For The Thief With Stormy Hair

In the Night Garden, between trailing vines,

Against a wall of brick--

Dark brick--

The color of an imperfectly healed wild heart,

Find the Thief With Stormy Hair.



I turn my hands, and dark orioles rise from my palms,

Into a sky of black--

Rich black--

Like the shirt she wears, then loses like a dream,

Offering me the stars, and her dusky kiss.



I want to climb the bricks like a Morning Glory,

Reach out and softly twine around her,

Bringing the rain every time we touch--

The orioles know,

My devotion is helpless, I go to her as if I were a spirit compelled--

I love her.

That is all anyone needs to know.

________

for STWIASD

photograph: Charlotte Gainsbourg

submitted for One Shot Wednesday

House Of Wax

He moved her into a house filled with spirits,

Then brought in that gloomy, ring-eyed excorcist

Before she'd had the chance to sleep with half of them.

No wonder he fell down the basement stairs

Christmas Eve,

His egg nog balanced perfectly unspilled on the second step,

Him at the bottom,

Staring broken-necked at the dryer.



These things happen, said the firemen,

Snapping their gurney open smartly and removing him on it too soon,

Before she'd had the chance to sleep with half of them.

No wonder their alarms keep going off

At exactly midnight in the firehouse

When there is no emergency

And the telephones make that awful off-the-hook whining noise

Inside their heads.



All I'm trying to say,

Is if you come to stay,

Kiss her softly,

Welcome her crossed ankles across your back,

And remember--

There's plenty of time to fill your lungs in the sunrise,

Hours from now,

Haunted and scented like last night's candle,

Rolled out the back door

And into the light.

________

The Far Garden

When I was young, I asked,

Why are my arms made of blackberry vines?

And why do I

Most love to sit

In the far garden filled

With strawberries and mint?



And why do I have

Cat-tail colored hair?

Why is the thunderhead

A black mother bear?

Why is my skin filled with restless blue lightning

And the pull of the moon?



You dreamed it, child--

Is all that I

Was told, and it's

A sin to lie

A sin to lie.



When I was young, I ran

Away through the wheat under bright summer sun

Until I was alone

Save for sparrow and crow

With south wind for sign post

And further to go



I sang to the quicksilver

Dead in the earth

Who lay with the bear's teeth,

The strawberry red,

And the sweet things that were



You dreamed it, child--

Was all I was told, but the

Far garden called and we

Grew up wild

Grew up wild.

___________

visit One Shot Wednesday #26

The Dime Priest

I sat with the dime priest on the steps of Saint T's, like a paper cup blown up against a holy statue in a garden.

I said,

"I am falling, falling. I am an ice chunk;

My mother the sky has farmed me out to her sister the earth,

Via express delivery."



The dime priest looks over, his huge hands dangling over his knees as if waiting for some greater work.

"What's wrong, Pookie?" he asks me simply, tilting his chin up.

He could have starred in movies.

"The tense has changed," I point out irrelevantly.

"It always does," he tells me with a shrug.



We watch the traffic in front of us, and the clouds above. No stop lights there. No brakes, either.

I love the dime priest. He is so queer and kind.

"Maybe I should say confession."

He looks down and laughs, his broad shoulders shaking.

"I may as well take it from a cat. You don't know what 'no' is, except for just an obstacle,

Something placed out of reach

Just to vex you."



Why can't I marry the dime priest?

I would make sure his vestments were always clean and mended.

He would make sure never to let me fall into the deep end of my heart.

We would fix our favorite coffee;

Always defend each other to strangers,

Never have sex,

And be smiled upon by some god somewhere,

Wouldn't we?



I am a spill, spreading.

He is the quicker picker upper.

"Who is she, Pookie?"

I falter, like a papier-mache bird caught in the rain.

"She is out of reach, like God.

She is funny and crazy, like the commandments.

She rides inside of something else, like Jonah.

Her faith wavers, like the heat over a fire.

She's just some woman I met," I add miserably.



He will look over at me, with those matinee idol eyes

And I will see that he's on to me,

Like everybody's on to me--

And he will know that I love this one,

Just like everybody knows I do--

And I will fall apart on the steps of Saint T's, and he will pat me with his bear paws and say,

"Aw, Pookie, it's gonna be okay."

I will say, into his black shirt, "The tense has changed again."

He will say, "It always does,"

And then he will be

The dollar priest

And I will be

Scattered change.

______

for One Shot Wednesday

The Juju Cowgirl

The juju cowgirl

Came like Venus straight out of the water--

Her horse stepping high,

And her hat brim pulled low.



She swayed in the saddle like a prom queen's last dance,

Holding the reins loosely

As she passed the factories, row houses,

And on past a flock of taxis at their stand.



The juju cowgirl only knows one way to kiss--

Like it's high summer in the mountains.

Just before she left,

She painted a moon and stars mandala

On the soft skin of her best girl's back.

She kissed her hair and both shoulders,

Falling across her like yellow sunlight through lace curtains.

