Two Sharks

 

I have two sharks inside me

swimming in tandem and holding my heart

between them like a little family 

walking in the dark.

I send them gulps of air from outside

as if I were some sort of oxygenated charity

with a face and feet, operating in the world

on their behalf like a proxy or prosthetic.

Oh fishies, confined and angry in the bowl of my ribs,

here come those old blues again.

Why does life go on so long, demand so much,

slowly dribbling out the cracked glass of years?

I have had ideas all along, fine ideas

to open a ministry in a dumpster,

a ballroom in an attic, a cemetery 

on a space station with the whole Earth for Ouija board.

I'm scared, fishies. Will the moon call you

and will you answer her tidal madrigal?

Will she require three voices, you and my heart?

Will you rise in glory, leaving me hollow, in salt and sorrow?

_________________

for Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

Oasis

 

Well ducks, it was the place to gather in those days.

There were ceiling fans that made one think 

that Baron Von Richtofen might fly in at any moment. 

I wondered whether a man wearing coveralls had to climb

 up on a ladder each morning

to heave the blades into motion.

They served a concoction of fruit, gin, crushed ice,

the low notes from Hernando's Hideaway, and who knew

what else. It tasted like children's party punch

but made our high perches start to  pitch

on the rough seas beneath our jelly legs.

Down some white stone stairs, there was a blue pond

someone had stocked with mallards, as green and gold

as my jewelry. They were free to fly

but could never leave--the desert

would have turned them to cardboard.

We slept with scorpion nets. One night I dreamt

that a handsome man in a uniform of water lay with me,

told me my hair was good rope from India, and

that I had been a snake charmer

in a previous life. He kissed me and it stung.

Ah, love, there you are looking at me through your new

telescope, your young face behind the lens like an egg.

I gave up gin, and traveling, and most other things long ago.

Now I'm talking to you with my bird beak,

free to choose but forbidden to leave

except via packing box, to be sent by air mail over the dunes

to the oasis bar, c/o my younger self, cash on delivery, payable

in florins, code phrase "wing walker." The Baron will be there waiting.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Across the River and into the Trees

Music: Hernando's Hideaway

The Way It Looks

Oh your friends call you Lily Faloma

but that's not the way that you are

It's too much of a gentle misnomer

for a shooting star

                                                 --Al Stewart

It's not the way it looks

the moon in the sky

your face in the mirror

the thing that was done or not done. 

It's not the way it looks

the moon, lonesome rock out in space

ask the fascinated tide

about the gravity of lit soul

It's not the way it looks

your face in the mirror so lined

ask the devils, those angels that free you

from a birdcage of bones 

The mirror limits vison

the moon limits sense

and everything you are or are not

will, in time, incandesce. 

____________

This song has been on my mind for days now. The woman he's singing about reminds me of me.

Al Stewart Song On the Radio

 

La Vigne de Lierre Magique et Très Sage (The Magic and Very Wise Ivy Vine)

 

The queen who kissed the garden wall

was snookered by an ivy vine

who made her head a cannon ball.

You see, dear queen, this magic mine

(said the speaking ivy vine)

Has launched your bean, my airborne queen

to blow the Brits to smithereens!

______

First written down by the French monk Gustavius Petitgrand, this well-known rhyme royal depicts the Battle of Camembert Castle in 1599. Beheaded by an angry mob of lettuce cutters in the streets of Paris, Queen Amie de Chateaubriand's head had to be used when the French cannoneers ran out of ammunition. The Queen's head landed in the officer's tent where British commander Lord Bupkus Kewgarden-McWeatherstone, Second Earl of Weevilwiggen was dining. The head is said to have spoken to him, though the exact words have been reported differently by various sources. In any event, so terrified was His Lordship that he immediately surrendered his army as well as his collection of chessmen carved from candle wax. This battle and the resulting French victory was a key turning point in the Twenty Minutes War and insured that no French child would ever be named Basil again. Vive la tete! (Alouette!) Ahhh!

For Word Garden Word List--Classic Fairy Tales. 

top image: Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse

Music: Choral Saint-Jean Alouette

launch code

 

soul is constant

a bell whose rope is already pulled

ringing in my ears all day long.

my body is its dog

sticking close, loyal as hell,

but short-lived. 

stars are soul

that couldn't be contained

kissing the dark with intention.

one day my body

past all nursing past all curing

will open like an underground silo

and everything

will expand in an instant BOOM

wow, hi, i'm not

an ant, i'm

a piece o' god on fire across the sky--

icarus eat your heart out.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Music: Shay Torrent Flying Fiddles

English Walnut

 every day

the black squirrels raid Heaven.

