The Silent Bird

The bird does not sing, yet you suppose your melody

swings inside her throat just waiting to burst free.

The bird does not fly, but you suppose it loves your shoulder

as if it were her Ararat, some wonder that you showed her.

Perhaps she's ill and dying, hiding everything she can.

Perhaps she curls within herself like a feathered ampersand.

Perhaps she's silent just to vex you, cruel withholding thing.

Perhaps she sings when you're not there and makes the courtyard ring.

She may have sung before you knew her, then not sung again.

Perhaps she makes of poise and pride a royal diadem.

Does she not love, or does her heart go by another name?

And if she sings, is her voice true or just legerdemain?

_________________

for Dverse Meeting the Bar--positivity through negation 

Only Every Bloody Thing

 

Only every bloody thing

volunteered for offering

against their will, against the grain

against their soul and flesh and name.

Our Mother of the Not Enough

whose kiss is made of chaff and stuff

to starve the cow whose bell is broke

and tell the flame it's only smoke.

Only every bloody thing

whose throat was cut but still could sing

will curse your words and curse your hand

in every tongue and every land.

Our Mother of the Frozen Pond

the awful ice where darkness spawned

a lonely child who had one too

whose scorn is mixed with pity, too.

________

For those, like me, for whom Mother's Day is hard. We are sisters, we are fierce, and we are worthy.

Two roads diverged in a wood...

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Music: Sly & the Family Stone Stand

My Giraffe

My giraffe
s'got the down-nose look,
and those squinty rich-MILF eyes.
What a bitch.

Still, she got a sweet and useful tongue.

When you talk,
all the birds have heart attacks and tumble from the trees in shock. 
Fucking whales have more to say
than you. 

My giraffe
would cut you dead
in public, anytime.
________

for Friday 55 at my BFF's place.

 

Travel Story For Girls

One had a boyfriend,
but never found Howland Island.
The other was an odd duck
looking for mermaids after every rainstorm.

One was Catholic,
the other Lutheran.
Both believed in female clergy
wearing Roman collars, and red hair long.

One lived at home,
the other in a flat where the gulls glide.
When they kissed the first time,
whole flocks moved in circles, like stars.

One liked Anna Ternheim,
the other, Eva Dahlgren.
When they made love the first time,
it was like piloting through easy clouds.

That May it rained every day for a week.
Water landings are dicey things;
Selkies find their buried skins and go back home,
forgetting they were ever human at all.

One moved away,
but the other stayed and wrote swells of storm-blue poems
about transformed women 
wearing Roman collars, and their red hair long.
_______

for Magpie Tales #238, and for Bjorn Rudberg's mini-challenge at Real Toads.

I've featured the this song once before on my blog, but it is so hard to find, and so cool, that I'm featuring it again. Plus, it fits the poem perfectly. Anna Ternheim is a Swedish singer who performs in English. 

History and the Future Made Easy

Not dressed like that, said mama to teenage Joan
but it's just whistling in the wind when a girl gets that traveling jones.
She carried a cross and a blade--
that runaway, that country simple Jeanne, the Maid.

Some people ya just can't please no matter what you do--
they'll sell you out for money, and to the fucking English, too.
There's only so much a girl can take,
and that's why she said, as they tied her to the stake--

Choose me or lose me.
This half hearted half way stuff doesn't move me.
I'm the coolest bad ass girl you were ever lucky enough to meet,
so choose me or lose me--
don't try to sell me bones and call it meat.

Ms. E wore a wide-brimmed garden hat and not much else,
living off the fat of the land and smiling quietly to herself.
She say, Adam you must be the biggest fool in the room--
I didn't come from a rib, but you came from a womb.

Wind come up, sky turned dark--
snake up in the tree was double looped and double parked.
You can't handle the truth, said Ms. E as she caught a cab,
and added something about a fool not knowing what they have.

Choose me or lose me.
This half hearted half way stuff doesn't move me.
I'm the coolest bad ass girl you were ever lucky enough to meet,
so choose me or lose me--
don't try to sell me bones and call it meat.
________

for Corey's challenge at Real Toads

Walk

I wanted to walk with you, but
I can walk alone.
You ever walk alone?
Nah, dint think so.

For a long time, every time I looked at you,
I saw
water for the thirsty,
and I was always parched.

Dint matter
if you got skinny, got fat.
Dint matter
what you said, it made my ears cock like I was back in the pack.

Guess you didn't want a woman who thought you were all that.
Guess you didn't want a woman who wanted you
like that.
Guess you didn't want a woman,
and I'm a woman--
one who would have told you all the redfire in her heart,
and never have taken it back.

I wanted to walk with you, but
I can walk alone.
You ever walk alone?
Didn't think so.
________

for Susie's Taking it To The Streets challenge at Real Toads. I hope this fits the bill.  

poem girl

packed deep in the roots of my teeth,
i keep everything i long to say, but don't.
i am as pleasant and sweet as a drink of anti-freeze--
kiss me, i hold thirty-two volcanoes. 

it turned cold, but you had your scarf,
your soft gloves,
your navy pea coat;
what did you need me for?
nothing.

longing cracks my bones open
as if they had been dropped from height by birds.
impossibility is a handy rock--
bombs away, 
the fall,
the split,
the blood-heart in the white shell.
i am a love letter written in angel spit,
misdelivered into hell.

i thought of you last night
and moaned.
there is no other mercy like your hair, your voice, your body;
i am krakatoa
i am a siberian fireball--
my ribs lay flattened for miles,
they heard my stupid whimpering on the streets of paris,
and the skies over new york stayed dusky and dark at noon.

i'm just a girl,
in love with you.
you have a husband you keep close like a voodoo doll--
you hang your heart on him like a blue star.
here is my smile,
empty and harmless.
here are my words, crimson-black on the page,
and when they hit the sea, the sea boils
and every beautiful creature
every mermaid
every siren
every humble shell
is turned to ashes with the expression of my useless flow of sorrow.
_______

image from weheartit.com

Feng Shui For Single Girls

The window is all there is--
the room could be on fire behind me,
all unknown.

I have books, thick as starlings at sunset--
some have tiny bones made from love poems;
that is what I've been told.

I'm so beautiful, and so stupid.
I give coins to babies, formulae to retardates.
I stay by my window like a moondog,
offering the airy currents my kiss.

I wait for you by the window,
pretty and useless, a song in a language no one can sing.
I am sister to the vase, the ring removed, and the window I love,
because we are all open, and empty, like this.
_______

A Remedy For Robbery

Remember the guest
Who stole the room
You gave her to stay and be sheltered in?

Beware the door
That opens to nothing--
A void where no guest can stay, again.

At the station, the stealer
Is stopped by her burden--
A room on a chain on the platform, stopped;

The thief is charming,
Policemen pet her,
Debating whether to hold her or not.

She steals the station,
The train and the tracks,
The schedules and benches, the smoke from the stacks.

Shutter the house,
Leave the lack,
Take only your heart and never look back.
_______