Hyena

 

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

faceless blank walking the orchards in a black duster,

you've brought wine

and dying birds

for my birthday, five months late. 

There are no seasons scenting your skin anymore,

you're a false summer,

holding up a pennant

that says, "I am here. Drop everything." 

In love with folly, and mock moons, I turn into midnight and let you in.

So tenderly I used to touch the icicles in your hair.

If there are graves in Heaven,

that is where your bed beckons

and always there is a woman reaching up from it,

a hallucination who would do anything for you, even as a phantom.

I told my girlfriends back when you caught me in your spring snare

and I starved very prettily

in your net like a sachet,

I said, "I have kissed a hyena and borne its laugh.

Collect my bones and boil them, my mother-song will stun every April blade.

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

frost your sham love with French cream so that I can bear the taste

as I spit it out.

Bring your playthings

so that I can crush them with the pestle of my tongue and destroy them,

especially my old devotion that spoke such fine poetry in your scavenger ear.

________

for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.

Shared with The Sunday Muse #246.

Image: I Dream of Reaching by Ivan Pili. 

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa Your Heart Is As Black As Night

Nursery Rhyme

 There were devils

present at my birth

and veiled angels

in smoky violet shirts

with handbells

they'd stolen out of Hell.

Who is the coward

that devils teach to curse

holding Hope out in a teacup

but overturn it first?

A fool's sun

wanes fast, warms none.

See the rose stem

my assassin's throat was vase for

so that every imprecation

that's spoken only makes more

melodies

across my garden's leaves.

Angels kept my heart

in a box with golden hinges

carried by a devil

on its back with burning cinches

in tandem served--

my hidden heart preserved. 

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa "I'll Take Care of You"

Lesson In Entomology

 

Red ladybugs, often made of wood or plastic, are the cheery ones. The dull brown ladybugs are the ones that bite. Born yesterday, uncelebrated and infused with the bright mindlessness of relentless summer, their hate is genuine; they wait on a pretty stalk for your bare arm. Your pain is their nectar. 

October is the time of show-off leaves. Red ladybugs burn their own houses down. Ask one. She is her own child in the blaze, and to her, death is quite romantic. She loves you, without the slightest notion what that really means. They are as vacuous as lawn ornaments. 

When waiting winter compels a choice, your heart will say, choose the brown ladybug, she knows your soul, even as she destroys it. Your sense says, choose the red, she'll make you happy. But no. You have decided and offer your arm.

______

Today at Dverse Prosery, Bjorn wants us to use a line from Bob Dylan's classic song "Desolation Row', a piece I have long admired, both for its lyrics and also for whoever that was playing the guitar counterpoint to each line. Bjorn instructs that we must use the line "To her, death is quite romantic" from this song. I will comply, (143 words)

Molasses Girl

 

The starlings. They protect my heart.

Kiss me and you can feel them fluttering.

"Aren't you happy?" you ask.

It is only the starlings rising in black unison

because your desire has disturbed them.

I am a molasses girl. I am what is left

after refinement. My heart is a vat.

Open it and drown

in starlings sugar-drunk and rushing

headlong into whatever will make you go away.

If I talk in my sleep near dawn,

it is just the starlings screaming from every tree.

I will bathe in the oven,

until my body is a cookie you can carry.

My familiars will follow, testing, screeching, objecting.

They are my dark dowry, the price you pay for more.

________

for Dverse "Strange Houses" (of Lee Madgwick) The art at top used with permission.

Music: Jonatha Brooke "Made of Gold"

Half Past Bitter Sweet

 

There's a peculiar kind of holy naive feeling that I get

when you step out of December

and through my box of memories that never happened yet.

Here's the ring that fell from a lost sea shell

and broke in shades of lonesome

to set the bungs and tie tongues of those who crave to tell.

In my dreams you are a hunter

when I'm falling in my sleep

and I can't put my finger on it

but its far and fey and half past bitter sweet.

You'd tell me it's just bullshit if you talked to me at all

so I spend the hours wounded

making feathers for a blackbird who sold them for a call.

