Tulips In Headscarves

 

Rain comes at night

wandering between buildings,

wearing a long black coat

and the silent hours.

Pink tulips beside the walk

dip their heads,

delicate and disappointed

as fallen birds.

Slate roofs facing the moon

shine for the rain

but feel nothing, admit nothing

aloof and blank.

Rain is the sky's child

but dies earthbound.

Tulips in their headscarves

mourn in

performative

pantomime.

_________

For What's Going On? "Rain".

Medea Visits Phaedra On The Ninth Floor

 

Hey Phaedra, what gives?

I came as soon as I could.

Creepy how they lock the door like that.

Hey Phaedra, shh now, don't cry.

You're emotional and it's late in the day.

They said something happened with the kids.

When they call like that, it's never good.

Acamas will be all right, he's in his room with his cat.

Demophon told me it's all a lie

and Hippy himself won't exactly say.

Did they give you those little cups with lids

for pills to take with their shitty food?

God, Phaedra, it's so hot, why do they lock the thermostat?

Theseus will be all right as long as his martini's dry

and I'm sure he doesn't think you're cray.

So, Phaedra honey, just tell me this,

was it Hippy who put you in this mood?

You've been just like a mom to him. No one's denying that.

I know it's cringey but what happened? Tell me. Try.

You know I'll listen. I'm here. I'll stay.

This all got Theseus where he lives.

He's gone to Poseidon's to bitch and brood.

Phaedra baby, Hippy's just talking trash.

He's confused or maybe even high.

Aw honey, who can figure brats today anyway?

_________

Rimas Dissolutas for Dverse Poetics. 

Cartography

I represent actual things

with a representation of those things.

Come in,

sit down.

I'll select posture, expression and language

like semaphore,

 an agreed-upon symbology

like mailing some version of myself

to some version of you.

Behold this Orinoco

made of ink;

this range

comprised of bumps.

Roll your fingers over them.

That, is real.

Let us fall in love

with what we seem to be.

Let us share a border

clear on charts but apocryphal on scene

where we may meet and express our confusion.

I am a cartographer.

I can tell you how far from here

 to there,

from where I am

 to where you are,

and at how many degrees

 longitude and latitutude

we can expect to find various landmarks--

happiness,

children,

retirement and so forth.

I am a cartographer;

come live with me

and be my love.

Some day,

I may write you a poem

throwing everything we depend upon

into chaos.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #122.

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

On A Station Stair

On a station stair, my wrist catches in a double railing and snaps.

Monet ladies promenade prettily on the wall.

_______

for Toni's thing at Toads.

 

The Thing That Was Created

Among the rolled up plans,
the coffee mugs,
the beakers,

there was one thing which was not like the others

because
it was alive.

At first, the thing that had been created was the object
of much lively discussion,
amusement and
conjecture

until it demonstrated that it was dangerous.

Then they
wanted to kill it, but it 
wanted its life as much as they wanted theirs,
as much as I want mine
and you want yours.

It fought
and was denounced;
it killed
and was set upon by its very creators.

Among the observers, both lay and professional,
the officers of the court
and those accusing and accused, judging and judged,

there was one which was not like the others

because
the bloody thing,
howling and unhuman,

alone among them all,
was innocent.
______

 

Wreath of Roses

I used stems to hold them in my hair,
the red of roses balanced there
to fire a fever in my head
a senseless sleeping, loved instead

Of you, a pool of glossy surface,
silent as some deathly circus
where all is mud and lily root--
cold lips to do what kiss can do

When offered with such artful lack
to turn my wreath of roses black.
______

For Karin's "artifice" challenge at Real Toads, which gave me the poem I needed to go with the image for Mag 301. Image by Ed Ross.

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