the nurses deferred

 

the nurses deferred

to masquerade doctors in balloon pants

who told them 

go to the underwater pharmacy

--a nickel a snorkel--

and dispense tobacco to the terminals

because

rules are restrictive

useless

barbaric

and they gave these instructions via telegram stop

from the big band ballroom stop

where the rhumba and the mambo

never stop

stop

and they used the bandmaster's baton

to perform minor surgery

on this poem.

In that town, at that time, the women never cut their hair

because of sorrow,

and the river's edge, and the need to weep

while covering their faces with their hair like bent willows.

In the heavy hour, in the day of the pueblo mission,

a mockingbird perched in the bell tower was singing,

"Come to the river's edge, to the place of no explanation.

Let down your hair as the boatmen do their sails in the silent evening."

the security guards delayed,

unfurling silk kimonos to wear in the confusion of night

and they had dragons

and chrysanthemums

draped over their arms and holsters

and their coffee was rich with a stupendous dizzying energy

which spoke to them

saying,

"you must leave this place and go

to help

and heal

where the real

suffering

is."

_____

for Word Garden Word List--Susie Clevenger. 

image at top: Socorro Mission, El Paso, Texas

I have used a technique I got from reading Grover Lewis, of alternating style and feeling between stanzas. 

music:  Jennifer Warnes "Song of Bernadette" 

Jenny Mechanical

 

Jenny Mechanical is too mecha for the main house

but too human for the tool shed.

She can turn stripped screws, whip up a perfect grilled cheese,

provide power during an outage and mow and mulch while she's at it.

She also dreams of a recharging kiss and poems appear at her fingertips.

Jenny had a little lamb whose fleece was made of synthetic polymer

and everywhere that Jenny went, the lamb was sure to follow.

See Jenny Mechanical, stopped in the middle of the front yard,

telling her lamb to look at the new leaves with its LED eyes.

She has always been a perfectly average 5 foot 3, can open any jar, pick any lock,

but she is crying into its faux wool because of something beyond utility.

She is needed but not loved, maintained but casually disposable,

and the poems at her fingertips have diverged from factory settings,

glowing pink

then rose

then lavender

then blue

then indigo

like space that has no atmosphere yet sustains those billion burning stars.

_________

for Sunday Muse #213. 

Mrs. Sartre At The Beauty College

I said to the stylist at the salon,
"All is darkness." 
From the pocket of her smock, a candle
with which she beat me about the head and shoulders.

"Behold, I give you light," she said.
"Crazy motherfucker!" 
Who hired this bitch?
Wax in my hair.
Will an indifferent Stylist mold me at Her whim?
________

for my BFF Hedgewitch's Friday 55 bash, and also for Play It Again (existentialism) at Toads. Also for day 12 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

Orange Peel

The white inside an orange peel

velvet soft as a water dream

bears the stunned blankness of betrayed wives.

Circles and sections,

heart beats, desires, babies, birds,

all in a grain of sand

or the eternal and silent dome of the sky.

The white inside an orange peel

fragrant with what it has already lost

remains beautiful, sensual, for a short time

but is already dying.

Circles and sections,

heart beats, desires, babies, birds,

none of these are meant to endure--

their purpose is goodbye,

their pinnacle sleeps in dust.

The white inside an orange peel

was/was never/ was/ was never one with the fruit it sheltered.

Lover sweet, lover who stings the knife's cut

all the same, and doomed themselves.

Circles and sections,

heart beats, desires, babies, birds,

all born of the branch and gone to the table,

the plate,

the necessary separation and then--

returned to the garden, the turned soil, the green shoots

and the endless rot and rise of everything. 

_______

Ease

More and more I have come to believe
that ease is where one finds it,
in quantities and dimensions
of one's own devise. 

Yes, things fall out of the sky
all the time--
flights gone from radar, fireballs from frozen space,
angels who whisper softer than morning dreams.
More and more I have come to accept all of these
with as much grace and courage as I can.

