Giselle

 

In Paris, at that time

we knew of Giselle, the world's most

talented and also hideous torch singer.

Muddy complected,

with white eyes like egg shells,

and skin chock-a-block with blue veins,

the woman was hard on the vision, sweet to the ears.

Have you ever heard

a buzzard that could break your heart?

Giselle could wring your soul with Gloomy Sunday,

make you miss someone

you never met with Lover Man

(Oh Where Can You Be?) She was serious!

Willow Weep For Me used to make 'em bawl like babies.

So one night this strange cat

showed up and started bringing her

trifles -- sugar candies, baubles, pretty shells and whatnot.

Oh, she sang, Just in time,

you found me just in time and she smiled

like a split shoe and ran her broken branch fingers through his hair.

We wondered, is he crazy? Blind? What?

Well, he weren't blind.

Cat could read a menu from five miles off

and he was no bug either, he was some kind of poet.

What we found out, after a long time,

was that this cat was stone deaf from bombs in the war.

He just loved Giselle like a bird loves the sky at dawn when it's

Beginning To See The Light. 

_________

for Word Garden Word List--My Dear I Wanted To Tell You. 

Music: Della Reese I'm Beginning To See the Light

Iris Indigo

 

Iris Indigo used to sing on shore and shipboard

with the voice given her by some broken, incandescent god

now and in the hour of her death, amen. 

Loved by the moneyed and shanghaied, 

tuxedoed and tommyrotters,

Iris Indigo

indiglorious

into everything,

indi gone. 

_______

for dverse quadrille monday "indigo"

Music: Melody Gardot La Llorona

My Lost Friend

 

My lost friend

is dreaming now of moon-silvered streets

and the lawns in tones of blue and green

like peacocks in repose

Is your lover, my lost friend

one of those?

My lost friend

has disguised herself in the ivy vines

twining around the garden stones

where the gray cats sleep

Is your lover, my lost friend

one of these?

My lost friend

wraps her heart in fox fur red and black

and waits in the dawn for the light to come back

across the lawns in morning mist

Is your lover, my lost friend

coming back to you like this?

Chronics

 

In the rehab place where wasted hearts

sleep too much like buried creatures

the nurse dispenses dreams from a cart

and the worst of us become the teachers

If you're feeling sentimental

aversion therapy works the best

and for something supplemental

try stuffing newspaper in your chest

We the burned, we the bruised

nod in our not-quite present way

shock-shelved inventory seldom used

but trotted out on holidays

A waitress serves the plates--we break them

to wake ourselves like catatonics;

we choose a new mistake at random

we the dazed romantic chronics.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Warren Zevon

Music: Damien Jurado Kansas City

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 

How To Do The End Of The World Cha Cha

 

Convinced of the End Times, Neighbor Jim

MacGyvers up a companion from old soup cans,

paint brushes, stereo wire and car parts,

A sort of Bride of Frankenstein to ease Armageddon 

with chicken pot pies and a surprisingly

avid libido.

One day she comes across the common alley

for a woman-to-woman, making certain things clear about

Neighbor Jim, my skank ass, and Fist City.

Watching her walk away, dragging her dinosaur tail on the lawn,

I envy her those spinal plates, round-so-round

vulcanized boobs, and blowy porn-model Medusa hair.

I'm saying she's dishy, in a home appliance kind of way.

There is a tender grace to the way she lights the candles with her tongue

as she and Neighbor Jim while away the evenings

Watching This Old House on the generator-powered tv,

waiting on the six trumpets of Revelation as if they were the Tijuana Brass 

doing a hotel gig on the last day of a bang-up Cancun vaykay.

________

for Word Garden Word List #12 (Richard Brautigan)

Emmeline, In November

 

Emmeline, darkling darling of November

wears russet and red and the rain at dawn.

Her summer-gone ways turn miser to spender,

Emmeline, darkling darling of November.

Her cucks in the churchyard rotting, remember

the rose and her wrist that dropped it down.

Emmeline, darkling darling of November

wears russet and red and the rain at dawn.

__________

this is a triolet poem. 

the image is French language singer Mylene Farmer.

I have written about Emmeline before.

"Emmeline By Evening"

and "Emmeline By Wolf Light"

The Welder (dedicated to Carl von Cosel)

The welder with the sickly wife

replaced her failing parts with metal

so as to preserve her precious life

albeit with skin more plating than petal.

She was calm and sweet and very grateful

and in him placed her faith and trust

to restore her as best as he was able

even after she began to--sadly--rust.

A stove pipe neck, a ball bearing eye

forestalled the Reaper's pitiless visit

even as neighborhood kids would cry,

"Holy honking shit, what IS it?"

Her lips of bronze, her lids of tin

and her gams of ducts meant for the furnace

made his bride a gadget so lovely to him:

"Ain't no other contraption as fine as her is!"

