Budget-Tel Hell

We were too stoned to get home, so
we checked into the local Budget-Tel, room 13.
The guy was pissed we woke him up
and he gave us a crappy room with a tv with a busted screen.

My old man said I made him mad like always,
and swung the towel bar at me so I called my friend
Dotty to come get high with us cos the stupid fuck might really kill me
once he finds out I took 20 dollars from the glove box in his pickup truck.

Well, Dotty came and dumbass didn't want to give her any dope
but I kicked his shin and told him not to be such a dickhead for once
and he slugged me but not too hard while Dotty went in his pocket for the bag.
How does a guy like me--says dumbass--end up in a Budget-tel with you two cunts?

I got right and was wondering crazy shit like would the bedspread burn
and I held my lighter to it but it only smoked a little bit. 
Dotty said Jesus what an ugly picture but when dumbass threw the lamp at my head
it smashed the frame and Dotty said it's an improvement. What ugly shit!

I fell asleep but dumbass kicked me off the bed and said where's my twenty?
so I bit his leg and he yelled and lost his balance and fell through the fucking window
so somebody called the cops and Dotty booked and there I was
high as fuck and under arrest at the stupid Budget-Tel, now ain't that just my luck?
________

for Artistic Impressions With Margaret--Alcohol Inks

 

 

The Cleric Crow

art by Toril Fisher

Crow, with your blackberry voice,
your hand-feet praying to grass blades
and sunflower stalks,

Come to my violin-framed bed of soft Gypsy songs.
Dolorous crow, in my elbow crook,
barter with corn kernels
for my robe spun from comb and tears.

Crow, with your harsh voice,
I must remember;
I cannot forget.
My skin hums with wings and stingers.
Your skin blooms with smoke and stars.

Crow, small priest of the northern window,
I have done so much
accumulating only to trinkets and sighs.

Take them, give them to the mourning dove.
I am useless but yours;
Distinguish me, by your bright vision, from pavement, 
from waste.

Crow, with your amorous voice
made from cat-tail and winding vine,
I must remember;
I cannot forget.
Make me your bauble,
give me to God
high in the branches of the swaying locust.
________
 
 linked HERE.
 

Sand & Water

"Solid stone is just sand and water, baby; sand and water, and a million years gone by." --Beth Nielsen Chapman

They say that if you love a Selkie,
she will leave with the tide, and not return for seven years.
Lovers of Selkies walk the beach collecting shells
and other empty things, here...and here...and here.

They say that if you love a Selkie,
to keep her, you burn the seal-coat she's shed.
Then you'll have a Selkie wife
silently crying in your bed. 

Here I've been, since who knows when,
Drawing pictures in the dust on the sill while you slept.
Don't say you believe, in me, in us
anymore; what's been burned can't still be kept.

Down through the town, past the fields, to the water
with my seal-coat stitched from paper and leather,
I slip back home, on my back I'm carried
by the change in the waves, in your heart, and the weather.
_______

for Margaret's Artistic Impressions at Real Toads.



 

Knife & Basket

Early morning, knife and basket
to cut and lay the iris blooms;
in vase, by parlor's dying noon,
tasked to do the thing I ask it--
lift melancholy; move the moon.

Fool to love you, fool to miss you,
more foolish still to think a vase
--that plenitude of empty space--
could soothe my heart and keep the bloom,
or separated root replace.
_______

for Artistic Interpretations With Margaret at Real Toads.

image: Still Life: Vase With Irises by Van Gogh

The iris's history is rich, dating back to Ancient Greek times when the Greek Goddess Iris, the messenger of the gods and the personification of the rainbow, acted as the link between heaven and earth. Purple irises were planted over the graves of women to summon the Goddess to guide the dead in their journey. (source: www.proflowers.com)

The Ballad of Agnes Lumpf

Agnes Lumpf changes her name to Dakota Descartes,
and starts haunting the coffee shops. 

