Night Walkers

We're sorry to call
at such a late hour--
so we'll scoot in and snick the door

shut

so quietly.

Every Wednesday night
since Goddess knows when
we're canasta queens

but then you know we

have time to be.

We wear white dresses up to our necks
and we like the jokers left in the decks.

Shh shh, go back to sleep.
Don't come down the stairs--
or we'll disappear, tongues gone to cats,
as if we'd never even been there.

We sense you more than see you
when curiosity draws you
down the stairs--

we hold our breath

and three our pairs. 

Curse you, damn you,
disturbing our game
with lights obliging us to disperse--

impudent meat bag!

We were here first! 
________

For Marian's music prompt--Alice Cooper. Youtube doesn't want to let me include his song "Black Juju" but that's the one I wrote from. 

I once had a dream that I was one of a small group of 1900-ish ladies who gathered regularly in a house to play canasta. We'd play our cards and get talking and laughing--waking up the resident upstairs in the bedroom. I remember very clearly that the house had beveled glass in the front door, and a narrow stair case rising up from it. To one side was the parlor with a fireplace and a table and chairs. All of us wore white. Anyway, when the resident would get up and start edging down the stairs to see what the voices were, we all had to stop silent and wait to see if they would turn around or come all the way down and ruin our game. You see, although only the resident seemed shadowy to us, we knew *we* were the ghosts in *their* house. And...it wasn't the first time I had dreamed of being a ghost in someone else's reality!

Red

Nick Gravenites: A woman...

Janis Joplin: yeah?

NG: A woman...

JJ: yeah?

NG: A woman...

JJ: yeah?

NG: Just makes me mad.

JJ: Aw man....sheeit.

--"Ego Rock", from Joplin In Concert

While i was in the hospital
being the world's shittiest caterpillar,
you bought me
JOPLIN IN CONCERT
the double live album i coveted bad.

you were leaves on a high breeze.
i was a silk grenade.
we were young once, weren't we?
in Birmingham
so far down the rabbit hole, the wrong way down the telescope.

nothing from then is still the same.
i kiss the feet of the Goddess who arranged *that*, but
the desire i had to will wings out of my body
and rise is still there,

just like
JOPLIN IN CONCERT
and though i rarely play it,
i see the red cover
and there you are, smiling still, and standing right in front of me.
______

for Bittersweet Melodies at Real Toads.
 

Wee-Ooh

Can you hear my thoughts?
You ought to be able to,
it ought to be a snap
there's an a app for that
a map for that
don't be an ass for that's the worst thing you could do, I think.

But if you can hear my thoughts,
it's not like you didn't know I was gonna say that
it's so easy
lemon squeezy
let's go crazy it's the sanest thing to do.

And la la la
I can't hear you, all you alien abductors
train conductors
found and fucked 'ers 
spinning around the planets like Super Nobody

La la la, oh
I'm not listening, here in the great midwest
what I like best
what I want to suggest
is that we change the station change the station....

So, can you hear my thoughts?
What did I just dream about?
Do I have to get out
the hand puppets just to make myself clear
and if you don't hear what I haven't said,
it's no use, like shouting at a foreigner, a waste of time I think.
_____ 

For Marian's Music Prompt: Dar Williams. Image at top: Clemence Poesy.

 

To My Darling, To Make Short Work of Noobs

"Your love is really an experience." --Taj Mahal

My Love, never waste your singular self on
unworthy noobs
or stammering, unprepared buffoons.

Behold the noob.
Harken to my inquiry of the noob,
to explain in stanzas, equations, hymns, vulgarities and riddles
your sexy cool self.

"Uh...well, basically...."
The noob has no idea.

Placing the noob in an open field,
we introduce them to the updraft that is you,
the rotation and charge. 
The noob, covered in ice, returns to earth at speed.
The noob breaks a windshield, then spins away with someone's roof.

Placing the noob in the lion's den,
the noob becomes a yolk within a shell of teeth, tongue, jaws.
In this way, the noob studies your sharpness, your appetites,
your sudden strike and your tendency to toy with things.
Lucky noob, copying down the poetry of your rough tongue!

Placing the noob in a tossing sea,
overboard is the only place to be,
cataloging starfish,
hammerheads,
heat vents,
and written cautions to just go with it, not to rise too fast,
and a decompression chamber at the ready in case of the bends.

My Love, discard and forget the noobs.
You are the lioness riding a funnel cloud and carrying a beach umbrella.
With you is the cub, the dust devil, the sharky koi pond,
so that it all might continue into the next generation.
That is the only noob you need.
________

for Marian's music prompt at Real Toads. My title is a tongue-in-cheek play on Herrick's  "To The Virgins, To Make Much Of Time."

  

The Birder

I fell out of love with myself--
I was cruel, I admit it.
I said things, things I'm not proud of,
and had no mercy, no care for what I did.

All the birds I am made from--
my own distinct darlings and devils--
elude illustration,
cataloging,
and most particularly, shotguns.

