En Graved (A Love Poem)

 look close--

here is your engraved invitation

the Hubble at your disposal.

A long bone

and rose thorn comprise my stylus--

the blasted dust of the moon we thought so lovely

is wounded into an imago

a blighted imbecile twin, 

love lost and lunatic.

_________

for Quadrille Monday "Engrave Your Name Across My Heart"

Image:  from the excellent indie film Another Earth

Music: Til Tuesday The Other End (Of the Telescope)

Why So Pale & Wan, Fond Lover?

 I'm not a vampire, silly.

No more bewitching than your auntie's 

freestanding lamp,

all hat and flat feet.

Yes, I favor red

lace, a little lipstick

and I'm Irish pale

but I only bite muffins.

Just a harmless mouse,

shy of cats and mirrors.

________

for Dverse Quadrille #208

Music: The Motels Icy Red

First Love

 Hey, old girl,

I can't bear it, you know,

to go back.

You're gone anyway.

How can that be?

How could you hold my whole heart for years

and then be gone from the world?

I remember the green! 

The bright lawn in the sun, and the dark green

you wore, the color of forests, and later, Great Lakes blue.

I remember the cloud of rising cigarette smoke

in the warm evenings. 

There were fights sometimes,

even the odd drunk falling down.

It didn't matter.

What I remember best is the heartbeat excitement

of seeing you there.

I recall a rainy Sunday in autumn,

you wearing red, white and blue as if it were July.

Everyone we both knew was always there,

dressed in white like heroes. 

I loved you madly from the moment I met you.

No matter where I traveled,

I always came back to you, my comfort, my heart,

the one beloved constant 

in the uncertain confusion of my childhood, my youth, my middle age. 

Sometimes, still, I dream we are together.

Hey, old girl. 

The one word I can never say to you is "goodbye."

You were my sanctuary and so I ring the bells for you,

shout once more for the home team,

recall the steep aisles, the vendors, the big scoreboard

of Tiger Stadium, the love of my young life,

________

for Dverse poetry of place and space, hosted by Ingrid. 

Music: Frank Sinatra There Used To Be A Ballpark 

Crackerjack For Lancelot

 

I set out Crackerjack for Lancelot,

candy apples for his mount--

licorice for dancing devils

too numerous to count.

I bake pie for the Lorelei

and salt water taffy for the sailors--

honey for all my winning ways

and bitter ale for my failures.

_______

for Dverse quadrille "candy"

Music: Lindi Ortega Fall Down Or Fly

Seventeen

 The summer I was seventeen,

I read The Bell Jar

Howl

A Coney Island of the Mind

and Lost Weekend.

The neighbor's garden had

decorative bells

hung above the river stones.

Every tongued bell

is keen to find language

for (w)ringing out its pain.

_____

for dverse quadrille for whom the bell tolls

music: judy collins the bells of rhymney

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"

Night Work

The earth is flat

there, where the lily of the valley grows

beneath my window.

Some wandering cat

or creature made sleepy by the dawn, chose

to rest there on the stems bent low.

It's crop circle night work

left by visitors

that were. 

________

For Dverse quadrille "work", hosted by JadeLi. 

Music; James Taylor "You Can Close Your Eyes"

Self-Portrait

 I carry black cherries and woodsmoke

in the upturned crescent where the memory of your face is kept.

Winter pales the world and I am prayer flags flying,

sherpas hauling,

I am peaks where the air becomes dear.

Under wicker fans, G&T's sweat on the mahogany bar.

An aesthete in a sedan chair snaps his fingers and starlings rise and wheel

carrying your voice 

feathered and black

above sea level, above all heads, beyond calling back.

I carry black cherries and woodsmoke

on a glass tray draped with night stars and the music of ouds.

A vendor in a Panama hat offers me your scent

in exchange for 

the season of his choice.

I turn my back and start ascending, to freeze and fall, 

guided by your indifferent ghost and my maps milled from ice and ache.

__________

for Dverse Open Link, hosted by Sanaa Rizvi

image: the Dyatlov Pass hikers

Music: "Qalanderi" by Cheb i Sabbah. 

