Mister Barbenstock

 

Mr. Barbenstock had eaten one of his students--

a little girl who sat in the third desk, 

far right row, a tiny ladybug in a hand-me-down jar.

There was a flurry of shrill criticisms from yappy parents,

the kind who weep at every brown leaf

and drive their sissy-ass cars to carnivals on Sunday.

Mr. B (as he was known at Grimoire Elementary)

stood out like bloody steak atop a birthday cake--

this bearded, uber-correct male among the ewes.

How many had he done this to? demand school paper reporters,

caps askew in the rough and tumble of a performative press conference.

What evil lies unsuspected beneath blah blah yadda yadda.

Mr. B. hears hummingbirds in his head; they alone can understand

his infinite lovesickness, lugubrious as an engine leak

in his smoking, whirring, damaged heart, hurting him.

His life has become a kind of constant translation--

bathtub to oceanside, mini-Cooper to Graf Zeppelin,

vacant, fidgety students to roaring throng of weird cryptids!

Mr. Barbenstock blinks. The prosecutor is asking for a cardinal number

denoting his victims. Everyone has grown up in a matter of moments.

It's a math problem! He begins to instruct, his forte where he hides.

________________

for Word Garden Word List--Richard Blanco. 

Music: The Temptations I Can't Get Next To You

Laika

 

Looking up through the trees in my yard at night,

what does it matter that the stars we see are already dead?*

I look to God as my dog looks to me.

Still there? Good. Anything you want me to do?

Sometimes I think about Laika, the Russian space dog,

so happy (as I imagine) to be rescued from a pound,

given a job and a pack. Did she look to them

as my dog looks to me and I look to God?

They sent Laika into space though there were no sticks,

no fields, no soft bed, no pack to go with her.

She must have wondered where everyone went,

and been so bewildered and lonely.

Who's a good dog?  Oh, you were, Laika.

My own dog looks to me as I look up to God

in tears and asking, still there?  

----

*required line written by Amy Woolard

for Dverse Prosery--Amy Woolard, hosted by my friend Dora. I don't normally write prose anymore, but made an exception. 

Music: Tom Rosenthal It's OK

Saw 101010101

 

No one has ever seen Mr. Cobol.

He's like an eclipse, we all use special mirror boxes, but still

he is bright, electrical, and smells of Ozone cologne. 

His disembodied voice materializes out of the intercom.

"Get down from there and report to my office."

Which one of me, I wonder?

No one has ever been to Mr. Cobol's office. 

It's said it's down a long hall, through a tube and up a ladder.

Some say he dances there on the head of a pin.

I select full harlequin costume and megaphone,

trumpeting, "Mr. Cobol, Mr. Cobol. wherefore art thou, Mr. Cobol?"

It's not love, but it's urgent. I need this paycheck.

Mr. Cobol responds--out of the ether!--with mechanical poetry

any simp could compose. I loose my infinite number of monkeys

and hear Mr. Cobol howl jaggedly, bleeding junk data.

Now Mr. Cobol's shadow self emerges, creeping though the ducts

for the air conditioning and all of our eyes. Many go blind.

I play a saw, wahhh wooooaaahh slashing his scores, stee-rike!

Some say that Mr, Cobol is the Ultimate Umpire,

regal, invisible, all-powerful, robed in Rules like Nebuchadnezzar

and the score is always 1-0. I saw lovely Sally in half, now there's 2.

It's said that Mr. Cobol has learned to play the saw, too,

but I know better. My monkeys have him moaning wahhh woooahh

over the intercom, making calculations, spitting out memos.

Me: Two.

MC: One!!!!

Monkeys: five!!!

MC: zeeeerroooooo...

Me: Nine!

MC; zee roooe

Monkeys: Nein! 

Mc: uhhhhhwaahhh oooo

Me: Since I sawwww her standing there!

MC: oeeoowww, oggghh

Monkeys: Not your steppin' stone!

Me: Stoned?

MC: one...zero...liftoff...