"Don't I know your name from somewhere?" people always ask.
"You might," she responds mysteriously, putting on a face she copied from her cat.

THE CRUEL PASTRY by Dakota Descartes

Light the slipknot of brusque temptation!
Immediate zoology! Feet talking ropes in hemisphere duplicity!
Highways of dough!
Icing made from the text of dead letters!
You are the planet I cannot plumb, no matter the tenderness of the telescope.

Soon, Dakota Descartes has a cadre of rapt followers,
squinting at her from behind clouds of tobacco smoke.

She learns what the famous poet must--
how to say "In night, no sun; in day, no moon" as if it were the Gettysburg Address,
and to do so with a straight face.

"Where are you from?" her fans ask breathlessly.
"Rangoon," she replies. (She is actually from Muskegon, Michigan.)

"And your parents? Were they artistic, too?"
Dakota looks off into the half distance, 
her smile as ethereal as an Enya song.

"My father was a painter, (a plumber)
and my mother a sculptress." ( a soap opera addict and part time nail tech)

When Dakota Descartes wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry,
the President of the United States calls with congratulations.
"Oh, him," she says distractedly, waving a hand and finishing her black tea.

Global melancholy, manufactured star,
all-knowing duffers at the drop-off of aftermath's postmaster,
weary the practical nurse of philanthropy
into a crying stew of the celestial jeremiad!

This from her masterpiece, FUSION OF DOLL AND CYCLONE.

One dreary morning in 2015, 
Dakota Descartes dies from huffing hair coloring
in bathroom number six of her palatial estate.

The staff finds her.
Her tragic death seals her place in the pantheon of immortal poets.

Dakota Descartes 1977-2015. In her own amazing words:
"Death, wearing buskins, treads darkly toward the pyx."

Oh God.
Total brilliance.

Wow!
____

Image at top by Toril Fisher. Posted for Artistic Impressions With Margaret.

The words used in Dakota's poetry came mostly at random from the dictionary.

However, I made up the telescope line, and I'm kind of liking it now. Lord above.

And now, Lambs, off to "camp" with you...

The Fox's Testimony

I was offended by the egg.
The purple-eyed featherless one inside,
suspended in goo, wouldn't even open her eyes,
and therefore believed
that her shell marked the dangerous end of everything.

She was right.
I ate her whole damn world,
and the yellow gunk on the tip of my nose condemns me.
Fly, little preposterous naked peanut;
fly straight into my stomach-nest.

It may be true that I am not the best mother for birds,
but my kits copy my every move.
They stick close, and are already skilled pilferers;
could I be more proud?
Besides, the hen is more pragmatic than sentimental.

You may get your moment yet, though--
you who judge me.
The sky, lonely for the birds that never rose,
may open and suck me and my family up into the sun,
little orange snacks to feed the fireball.

This is why the egg offends me--
I know what it has in mind.
_______

for Artistic Impressions With Margaret--Toril Fisher. Image at top is Toril's, entitled "Wanna Play?"

 
 

Nydia

Nydia

It was a dark and stormy night, and I,
pale as a sugar moon,
stepped my inviolate and ivory self out into it.

All the ashes flicked 
from all the cigarettes ever smoked 
by every cabaret singer who ever was,
are small-town stuff
compared to Vesuvius' great burning wave arriving
at out tender bare feet
and above our perfectly sculpted, stupid upturned faces.

My name is Nydia--
I am both blind as a bat and deaf as a white cat,
despite any contrary impression I may have given

All those times we lounged,
and I seemed to listen raptly
to your cocky prating,
my lord and master, purchaser of all my various blooms--

Here I stand in the ignited whirlwind,
with my porcelain fingers wrapped around some random staff,
such that you fly to me in a jealous rage.

In a thousand years, when they find us,
cooked in close embrace,
they will say,
"Behold the low one,
who, by this high one, was owned."

It will be so cute, how you'll think it's obvious
what they mean.
_______

For Artistic Interpretations With Margaret.

