Blues & Calicos

 Exes should have to wear a bell

like blues and calicos, so us birds can fly.

But all right, I'll handicraft a smile,

me in the role of a civilized adult when we 

happen to cross paths.

Raise a glass to the past--

vinegar was wine once,

so drink up,

you little arched-back pussycat.

Donne Like Dinner

 

Consider the plight of old food.

The congealed egg gesticulates, spilling her ninth glass of wine, 

claiming she could have been a chicken, soaring majestically over all you dumb motherfuckers.

This is not just lies.

She was hot, desired, asked for, and surrounded with warm companions.

Somehow, though, time skittered by, friends departed,

turning her yolk cold, her edges hard, and her future bleak.

Now there is nothing left but the scrub pad, the spray nozzle and the disposal.

Uneaten bacon sighs, recalling mobility, corn cobs and enticing sows!

Where is yesterday's jolly sun and days spreading out ahead like the world's most magnificent wallow?

The young roll their eyes as bacon's eyes light up,

warming to his subject, reliving the glory!

Like an old actor in a shuttered theater,

bacon has no stage but the walk-in cooler,

no mark but the edge of its cardboard box,

no applause but the hum of the refrigeration unit.

Imagine having an expiry date stamped on your skin!

Imagine that it has already passed!

Consider the plight of old food,

the muffin, the corn flake, the butter pat, scorned and forgotten!

Hash browns have feelings.

If you prick a pancake does it not bleed (syrup)?

Does the orange (juice) fall far from the tree?

Ask not for whom the busboy's bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

_________

for Sunday Muse #205.

Silent Bird

There is a silent smoke-bodied bird

in a stone nest

on a broken branch

overseen by a gape-eyed imbecile.

"All hail," say purple asters.

Hollyhocks drip with faked tears.

Sunflowers babble.

In evening,

all blooms combust to ash.

A silent smoke-bodied bird 

lays dead eggs 

in a broken bell

with a millstone tongue.

Multi-mothered monsters calve.

______

for Friday 55, hosted by the haughty and magnificent Hedgewitch. ;-)

In The Time Of Dinosaurs

In the time of dinosaurs,
we were happy.

In the nights of silent spinning planets,
you could reach for my hand,
and it was there.

Since then, the sun has risen a thousand million times,
and has set as many, 
less one.

Now they have discovered
that monsters are more than bones--
we knew
that they were birds all along.

This afternoon, a comet will come, in all its rarity--
then a cloud.

Who knows what happens after that?
But, until then, 
before I turn to dust,

Here is a sound I call a song
in a language we called ours.
_____ 

Surf Blue

Do you remember
my brother's little cars with the real rubber tires?
We would load our dollie in the back of his ambulance
and leave it on the tracks.
Ding ding ding, dollie--
you think you feel bad now, just wait til old number 7 comes through.

Later, we took out your grandfather's Plymouth
with the push button automatic.
The radio played Golden Earring
and the back seat was bigger than our first apartment.
We fishtailed through those years,
and though you said you knew where we were going,
you lied just as sweet as ever.

How I loved your fingers.
There aren't enough rings in all the second hand shops of the world
to do them justice.
I remember them, and how they found their way,
slick little devils that did the trick every time.
I told you not to take that job in radiology.
I hated to see you lose those tapered beauties one by one.

Sometimes I think the only clear view comes through a cracked glass.
If I could find that Plymouth, I would sit in it
and recall how you told me I was a better kisser than any movie star.
Now, my teeth have gone soft in my head,
I live on pancakes and don't give a damn if the mail or tomorrow comes.

I want to sit on the tracks in a long white bed,
and dream of how we used to be.
The train system is run by computers now,
nobody to feel guilty if I get spun like a carousel,
an old doll in a gas tank bomb of a car,
crashing headlong to feel you restored and handsy

touching my face so tenderly
as if I were made of blown glass and what they used to call
surf blue with eggshell white.
________

for the mini-challenge at Real Toads.

 

blood egg

It only hurts at first.
Look--
the stars still wheel,
and you are still here, miles beneath them, like before.

To be consumed, whether by rapture or dumb beasts,
is the opening of the blood egg.
Thank the tooth or the jagged shell edge
that teaches you this sudden language of ascent.
_______

Union

In the winter,
I married a small wooden box.
I carried my devotion around in a coal scuttle,
and named each of the kitchen utensils
as if they were children who might one day attend university
and, subsequently,
slowly forget us.

My husband was made of cherry wood,
wide as he was deep.
I mailed him the dust from the nursery
where we grew liniment and bitters
from window boxes buried under the floor boards.

One day, going on spring,
the sky turned the color of a fouled well.
It rained river perch;
they came down inside overcoats of ice, like a devil's fairy tale
and all the while,
my husband was one lung and I was the other--
with no heart in between,
inspiring and expiring
without any conscious thought at all.
_______

for Mary's Mixed Bag "connection" at Real Toads.

