At 23 (for Bob Green--not the famous one)

Our mutual friend

had told you

how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.

"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.

"Like it really happened?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

"It did happen, but now

things are so different that it seems

ridiculous."

I sat there,

shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--

like him, not dying

but split and empty like a dead pew.

There are more gospels than they let on, you know.

This man loaned me two records--

Joni Mitchell

and It's a Beautiful Day.

Like poetry, it was love for life for me--

Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.

I left Illinois not long after

to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers

off for the summer.

We read Richard Brautigan,

and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston

where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry

on a Sunday morning.

______

A Sequence of Bells

 

Where is the bell that was ringing?

it is in your throat

waiting for Sunday.

Where is the bell that has not yet rung?

it is in the ring

shrugging and feinting. 

Where is the tongue

with which the bell will speak?

The cat took it

and left it on the porch rail.

What does the ringing bell signify?

That the priest's hand

is strong and able. 

The boxer delivers his sermon.

You speak, and a shiver goes through me.

The cat is a night cat

and goes before me, always.

___________

Merciless

Listen, she is merciless as a Saracen.

My poor heart jumps for its den at the sight of her,
leaving me a little breathless,
wobbly, tongue-tied, what a mess.

'Scuse me Miss, what lovely teeth you have,
pretty maids all in a row,
the better to slay me with.
Her voice is cream to the cat, I'll fall off the fence.
dazzled and stupid, upside down on the ground.

She wears tortoiseshell glasses,
she's a rocket scientist distant as Mars
because I am shy, uncertain, starstruck, clumsy,
knocked over by the fragrance she wears,
gone from austere bookworm 
to clueless spaz
with no escape except into the stacks to recover.

Like a ninny I return to the shrine,
her reference desk lair
where I hope to inherit a word or a smile
to check out and take home and keep
like an overdue volume.
That's when I'll go back
and say to my librarian crush,
"Hi, I'm your fool, can you help me?" 
And hope, like an idiot, that she can.
________

for Skylover's word list.

Donald Barthelme vs. Russell Edson In Outer Space

At the space station, time stretched out like taffy.
We made up slogans
out of our asses
for absurd commodities which, if they exist, shouldn't.

We voted (ourselves)
into made-up offices.
We issued edicts to each other,
and had drunken fights over borders we dreamed, or misremembered
from wasted schoolroom afternoons.

Abruptly, we were summoned home,
though the trip took months, and we strangled or ravished each other
at intervals all the way, regardless of
gender or
consequences or
any pretense of sanity or cohesion.

Arriving from the Space Station, we were feted as heroes.
We had intimacies with heads of state,
and endorsed, on camera, preposterous shit with unknown risks and
dubious utility.

Wish upon a star, said our mothers
so many years ago,
as we lay in cribs like soft, wonderful jail cells for the innocent.
Wish upon a star, 
and we did, God help us, we did.
_______

I discovered two of my strongest (and most bizarre) influences in my teens (Donald Barthelme) and early 20s (Russell Edson). Barthelme is the author of several collections of short stories which describe dryly absurd situations rife with irony and failure. The first one I found was a paperback copy of "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts" (find quotes from which, HERE). I owe a significant debt to Mr. Barthelme for the indelible mark his style has left on my sensibilities. Then there is Russell Edson, whose book of prose poems "The Wounded Breakfast" showed me that poetry, and story line, and creativity, and just about anything else on a page, could be however my mind could imagine it. Find "Angels" by Mr. Edson, HERE.

For Karin's "Under The Influence" mini-challenge at Real Toads. The artwork at top is hers.

dog years

I love you in dog years, seven for one.
I love you in predictive quatrains and in the secret language of twins.

My love is revealed in weather anomalies,
sea changes, and the Rorschach of sunspots.

Here is the reason for my fingertips:
your hair, your skin.

Here is the sure sign of intelligent design:
your dark eyes, the smile at the corner of your lips.

In the madhouse, men think they are God.
Churches become madhouses for doing the same.

I am mad enough--I want to say to you, girl,
fuck my brains out, make me beg to get inside you,

marry me, tie me up, get me pregnant,
make the room reek of us and then write poems about it.

Kiss me in the middle of the mall, hold my hand.
Duplicate my desire in an uncontrolled environment.

Love me in dog years, seven for one.
Viva la revolucion.
______

 

 

trifle

There is a poem I wrote for you,
a trifle scratched with a fingernail file into some stranger's parquet floor.

There was an accident--
I stumbled inside the nearest house,
leaving smears of blood like sloppy lipstick 
on the glass panes of the study door.

Foolishly, I tried to kiss the air,
though it didn't have one molecule of your scent in it.
I fell, then crawled up into a chair, feeling sick and dizzy.

The alarms in the house were made of clarinets.
The police who came wore blue serge
and knew all the standards.

I told them I was delivering a donor poem,
so if they come up your walk with their little ice chest,
receive them. Remember your southern manners.

Eventually, the blood will wash out
and I will stay in my grave like a bookmark.
Until then, know that I was thinking of you
all the way up until the end.
_______

 

 

The Queen Of Small Spaces

I am the Queen of small spaces--
one ripe plum on a clean white counter,
a single filigreed chair,
and August moonlight for my hair--
these are all I claim.

One night, near the end of Summer,
I filled a vase with love poems folded from crimson blooms.

Verbal as a Saimese,
and aching for your slightest touch,
I put on the soft black shoes of my persistent, hopeless desire,

to come haunting your door at dawn, offering you everything--
these trifles,
all I have.
_______