Gunfire, atrocities, sinkholes, hurricanes--
these exist, but must do so in the same world
with kindness, silver maple trees, dogs, weddings. 
There will always be
bills and break-ups,
jobs to go to, children to shelter, parents to bury, 
and only so many hours or heart beats for all of it.
There will be a shortfall,
and it will  break your heart in the end.

Still, there is balm in Gilead for gathering 
moment by moment.
More and more, I have come to believe
that ease is where one finds it,
in quantities and dimensions
of one's own devise. 
_______ 

Between Order And Chaos

Between order and chaos,
in the interstice between air and swallow's wing--
in the silent interlude between rippled pond and snow-dusted ice,
there lies the thing I have wanted to say.

I have been thinking about the difference between old glass and new;
whether the wave is perceived or actual--
in the pane, the mind, or somewhere beyond.
And....is the smooth order of new glass wanted--needed--
in every window, upstairs and down, from vane to garden shed?

Today, I thought of your hands,
swallow-small; and like them, never still.
I thought of you holding a knife, an orchard apple, a fallen bird, my face.
I knelt among the tomato vines held on their stakes,
thick with green leaves going yellow around red offerings.
I sobbed. 
I couldn't help myself.

In the indigo between coin-moon and a million stars,
between ink and score where the fermata speaks to a single heart beat,
there lies the explanation, the cold-water borderline
between order and chaos, wrapped in silk, 
held between fingers like a tarot card.

Oh...chaos the surface and the core at once.
Order, these lines, these rows, these days and weeks;
the ones I live in now,
with my routines, my dog, and this terrible, lovely music
pressed between my ear and the late-year air--
for you,
for angels and devils,
for sane and insane,
carried on a gust that swirls forward in a round dance,
no end or beginning,
called by no one, moving through rows and woods, over water, into winter.
_______

Neptune's Dinner

Eileen searches pasta packages for bird's nests;
the banister for bowling balls. 

When she makes spaghetti for her absent son,
there is a great flapping and avian concern--rightly so--
about the eggs in the colander.

On the way to the guest room, strange ghosts who arrived by train
are sent to the sides of the staircase by a perfect hook.
Eileen apologizes, though they are incorporeal
and therefore unhurt.

She feels responsible, does our Eileen,
for perished sparrows and
heavy accidents.

Eileen descends to 20,000 fathoms
for some solitude and quiet,
but at her feet she finds little lobsters with rubber bands around their claws.
They are intended for Neptune's dinner,
and cannot deliver the mail.

Where is Eileen's son?
Is he happy on a beach somewhere, with a girl Eileen hasn't even met?
She joins a bowling league, but they don't bowl--
they rescue birds from tornados, and in doing so find purpose
and a comforting sense that when they are ghosts
wind won't matter anymore.

Neptune dissolves at last, perhaps allowing Eileen to believe again in something--
maybe lobsters signing the Gettysburg Address for the hearing impaired
under a blue sky
where being alone is common
and doesn't make her feel ashamed, and like dying.
_____

For "the crack in everything", part of Play It Again Toads.

calling

i was thinking--
between the nail that breaks on the drawer handle
and the wicked in the world and the wick in the candle--
that there are great drifts of questions
and little leaves of answers
that come when they will and only for a moment.

i was walking--
and saw a ghost through the window of a vacant house--
she looked so bewildered and lost,
so out of her element and with such a space to cross--
i said to her, sister,
isn't that always the way
isn't that just always the way?

we only want to be loved, don't we,
whether time is on its way up or going down--
and those others who are gathered around
may be devils or angels--
may be lovers or strangers or really anyone under the sun,
all in or out of the same skin--
together and alone--
haunting each other and calling, like spirits far from home.

Aphrodite

Aphrodite came out of the sea,
Barefoot,
Wearing jeans, a shell necklace,
A bunch of bangles at her wrist,
And nothing else.