This happens, from time to time--
this disenchantment, this anger, this flocking out on the ledge.
Loud noises ruin everything,
and when I am feeling this way,
I am a cacophony.

See how clever you are.
See how my birds come to you, in winter
in summer, in distress and in droves,
saying "She is gone mad again, and we cannot reckon anymore."
See how you shush and shelter them,
my storm orphans.

Here is the curved sky,
the similar earth below;
here is the birdhouse with its precise holes for entry,
and its green shingled roof for keeping out.

You asked me for a bird, tonight, knowing I wouldn't refuse.
You brought no cage, no tether.
How quiet it got, so that all there was to hear was feathers
as I flew back into myself and became this poem,

the one you saved,
the one I wrote in birdsong for you.
______

for Every Day I Write The Book at Real Toads. 

 

C'mere, Sugah

C'mere, sugah.
Oh come
_
_
_
HERE,
woudja, sweetheart?

Aw, don't be like that.
Aintcha glad t'see me?

All right.
I'll just bide my time.
Sooo,
is that a good book?
Well,
ya didn't have to close it,
but I guess there's a fire or something outside that window.
Yep, something wonderful in-ter-esting.

~whistle~
~sigh~
...
...
...
Well hello there, baby.
kiss~
and
~kiss.
I sure love you a bunch too.
Feels like I ain't seen ya in donkey's years.
I said "years", not "ears."
No, I ain't saying nothing about your mama.
I like ole Jenny just fine,
you know I do!
She made you, didn't she?
(yeah, I know that's pretty cornball,
but true.)

C'mon, then.
Let's go paint the town!
_
_
_
Um, you ain't gonna get there very fast
sitting down.
Now what?
I seen tree stumps less firmly planted.
Take it easy,
I was just yanking your rope,
but how come if I say A,
you just GOT to say Z?

All the same,
I love ya so.
You'll always be my hinny honey,
and yes,
I love your singing.
You shoulda been in some sort of horse opera--
you woulda done your daddy proud.
Now can we go?
Kick up a little dust?

I love it when you walk right close.
Aw sugah.
Aw shucks.
______

for Marian's Time (the Revelator) challenge at Real Toads. I used a different Gillian Welch song, "Hard Times."

Fun facts to know and tell: a female donkey is a "jenny". When bred with a male horse, you get a "hinny".

  

 

Guadalupe

Guadalupe wears her red cape in the rain;
her black hair makes her appear to be on fire.
The sky is like an ether cloth, trying to put her out.
The sun is a coward, a pendejo, 
a grandee in Granada, a gardener in New Braunfels,
haunting the hotel from inside the linen closets.

Lupe goes to Danny's, but always drops her coffee mug.
It's a starry constellation on the floor.
"Ay, chica, you're such a spaz," say her friends.
Inside her is a howl. It paces from rib to rib, getting closer to her throat.
She has noticed that she no longer has hands.
Short gray fur, pads, the urge to run--
she has these at the end of her arms, her rope, her patience.

Last night, she dreamed that a gaucho rolled the moon across a stage
as if it were a lariat.
His horse snorted and stamped at the ground at the mere scent of her,
and then,
in the weird way of dreams,
the gaucho became Caligula, and he spoke to her urgently.
"I ordered my legions to march against the sea.
When they failed, I required that my soldiers collect shells in their helmets,
like little girls.
In the end, I turned into a porcupine, killed with quills delivered by my enemies."

Guadalupe's friends are blathering on about lip gloss.
Lupe sees that the Succubus and the Queen of the Vampires are sitting on one side of the door,
and that Chloe and God are sitting on the other,
like Nixons in a bowling alley.
Lupe winks at Savanna the teenage runaway,
and just like that, they are over the tables and out the door,
converting the split,
a silver blur in new moonlight, running hell for Sunday into indigo night.
________

for Marian's music prompt. Will the wolf survive? One of my favorite songs. 

When visiting New Braunfels, Texas, try the Prince Solms Inn. It is haunted by the spirit of a jilted bride.

Nixons.

See? 

  

Dainty Maid

I'm a delightful, dainty maid
with a girlish giggle and a live grenade--

I felt silly,
so I blew up Billy.
An evil devil murderess,
that's what the judge says.

But let me run and gain plurality,
then my prank is simply policy.

What a dainty little duality.
Would you like to play with me?
_________

for Marian's music prompt at Real Toads

The Forgotten Birds

Forget birds.
All they want to do is sing, anyway.

Draw flowers out by lizard's tongue;
leave them language pooling in their blooms
with a hundred words,
a thousand subtle shades
of one feeling, a pollen of blue starvation.

Don't walk on the wet grass.
It will pack the earth, stunt the roots,
and then you will have to take the same worn path every day
until screaming seems normal,
and the sun comes out like a gaudy so-what.