In the garden Quasimodo is looking for his bell

and hes crying but can't hear it

except when he gets near it and can't say if it will make him worse or well.

In my dreams you are a dust-star

when I'm flying in my sleep

and I can't put my finger on it

but it's far and fey and half past bitter sweet. 

_______

for Word Garden Word List #6 (Laura Marling)

Note: this poem has nothing whatever to do with clergy. I liked the picture for other reasons. It's a love poem.

Rotten Fruit

Here is your rotten fruit
taken from a gorgeous vine--
the lush one, the lovely one
in its season--mine.

Roll the dough, crimp the crust,
spoon the rotten fruit inside--
bake it well, then go to hell
where with these sweets you may abide.
______

for Poetry Pantry #358.

 

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.

Gift

It's time for MZ's "Words Count" feature at the Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. She says:

"Imagine yourself in the safest place you've ever known.  Let yourself sink into the details.  Feel the texture, the temperature.  See the angle of the light.  Breathe deep . . .

And, tell me about it in 53 words or less."

Okay. Here it is, in exactly 53 words!

"Gift"

She had a voice so right she could make the Moon sneak to meet her on the down low--

So new-car fur-cuffs fine she could make concubines cry and quit for jealous.

But that night, she soothed me sweet,

a mother for the mother-hungry...

the perfect gift, and I

never forgot.

___________

 

If You Had Asked

If you had asked, I would have told you--
I am sitting with the lions. 
I didn't go to them--
they came to me.
They always do.

The stench of their last meal rolls from their open, panting mouths,
like a ghost-scream from the one consumed--
the one that did not get away.

They are covered in flies.
The flies know what they want, but not how to get it.
They want death, but death is inside,
a backwards cub giving life to the lions.
The flies know this,
can hear this,
covet this,
see it in thousands with their minds' compound eyes,
but all they can do is buzz and annoy.
This is why we despise the flies.

Did I say "we"?
I am sitting with the lions, but I am by myself.
I can see for miles in every direction,
but I cannot see the curve of the earth.

If you had asked, I would have told you--
I am changing.
Always, I have loved the zebras.
I have been the admiring dust around their running,
and when they have made their distinctive coughing call,
I have always looked up
as if expecting a lover to say something kind.
Now, sitting with the lions,
I see the zebra's perfect hooves and think,
"I cannot eat those, or the hair; only the stripes:
live/
perish/
live/
perish.
This is not the woman I have always--or ever--been.
Rebel, rebel, you torn your dress...
but it is just the lions idly batting me to the ground
like an anthill made of girl.

This morning, when the lions first came,
I thought to tell you all these things.
I have been a river, pure and deep,
a few dozen dreams from the place you sleep;
I have been the moments when your mind was still
and your limbs were loose. 

If you had asked, I would have told you--
everything that a thousand years of crossings have taught my flowing blood.
I would have told you how my fingers have no other purpose but to touch your skin,
and how this yearning has refracted and filled my imagination
a thousand times.
If you had asked, I would have told you--
but you didn't;
and here among the lions, 
I think it best, now, that I remain silent.
________

inspired by "Lions Abide" by Talon. Find it HERE.

Jaguar Black

Jaguar black
Is the rain-beat pulse
At my wrist,
At my throat,
The animating ghost my body is cage for;
A cat's whisker
Searching in the dark for your hand.

If I had golden eyes,
If I were sandalwood incense burning
Beside you,
Rising,
I would move through the stars like silver grasses;
I would borrow moonlight for my coat,
To make myself beautiful
So that you would love the very skies
I fall from.

Jaguar black
Is the trees at night
Whose hard embrace holds me,
Whose canopy carries my almost-human cry,
In darkness
In hopelessness
That my desire would ever be haven for
A touch returned
That can never be mine.

_____

Using two of Shawna's Monday Melting words, "jaguar" and "incense."

The Winter One

In the heart of Winter,
No one came near;
What choice did I have, but to
Summon you, dear?

Black are the branches,
Black are the crows;
What heart could survive by
Loving those?