I was there, on the beach,
In the first gray of morning,
A little ashy bonfire of a girl--

I was writing poems,
Which I considered, by turns,
To be well worth fucking me for,
Or,

To be the stupidest,
Most scorn-worthy scraps of weasel crap
Ever to insult an innocent blank page.

All these things depend upon
How recently you have stretched out on top of me,
Smiling;
Or how fresh your indifference,
Thorned into my borrowed shell.

"Aph," I said,
"Tell me,
How is it that the waves always come this way,
Wearing stones down to sand,
And yet...

I remain as dry as driftwood,
Smooth and silly and flat on my back,
Waiting to be carved?"

Aphrodite complained that she had lost a bangle in the surf;
I have seen many women's backs,
But hers, when she turned,
Was so beautiful, it reminded me of yours.

I know she didn't hear me, or care,
But still I asked,
"Why am I always the sunset, well-remembered, Aph?
And why never
The longed-for shore?"
_____
for Mary's Mixed Bag at Real Toads.

Because Becca

Because Becca,
Hawks (which Becca likes) matter.
(More than blue jays, which Becca doesn't,
And which are nothing more than puffed-up mimics anyway.)
Also, sweet rolls
And switchblades.
Becca is greater than Sally, Meghan, Jane.
Becca is less than...
(Empty set.)
Because Becca,
I have worn my red hat,
Red scarf,
Black suede boots,
And jean jacket.
Because Becca,
They will all find new accomodations,
Placed by the extra heater
In Becca's white bedroom
Overlooking Stroud Avenue.
In the moments of dark late afternoon,
I posit:
"Because Becca, everything else."
The way I feel,
The way the world seems to be (better),
My body, full of endorphins,
Up a flight of stairs, and behind a multi-colored brick wall,
One storey up from Stroud Avenue.
The reverse is not true:
"Because everything else, then Becca."
No.
That shit was all here before,
And so what?
Write this down, (I say to her dog,
Whose eyes lift up, but not his head, from his paws)
"Because Becca,
Everything else."
His tail thumps.
Eat my dust, pedants, philosophers, muthafukkas!
Proof.
_____

posited for Kenia's challenge at Real Toads.

Before, And After

Men in hard hats with saws
stood looking at my maple.
They had not come
to tell her how beautiful she was.

I have watched her
over a thousand morning cups of coffee
or while outside with my dog
as she grew where her nature naturally took her.

Now, there is a big piece of her missing
from her center, where the power lines run.
Their closeness was dangerous, I know,
especially in seasons of storm or snow.

I would have hated to see her
Blackened and burned, ruined and bent,
or my neighbors' cozy kitchens and dens
gone suddenly dark,

But it hurts my heart to see her this way,
split and altered for safety's sake.
My morning coffee tastes unfamiliarly bitter
as I think of how beautiful she was.

_________

A Bicyclist's Verse

for Emily


A Wheel is a fair curious Thing--

Traversing toward Age from Birth--

It moves, at once, toward Heaven,

And also, back to Earth.

________

Dining Car

I took my eyes out of my head and set them in cups, like eggs.



Look at them, I complained.

They are like library lions, guarding the doors from the steps,

And the steps are sinister,

Always rising.



I seek the sun inside an egg shell,

I don't even tap with my wrench,

I float,

Like the heavens over a corn field at night...

But it is the corn field in motion,

Not the stars.



Look,

My baby is blind.

Look,

How my eyes sit paired, set before the morning with a linen napkin lying next to them, an adored and lazy lover.

Reach out,

Splay fingers in empty air like prayer.

Sense the scion settling in,

Wearing a summer suit,

Arriving refreshed,

Combed, cologned,

And hungry.

_________

Dem Bones

Dr. Loomis sought to understand the skeletal structure of the human arm and hand.



Why does the upper arm have just one long bone (the humerus),

While the forearm boasts two (the radius and ulna)?

