Printer's Devil

 

A printer's devil told me

(gesturing with his blackened fingers)

that the sound of your voice had been published

by moonlight on a dead crow's face.

Little starfish, I said, touching his beardless cheek,

return now to your watery home, that shell

full of mermaid-song out by the reef.

Poor Inky, no jagged cure can ever get him clean.

I returned to my clay and kiln, thinking that I might bake

some sort of Vodou plaything to give your tongue a palsy.

The waves down by the dunes offered their salt

and told me that the whole sea could be my circle. 

Of course you spoke anyway, like glue-sap in a broken bucket

from a storm-split tree tapped with a sharpened crucifix..

I'm leaving this damp-match town bursting with illiterate poets,

your half-dead friends, parroting smoke from the foundry of your good intentions.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--B Is For Bad Poetry. 

Seven Poets

In Hades seven poets

pasting pips on paper crowns

facedown on the sidewalk

holding seven falcons down

woke to find the sugar vein

clogged by golden tusk

and the Genius of the Galaxies

was just shit out of luck.

When seven poets wobble down

the racetrack of the dawn

riding lazy Sensitivity

like bangers of the gong

who spin in gyres like goblins

whose experiments go wrong

when they trade their tongues for bullshit

then say, "Don't you love my song?"

Seven poets claim the globe

of earth and eye and breast

while their dietetic revolution

starves out all the rest

I pray for wolves and pray for beasts

to pry them from their pens

to strip them of their peacock pose

and show them stunted hens.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Michael McClure.

also shared with The Sunday Muse #252. Image by Ruven Afanador

Shy Girl's Lament

So here's the thing:
Speak, girl, I tell myself. No one will bite you.
Surely no slender-fingered flautist could produce
such a sweet gentle tone as my voice is sure to be.
Men will drop their guard.
Women will smile and mean it. 
Speak, girl. It'll be fine.

So I do, and a concussive bass explosion of broken grinding gears 
shatters the stemware for miles around.
The floor shakes.
Deaf people swivel their heads in sudden fear.
Birds shut up because their tiny hearts explode.
Women exchange looks.
What happened????
"Oh honey," says some perfect size 2, her hand on her friend's arm,
"She's a T-Rex."
"Ohhhh...."

I can't get my arms around my stupid life.
I can't get my arms around anything, really.
"Sweetie, I wish I had your skinny arms.
I'd wear nothing but sleevleless dresses all summer long."
Oh cram it. 
Bet you don't wish you had these thunder thighs.
I go through oceans of Olay and still, look at the scales!
No one will ever love me;
I may as well go lay an egg.

"Sugar pea, don't be so shy! 
There's a lid for every pot.
Come on now, 
don't hide your light under a bushel!"
A bushel?
Is this chick insane? 
Look at me.
(Which is exactly what everyone does after I get over my endless five-head,
lean into the light,
and snap her up in my enormous jaws.)
"Bless her heart," says some bottle blonde, loud enough to be sure I hear.
"It's the Majorette for the Gross Eater's Parade."
When she and her friend titter,
it sounds like a slender-fingered flautist on her best day ever.
_______

At Toads, Sherry wants us to speak in the voice of another.