In the heart of Springtime,
When my Winter One slept,
I rocked by the streamside
And bitterly wept.
_____

a triptych for Kerry's challenge at Real Toads

Black Lilies

She came,
Sweet/bitter, like blackstrap molasses.
Her skin was black tea,
Her voice was black earth.
She embraced me and that was the moon in eclipse;
She breathed in my bones, and my bones bent to her.

She stayed,
Like rain falling on the dark river.
She rocked me all night
As both lover and child.
She kissed me, and that was the moon in obscurement;
Her touch was black lilies, and her touch was light.
______

The Finches

If the finches should call you
On the land line
In the hall
Of the old house,

There is no need to set aside your book
Or to trouble yourself at all--
It is only a draft
Through a window
Where an empty vase still sits.

It is only the gone summer,
Only the things that could never be;
It is only these.
It is only me.

And if there is a nest
On the pole,
Above the transformer,
Where the snow clouds skulk and glower...

There is an egg,
And in the egg, a memory that does not change,
But is, instead,
As static as a china dish.
Likewise, there is a lace-edged wound,

And within the wound,
An hour,
And within that hour,
The high-grown fields,
Your bare arms with their gooseflesh skin,

And one secreted, hoarded darling--
Palmed in my hand to kiss.

If the finches should call you
Before rot
And ice
Destroy...

It is only me, up on the wire,
Sealed and
Cauterized
With my voice.

I remain as mad
As mad has always been--
A balance pole
Of oriole
And owl bones

Long and thin.
Find the dazed bird on your porch boards,
Dashed against your doorway, dying;
Uncurl my fingers,
Lean close, and laugh,

And love me
One last time.
_______

Picture by Eugenio Recuenco, sent to me by Kerry O'Connor, my fellow Toad. It was originally part of her challenge to me to write to the pictures of Recuenco, which I did, but not to this one, until now.

This is for dverse OLN, because my bestie, Hedgewitch, is hosting. 

Chamber Duet

See how I love you, darling,
Risking my favorite gray ankle boots to go skittering down the rotten-leaf path to the marsh,
Wearing my delicate little gloves and an old-lady cardigan against the chill damp?

Don't try to hand me any shit about how you love sailors now,
And how they float their bones up from salt water to this place,
To sing shanteys to you--
Here, where you percolate in the shallows like a Quadroon turned to wax.

My frail sweetheart,
Look at you, what's become of you.
There was a time when you could char the moon's pale edges simply by looking up;
Don't I know it better than anyone?
There was an age--was it sixteen?--
When a lack of you was a dearth I couldn't endure.
Now, if I move you at all,
It is with the edge of a cypress branch,
To roll you like a dismal log in a fire of rot.

We really cared once, you know it's true;
But these days we are sophisticated--
Everything must be de rigueur and scripted to within an inch of its life.
Go ahead, I release you for all time--
Be the anima for your little sailors as they dance out from sharks' mouths and surround you,
As stultifying as ease.

I will use tiny silver clippers to trim the soulful timbre from the cello,
Rendering it a balsa fiddle;
A repository of false notes and refined choking,
A waterside abomination,
Our love song evermore.
_____

for Monday Melting Week 2. I had to use the following words: timbre, derigueur, percolate, marsh, char, damp, frail, dearth, wax and anima. 

Come Back

Come back to bed--
the winter is coming.
Then, we will wear nothing but black and white
except for your crimson scarf.

Come back to bed,
while red leaves still blindly find the window glass,
like flames to us, two moths.
Let me kiss your brown and orange wings.

Look,
it rained while we were loving.
Come back to bed--
soon enough, January will settle and stun,
leaving us riven as fence posts.
I don't like to think about it.

Come back to bed.
Your brown sweater and wool socks are somewhere on the floor,
if you want them. If you're cold.
My heart loves nothing as it does
the sight and touch of your warm skin,
and beats best under your protecting palm.

Come back to bed.
I need little else to live for, but that.
By the time winter is done, you will have gone,
and the world will reduce to black and white.
I will go out walking
over the ice-sheathed leaves,
carrying only what I can't let go of,
and wearing your crimson scarf.

