Poets' Bento Box

 I dug our grave with a silver spade

and a paper bell in the coffin shell--

a bento box where our lines were laid.

I dug our grave with a silver spade

but then in a dream, a kiss delayed

like a sweetly sorrowful gift from Hell-- 

I dug our grave with a silver spade

and a paper bell in the coffin shell.

_______________

a triolet for Word Garden Word List--The Return of Ellie Black

TLDR:

Dave Van Ronk, in the song Motherless Children, sings these lines:

Dig my grave with a bloody spade when I'm dead

dig my grave with a bloody spade when I'm dead

dig my grave with a bloody spade

make damn sure that the digger gets paid

He also does a song Old Blue about a beloved dog who dies. He sings:

I dug his grave with a silver spade

lowered him down with a golden chain

I kind of combined the two in my triolet, which is not about motherlessness or dogs, but is about an old relationship. The bento box denotes the compartmentalization of it. 

In the 19th century, there was a great fear of premature burial. A solution was offered in the form of "safety" coffins, which had a bell above ground attached to a string underground and placed in the corpse's hand. In the event of premature burial, the person could ring the bell to summon help.

Finally--and my process notes are now quite a bit longer than my triolet!--I had a dream recently that a person I had put out of my mind came to me and kissed me tenderly on the cheek, bringing back old feelings, if only in that moment. A paper bell, if you will. 

Music: Elton John Funeral for a Friend/ Love Lies Bleeding

Gray Cat In the Paperbacks

 

At the most unexpected time

on the most unlikely of days

I met someone who couldn't stay, 

and yet stayed forever.

I wasn't then who I am now

which is both a good and a sad thing.

I didn't really love the one who gave me a ring

but meant well by them.

No poetry, on paper or in my heart

but I had one regret and so made a wish

to know the real thing with someone, only that and only this.

I knew the weight of asking.

I had asked to know peaceful days

before I grew old, and was given them.

I asked for sobriety and the craving was gone as if it had never been.

Still, out of the blue, out of left field...

I saw green eyes and they saw mine

just walking by at the end of an ordinary day.

Imagine someone feeling the same way; hit by lightning, swept away

from the next morning, for one glorious day.

Would you believe in a love at first sight?

Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time.

Two people utterly bowled over--one day to remember forever--mine.

Talk about the luck of the Irish.

Would I walk away from it again?

Would I be so rulebound? Was I right to head back home?

It doesn't matter now. I'm okay the rest of the way alone. 

I have that day, and the card you sent

to keep and remember what an answered prayer meant.

_________

for What's Going On?: Keepsakes and Treasure Chests (newwhatsgoingon.blogspot.com)

(Blogger isn't letting me do links normally, lately.) 

Image at top is the card mentioned in the poem. I've kept it for 27 years. The gray cat is because I told them about a poem I had read in which a gray cat is a symbol for randomness and kismet. The poem was "untitled" by Carl Rickert. I would link to it but have never found it anywhere except in the magazine where I first read it. 

Music: Holly Cole I've Just Seen A Face  (If the Beatles object to me quoting Help From My Friends in this poem, I place myself at their mercy. I'd kill me if I were them!)

Gray Area

 

Impossible things--when I was little

there weren't very many of them. 

I thought--I might be like a girl I read

about, who woke up speaking Italian

though she never had before.

I thought I might discover a talent for

playing the piano

or hitting a softball

or performing feats of memory.

As time went on--well, you know.

Good at this, not so much at that.

Lucky at neither cards nor love. 

You have--oh, where should I start?

(should I start?) 

gray eyes like my father's,

amused and kind, but in a woman's face. 

I like--how you look in that flannel shirt

of gray, blue, and white, with the maroon henley

underneath, and old blue jeans. 

I like--your bedroom with the pastel

gray walls and cream trim. Yes, I looked

on my way to wash my hands

with your milk & honey soap. 

I'm nervous--but in such a delicious way.

Should I tell you what I'm feeling? I could

ruin this bright beginning, I know...

Your hair--it looks good gray

I want to touch it, touch you,

but chances have gone wrong before.

It's a gray area--how you might react,

how these things are done 

when nothing is familiar or sure. 

Impossible things--Alice's Queen believed

in at least six of them before breakfast

I'm wondering, could you?

Would you--take a chance on Wonderland with me?

________

for What's Going On? Colors Passing Through

Music: Denise King Stuck On You

A Taste of Honey

 

I'd like to say I understand

and forgive as in the carpenter's command.

The once-lovely loaf has gone green in my hand;

the crows will have it now.

It's such a feeling to be living at the dawn

with new love in some contented Avalon,

but these things cannot go on and on.

They shy and die away. 

Around your arm, a snake arrives

and I see your face reflected in its eyes.

It speaks one word--the word is "compromise."

It turns your heart to smoke.

I'd like to say it's all all right

and I can't remember anything I dream at night

but my bedside vase holds blooms gone dead and white.

They wave like conquered kings.

And so I'll say--no word at all.

Both the dawning and the dimming hold a sudden fall.

The gods we placed our faith in don't return our call.

"A taste of honey" is their lazy joke. 

____________________

for Desperate Poets "Lonelytown"

 

Snowblind Jane

 

I have thought of the gray cat for years now,

though the gray cat thinks of me

no more than a gray cloud would,

or a window pane,

or a key chain.

I leave my life in a dish for the gray cat to find,

but the gray cat is gone

like yesterday's breath.

Who knew I could hurt like this?

If I drop the dish, it doesn't even shatter.

The gray cat's main concern is the moon

and garbage and gray cats and food.

I was sick once,

and became more beautiful.

The fever fell in love with me, poor thing.

Outside myself at last, I hover,

asking what's wrong.

"Bring me my gray cat," I whisper, crying like a child.

Other Me laughs,

says you'll never come back

and were never gray,

                           never gray,

                                      never gray,

but black, dear, black.

______

shared with Sunday Muse #243. 

image at top by Jocelin Carmes

music: Once Blue Now That I've Disappeared

Painter

image by Ali Falik

She is the painter with the borrowed style,
squinting as if every thing and person were the sun.
On canvas, her stars struggle.
Here is her garret, on stilts, shifting in the wind.

She is the painter with a surgeon's skill.
Her models go home with acquired malaise.
In space, she paints solar flairs as ruined starlets,
already seen, grasping, scorn in every stroke of her brush.

She is the painter with one set of supplies,
mail ordering locks from ghosts with discontinued accounts.
Galleries are cruel, declining her work before she creates it,
claiming they know as well as she does the grays of cats in the dark.
______

for Sunday Muse #70