Evelyn, By Lamp Light

Give her pages blanket soft

with use, with love, worn--

familiar lines still welcome

those dear ones passed, then born--

love treasured, lorn,

stitch plots taken up, then dropped.

______

for Real Toads mini challenge. Photograph by Ellen Wilson, used with permission.

Pantry Chef

When I was younger,
I washed lettuce heads in cold water.
I would set them on my cutting board, gently,
As if my hands hummed with lullabies.

I lifted tomatoes from their cardboard carton beds.
I lined them in a row like nursery babies,
And my starched jacket was always white and clean.

I knew romaine and bibb,
Beefsteak and cherry.
I kept my hair tied back, my nails short,
The right knife sharp and at the ready.

I didn't know, then
That lovers remember the wine, not the greens;
The sugar, not the side plate.

I wish you were here to kiss my hands
With their swollen knuckles and cut-scars.
What was I doing with my tenderness
When I had someone who wanted it?

When I was younger,
I had a paying job, a small talent,
And a driver with a dolly at the back door
Coming every day to keep my walk-in cooler stocked.

I thought that was bounty.
I thought there was no harm in staying on through another fall.
I never considered that what I made was not mine,
Or that someone else was paying for it all.
_______ 

Earnest Twang

wrote a letter
to miss abby blue
and here's what the letter said--

earnest twang can't sing for you
cos earnest twang is dead.

nippin' on a carob cake
in a vegan coffee bar
earnest twang wrote his last song
about the wrongs there are

in this world, baby
down here on the ground
nothings's right
nothing's sure
except a righteous sweet note's sound.

abby blue,
he asked for you
in the hour when he was dyin'

he sent a prayer
through the ozone layer
that he was still your brave orion

earnest twang
was loved by some
and some thought him a star

but earnest twang
will sing no more
about the wrongs there are

in this world, baby
down here on the ground
but it was you
miss abby blue
he wrapped his heart around.

wrote a letter
to abby blue
but decided to call instead

earnest twang can't sing for you
cos earnest twang is dead.

_____

for Marian's music prompt at Real Toads

 

Pretty

I used to want to be pretty, like a Mucha girl--
Got the Lancome landfill to prove it.
But now,
I just don't care--
I'm as nasty as a shut-off notice;
I don't even try.
I don't care if you look, and go blind.

I used to want to be somebody's Star, their Number One--
But now that shit is done.
I'm as lonesome as a broken step--
Don't even try,
Because I definitely bite, hard and deep,
And for little cause.
I'm the un-Mucha girl--
Part rage, part grief, all claws.
______



for Fireblossom Friday "Much(a) The Artistic" at Real Toads.

The Black Cat/ Nobody's Woman

As my dear friend Hedgewitch sometimes does, I have decided to post both the original, much different version of this poem, and then follow it with the reworked and final version. 

 THE BLACK CAT

I asked the black cat
and the black cat told me true
how the half moon cracked the window's edge
and how it was, with you.

Tea in the painted cup
frost upon the mat
never let the half moon in
or listen to a cat.
_______

 NOBODY'S WOMAN

I am nobody's woman.
I dreamt that I knelt at night to the water's edge,
A falling leaf to the dark-eyed deep;
A girl again,
Running her hand through the blue future.

I woke, and got up,
Wrapping myself in the wings of a million dark birds.
Who was there, after all,
To kiss the color of the cardinal
Onto my skin like brightness to a candle?

I am nobody's woman,
And because rain has warped the gate,
I cannot close it;
I cannot stop the stars from wheeling,
Nor my tears from wandering out among them.

In the night,
Risen from sleep as from a bath gone to chill,
I make muffins in my tiny kitchen
For the comfort of their aroma
And to try to lure the moon to my open window.
I long to lay my head easy
Where curve meets silence
And die there, content.

My pride is hurt, and I realize how I must seem,
When only a black tom
Seeks the yellow light and its sill stained with blackberries;
He knows I wanted a woman,
Like calling like,
But he is kind enough not to call me ridiculous.
Here I am, no longer young,
But still filled with the same sharp need...
I am a rain of useless poems--
I am the sand, with the tide receding--
I am nobody's woman.
_____ 

Mail

Dearest Heart,


Darling Mine...

I am picturing you, wearing your dragon kimono, with your dark curls tied loosely back, carelessly, beautifully, standing in your doorway where the yellow forsythia appears every Spring,

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You could break my heart, you know, just standing there, fanning out the bills and ads, but with that look on your face that you get when you're unaware of yourself; the look that expects something pleasing, something nice, to happen at any given moment...

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My love, how you won my affection with that, from the very beginning. And now, I will be the one to ruin it all. Now that what I feel is so much more than affection, more than desire...more than I can bear, anymore, because you have become so indescribably precious to me.

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You have always been the one to see what I never could, by myself, and to believe that I was so many admirable things that no one else ever had. Now, my only one, you will see that I am owned by others, and heartless, and not even worth hating.