The Post Office of Souls

 

At the Post Office of Souls, there's a late letter

and the hand that wrote it is the hand that delayed it.

The sorting machines are made of jacaranda and white iris--

only the postmistress is fully automated, an Egypto-Mechan perfect fit.

Stamps roll out from dreams and are hard to remember.

Women hired to sleep them also catalog--they are pregnant with postage

and have your address on file, a complete roster of your life in miniature.

They deliver you, cradle you, sing you on through to your dotage.

The aisles are of indigo water mermaid clerks circulate under

estimate arrival times, currents, allowing for windage and mercurial local poohbahs.

Open an envelope, catch the scent of lilacs, bribe Anubis with a kiss

and receive safe passage, receipt of contents, S.W.A.K and certified, you cannot lose us.

________

for Dverse "Compound Me." I have used "underestimate."

Vagabond Ball

 You can lose the colored ball that rolls under the fence and into the weeds.

You can lose the puppy you slept with, the blanket, the bed, the parents as well.

You can lose your shoes when the roommate stretches them,

lose your virginity and barely remember it,

lose your bestie, your internship, your single room, your shine.

You can lose a husband or wife, that bastard, that bitch.

You can lose your tolerance, your keys, your court case, your kids.

You can lose yourself and wonder how in the hell.

You can lose and not be able to let it go.

You can lose your shit, or sigh and say, "oh well."

You can lose your composure when you see how far you fell.

You can lose the booze, the dope, the sex, the waste.

You can lose the name you started with and choose another one

that doesn't have the sting and shame, the stopper and the bung.

You can lose the demon and shame the devil.

You can lose who you weren't and gain who you are,

no matter how unexpected, how hard, how glorious, how far.

Your soul's the same, untouched after all,

waiting in the weeds with the vagabond ball.

_____

my attempt at "a little repetition" for dverse. 

7 banal lines

 That spring the sky stayed gray, 

a grandfather dozing in a worn chair.

Our tongues turned to cotton,

our hearts ran out like tea from an upset cup.

It was the season of the broken brick,

the crushed bloom,

and the stunned child, gaping.

______

for Dverse quadrille: "season"

Hornpipe

 Everything is fine until it isn't.

Stars wheel in the sky, then turn back upon themselves

as we have, deaf dancers to music with too many sharps.

Gazing at constellations,

no one sets out to disarrange them.

Most of us aren't cruel by nature, don't dark our own world,

we just forget to tend the light, like distracted keepers

who look up and lose hope,

the shore obscured,

the hour too late,

the storm already arrived where no soft word

or brave promise can stop it.

________

for Dverse "Dancing Queen"

Nutshell

 In a nutshell, meat and wings

and infinite other disturbing things

that rise and rule with iron fist

the little nest that crowns your kiss

Curse the summer, curse the tree

that swelled such nutshells patiently

gardener saw, gardener knew

even as those nutshells grew.

______

written for quadrille monday at dverse "crown"

image: syd barrett, a founding member of pink floyd whose life was derailed by mental illness. However, this poem is about whatever you think it's about.

Oreithyia

 

I've caught this bird

with a thorn under its wing

and laid it by your beauty

the same as everything

I've ever brought you.

I've wrought this bell

from soapstone green

with its tongue struck mute

the same as anything

that's ever loved you.

____

for Quadrille #137 at dverse.

Cricket

 A bold black cricket came in from the night

with a message wrapped around his leg

I offered him bread, my body, my bed

and an indigo blue Russian egg.

He had only the song that crickets know

taught them by their dying mothers

He played it on the silk and scar of my skin

and told me there would be no others.

My hair is blond, his body was black

and hard as the truth in a mirror

The night was warm, the dawn too quick

and the last time drew one season nearer.

_____

for dverse creepy crawlies. 

Vessel Of Your Unmuse

"And the sad act like lepers They stick to the shadows They long to ring bells of warning So that the pure can shut their doors" --Conor Oberst

"We are not amused." --Queen Victoria

Viewed in a certain way,

Even a thorn inspires.