______________

The most famous work by the celebrated American poet Aldous W. Bates. The poem first appeared in Popular Metallurgy in the June issue for the year 1913. Bates was, in fact, married to what we would now refer to as non-bio companion named Alice Menzies, who had previously been part of a steam engine. They had one child, a boy, who the couple named Boot. The child showed early promise as a can opener before succumbing to an over-fondness for WD-40 and dying in obscurity in 1957. A full account of the life and work of Aldous W. Bates is available in book form under the title "Hard and Steamy: A Love Story" 353 pages, Slagheap Press 1931. The volume is renowned for both its fearless eroticism and the inclusion of a formula for what was, at the time, a newly discovered alloy. 

Source: The Sunday Muse #111.

A Peculiar Blindness

"If I were blind, would you be my eyes?" --Todd Rundgren "Pretending To Care"

It's a peculiar blindness
so many of us have. 

There you are, little bug, looking for a place to land
never giving much thought to how you came so far.

That's why a breeze brought you me.
You think you are small, unremarkable,

but I can see your big glorious wings
spread out like an exclamation

right behind you,
in fabulous display,
plain as day.
______

for Wednesday Muse "butterflies."

Library Science

"Goddess, make this mirror your river...
show me what you would have me see." 
Another woman walks in
as I stand at the sink taking in
my own face and flaws and shaking in my boots.

Silly girl.
Silly woman.
Go out that door and up to the reference desk.
All this time,
all the books checked out,
and I still haven't talked to her--not really--yet.

I wonder what's in her mind?
Austen? Ferlinghetti or Faust?
I wonder what's in her bag?
Lipstick? A leather cord with an ankh?

Goddess, make my lips your instrument,
let me say what you would have me say.
I want to kiss her. I want to hear her whisper "yes..."
I want her not to think me a fool. 
Goddess hear me, Goddess bless.

She's with someone...at her desk. In her life?
Is my boho baby someone's girl? Someone's wife?
Gee I love her hair, her smart-girl glasses, 
her long fingers, her long skirt.
I think we could be really beautiful
or I could just look stupid and get hurt.

(Anyway, here goes nothing.)

Goddess, make my lips your instrument,
let me say what you would have me say.
I want to kiss her. I want to hear her whisper "yes..."
I want her to see me, and understand.
Goddess hear me, Goddess bless.

Now's the moment. Smile! 
Say something! "I...."
She tilts her head, I think she knows...
And then, so softly, "Yes?" 
________

For my last Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads. "Love."

I love this song. Good grief, scratch a cynic find a romantic, I guess.

 

Emily, 1919

Hello, brother Statue.
You are glorious, your war never over,
yet even the lawn rises in spite of your noble pose.

The trenches here are manned with daffodils.
I have felt them, gobbed with afternoon sun, 
drunk as sailors on the stuff. 

Did you know I was in love once? For five days.
There was an administrator, and the way she spoke, 
with those hard R's and soft K's,

I longed for her interview
and to offer my responses, as I do for the daffs, 
but inside, and without words.

By the end of the week she was gone, like your comrades I suppose.
Now you have new ones--
with avid wings and so they must be angels.
Go to the light, brother Statue. 
I've heard that said.

Dr. Bigelow will unwrap me tomorrow
and....then? Why, then I will be twenty-two again,
and gather my cook books and crochet from their grave-boxes.
If I find your comrades, I will kiss them for you.

Then, I might even hire a car.
My hair wild from the wind, I'll just show up, 
like one of your homing pigeons with a message.

Brother Statue, if you hear an opening door, a hard R and a soft K,
be gentleman enough, old friend, 
to turn--discreetly--away.  
________


For Izy's Out Of Standard: "Waiting for...."

 

Rain

The sky couldn't hold it together anymore.
You think it's just always there, 
full of stars and big honking planets,
light, every kind of bird,
the freaking sun for goodness sake.

That's woman's work, babe. 

But I knew. She'd been gray for days.
Unwind, girl.
Close your eyes, shake out your hair.
Let go.

Rain.
____

 A 55 for my BFF at Verse Escape.

It's raining here today. Zacky Peanut and I are fine with it!

 

Tell Me No

Tell me no and all I hear is the 
ocean roll and sway in my ear
tell me no
but I'm deaf to reason.

Tell me go and I'll go until the lights
fade low and the moon shines mad
tell me go
but I'm blind to reason.

The stair is dark as a plum is cool
the rail is smooth as your naked skin
tell me no
but with a tongue you know I'll understand.
_______

finding some Bits of Inspiration on the stairway (to Heaven.)

M'duza

M'duza has just finished doing my hair.
The chair spins slowly around as if I were the world and M'duza the sun,
albeit a sun that charges money for her not-inconsiderable skills.
"Have a blunt, "she says,
"And an apple."