Some asshole called me "sir" today.
Don't set prickly lettuce in a tourist trap coffee cup on my table
and call it anything but what it is--
weed and kitsch.
Do you know what this is, this skin-trapped life, this leggy vine going on?
And where is the gardener?
Lazy absent bastard.

I have a second-floor window box
five steps from my bed, if I still bothered to get up.
Every morning, the sun rises out of it,
facing east as it does,
a cemetery of little plastic sticks, evidence of the ghosts of myself.

Forget summer.
I wish it were winter, cold and dark as a banshee's hair in the wind.
Forget that stooge, hope,
forget her face and your garden homage to her;
forget spring's vacant creeping stupidity,
forget May.

And forget birds--
they only want to sing anyway. 
______

for Marian's music challenge at Real Toads, today featuring Jonatha Brooke.

 

 

Violet Ward

Violet Ward's mother wasn't a smoker, but she got a cancer anyway.
Her skin was white and papery, despite her (relative) youth.
Her hair was brittle cellophane,
dishwater blonde, with a gold stripe around it from some kind of cranial jaundice.

At night, she smoked herself empty.
There are degrees of empty,
and sometimes empty just purely hates to be alone.

My dog loved Violet Ward.
He had made a hole in the upstairs screen, as if it were the ozone,
and he would run to stick his great head out, at a word from her.
Sometimes she would bring her friend to see The Dog From The Sky.
They stood like stargazers by the fence, looking up.
He barked a blessing.
It was a pure, fine thing.

Violet Ward had a chow chow named Gemini,
but one day the men with their loops came and chased him around his own yard,
and took him away.
That night, Violet sat outside cradling a broken radio, and the sound that came
from her poor raw throat was unlike any I have heard. 
There is no frequency for that.
It would break the air and stop hearts cold if it weren't contained.
"Shut up!" screamed Violet Ward's mother, in the public interest.

My dog's name was Sunny, and she was his faithful moon.
She called, he came, and he shone,
into her frozen world, as he had into mine.
Years later, I told my night-frightened son that Sunny could banish ghosts and devils,
and this was the God's Honest.
I had seen him do it a million times.

Because she was full of cancer, if nothing else,
Violet Ward's mother made an heirloom of emptiness
and screamed at her daughter to come collect it.
"You stupid little fuck!" 
And so emptiness took root and went to work from within.

Violet Ward had a dark doll she called Nigger Baby.
I sometimes saw her come out the side door,
wiping tears with the back of one hand, 
and shaking the shit out of Nigger Baby with the other.
Sometimes she bashed Nigger Baby's stuffed brains in against the side of the house.
"Bad Nigger Baby!" she would hiss quietly, so her mother wouldn't hear--
her mother with the perpetual headache and the cancer heart.
Every time Nigger Baby hit the siding, I flinched.
I would hold Sunny and breathe carefully around the broken thing in my chest.

I left Texas, and what became of Violet Ward stays at the edges of my dreams,
out of reach.
Sunny died and went straight to Paradise.
I finally got sober.
I had a child of my own and raised him, and I hope I did more good than harm.
His dolls were called Stretch Armstrong and Donatello.
When I still went to Mass, I prayed for Violet Ward, for years.
I hope she found a glow-dialed radio
to watch over her with Golden Light
and play only the songs that Violet loves--
Maybe Mitch Ryder--
and that she is all right.
________

Everything in this poem really happened, a long time ago, in Texas.

For Marian's "Dead City Radio" and Kim Nelson's "Violet" challenges at Real Toads. 

It's Mother's Day. 

 

Saph Says What

Like the old record should have said--
hit me, babe.
I'm nothing but a bell girl,
nothing but a plain spoken girl.

Hang me babe--
haul down on that hemp.
Swing me babe,
and I'll sing it, like truth down from the mountain top.

Ring me babe--
with a Claddagh or a Labrys;
or deny, and deal with my silence--
no more sugar on a Sunday morning, no more sweet talkin' tongue in the bell.
_______

for Marian's Music Challenge: "Soon Enough", the music of Aimee Mann. I struggled with this; it took me three days and a near-total rewrite, but I finally have something I am happy with. Here's a Til Tuesday song that I used for inspiration.

...and also the Doors song I referenced in the poem. Robbie Krieger wrote this song as "Hit Me", but Jim Morrison refused to sing it that way. If you listen carefully, you can hear that the band had some fun with it as they chant the old Ajax laundry detergent jingle "stronger than dirt" at the end.

I'm adding these images, as several people have mentioned having to look up what I was writing about.

Claddagh ring

Labrys ring.  

Girl Next Door

She said she wasn't the girl next door,
but she was.
She said she had both hands on the wheel,
and she did,
but the wheel stayed still while the car went road sky road sky road sky stop.

She said she never kissed a woman,
but she had.
She said she had both feet on the ground,
and she did,
but she stayed still while her heart went swerve right swerve left swerve right crash.
_____

written for Marian's music prompt at Real Toads