I find leaf clusters

like fallen angels

everywhere.

they want

the hard nuts growing high

in the tree I tend

with loving care

these twenty odd years.

each time

they find their desire,

the Icarus clusters fall.

my tree expands, produces,

then incrementally loses 

all summer long.

I learn

from watching all this

a new behavior

a new ache.

will you bury me as well one day, squirrels

or float me old green feathers

in kind aerial gesture?

_____

for Sherry's prompt at desperatepoets. 

image of leaf cluster and walnut my own

Poets

 

--function best inside of ambulances,

whether driving or

receiving the EMT's fist on their heart as the sirens sing.

--must always be admitted only to hospitals with gardens,

preferably in some Spanish-speaking

hotbox of stucco-and-tile Catholic gin confusion.

--operate in a fog as reluctant circus cannon balls,

making door knockers of their own bones

and entering-and-breaking every secret heart in mid-air.

--arrive at the wedding of themselves to themselves

reciting vows from codebooks

once the property of some demolished poet-angel (body never recovered.)

--have no hero except the homunculus oracle

who keeps them awake all night

weaving flowers around their ears, lit and inextinguishable. 

--translate that thing you always felt but couldn't say,

wear codex clothing

and trespass the afterlife with a Gladstone bag and a talking bird,

in failing health, strong as vinegar, needed but not wanted in all 50 states.

_________

Georia O'keefe

for Word Garden Word List--The Legacy of Ladysmith

and shared with The Sunday Muse # 247.

image at top: BLOOMS by Anna Shuleit.

image at bottom: Charlotte Gainsbourg

Music: Paulo Nutini Iron Sky (utterly amazing)

A Man

 

A man of some note,

wearing the planets on a chain

said,

'I can't swing a cat without hitting

a faggot or a 

whore

or a

sinner of some variety."

The birds inside my throat stayed silent

but I could feel

their wings

flutter.

I turned my shoulders to July noon

as a favor

to such small, light riders. 

A man of great learning,

with entire

alphabets lined up on the 

tip of his tongue,

kept them all like pets

and taught

each one

to balance prettily on a circus ball

while he went at them hammer and tongs

to no purpose.

Three times that season,

my eyes

became eggs

and fell to my 

throat/

nest.

Finally, flocks flew filigree patterns

all around 

my head

and a man said, "Harlot! Sapphist!"

and a man said, "Anarchist! Libertine!"

but I was an 

aviary/

melody

beyond such puny mewlings.

Concubine of the Quarter Moon

 

I did not hire the day laborer inside whose bones I ride. 

Here is motion, here is time, here is the spinning world.

Here is the trowel, mortar, and metronome hand industrious.

Here is the moon, the hidden language, the valuable burl. 

Here is my compulsion to sing, and my throat empty as a new vase. 

Here is the afflicted tree holding one jewel and a thousand birds.

Merged, the swordsman and the healer, missionary from God.

Ice and ivy grown on my tongue break the bricks with words.

I am a scorched bird born of lightning, hatched from geode silence.

I am more beautiful than any river. I am cloaked in thorns and tar.

One day, laborer and wall will dissolve intestate

and I will rise, concubine of the quarter moon, magna voce avatar.

_______

Linguist

 It's like a telephone call from the gut,

a mirror garlanded with white dahlias where the moon lives

behind the glass, shifting,

swinging a railroad lantern,

calling you by an unsuspected name.

Now you are a brick and must throw yourself.

Now you are a throat and must sing yourself

until you fall to the flagstones empty, an overturned ewer.

Desert the war, go home to your bed with its hand-sewn quilt.

There is a woman there

or a man

or no one--it doesn't matter. Go. 

Now you are a blooming vine, and the earth moves 

with you each time you step.

Beware the imbecile with his scythe.

Carry the fragrance of God in your laced boot.

Use playing cards to confound thieves.

Find Venus on the night horizon during a crescent moon.

Keep an oriole, a falcon, and a buzzard.

Live alone, 

but with the door open

so that April can call you with her rain-voice

like a petal volcano

birthing bees from your tongue in new language,

the thing you longed for

now--in astonishment--named.

_________

for Sunday Muse 202. 

A 7 Line Poem

There was a wall made entirely of glass, and a bird with a tether on its leg. 

There was you, in your olive raincoat, and a sky of grandfathers, complaining.