Now she wakes up sore

And still in the saddle.



Past the smokestacks and train tracks she rides;

Her horse tosses his head as they cross an endless dirty steel bridge

With the buses and pick-up trucks

High above the wide holy water.



The juju cowgirl loves the prairie grass

And the hot sun from an empty sky;

Leaving the city at night,

She stops beneath the orangey sodium lights by the freeway entrance.

After this,

There is only cool air and the miles ahead.



The juju cowgirl will find her way--

She will use magicks, leather, and horse sense.

She will navigate by the stars,

And no matter the distance or the passing days,

She carries the charm you gave her

And if she loves you

You will know.

_________

for magpie 40

The Girl Who Dreamt Of Polar Bears

The girl who dreamt of polar bears

Always wore a black scarf, black gloves, soft black boots,

And a coat the color of a doe in winter.

In the frozen, brittle hours of night,

She invited them to meet her in the dream-time,

As if they might walk right in through her front door

Like guests for tea.



Will you purse your lips, look away, clear your throat

When I tell you that is almost exactly what they did?



With the sun barely higher in the sky than a lacrosse ball,

And bound to fall as fast,

She walked down to the Dairy Queen, and as she walked,

One,

Then two,

Then several

White bears began to follow her.

Polar bears have no natural enemies, and fear nothing.

They can tip a snowcat over as if it were a toy, and

Nom nom nom, no more driver.



Today,

This day,

The hockey boys didn't shout at her, didn't make rude invitations;

They just stopped on their skates and stared, as the puck slipped unnoticed past fat Jimmy Flynn.



On she walked, bears all around her.

The constable, with his rifle hanging by its strap over his good wide shoulder,

Simply stood there,

Like he'd never seen Girl With Polar Bears before.

Maggie Two Crows turned to him and said, "Dat's some white girl," and smiled as if she were little again and helping her mama make fry bread.



The girl who dreamt of polar bears arrived at Dairy Queen and stomped her boots.

The bears stood or sat, the breath from their big black noses making them look like locomotives.

The girl said to the boy inside,

"The bears are mothers of things known without teaching.

They got paws bigger than my head.

Gimme a cheeseburger and a hot chocolate.

Some for the bears too, eh?"



That is the story of the girl who dreamt of polar bears.

Her mama said she weren't no good,

But the bears liked her.

The bears told her about the Great Medicine Wheel.

She told them about Mats Sundin, famous captain of the Tronna Maple Leafs.

Anyway,

Makes a pretty good story, yeah? Damn right it do.

__________

for One Shot Wednesday

photo: Jennifer Connelly
__________

Fire

I dreamed that I was drunk and 23--

You were there with me,

Wearing old jeans and a ponytail.



We had wrecked the fucking car--

Driven it into a tree, far down a side road.

You had said, "Trust me, my plans never fail."



We walked away

As the forest went up;

Your smooth tanned arms glowed with red and yellow

And I had no idea what to say.



You turned around, lazy and high,

And I

Stumbled into your sure embrace.

I was bleeding.

You said, "Aw, sugar," in a voice both sweet and mocking,

And tenderly kissed my face.



The woods were on fire,

All we had left was whiskey,

And I knew my love was hopeless, and that I'd never see you again.

It burned, you know.

All of it.

It burned going down.

_________

done in response to prompt  magpie 23

Lies

I was the first girl baseball star.

Babe Ruth once came to me in the holy wooden clubhouse where I dressed alone;

He arrived sober, quiet, hat in hand,

To ask my advice.

I told him:

Live temperately.

Recognize the hand of the divine in everything that you do.

Realize that the pitcher is a major leaguer, just as you are.

Be patient, wait for your pitch, but when it comes,

Swing hard and wail the living snot out of it.

I once met Mister Eddie Rickenbacker,

The celebrated flying ace.

I asked him what it was like.

He told me:

"The sky is filled with devils and blackbirds.

I find the enemy, then send them bullets like children's prayers;

When smoke begins to pour out of their machines like hubris,

They go down singing Lutheran hymns

And German beer drinking songs--

They fall

As softly as spring rain.

I once loved a dancer

Who worked at the One Eyed Cat in Baltimore, Maryland.

She told me she had once danced

For Mister Edgar Allan Poe

On the last night of his life.

People said it was drugs,

Drink,

Bad living,

But I think he was driven mad by love for someone he could never touch.

He died scratching poetry

Into the cobblestones

With his fingernails.

I was the first girl baseball star.

I once struck out Babe Ruth.

That was when I learned

That failure can be more beautiful, sometimes, than success--

And so I went home to the gypsy camp I came from.

I told them how I'd gripped the ball

And done everything the way I'd planned to;

These women who had known me all of my life,

Just laughed toothlessly, silently,

And sent me to collect the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe.

I took him up tenderly, like an angel, or a new mother,

Stroking his filthy hair;

I told him how every time my bat kissed the ball,

It would fly far and fast into the sky, disappearing like joy over the tin Coca-Cola signs

And into the hands of some grinning urchin in a newsboy cap--

Then I kissed him

And his spirit flew away like an oriole,

Set free by my love

And gone.