Monkeys: happy trails, pardner!

Me: Haw! better skeedaddle!

MC:

MC:

MC: master

MC: master of

MC: Master of Ceremonies

Monkeys: Evacuate!

Me, wearing balloon pants and tapping head: Can't touch this!

Bette Davis: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

_________

for desperatepoets "Slam At The Singularity Corral. "

Note: In All About Eve, Bette Davis actually said "bumpy night", not "bumpy ride", but the misquote serves my ending better. 

Music: William Mapother plays the saw for Brit Marling in Another Earth. 

Eyeglasses Like Morning Mist

1.

Eyeglasses like morning mist one wakes to

or a neighbor's house seen through falling snow.

I can't recall or summon up the moment

when they began to film, smear, obscure

and soften every object like a too-polite host.

2. 

He is a secret creature, keeping his own counsel,

his heart right there in his eyes, but his eyes useless.

"Here, boy," I say in my love-voice, as if I were a river

and he the one born in love with the blind leap.

He fears nothing, I am his safe shore, kind, constant.

3.

I was twenty, though I was sixty, in love, sitting alone

with my novel when the bus creaked up, its numbers

broken, aslant with rain. I closed my umbrella, got on,

dropped my change in the box, swayed when we moved

and saw through the window my book, blurred, forgotten.

4.

After, you know, I saw you everywhere, and never again.

A certain wave of black hair, someone's careless rhythm

crossing a parking lot, swinging a bag or a child's hand,

I mistook you everywhere, nearly kissed strangers, blinked

back sudden tears, so angry, so confused, so blind sad.

5.

Eyeglasses like morning mist when one wakes to

to find the beloved novel on the floor face up

and opened to the wrong page. Was I on pavement?

in the back yard? in bed? in grief? when the stars tilted

and I knew I had lost the heart, the luxury, to leap.

_________

for dverse Meeting The Bar, "Cadralor."

Progression

Ice broke the bowl
of the bird bath.
Spring had revenge upon the ice.

In summer I watched my sweet dog
step up and hide her head
against my stomach, for love.
Winter cared nothing for her.
She is gone.

Illness broke the bowl
of my body.
Today's better, though.
I tell the empty room.
_____

a flash 55 about extremes for Kerry at Real Toads.
 

Cassandra

With barbs through my swollen lips,
I told huge lies
about an angel.

With a cracked skull, I said every wicked thought I had,
to the wind,
to the wind.

The angel warned every neighbor and cousin about my evil.
She wept,
and swept her reptile tail discreetly out of sight.

I ran, such an ugly girl that the sun turned away,
and the clouds
abandoned white for shroudy gray.

No one believed anything I said--
not the stupid, swaying trees,
not the flimsy hollow-boned birds,
not the thin air I spread my screams into.

No one, until I found her in the crack-glassed mirror,
spit on by Apollo,
disregarded and accurate--

Cassandra.
_____

for Ella 

Monsters of Me

I'm not so sure I would want to face
the monsters of me
that might have been, under different stars.

How heavy and foreign, how bizarre,
the clunky telephone and the safety glass.
What to say to the hardened, lined face on the other side?

Taken further, what about the locked ward,
what about the chilling disturb of the rolling lawn
with its markers and dates?

Then again, maybe Goddess spared enough angels
to save the other me, too.
Maybe the bars, the taverns, the prisons, the asylums,
and yes, the graveyards, had to do without me there, too.

What if, on that different Earth where the same sun seems to rise,
and where coffee brews the same, warming the hands, the body, the soul,
I should find something even harder to see?

What if there were a white-painted porch in early daylight,
a soft gray throw, and a pair of dogs at my feet on the painted boards?
What if a face as familiar as my favorite poem appeared...
what if she had lips for mine,
her body close and known?
What if I had her close at hand, there, in that other life?

What if, looking on, I didn't even know her name?
What if, having seen, I had to go back?
I wonder,

if that might be the hardest of all to bear.

_______

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads