Lazy Fireblossom !

 

No Word Garden Word List this week, but it will be back next week! No good reason, I'm just feeling pleasantly lazy this week. :-)

The Willow & The Swans

 

I talk

about swans

in the obscuring haze of dawn.

My fear overhangs like a willow

thin-leafed,

stock-still

and trembling.

White swan,

black swan,

I mock you from a distance,

light myself afire to scare you

but I

betray myself

in brilliance.

I  bring

you bread,

my poems, my hair, my jewelry

despite myself, I reach for you

and feel

you flying

through me.

A trinet poem for Sunday Muse #186 "illusion"

Intention

 

Back then, I hung lanterns on my heart,

kept my own counsel

and spoke Romany in front of the marks.

I appeared 18 or 80

depending on the phase of the moon, 

or the shape  of my dreams.

I kept The Fool and The Tower up my black lace sleeve

and slept with other girls

thinking to cure my fever and my thirst.

Now a young man comes,

his mute-bird girlfriend behind a pace

with her patience and frybread face. 

I long ago burnt my heart down to nothing,

fueled with equal measures bravery and turpentine.

So, why does he make a visible ghost of me?

Do I wail for wanting to touch him,

or because my unringed fingers die behind my folded arms,

cursed by years?

Once, I hung lanterns on my heart,

and spun spells that only worked when I didn't care.

I mixed brown sugar with oleander

and wrapped my sorrow in a million words.

Young man, these are not crows, they are flying ash.

I want you and cannot say it,

but you came here with intention of unraveling old spells

and have done that

fiercely well.

__________

for The Sunday Muse #126, where I am hosting.

image at top by Brooke Shaden.

Croc Girl

Croc girl meets Florence of Arabia down at the Lavender Laboratory,
where a girl can get
pretentious coffee made from beans picked high in the hills
by female fingers only--guaranteed.

Later, in bed, Croc Girl can't shut up,
she's got a big mouth.
"Bla bla bla bla bla," she says, eternally,
"Bla bla bla," until the moment is lost and Florence of Arabia gets out of bed
and starts waving her scimitar around.
"Bla bla," continues Croc Girl, hating herself, but helpless.  

The next morning, alone at the Lavender Laboratory,
sipping some idiotic kind of tea and writing long, dreadfully sincere poetry,
Croc Girl feels shitty and realizes her blood sugar is low.
Ever seen a croc girl eat?
Whole boxes of Debbie Cakes down the hatch at once.
Croc Girl sits there, stomach rumbling, hating herself, but helpless.

O for the water.
O for careless thirsty creatures whose names she doesn't know.
O for croc moms who don't hover, bitching about everything.
O for peanuts and Cracker Jack, blue skies and sun all afternoon. 

Croc Girl goes down the block to the chain drug store,
spending forever in the lotion section, mooning over Olay,
Jergens, St. Ives and Burt's Bees until the tears come.
"Hold me, I need love," she says, all the time.
"GTFO," says everybody.
In a low blood sugar rage, Croc Girl sweeps all the stupid lotions onto the floor--
you don't need boardinghouse reach for that.

The next day, down at the Lavender Laboratory,
perched in a chair high enough for Seven Foot Billy, the old carnie freak,
Croc Girl sits reading a lesfic novel.
It's about Raven, or Madison, or Dakota, or some other heroine
named after a creature or a place,
who had a nasty break-up, moved back to Podunk, 
reconnected with Sally Silo,
and did it 'til LBD set in, but that's not included in the edition she's got.
"Bla bla bla bla," says Croc Girl under her breath, mocking the author's style.

Somewhere, there is mud enough for a thousand mud masks.
Somewhere, a girl can float with just her eyes above the water line.
Somewhere, a girl can wear a sleeveless dress
without some bitch saying maybe she shouldn't, with a pointed glance.
Somewhere, a girl can have a big bad-ass tail, 
long and wide enough to knock over the garbage bins.
"Say something about it," she challenges,
then realizes she has spoken out loud, 
making anorexic truants from the local high school turn and curl their lips.

Something slips inside Croc Girl, like The Golden Key Card,
and she blinks her eye in the weird way that only crocs can.
The truants all falter,
go back to their chai tea,
made only with milk from happy Tibetan goats, guaranteed.
Croc Girl slips down off her chair in one easy motion,
grins her shit-eating open-mouthed grin,
and says, "BLA BLA BLA!" 
They think she's crazy, but
it sounds like pure poetry to her.
______

Note: LBD = "Lesbian bed death"

Alterations In Religious Discipline In The Hour Of The Bomb

zen master sits lotus

for hours; padawan learners

fidget, wish him dead

Gathering nightshade while I may, for the Weekend Challenge at Real Toads

Entre Nous, George....