"I don't smoke," I tell her for the millionth time.
"The apple, then."
Her voice is lazy as she leans against her station.
Blunt in her right hand,
arrows in her left.

She comes from a floral source, does M'duza.
Pistils and stamens and honey bees.
She makes fig jam, 
and stores her picks in a yellow box.
Her lineage is traceable to women whose feet stood in white ocean foam.

"I didn't bring any money," I tell her, lying.
"Money is the tool of the enslavers," she parrots,
"A chain around the neck of the people."
Then she takes a long drag and holds it.
I ask, "M'duza, why did the proletariat cross the road?"
She raises an eyebrow, lips sealed shut.
"To make that goddamned chicken join the fucking collective."
She laughs hard in spite of herself, blowing smoke like a New Year's dragon.

M'duza sprang from the halls of macadamia,
and is my favorite nut;
her shop smells of acacia and sage as much as peroxide and hair spray.
Me, I leapt fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus,
my father's daughter all the way.
"So, what now?" I ask her.
It's Monday, she doesn't have any other clients.

"Now we set out to find the wild nest," she says,
stretching her arms over her head in her typical elaborate gesture.
"We carry caramel babies in our honey-stomachs,
and start a colony of sweet clear-minded revolutionaries.
They will stick it to the man,
and always remember their mothers on holidays."

I parrot, "Holidays are a construct of the ruling class,
meant to distract the workers from their misery."
"Oh, fuck you!" says M'duza,ratcheting the chair up as high as it will go.
"Uh-huh," she says, nodding at my predicament.
And so, as always when I'm with M'duza, I leap. I am in mid-air,
without a thought in my head, true as a launched arrow.
________

from this word list.

What I'm Made Of

Sugar and spice
and all things nice;
red strawberries and
shards of ice.

North wind, south wind,
night bird's call;
prayer and peaches and
folderol.

Some from the heart and
some for show;
wouldn't you, honey,
just love to know.
______

for "I Am Made Of..." at Toads.

Woman In A Coffee Bar

I don't look like much, but when I open my mouth, 
they send the bomb squad and a priest.

Standing there at the counter, that dress makes me both jealous and repentant
of the things I want to declare at the border of your beauty.
Does the world seem blurry,
silent-movie sped,
to you, too?
Or are you as contained as a coconut,
as cool,
as necessary and as removed

from earthbound spirits?
You'd like me, if only you'd release your carnality into my custody.
I'm nervous, but that's all the time.
I'm the girl with a locust under each eyelid;
all I have to do is look,
and everything reduces to simple appetite.

Don't condemn me, I'll pay whatever back tax you demand.
Just come over here. Soon. Admire me, too.
Tell me I'm the ladybug you've been looking for
despite the fire department,
child protective services,
and, especially, the aftermath predicted for my bedding
by the tarot card I keep in my bag to notify
handsome firefighters and lady doctors of my special conditions.

Someone sent me their heart by telegram once.
It was too slow, and they had
to use dynamite and a blowtorch to get into the crypt I was renting at the time.
I came back to life anyway, though,
just now,
when I saw you standing at the counter.

I said to myself, there's the drug I've been kept off of--
the stuff cats and deep water divers know about,
made from equal parts next year's pandemic,
mother's milk and
the smell of pussy on the pillow, one's fingers (nails trimmed short) and
a book of favorite Catholic hymns
that we'll use to prop the door

so the breeze can come in, as you should as soon as you possibly can.
_______ 

From the following word list. I did not use all of them.

carrot

soon

seducer

deepwater

condemn

blowtorch

locust

urban

coconut

fluctuation

flesh

blurry

aftermath

ladybug

decadence

crypt

 

Friend Jane

Look, friend Jane, for a wishing star
stuck in the sky like a dime in tar;
Tell that star what you won't tell mother,
tell what we tell, only to each other.

Wish star,
wish star,
Imhotep and Ishtar,
Nile crocodile keep this secret safe!

Oh, friend Jane, tell me what did you wish?
swear on a little finger, seal with a kiss;
meetcha by the rail fence, meetcha by the moon,
mother make the evil eye when she sees you.

Wish star,
wish star,
Imhotep and Ishtar,
Nile Crocodile keep this secret safe!

Now, friend Jane, I know what you said,
mother's at the bottom of the stairs stone dead;
moon on the pond water, stars in the sky,
mother's eyes are open but she's blind, Jane, blind. 

______

for the mini-challenge.

Emmylou, At Last

The camera had been drinking, not me!

I've heard those rumors. You know the ones. That I have some kind of fangirl obsession with the singer Emmylou Harris. I don't know who started them, but let me just say right here and now...the rumors are absolutely true!

