Oasis

 

Well ducks, it was the place to gather in those days.

There were ceiling fans that made one think 

that Baron Von Richtofen might fly in at any moment. 

I wondered whether a man wearing coveralls had to climb

 up on a ladder each morning

to heave the blades into motion.

They served a concoction of fruit, gin, crushed ice,

the low notes from Hernando's Hideaway, and who knew

what else. It tasted like children's party punch

but made our high perches start to  pitch

on the rough seas beneath our jelly legs.

Down some white stone stairs, there was a blue pond

someone had stocked with mallards, as green and gold

as my jewelry. They were free to fly

but could never leave--the desert

would have turned them to cardboard.

We slept with scorpion nets. One night I dreamt

that a handsome man in a uniform of water lay with me,

told me my hair was good rope from India, and

that I had been a snake charmer

in a previous life. He kissed me and it stung.

Ah, love, there you are looking at me through your new

telescope, your young face behind the lens like an egg.

I gave up gin, and traveling, and most other things long ago.

Now I'm talking to you with my bird beak,

free to choose but forbidden to leave

except via packing box, to be sent by air mail over the dunes

to the oasis bar, c/o my younger self, cash on delivery, payable

in florins, code phrase "wing walker." The Baron will be there waiting.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Across the River and into the Trees

Music: Hernando's Hideaway

Bird

 There is a blue and yellow bird.

He can say "pretty bird."

He can take off your finger before you know it.

There is a room with a large cage,

or that is a large cage,

with a sentinel window where only light passes.

Say that this bird is yours.

Say that he lights on your shoulder.

Your skin will envy the window glass, and long for distance.

You can sit quietly in the evening.

The bird can strut and scream on its perch in the afternoon.

When you die, tomorrow or ten years from now,

The bird will tilt its head, fluff its feathers, tap its mirror

tap tap tap

in boredom or in victory, a line of sun across its rope trapeze.

_______

Cirque du Folle

There are other things we can do
in this time of dead clocks.

We can interview the air, jammed with blackbirds.
We can discard our clock-lungs,
turn our hearts to fragrant bowers. 

We can tightrope, half-awake
over the roofs of our old loves,

and fall into chimneys like bones into limbs,
fantastically existent, howling, dumbfounded.
_____

poem #5 of my 39 in 39 days.

for Friday 55 at Verse Escape, hosted by the incredibly fab Hedgewitch O' The Wilds.

When There Were No Connections

When there were no connections
between us, our senses, our skin
and the world we were living in,
the white smear erasure of our minds made us birds in an atmosphere of anvils.

Survival left rippling cracks in the plate glass
of our temporal back-beat;
People mistook us for Dada tickets but we were 
just a wedge in a bar of a song in our heads

To be remembered each Fourth Of July
as we concuss, diffuse, and catch each other's eye
even in gravity boots,
even in the dark.
_______

for Kenia's guest post at Real Toads. I chose the following song:

Fall

If you're going to fall for me,
do it just as the sun is going down,
or not at all.

I've always needed someone to kick the chocks back in under my wheels,
and to reach up and stop the propeller.
Otherwise, the sky calls me with its own backassward gravity;

My hair stands straight up, 
all the blood rushes to my head,
and the next time you see me, there I am, crossing in front of the moon.

If you're going to fall for me,
feel me up, fill my ear with all the things you imagine that I am,
wait until the last leaf falls. 

Then, up to our haunches in October snow,
I will kiss you the same way I kissed the woman I really loved;
the one who wore red flannel, raised ravens, and was nothing like you.

If you're going to fall for me,
whoever you are, do it on Halloween.
Brain me with a shovel,

Or else I'll be running down the center of the airstrip at dawn,
a gas can in one hand, passport in the other,
taking off in Le Corbeau, my arms in the air,

Singing "Mon amour est folle comme la lune,"
and as red --oh! as soft-- as my hair.
______

For Karin's "Falling Into Lines" mini-challenge at Real Toads. 

"Le Courbeau" = The Raven

"Mon amour est folle comme la lune" = "My love is as crazy as the moon"

Confidential to Buddha Moskowitz: Is this more like it? *grin*

 

Crop Duster

She fell out of the crop dusting plane--
chemicals may, in fact, have had something to do with it.
She was certainly high.
She may have been lit.

She threw herself, a bouquet, at the world.
Here comes a blossom,
a real live flesh and blood
girl.

There were no stairs.
Had there been, she could have done her best deb walk,
descending photogenically
from blue
to bloom
and from sky
to stalk.

Okay, so it was me, on my way down from wing-walking of an afternoon.
I thought I saw you below me, among the vines,
eating a tomato and reading Whitman.
It could have been you.
It could have been chemistry
or kismet
or my eyes playing tricks.

Anyway, every time I breathe,
my blood turns from moody jay to calling cardinal.
That is why I had to come and kiss you, honey,
even if I had to fall.
_______

Mexican Poet

You lay the Mexican poet down between us
on the fading blue moon and stars of our overwashed sheets.
You told me, open as a new bottle of wine,
how you loved him,
how he wrapped his words around your heart
like a morning glory vine around a nested stinger.

I should have listened to the skinny about bi women--
they will always leave you twice.
There is a reason why
sun and moon rarely share the sky,
and when they do, it is always in half-light--
that darling of killers, clergy, and affected stand-in bullshitters.

I know it was just a book,
just a moment,
just translated soul settling inside our skins,
turning them to sandpaper. 
The real blame belongs with my jar of hoarded scorpions,
scattered in our hair,
blooms on two brittle garlands lovely in any language
but never meant to last the night.
______

for Real Toads mini-challenge.