Further, why does this progression expand and bloom into five phalanges, or fingers?



Consider the humerus first, the doctor advises his young students.

It springs from the shoulder and, in turn, from the torso, as solid and utilitarian as a wagon wheel.

The simple single bone (he continues),

Facilitates the straightforward actions of warfare or farming:

Thrust.

Cut.

Bury.

Reap.



Why does this simplicity give way to ambivalence?

(No useful postulations issue from the students' gallery.)

Perhaps the radius and ulna reflect the conflicting urges to grasp and to draw back.

Combined with the gender-based, inherent split in all bones--

The masculine "robust" and the feminine "gracile"--

We have, clearly, a limb at odds with itself, shaking apart, disintegrating into ever more numerous shoots and branches.

Fine for botany, observes Dr. Loomis dryly (eliciting a ripple of superior chuckles from his charges),

But it will hardly do for human anatomy.



The double bones of the forearm may suffice for slightly more complex motions,

Such as operating a weaver's shuttle, or manipulating the mechanisms of a weapon,

But, when speaking of finer tasks,

(For example):



Writing a letter to inform that a loved one has died,

Or,

Touching a lovers' skin, puzzling whether silence denotes contentment or ennui,



These things require the bizarre profusion of digits at limbs' end,

A removal from what is really understood,

And distance from the rational mind, locked in its bony case.



With this,

Dr. Loomis rejects medicine and turns to astrology, religion, and superstitious rite.

"People die,

Lovers leave,"

He tells the unfinished faces looking up at him, as his students pause in their note taking.

"I haven't the god damnedest idea why."



Then, he crumbles,

Collapsing onto the single wooden chair beside the dais,

His tired face hidden in his folded arms with their troika of perplexing, vexing, ridiculous bones.

_______

Missionary Stew

"Don't you believe

In the literal word of God?"

Said they.



Let me think.

Let me see.

Let me consult my heads on sticks

With their eyes so pretty stitched

So wise.

So gay.



They say no.

No, we don't.



Besides, we find it surpassing odd

That you believe in one single lonesome God

Watching "House" on Hulu...

Such a strange drooping deity

Will never do.



I believe in

My neighbor's thighs,

And

The sun and stars.

Things that aren't,

And things that are.



"Would you like to discuss these things with me?

Stay for tea?"

Said me.



They say no.

No, they wouldn't.



All one can do,

(I say to the heads)

Is offer the truth.

They nod,

Painted and beautiful in the evening breeze,

They hang.

They agree.

________

photo from Beetlejuice


________

Interstate Aubade

I'm sick of the back door--

That's no way for a lady to make a proper entrance.

Thanks for the short-handled fire axe...

It's easier for me to grip;

And ever since you brought it, wrapped in a pink bow, to bury in my living room wall,

I've been mulling other uses for it.



I can be the tenderest of lovers, you'll see--

I will wrap my arms and legs around you weightlessly,

My lips at your throat,

Like a grinning locust on a stalk.

Then,

When I wrist-flip your skull down the hard wooden stairs,

You'll hear me at last

And see seven of everything.



Don't let's end this way--

Let me write you one last love poem on a lamp shade,

So that my leaving will light up the room every time you think of me;

And when,

After I've kicked off my shoes and run to the middle of the pedestrian bridge above the freeway,

I'll be careful about the cars...

I know they always make you sad, and I am not heartless.

The link mesh is like a protective angel--

It lets the breeze in, but prevents me from dropping things into the lanes below.



Still, you always liked me clever,

And so I crawl up and hang upside down from the inside arch,

And that is enough

To distract and bring fire and doom

To travelers I can't get close enough to touch;

Lunatic moth, that's me,

As I make my way at last

Down the parallax to the other side,

And away from us.

_______

1909

It was a long way to go

To the friend's house,

So she,

Hattie,

And Marjorie

Dressed themselves like cloth bells

And swung with each step

Through the snow.



