Ode to L.

 

Here is an ode for you, my dear

to celebrate your ferric heart

and an idiocy of intimacy

as valueless as modern art. 

Here is a pot of chrysanthemums

with viper heads on every stem

to commemorate the quacks you quote

and your absolute belief in them.

Behold the cradle that holds the child

who turned to fog before she cried

and the trivia you cared for more

than the funeral or the fact she died. 

Who holds the torch and crosses eyes

at you in imaginary dance?

You, the center of the world

departing now by ambulance?

We were once and once was us

in kinder intervals that fell

into the ditch like cur and bitch

chasing cast-iron kites through Hell. 

________

for Word Garden Word List--Hapax

Orbit and Waterfowl

 

Here are we, in our clean white smocks

carrying our easels

waddling in flocks

freed by signatures, approved by weasels

with keys to all the locks.

Gone in a group, out to the duck pond

chicks watching chicks

circling around

like the melt around ceremonial wicks

we the lost, them the found.

We who ate bitter oftener than sweet

who had enough

and beat our feet

into shadows where we flicker and huff

sentient suns in setting concrete.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Save Yourself

Music: Gnarls Barkley Crazy 

Poor Betty

 

She built a doorway of hard-done-by and walked straight into it,

then said she'd been beaten by the future.

She placed a putty god in a mushroom soup sky

like a bumper sticker on a car made of wind.

Go, Betty, Our Lady of the Tinkertoy Triptych.

It's sad magic to watch a woman become an infant,

plastic ring on a tiny fat hand, teething on the little vile grenades

she treats like dollies, dumb scapegoats to blame for her dead dandelion smile.

______

for The Sunday Muse #212.