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You know what the price would be, for us to make a life together. You would do it, I know; you would fight anyone, even put yourself between the world and me, if I asked you to. Oh honey, I will tear myself to pieces writing this, and doing this to you. By the time you hold this letter in your hands, the hands that can make me tremble even in memory, I will be gone. I will do what is expected of me, live the life that has been planned out for me, and I will do all of it with a dead heart. I will be called fine, and proper, and pleasing, but what I will be is hollow and weak.

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In my life, I will only, ever, love you. I am so, so sorry. I leave my heart and all that is best in me, here, with you, though I don't expect that to mean anything, after all I have just done and said to you. I am a coward, but I do love you, and always will.


Sarah

_____


for dverse patterns pictures and poems


top photograph by James Rainsford. Bottom photograph by Robert Holden.

 

Cowbirds

Be reasonable.
Don't die here, not yet.
Besides,
A good French manicure should never be wasted;
So keep fluttering your hands,
Asking for water (good!),
And variously demonstrating that the heart within you still beats.

You think me unkind.
Why?
I stomp on anybody's hands
When I find them hanging from the high wall by their fingertips like that.
If Goddess meant for us to be vines,
She would create us as slender,
Graceful,
Rising things;
Not great crashing beasts
Caught in nets,
Idiotically bellowing.

Hold still.
Be a lady for once.
Pretend that you forgive me,
And I will build a nest from assorted debris,
As birds do,
A little round emblem of natural perfection
That we can call home
Just long enough
To fall out of.
______ 
for Real Toads Open Link Monday

Romans

All roads lead to Rome, they say--
But the legions,
In their breast plates,
With their red plumes, and brilliant strategies,

Are screwed VII ways to Sunday,
Dead beneath the gravel,
Knocked flat by fat babies
And little black crickets.

Dandelion-seed emperors,
Ladies whose looks went centuries ago,
Dust-mouthed senators;
Their domes are as empty as old flower pots.

Beyond this gate,
There is a horse in a paddock
And laundry on a line.
What fool put them so close together?
I don't know...

All I'm sure of,
Is that the grass here smells sweet,
The sunset is pretty,
And that I want more than anything

To feel my back against the post,
Your lips against mine,
And your fingertips at my cheek.

Do what the sleeping legions can't do--
Open the gate, sweet honey,
And pass through.

______

for Kenia's photo challenge at Real Toads. The bottom photo is hers.

Written while drinking Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai tea, which I am convinced helps me to be creative. It's irrelevant whether this is true. It only matters that I *believe* that it is true!

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. 

The Constancy Of The Moon

Christmas bells rang my head--
to,
fro,
or maybe it was just the Colt 45.

The moon used to cradle me in her curve while I slept--
she always whispered,
"Little girl,
take this silver dollar
and buy a ticket home to me."

Texas Jim rang my head--
to,
fro,
or maybe it was just the December wind.

I would leave here, head south,
if only I could stand up.

The moon used to cradle me in her curve while I slept--
she always whispered,
"Little girl,
take this silver dollar
and buy a ticket home to me."

Christmas bells ring my head--
to,
fro,
echoing in the alley between the churches--
I would come to Jesus
sure enough,
if only I could stand up.
_____

for Real Toads OLM

Dark Roses

The dark roses that crowded, tangled, 
On the latticework, spoke to me
As I knelt in the deep black dirt, adoring them.

They said, behold the spitting clouds.
You cannot stitch them, you cannot
Make a wedding dress or a shroud from them,
They are beyond that.

There are things dark roses do,
Practices they keep, that leave
A girl such as me bitter.
This is what I told them.

The dark roses that crowded, tangled,
Around my body, within my mind,
Choking off all rivals, all future,
All breath,

Laughed at me, and were still beautiful
Even down to their hateful thorns.
I offered, to the leaden sky's face,
To become a bird just to vex them,

But my dark roses only relented enough
To tell me that I am pale, paper-skinned
And bloodless, as doomed as happiness,
Not even worth tears.

Here is the truth I learnt and then poisoned myself with:
My dark roses are flawlessly formed,
Vicious and unforgettable,
As soft and compassionless as worms.

_________

Blame

You can't blame it all on me.
I broke that bottle square on your boat's fat beak,
And looked damned fine doing it, too.

Is it my fault
That a little pink ribbon dragged her down?
Was it my doing
That the captain you engaged was a freak, a fiend, a fool?

Tell those idiots to lay their tubas down.
The breeze is picking up,
Everyone is heading home,
And not another soul blames me, not one.

So hit me or kiss me,
But don't stand there stupid
Like a dressmaker's dummy.

It's easy to react after the fact,
But at least I twitched,
At least I spit in the wind and went whistling past the graveyard;
If you sink, you sink alone...
Don't try to blame that stuff on me.
_________ 

Also, find my new prose poem at Night Blooms, HERE.