_______

Beep Beep

Caroline loved Megan.
Loved her olive skin.
Loved her in her suede boots, coming in the door.
Loved her, next to her, sleeping.

Caroline loved Megan, but,
Megan's crafts turned cruel.
Who knew that the big wind would come?
Who knew that knitting needles, left out,
Could become arrows?

In the emergency room,
A young intern who had been on duty since Tuesday
Laughed, because
Caroline looked like Wile E. Coyote
With a knitting needle through her head;
But Wile E. Coyote
Never looked so terribly confused, and lost.

After the accident,
Caroline changed.
She began to dream of stars, like children make,
With points.
She began to see the world like an old tv
With horizontal lines rising, rising, rising,
And she sees the flag, with its stripes
Promptly at 2 a.m.
Every night.

Caroline asks Megan,
"Take me to the salt flats."
There,
Megan holds her hand,
With silent tears running down her dusky cheeks.

Once, Caroline loved Megan,
But now she can't remember.
A little blank,
She looks around.
Another storm could come, you know.

Caroline smiles her weird vacant smile,
The one that Megan can hardly bear.
"Beep beep," she says,
Looking at the sky.
As Megan turns away, she says it again,
Like a broken blonde doll.
"Beep beep,"
But she can never catch up with herself,
Or the teasing after-image of contentment
In the foggy broken clock of her mind.

______


for OLN 8

Sunday Poem

When the new day comes,
I will wrap the sun in a fresh newspaper
Like a bright baby,
Nestled close beside the long wet stems of irises.

When the new day comes,
The characters I love best from books will start heart beats--
Antoinette,
Cece,
Flannery,
Dressed down and lazy in white chairs on the flagstone porch.

When the new day comes,
I'll keep the moon in a cut crystal bowl outdoors,
And jay-blue feathers will float down
From the branches of the ash tree,
To take my arm like a favorite sister.

But until then, I am getting older,
And expect to remain alone--
With cagey time always diminishing,
And this sunflower-dust disaffection
From skin down into bone. 

_______

Antoinette is from Robert Girardi's "Madeleine's Ghost."

Cece is from Julie Anne Peters's "Keeping You A Secret."

Flannery is from Sylvia Brownrigg's "Pages For You."
____

Love Poem

Sweetheart, please,

Come up the narrow stairs

To the white door I keep propped with books--

Anna Karenina

Keeping You A Secret

Collected Poems.



My room is dark and cool.

The bed is brass.

The comforter is white and textured.

It is a place of lavender and wood,

Paper and dreams.



Darling, do you know,

My bones are only old rolled pages

Spilling words like sparrow bones onto a velvet cloth.

Please, come,

Tell my fortune with your fingers.

Make the sun go down with your kiss.



Sweetheart, I understand

Why you cannot stay here in my woven dusky nest.

What I wouldn't give to close gently around you,

To cover you,

To protect you with every word I ever wrote.

Still, my love,

You are the only one invited here...

And though you leave,

Believe me, you always remain.

________

for magpie 66

bottom photograph: Sheetal Sheth from The World Unseen

A Bicyclist's Verse

for Emily


A Wheel is a fair curious Thing--

Traversing toward Age from Birth--

It moves, at once, toward Heaven,

And also, back to Earth.

________

Worldes Blis

In the time of the black death,

There were still little silly white clouds,

Floating overhead like some sort of joke.



On the day of the ergot fungus,

The bread brought visions,

Panic,

And the violent jerks of St. Vitus' dance.



Leave off your washing--

You'll only have to burn it all anyway.

Meet me in the fields,

By the road where the Duchess's carriage lies tilted and empty in the ditch.



I have a half a loaf of rye,

And all afternoon to spend.

Come kiss me.

Use your tongue.

I already know you're contagious, and that I am infected;

We can lie here on our backs,

Watching the clouds, and our hallucinations.



If we don't die first,

I will tell you that I love you.

It's true, but

You can laugh, and blame fever or psychosis,

If you're even still answering me

At all.

______


"Worldes Blis" is a 12th century chant, which says, essentially, "earthly joys don't last for long." You can't really dance to it.

_______