I was in a record store in Royal Oak, Michigan, where I lived at the time (1975), and they had a wall of record albums displayed. Two of the LPs were by some chick called Emmylou Harris: "Pieces Of The Sky" and "Elite Hotel." The first had a sort of soft-focus image of an ethereal-looking pretty gal, and the second had an image of a gal wearing high boots and sitting on the steps of a hotel, looking like she had attitude to spare. Guess which one I left the store with? Once I heard "Sin City", "Wheels", and all the other great songs on it, I was hooked.

But my favorite of her early albums was the next one, "Luxury Liner." Those songs are like the soundtrack to my young life. I checked the songwriting credits on my two Emmylou albums, and saw that some guy called Rodney Crowell had written several of my favorites. Who's Rodney Crowell?

Time went by. A lot of time! My "Wrecking Ball" cd got a lot of play when I was getting divorced. The next one, "Red Dirt Girl", might be my favorite of them all. All that to say, Emmylou's music has been a constant in my life since I was twenty. "Tulsa Queen" can still make me cry. "Amarillo" still makes me crank up the volume. "Big Black Dog" makes me smile.

A couple of years ago, my dear friend Sherry Marr sent me "Pieces Of The Sky" on LP. I had never bought it, over all those years. I love it, and so, naturally, I went out and found about five more Emmylou albums on vinyl, to go with my cd's (and now mp3's). 

But now, a confession: I had never seen my idol perform live! Enter another friend, Lynn. When she found out that Emmylou and Rodney Crowell were going to be playing Royal Oak, she let me know, and said, "You've got to go!"  (A lot of people tell me I've got to go, but Lynn meant it nicely!) So I did. Last night!

When the band walked out on stage, people clapped and all, but when Emmylou came out, you could just feel the great affection her fans have for her. In all honesty, the band seemed a little off during the first couple of numbers, but then they hit their stride. They played "Pancho & Lefty", "Ooh Las Vegas" and "Boulder To Birmingham", which pretty much brought the house down. Then they played "Luxury Liner." I don't recall the guitarist's name, but man can he play! I do remember Rodney Crowell saying that the guitarist is Australian, and that he describes his homeland by saying "the stars are so bright you can hear them." 

Emmylou talked about how Rodney Crowell sent her a parcel of cassette demos. I loved hearing her talk about stuff. I'd love hearing her read the phone book, probably. Anyway, they played "The Traveling Kind", and a song I had never heard, which made me cry, called "When We Were Beautiful", which I'll include a video of at the end of this post. (It isn't from last night, but the band line-up is the same.)

Emmylou wore red shoes, tight faded jeans with the cuffs rolled up the way she does, a white top, and a loose brown jacket. She looked great. And of course, that hair.

They wound up with "Ain't Livin' Long Like This", a great song I associate with Waylon Jennings, but it's written by Rodney Crowell. They also played an old Ray Price number called "Invitation To The Blues" and a song off "Pieces of The Sky" called "Bluebird Wine" that really made people tap their feet.

So. It's true. Emmylou is awesome, amazing, perfect, etcetera etcetera! At the very end of the show, a handler brought her dog out on stage, and she talked a little about adopting shelter animals and spaying and neutering. Then they were gone, but...not quite! On the way out of town, we passed their tour bus parked at the curb, and who should come striding out the back door of the theater but Rodney Crowell! Bye, Rodney!

Here is that video:

To My Darling, To Make Short Work of Noobs

"Your love is really an experience." --Taj Mahal

My Love, never waste your singular self on
unworthy noobs
or stammering, unprepared buffoons.

Behold the noob.
Harken to my inquiry of the noob,
to explain in stanzas, equations, hymns, vulgarities and riddles
your sexy cool self.

"Uh...well, basically...."
The noob has no idea.

Placing the noob in an open field,
we introduce them to the updraft that is you,
the rotation and charge. 
The noob, covered in ice, returns to earth at speed.
The noob breaks a windshield, then spins away with someone's roof.

Placing the noob in the lion's den,
the noob becomes a yolk within a shell of teeth, tongue, jaws.
In this way, the noob studies your sharpness, your appetites,
your sudden strike and your tendency to toy with things.
Lucky noob, copying down the poetry of your rough tongue!

Placing the noob in a tossing sea,
overboard is the only place to be,
cataloging starfish,
hammerheads,
heat vents,
and written cautions to just go with it, not to rise too fast,
and a decompression chamber at the ready in case of the bends.

My Love, discard and forget the noobs.
You are the lioness riding a funnel cloud and carrying a beach umbrella.
With you is the cub, the dust devil, the sharky koi pond,
so that it all might continue into the next generation.
That is the only noob you need.
________

for Marian's music prompt at Real Toads. My title is a tongue-in-cheek play on Herrick's  "To The Virgins, To Make Much Of Time."