She had not slept much the night before--

When the fireside is warm

And the wine is good

There are more uses than one for a lady's scarf;

But today she talks of cobblers and cows

To Hattie

And Marjorie

Because, after all,

Friends, too, can warm a woman's heart.



It was a long way to go,

From the morning to the evening--

She grew tired

And her feet got cold.

Eventually, her friends

Hattie,

And then Marjorie,

Went their own way into night across the snow.

I cannot see my foot tracks anymore, she thought,

No helpful light yet drifting from the sky;

I cannot feel my fingers,

Nor my slowly quieting heart...

I cannot feel...

I cannot feel...

I.

________

for Magpie 49

Dedicated to my grandmother, whose name was Marjorie. You are missed.

_________

Life Story

Lightning struck the tree--

Mama blamed me,

But she couldn't find my trialsome ass

Cos one block of blackened wood looks much like the next.

So, I slipped the strike in my pocket

And took up smoking,

Kissed the girl next door--

She was older,

Invited me in,

Shut the door,

And I grew up like a gypsy in her jewelry box--

Hers and a dozen others more.



Years later, another light came out of Heaven,

And I sobered up--

Quit cursing during grace,

Or wearing fishnets on the church steps;

Tried the straight and narrow ways

For a while,

Crocodile.



Now I live in a bower made of books;

I whisk words with the places I've been and haven't been--

I spend my days out on the porch,

And after dark, I'm in.

I kiss my finger when I've cut it on a page-edge;

My dog sticks close to home.

The old strike is still there,

Kept between my writing chair

And the window where I watch the dandelion seeds

And river reeds.

My remaining life lies just beyond,

It might be wise or unwise,

But what it so certainly is,

Is exquisitely,

Deliciously,

My own.

_________

The Lycanthrope

I look human.

I am not human.



She lived on the edge of the ice,

Like water running too fast to freeze;

She had long smoky hair--

Something heavy within her was always burning.

She had come back to the stony earth to die;

She was every element.

She had nothing.

She contained everything.

So, when the crow

(I know well)

Came to collect her soul like so much carrion,

I was waiting in concealment.



The world seems to die in winter.

It does not die.



I came down across the snow,

Quickly, like passion from a perfect touch--

And I almost caught that crow.

He lost feathers, and several heart beats,

Before flying away, a disturbing dream upon waking,

Hardly even real.

I lay down beside the dead gypsy.

I said,

Why did we not take each other in, like air, like restless spirits?

Why did we not carry each other like currents, like blackberries in cupped hands?

Why did we not bury each other, away from dull eyes, wrapped together like sticks with the same skin?

Why are you so still?

Why do the shadows slowly move across us anyway, indolent and indifferent?



I love, though I hate love.

I am human.

__________

Dolls

When the plane went down, at night, in the desert,

The cargo hold burst

And a few things were thrown clear.



It's cold in the dark, in the desert,

And after the hulk burned itself out,

Three heart beats remained in the shadows.



The one with the injured head would fade out with the moon, before morning.

The broken arm would envy suitcases, rocks, anything that does not know pain,

And a third sat silently, and ridiculously, unhurt.



They had

Some Mexican dolls in crates;

Some California video games,

And a sled bound, like them, for Boston.



They burned the sled,

Trading the sky back for its snow, sending smoke this time instead;

Then the dolls,

Which seemed far too close to the bone, but they used what was at hand

Because they hadn't any choice.



In the morning,

It grew hot. One was dead.

The sun rose yellow in the sky like an advertisement for a morning newspaper--

Sports final, funnies.



They sat where they had found themselves, like broken weather vanes.

They sat amid the video games,

All that was left,

And tried to decide whether to wait or start walking.

For them, the decision meant everything.



Above,

The sky was a silly blue,

As blank and unconcerned as the face of a child holding a magnifying glass,

And whose kindness stops

At the end of his own nose.

_________

for magpie 44