 Nydia, the blind flower seller, was a popular character from the 1834 novel "Last Days of Pompeii" by English playwright and novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton.  Rogers depicted her wandering through the wreckage of Pompeii as the erupting volcano Mount Vesuvius destroys the city.  Her staff and acute sense of hearing guide her around the destruction.  Nydia, a slave, listens intently for the voice of her aristocratic master with whom she has fallen in love. 

Bulwer-Lytton is infamous for having penned the line "It was a dark and stormy night"

Panthera Tigris

Let's talk about your tiger.
The one that started following you around,
years ago now,
until you wonder how in the hell you used to slog through the days without one.

The tiger rides in your car with you,
fucking with the automatic windows.
She winds her way through the aisles at Target,
close by your side.
Make way, shoppers!
She leaps into the basket, taking the whole thing up.

Two biddies are scowling at you.
"Isn't it against the rules???"
"That tiger should be in the rain forest.
Or wherever tigers live.
Where is the manager????"

Tiger could care less.
She has fangs and claws that would make anybody crap their pants.
And who knows?
Maybe she has raised little tigers til there were enough baby tigers.
Maybe she has plucked monkeys right out of trees.
Maybe whole villages have had to stay in at night, on her account.

Your tiger wanders the 'burb at 3 a.m.
"Poor stewardship," says your next door neighbor, in a written note.
"Selfish, keeping a wild animal like that," says the busybody across the street.
But maybe the tiger was sick of the mangroves.
Maybe it was lonely there.
Maybe she felt lacking, like a museum tiger, until she found you,
but waking upon receiving your smokin' hot kiss,
she made up her mind then and there.

She stays because she wants to.
She's a tiger.
Who's gonna tell her no,
when she's such a big pretty kitty, and loves you so?
________

for Artistic Impressions at Real Toads

Wampus Cat

They said I was sneaking around,
soft-stepping,
silent as a grudge,
listening in on their conversation.

It's their council fire, you know.
They discuss lacrosse,
and similar such like.
They imagine that women burn to know what they yap about.

The shaman set aside his jerky,
and rose up.
My half-grown niece has more magic in her Juju dolls
than ten medicine men working the mystical expression.

Anyway, they think they turned me into a wampus cat
as punishment for my wicked spying.
Rare, the wampus cat
that I already was, already was, already was.

Many's the dawn when I saw white man's angels coming down;
many the feathers in my wampus cat mouth
by the time I was finished fooling with them
and the sun rose high.

Lacrosse player,
where is your wife?
Soft stepping with the wampus cat
to a place where fallen pine needles are welcoming and warm.

They said I was sneaking around;
I was.
They said the shaman turned me into a wampus cat;
too late for that.

Good thing, I think,
when men get solemn and injured like they do,
that a wampus cat, like any cat,
cannot smile and is sly enough to keep her eyes downcast.

_______

for Margaret's challenge at Real Toads! 

 

Suit Case / Stair Case / Head Case

Lisa Gordon Photography

These days, I want everything made of wool and fire.
I count fireball sheep, but never get to sleep.

Mama said, I'm at my wit's end
with you, girl.
Mama said, you got the devil in you,
and that I can't abide.

Doctor Willoughby asks, why did you set the fire?
Do you remember setting the fire?
His eyes swim in turpentine.
I dream of painting him; painting him on fire.

At home, I went out of my bedroom at night,
down the double rut path that cuts through the woods.
Mama found out.
Mama whipped me good.

I brought a suitcase here, and inside it are postcards
of famous pretty people who cannot sleep.
(I know because I watch them.
Their eyes never close, so I scratch them out.)

Dr. Willoughby speaks to my mother in private.
I don't know what he says, but she never comes back.
That is the end of the good news.
The bad news is that he is worse.

He tells me that I am full of sexual waywardness,
and moral decay.
He asks about boyfriends, again and again.
I tell him Mama kept the rooster, cut the head off the hen.

