absurd, destroyed, haunted forever.
The horse tried again but was held back,
leaving knots of red flesh on the barbs of the wire.

Horses, like men, find themselves where they find themselves,
but that is still not the worst of it.
This horse, caught in the wire, a round in its ribs, frothing, struggling,
could as easily have been cantering around a track in Kentucky
or pulling up clover in an Irish field.
Great men lighting cigars in gilded rooms saw to it being otherwise.

But listen to me.
That animal has rotted to white bone, along with its rider.
Any sunrise they ached to see has long since come and gone without them.
So here I am, standing in front of the house I grew up in--
I left bloody wads of myself caught on the twists of love and hate,
hope and despair that existed here,
but that is not the worst of it, either.

The worst of it is what I brought to my own child
in my panic, and in my pain.
I hope that armistice came soon enough.
God forgive me for carrying on traditions like these on the innocent,
and God bless the dumb beasts
who live only in the moment for their simple needs
and by doing so, prove their masters fools beyond all telling.
______

for Mama Zen's "Dear Past, Dear Future" challenge at Real Toads

  
 

Teas

"Here are my teas," you said,
fingers light on the smooth white 
inside of the cupboard door.

Tucking red hair behind your ear,
you recited them:
"Darjeeling," (drawing out the "ing")
"Mood Mender," (stressing the "M"s)
and "China Black...?"

You carefully fold back the little flaps
of one lucky box.
"Mmmm, smell that," you almost whisper.

Then, the kettle whistling,
the pretty, empty teacups on the table,
and you, with a cat's cool,
serving tease.
_______

Exactly 75 words for Margaret Bednar's "Play It Again, Toads #15. The photograph at top is hers.  I selected Mama Zen's Words Count from last December 10th, asking for the use of homophones. (Are they some kind of specialty cell phone? I've got to get my hands on one!)

 

Bon Appetit

"Marlon Brando loves dark women, because he can't see them." --Jane, mental patient

"Children are the only ones who blush." --Lou Reed

The poissonier said to Marcel Proust,
"It isn't always about you.
I've got my own fish to fry."

Nemesis said to Narcissus,
"Get over yourself.
Eat those feewings, and stay out of the water.

Mott the Hoople met a frog and a local beauty for lunch,
and Pharaoh Menes came all the way from Memphis.
The menu was all-natural,
but none of them much liked being told to eat shit.
_______

70 words exactly (excepting the quotes at the top) for Words Count.

Meat

The Meat Monkeys boomed death into my mother.
No more warm,
no more milk,
no more rough tongue.

They put the hard ring around my neck,
and pushed me behind the strange gray grass that cannot bend.
The Meat Monkeys taught me useless things:
Jump through a hoop.
Sit on a perch like a bird.
Go here, do that, learn some monkeytalk.

Whip. Chair. Hungry.
At night, I dream of forests full of loose dinner.
Here comes my Meat Monkey, strutting.
Meet my claws, teeth, anger.

Learn some tigertalk.
______

a circus tale for Mama Zen in 89 words.

Fall

Bright by daylight,
but you get dark early, babe.

You make me shiver,
when you wrap yourself around me.

Your blackcat ways
and the things you say,

leave me to smile, 
redden, 
fall.
_____

33 words for Words Count with Mama Zen.

Bosco Speaks!

English: "Woof!"

Bosco language:

Last five minutes of your movie? Miguel Cabrera up to bat? Last ten pages of your novel? Just got comfy and half-asleep?

I'M STARVING FEED ME LET ME OUT!

Just started doing dishes? Coloring your hair? Writing a poem?

OUT! NOWWWW!
_________

Alternate version:

Bosco: woof!

Translation: "I love you, Mom!"

Shay: Awww. I love you too, Bosco! What would I do without you, huh?
_____

Image from weheartit.com.

For Mama Zen's Words Count at Real Toads. She asks for a little personal weirdness. I have regular conversations with my dog Bosco. I often handle both ends of it.

 

Paleontology For Couples

450 million years ago,
at Angelo's,
before they remodeled,
I told you something.

I had been saving it,
relishing the moment when I would unveil it,
reveal it,
astonish you with the joy of it.

You never heard a word I said.
So, for 450 million years, I never spoke again--
here, but not here,
turned to stone instead.
______

59 words for Mama Zen at Real Toads.
 

 

Third Moon

The moon,
the usual moon,
set itself in the dark of your hair.

At your shoulders,
waves took on silent motion,
but I stayed quiet, having seen that before.

A second moon
lit the dampness on your skin,
making anyone who saw you, dream you.

In strange light,
the long hair down your summer-colored back
looked like tiger stripes, and seeing, I was bitten.

I could still have lied to you, then,
could still have gotten dressed, exhaled, escaped,
slipping sly across a thorn stem.

But oh, Love, how you command the third moon,
the one behind your eyes,
that leaves me thrilled, speechless, compromised.
______

for Words Count with Mama Zen at Real Toads. At 105 words, I blew the count again, but maybe she'll forgive me since I did such a nice job with the theme of threes. :-)

Catholic

Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit declares
that people who support gay marriage should not present themselves for holy communion.

Look, altar boys come and go,
and what's the big deal about a few stray Nazis carrying suitcases
with stickers for sunny Italy and sweet, safe South America?
They gave us head,
or the odd work of art;
can't a few trivial matters be overlooked?

But you two, saying you're in love,
get the fuck out of here,

and send in Fritz
with a young friend to take my mind off such abominations.
_____

I confess I blew the word limit for Mama Zen's Words Count at Real Toads. I hope she will absolve me.
 

April

We are playing softball
--orderlies vs. residents--
out on the lawn.

The sun is out at last.
A robin is playing short fielder.

Tyrone belts one
way out to the divots where 
Rita dug in her heels
screaming, fighting Tyrone,
who knew to leave the shiv in or she'd bleed out.

She did it to herself.
Today was fun, but
we missed Rita, who couldn't come.
________

"the flowers bloom like madness in the spring" --Jenny Anderson

"No matter how hard the winter, regardless how bumbling they were the year before, come April we always thought our team would be in the thick of it. With the ice melted and everybody 0-0, just the crack of the bat was enough to make the hardest of us believe that our hearts would not be broken this time, and that a benevolent God surely loved the Cubs, just as we did." --Jeanette Prolsky

66 words exactly, for Words Count with Mama Zen.

 

Girl

She's not a nice girl.
Her kiss takes your breath,
and while you're weak,
she'll take the rest.

She'll have your child,
but bear it dead--
then raise it up
(but just the head.)

Kiss me

instead.
______

for Words Count at Real Toads. 37 words on the nose.