Your Heart

Now, after the fact, like a glitterbomb coroner,

I want to have another look at your heart.

My microscope went blind last time--

I squeezed it too hard, like a sponge when I'm angry-cleaning.

I was too fascinated, sappy,

needful as a driver in a wreck.

Bring me an ambulance in the shape of a spyglass.

I want to find my own ghost.

I thought your bones were made from hard cane,

your hair caramelized smoke.

I wore a white coat (as if I knew something),

glasses made from willow switches, and a half moon smile.

Relax, I told you, but it was me in the coma.

Now--please hold still for once. These worms aren't good,

like the plastic model I saw at the vet's. Your heart,

like the plastic kitchen I used to play with,

practicing to be a fly that would bite you one day.

Eat my attention, it's good for you.

Each worm burrowed there is something I said,

some of which I meant--the rest was practice for a role. 

Let me pull one out like a string, pull it and it speaks this poem,

a pretty wasp with a stinger where the truth pools. 

I am too harsh, I know. I am the laundress who bleaches everything,

a maniac for killing the invisible baddies, a hospital candy striper

performing unauthorized tests that do nothing, or at least,

don't cure or induce any useful fevers.

I have your results. I'll bring them down to the morgue where my

hand awaits its conclusions as if they were a ring or a nail.

Summation:

they weren't worms,

just paper streamers.

I infected you

but it made you better for a while.

the microscope cannot be repaired.

my report needs to be presented in a recognized language.

i'm sorry, truly, if i hurt you

that was never my intention.

this poem is not written in my true voice.

i was never your babe.

that was never your heart.

_______

Music: Igor Paspalj "The Thrill Is Gone"

for Desperate Poets "Illicit Encounters"

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.

_______

Movement In Four Parts

 

Shot-Through-The-Guts had been shot through the guts.

"Tsk tsk," said Portly Pantaloons, packing his pipe. 

"Serves him right!" growled Razormouth, having done it. 

"Might...die..." gasped Shot-Through-The-Guts.

"Tsk tsk," scolded Portly Pantaloons, with his habitual air of mild disapproval.

"He woulda stole my teeth with a monkey wrench!" complained Razormouth, who hated the dentist's smock that Shot-Through-The-Guts liked to wear. 

"It's worn ironically," groaned Shot-Through-The Guts, as a crimson stain spread across his dentist's smock.

"I think it's vulgar!" cried Mrs. Portly Pantaloons indignantly.

Razormouth said nothing, but clicked his teeth together menacingly.

"Where will you go," inquired Portly Pantaloons, gesturing with his pipe, "if you, eh, pass on, as it were?"

"Straight to hell!" interjected Razormouth, dancing from foot to foot.

At that moment, a host of beautiful angels wearing pure white dentist's smocks floated down and tenderly collected Shot-Through-The-Guts, then returned to the clouds.

"Not from this neighborhood I daresay," complained Portly Pantaloons, stamping his cane importantly. "Probably came in on the bus line."

"Dentist's smocks!" bellowed Razormouth, his little eyes widening. "I shoulda plugged 'em! I shoulda....I..."

"There there," cooed Mrs. Portly Pantaloons distractedly. Turning to her husband, she asked, "What bus line, dear? They seemed to appear out of the sky." 

Portly Pantaloons, grunted, mumbled something that seemed very definite in his sonorous baritone, and pretended great interest in a bird across the way. Mrs. Portly Pantaloons was still talking, and Razormouth was still blubbering, but by then, Portly Pantaloons' mind was far away, calculating ways to manufacture more monkey wrenches, more dentist's smocks, and more shooters-through-the-guts, at the least cost, with the widest distribution, and at the highest profit. 

The bird, whose name was Captain Poopybird, lifted its tail feathers, pooped, and sang.

___________

for Sunday Muse #156. 

Swans At The Door, Complaining

Swans arrive at the door, complaining
that I stole the horizon.
The lake (they claim) has drained, 
and the plumbing bill is enormous.

"Do you think we can live in a desert?" 
they demand. "Where will the sun rise?
Have you, thief, considered that?"

Never before have I been shamed by swans.
Never have they appeared at my door en masse
with their troubling litigations.

I produce the horizon and brandish it
like nunchucks. Feathers fly. I am torn by beaks.
The sun loiters down on the corner, watching.

The swans persuade me to have the plumbers re-install the horizon. 
The sun ascends.
The swans disperse.
The lake is calm.
My door is sulky but will get over it.

Now for my next heist....
______

for post #100 at Sunday Muse.

Clocks In Deep Resentment

Do clocks sit in deep resentment
of time flowing past them, through them, slipping by,
or do they cradle and bless like a riverbed? 

I have asked them, held in my hand
like branched nests whose natural progress is startled
by my rude curiosity.

You--are you a kind of clock?
At times you define me to myself, but in the next moment
one of us has moved on, like pouched time, a hoarded secret.

I wonder--shall I join these resentful clocks,
ticking off quantified complaints ad infinitum?
Or is it better that I dissolve, like the sugar of a moment

In a hot mug that warms my hands, but only in this instant?
_________

for Fireblossom Friday: Ask  Question.

 

Stock, Celery, Carrots

For the soup--
stock, celery, carrots.
What of the egg, the seed, your hand in mine
last winter, or the one before?

The chicken, the garden, the blackberry summer
never knew what hit them--
Look now and you won't find a damn thing.

I stir stock, celery, carrots--
the pot steams my windows til I'm blind.

Still, I go through the motions, because that's the expected thing.
I don't even feel the bowls in my hand--
I have no appetite at all, and yet I am the Mistress of Delicious Things

Consumed by others and praised
until they set their wet spoons down to stain the cloth.
_______

A bitchy little number for Kerry's challenge about time, at Real Toads.

Wait

Waiting is important--
it gives clocks something to do.
Besides, why be in a hurry for the doctor to walk in,
delivering bad news like dark babies
who stare like cats and talk early but only to curse and mumble?

Oh cheer up, you'll say.
Just wait. Things will get better.
The French will quit smoking and forgive Hitler.
That shit in the fancy jar really will make you younger.
"Bro Country" will disappear from the charts,
and the Kardashians will kill themselves.

Waiting is, after all, an action--
it is "why not?" when the "why" has been seized and sold for taxes.
Each day, more fodder for the faithful:
Good morning, please vacate the premises within 30 days.
Good afternoon, it's over between us and I'm already with someone new.
Good night, you're dying but no one will be there to meet you--
they've all joined the jihad on the other side.

Wait instantly with new technology.
Clocks, doctors, lovers, true believers, all irrelevant and shown the gate.
You're next. Just wait.
_______

for Bjorn's challenge at Real Toads: "Waiting For Something Good....Or Not."