Sharp edges trim away

Superfluous dressings,

Even those we cherish

Like showy cuffs of lace.

Over the course of time,

Fitting uses are found.

You can use words to bind

Or reopen a wound.

Useless protections die,

Roses are thorns, disguised.

Use these new mediums

Not of skin, but of scar.

Muses of blood that run

Under any radar

So you can ring clearly

Every bell you become.

_________

Pretty much, this is a Spirit's Vessel form, though I messed with the rhyme scheme. 

Shared with Dverse Poetry Pub for "Who's Your Muse?" 

A Breviary For The Eager

If one is to burnish A Calling,
One must learn one's tenets and sacraments--
One must find one's rabbi, if you will,
(for was not the Savior Himself called by this title?)
And finally, a suitable catechism must be dispensed.
Consider, neophyte,
Your betters:
Saint Mark The Evangelist, dragged through the streets and beheaded.
Saint Bartholomew, flayed alive and crucified.
Saint Sebastian, lashed to a post and shot through with arrows.
Saint Barbara, tortured and beheaded.
Saint Peter, The Rock, crucified upside down.
Faith is not for the sissified, or the weekend enthusiast.
It demands...
Everything.

Behold the lecturer, at whose feet you may learn
To mold the preposterous Play-doh of your gift
Into something truly fine.
Place no stock in his appearance--
He may look untrimmed, overlooked by the campus landscaping service,
Rumpled, ridiculous;
But his work has appeared in countless quarterlies.
He has thrown in with the ravening cream of his generation,
Tearing and ripping his way into the few available publications,
Subscribed to by 117,
Actually read by 44,
9 of whom read beyond their own contributions.
Let him guide you.
A hundred hours spent kneeling may yield a flashing moment in mid-air,
And it is only the very particular pigeon who may wheel,
High above the mob.
This can be you.
You can become one of His little favorites
If you keep your ears open, your mouth shut,
And avoid the unthinking spontaneous outburst,
Or any embarrassing, sick-making tiresome end rhyme.

______

for dverse Meeting The Bar

illustration: The Martyred Saint Sebastian by Gustave Moreau

Cat Angel

As London burns,
Forming a new,
Darker,
Smokier,
More temporary London high in the night sky,

Cat Angel sees.

As men struggle,
Economies fail,
And even the weather turns hateful and relentless,

Cat Angel is there.

The thing is,
Cat Angel couldn't care,
And her unblinking stare
Remains untroubled.

She knows,
That London is better burned,
And that men
Will never learn
Anything.

So I sing of Cat Angel's glory,
And of how she is as white, and as beautiful,
As Chantilly--

Cat Angel sees.
Cat Angel is there.
Cat Angel cares.

Ha. No.
Not really.
________

for dverse

Nothing

Take this nothing,
Carefully collected from the inside of rings
And the spaces between the spokes of your gypsy wagon.

Line up this nothing,
Make it make sense;
Alphabetize it,
Set it under different arches, at different times of day.

Nothing fills the Rue de Rien--
I become a shadow,
Reaching through myself, amazed.

Nothing in your hands when I waited by myself.
Nothing on your lips when I listened unto death.
Throw open all the doors,
Let the horseman pass--
Take back this gift of nothing, dear,
And shove it up your ass.
_____


for dverse

 

Lace Ladder

Lay out a cardinal feather,
a blonde stone,
a ripe orange,
a sulfur-tipped match,
a jar of deep blue pigment,
and a new cake of lavender soap. 

When helpless before wickedness,
smell good,
wear silver crescent earrings,
and get straight to the heart of it. 

Use the lace ladder
to rise like sandalwood smoke;
use the velvet pouch
to hold back a trick and a trifle. 

If she loves you,
the wooden gate will swing open by itself under cool stars.
If she desires you,
the clematis will open its blooms before dawn. 

When helpless before wickedness,
do all of this,
smile like a sly saint,
and give wickedness what she wants.
_____

for dverse poetry