________

Valentina

Valentina flubs her lines.

The little weasel director crawls out of the drain and gives her shit for it.

And she knows--

The way that birds know north,

That the entire picture is shit,

That she shouldn't be there,

But there are bills to pay

And so there she is.

That night, she strokes her lover's ribs.

Up close, the stripes are like rain down a window glass,

And when he smiles at her,

The great cruel teeth seem almost like peppermint candies.

It isn't easy for her, though all her girlfriends are faint with envy.

Every morning, the bedding is in shreds,

And his golden eyes are so intense

That she stumbles into the shower feeling scorched from the inside out.

She likes to lay her face on his fur where it is white,

Like the pillows on her canopy bed when she was a girl.

She knows

That he will not always stay with her;

And she knows

That he is changing her

Even as they lay together

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

Valentina flubs her lines.

She is supposed to be saying something about childhood, it is her character's big expository scene,

But her mind is on her lover, and how his arms are so strong that a single touch could shift her from bones to fingertips--

That he can rip her open just by padding up the stairs,

And oh, how graceful,

How lethal

Is his leap.

Valentina knows the entire picture is shit,

And that she shouldn't be there.

The little weasel director is in an unholy panic,

He calls her a stupid bitch

But she stops him with a smile

And his throat opens to her tangerine-polished nails

Just like a sinner finding God.

__________

Strippers

A pole dancer and a minister move in together.

They don't love each other, but,

They agree that everyone else is an asshole.

They are both sick of the needy looking to them for what they cannot find at home.

They hand out titillation, or cans from the food bank, with the same smile, and the same withering scorn.

Their friends are all horrified.

"How can you move in with someone like that?" they ask, eyes wide.

But in the night, she asks him to recite scripture to her. His chest is hairy, it's like passing out on someone's front porch with her face on the bristly doormat.

The words he says are loony gibberish, but his voice is like newspaper trucks rumbling by in the pre-dawn; his arms are a porch light and she the moth.

In the night, he touches his fingertips to her skin, and finds that she is smoother than a surplice. It is like being handed the bowl, for the sweet batter within.

He knows her history, the cafeteria line of her past lovers hovering like moondogs, but in her arms he feels that she is braille, and he the blind man.

People begin to notice changes.

She quits the club and takes up dancing at her kitchen sink.

He quits the ministry and finds himself suddenly mute, but his hearing improves.

Their friends are horrified.

"You've changed. I knew this would happen!" they say, eyes wide.

The pole dancer and the minister move away.

They live in a dinky place, but

They love each other.

Their neighbors smile, but regard them with withering scorn.

They think the couple are bohemians, and if there's a cat left in the local shelter, it must be because those two missed it.

She likes the cats for their physical grace.

He likes them for their silence.

Neither of them goes to clubs, or to church.

They make new friends.

The friends say, "One day at a time, keep coming back," and other loony gibberish.

The sun comes up, the sun goes down.

If they keep living on the Mobius Strip,

They may just find themselves yet.

__________

Beeville

Another one I literally dreamt up....

Beeville is the kind of place you move away from.

There are silos and an IGA out on Miller Road, out by the old assembly plant.

Its heavy chains loop around the gates like yarn in a girl's hair,

But of course,

Girls haven't worn yarn in their hair for decades.

Out at Beeville High,

The boys' football team is practicing--

They are called the Bucks

And bucked is what they are.

Ricky Lundquist is the best they can do;

The kids call him Fat Ricky

And the football squibs out of his fingers like a link sausage from the hand of an infant

Playing with its food at the IHOP down Highway 90.

The last time Beeville won anything,

It was the lady Bucks in 1990.

They rode their ancient bus to Chesaning and Fowlerburg,

And Becky MacGruder's hook shot would arc through the gyms like a bright planet in the winter sky.

She kicked ass,

And all the lady Bucks would hit the DQ on the way back,

The yellow bus bouncing over the pot holes in the lot

Like a happy drunken duck.

Becky MacGruder has kids of her own now.

They wear a lot of crap around their wrists and necks

And howl like the damned if made to stay home on a Saturday night.

Sometimes if the doorbell rings or the dog gets into something,

Becky will shift her laundry basket from a hip to the stairs

And go off down the hall just like she was driving the lane.

When she gets back,

With somebody's sweatshirt in her hand, plucked off the back of the couch or a kitchen chair,

She balls it up

And sinks it in the laundry basket from fifteen feet,

Nothing but plastic.

Beeville lady Bucks!

Yeah!

It's still on the sign out on Miller Road, even though the "a" in "ch mpions" has fallen off.

They locked up the title

On a crisp night in March--

Locked it up tight like the gates of the assembly plant,

And even Mr. MacGruder, who hardly ever said two words in a week,

Told his daughter how very proud of her he was.

____________

photo credit: Krista Hakola