If I had wool and fire, I could keep it quiet inside my head.
They fill it with fireball sheep, and afterwards,
I can't remember things,
and sleep for most of a week.

Dr. Willoughby asks why I set the fire.
Do I remember setting the fire?
I tell him that ever since I was born
I've only wanted to be warm.

Somewhere in an attic several floors above my head
(my poor head),
is my suitcase.
It's up the staircase.

I'm not a rare case, says Dr. Willoughby;
but when he forgets and sets his pen down near my hand,
I can think of nothing but his eyes--fire and eyes-- 
when he sighs and shakes his head.
________

for Margaret's super superb challenge at Real Toads. She asks for a first person account inspired by Willard Asylum.

 

Chums

"Six jolly soldiers to carry my coffin,
six jolly soldiers to walk by my side;
let six jolly soldiers take a bunch of red roses
therefore to smell them as we move along"

--When I Was On Horseback, Irish ballad

Bored of farm, of crow, of field,
we put our shoulders to the wheel
of patriot's game and patriot's folly,
for love of King and kin, by golly.

The station's bands and bunting were fine,
with cheering sweethearts straight down the line
to see us off to who knows where,
God help the Boche when we get there.

We joined the army with our "chums",
to sound of bagpipe and of drums,
that echoed off the bricks of Dublin
to let the bastards know we're comin'.

Here's your quarters, here's your dinner,
trench and rat and all you sinners
here to fight and done by Christmas,
not knowing the endless Hell that this is.

Here, no crow, no pretty crocus,
just splintered bone and bloated horses,
just bombs that scream and hands that shake
like earth itself when bedlam breaks.

Kiss the cross, go over the top,
wish yourself back in your uncle's shop,
buck up boys, and give 'em hell,
the kind that comes when flesh meets shell.

It's not so bad, you've still one eye,
what the trenchfoot takes will always be dry.
Go home and rest on a porch so cool
to think on your glory, and quietly drool.

The sentimental rose your sweetheart sends
on a card for the hero who bravely defends
the crow, the field, the farm back home,
will make a fine ornament for his bones.
________

for Artistic Interpretations with Margaret, at Real Toads. The subject: flowers and their meanings.

Image at top: Irish WWI soldiers.

"Join up with your chums." WWI enlistment slogan. Men were allowed to enlist with, and serve with, their chums. Because of this, some towns and families lost an entire generation of young men when they died together on the same battlefield.


Chum, noun: a close or intimate companion. "boyhood chums."

Chum, noun: cut or ground bait dumped into the water to attract fish; fish refuse or scraps discarded by a cannery.

Chum, verb: to lure (fish) with chum. "They chummed the fish with hamburger."

 

Seeds

At the top of marble stairs,
those hard smooth stairs pressed from prayers that could not be granted,
I will leave twin birds each with half a song.

You will know them by their scent,
and by the midnight-storm sea-water blue of their melancholy.
My kiss will come back to you, folded inside their feathers.

Follow the marble to where it breaks,
take the root-bone broken dirt road that splits the upstairs floor.
I will strew lilies to guide you, as sweetly as an easy death.

Oh, did I mention how restless, how diffuse
is the road I have lured you down? It webs out, becomes thousands,
becomes legion, and down just one of them is my bed and my heart?

I wish you luck.
Place these non-seeds in your hand and let your breath begin them.
Follow them. Splinter as you do, and I'll kindly bury each letter of your lies.

You should have loved me right, when I flowed hard for it.
Now, well now, this is the only way, and I have avalanched everything behind you
with black gems that turn to rot if you touch them.

Just do the best you can, my second chance baby.
Just pretend your feet are magnets and that I am true north.
Just follow the strange-birthed backwards sun that comes up in the west,

so that you, too, can know what it means to be scorched by a blank face.
______

Milkweed orb by Deborah Glessner. Used with permission for Artistic Interpretations With Margaret at Real Toads.

Check out the song. I dare ya to sit still.