George Tooker self portrait

Oh, don't look so stunned,
as if God had unfriended you.
Just keep tying your sweater arms around your shoulders like that,
and the right man will come through.

Now let's talk about your barber.
Either grow it out or shave, but not this.
You're more Paris than Parris Island, and that fivehead, oh my.
So wrong. So remiss.

Get that shell. It's for you!
It's Clara Bow calling, she wants her lips back.
Here's a drapery, wrap it around that tree trunk as an ascot.
You're welcome. 
My lips are sealed;
I'm the very soul of tact.
_______ 

For mag 289.

 

Lizzie Borden

He cut himself shaving.
Yes, on the couch. He was cheap,
and bought those disposable things 
that are just a golden invitation to bloody accidents.

On the couch because he was too cheap to run any water.
Goodbye, horsehair sofa!
Now I can pitch that hideous thing.

No, you're right, that doesn't explain Mama.
Meteor shower, if you ask me, and you did. 
Through the open windows, of course.

Fall River, home of the snoopy neighbor
and the bigmouth gossip!
How am I supposed to live here, after this? I'm a victim.

Go on his computer, he had loads of enemies on Instagram.
They could have just blocked him!
No, it wasn't a murder, it was razors. You're confusing me.
Who does a girl have to kiss to get a Diet Coke around here?

That axe was already broken.
Bridget tried to chop down the equestrian statue in the town square with it.
Maybe she doesn't like horses, how should I know?
Hire bog Irish and that's what you get.

Look, do we have to do this right now?
I have a date for duckpins tonight.
(Mimicking the interviewer) "This is very important, Miss.
Seems like you'd want to clear this up, Miss."
I bet you don't get invited to many parties.

*sigh*
All he ever said was, "No, Lizzie. I forbid it, Lizzie."
Put a nickel in her and it was always "Listen to your father, Lizzie."
Now the cat's got his tongue,
wherever it is.

I have rights, you know.
I want a lawyer, one of those ones on tv 
that stands there and goes, "My client is innocent of these ludicrous charges,"
"This is a gross miscarriage of justice!"
and like that.

Maybe he stepped on a land mine.
Yes, in the middle of the parlor. 
There could be a rhinoceros standing there,
and Bridget would be all "Wut rin-aw-srus? You mean that wee horned thing?"
So, yes, a land mine. As if she'd take it out to the bins without being told.

I'm done here.
This isn't exactly CSI Fall River.
Your own people keep tromping through like a herd of retarded elephants,
every one of them a size twelve or better.
Anything that was here is gone.
Yes, including the razor.

See ya in the funny papers, Sherlock.
Oh don't look so down in the dumps.
I'll put a kick-starter thingie on my Facebook page 
to buy you a new magnifying glass.
Your eye will look THIS BIG when you look through it,
and then you'll see I didn't do it and you'll be all "So sorry, Miss," and I'll be like, whatever.
_______

 

How A Girl Gets To Your Door

I find my way by landmark--
compass points a confusion;
my map margin-ed with love poems.

The train station wasn't landmark friendly--
Signs, riveted in place by men in boots on cherry pickers,
knew me for a foreigner.

In my northern accent, I asked a woman--
By the University? Black coffee eyes? Soft lips?
Castlerock.
__________

for flash fiction 55 with hedgewitch, at Real Toads this weekend.

 

Froshus

Dear ferocious man-eating tigah,
ooooh, hims so GRUMPY today!
Whassamatta?
Did that last villager not agree with hims's tummy?

Ow! Hey!
Enough with the caveman drag-her-by-the-hair routine!
I just had it looking the way I like it.
*sigh*
You a big, striped, pain in the butt sometimes!

My girlfrens say, honey, that cat gonna swallow you whole.
I say, pffft, hims a pussycat.
See, what if I dangle my charm bracelet in fronta your face?
Eyes left, eyes right, eyes left...
You got such purty golden eyes, pooky.

See this charm?
It's a cat. It's cuzza YOU!
I knew we could handle all this like adults.
After all, you're nearly three.

Tigah in the mangrove swamp.
Tigah want his lunch!
Tigah swipe my Cobb salad.
Tigah, thanks a bunch!

Now, lookee.
If you eat me, Mr. ferocious man-eating tigah,
then I won't be here no more to tell you
ohhhhhh, hims so pretty,
hims so strongggggg!
And blah-dee-blah, don't pretend that you don't lap it up.

Okie dokes, now quit messin' around and kiss me
with that big rough pink tongue.
Exfoliate me, baby!
Put those dinner-plate paws to a good use.
Uh huh!
I think you got a bad rap, dude!
You're no man-eater.
Hehe.
_____

a bit of ridiculous silliness for Helen at Real Toads.