There were lilacs, dogwood blossoms, a wrought iron screen hung from a fence peg.

It was April in the finest chill of dusk, a Wednesday with an hour's light remaining.

There were angles to the gables, to the downspout, and the feeling beyond naming

That I carried in a Gladstone bag kept hidden with the gewgaws

Preserved and cared for like that bird, to rise toward home when he does.

________

linked to dverse oln.

To An Admirer

 "It's like being mailed into space" --Sylvia Plath

There are children

and a magnifying glass,

an ant

a sidewalk

and the summer sun, 92 million miles away.

The Prometheus ant will shortly know glory

and the eagle.

The children are its doctors

with their laser.

A poem on one's heart

is a volcano in a paper bag.

An old romantic

is an ant in a Hiroshima body.

You'll see me magnified, aflame,

for writing this poem about

happy children

in the summer sun.

________

for Sunday Muse #183.

The Last Auk

 

The last Auk, 1852

was found with menhaden

and capelin

and a series of letters from you.

I weep for the Auk,

the last of its kind, alone.

with its feet on rock, its beak in the breeze,

and a feeling for you in its bones.

Is it the fault of the Auk that its dreams of flight

were scuttled by wings too small?

Was it soothed by Hughes, rent by Plath?

Did it feel anything at all?

It had no mate,

no egg, no day of comfort in the future.

Stuffed on a stand, it asked for your hand

to tenderly tie the last suture.

____________

Two Poems/ Two Forms

"Getaway"

Stop the crying jag

pack a Gladstone bag

book a lunar junket now.

Stay on the sun side

Moon Rabbit runs by

late for a date anyhow.

Rent you a moon car

with hot tub and bar

green cheese and crackers for free.

Dub yourself Moon Maid

retro your moon grade

stay on indefinitely.

-------

this is a form called an alouette.

for Sunday Muse #169.

________________________

and...

"Recipe For Satori En Flambe"

In the desert, find a mirage that suits,

that lives, that fruits despite the gritty eye,

the thing that dries and rides inside your boots,

the thing that shoots itself but does not die.

This is the thing you'll need the most,

a far outpost of the soul.

There is no whole thing here, just shards

and acrid tars to smoke.

This is not as bad as it scans,

not some madman's practical joke;

a softly spoken barcarolle,

a gondolier mid-stroke.

In the desert, find a skull that sings,

an awful thing sick with the wound you need.

Take it up, feed it well until it brings

(from horrors) wings of glass, and salt, and seed.

In a rib bowl, mix these with buried roots

and tongues of mutes in ash rain from a sky

too close and bright, the silver-sharp of flutes

some god imputes with holy song and sigh.

________

this is a LaJemme poem.

You can see where the connection failed. When I came back the type changed. 

The Next Voice You Hear

Poster,
please stick to relevant things--
the throes of nature,
the hilarious pratfalls of modern love, or
figures of worship in their august magnificence.

Stop this foolishness about hair styles,
haiku,
and what your husband does in his garage--
the world is filled with such horrors already.

Commune with your higher self,
fast, clear your mind and physical body,
then return to us and to your postings.

Tell us about your ex-convict grandfather
and the spotlight he keeps in the attic.
Give us stuff that works at the box office,
such as your journey from Jenny Craig to heroin and cult religion.

Reveal to us your unabashed embrace
of outre philosophies garnered from the complex and authentic human being you met at the bus stop.

In summary, cut the crap and give us
your True Self
in all of her shadows and lights.
Give us the hagiographic treatment, 
the old college try,
Pose for a picture holding a French visa open to show your patronymic name.

Otherwise, we unsubscribe
and banish you to a wilderness where only dumb animals and cosplay Vikings can survive in the late-winter rot of your usual content.

Regards,

MichiganSally52
________

from a word list for post #3 of my 39 in 39 days.

Dragonfly

I dreamed of you last night.
(Yes, after all this time.)
Everyone was floating, dancing, flying,
and yet you were melancholy, 
and the world kept turning behind

Us where we posed. 
What does "I love you," mean?
Is it glorious in the morning, or as idiotic
as childhood pictures we cringe to see?
Still, who else has seen you

In multi-form, and been proud to say it?
Dreams are shadows, no matter how bright--
and I don't celebrate what's happened to us both.
Here is the curse of compound eyes
the dragonfly knows--everything is on every side,
never distinct, never absolute between blooms and motes. 

I dreamed of you last night.
(Yes, after all this time.)
On rising you were gone and not gone;
I saw all that I cherished about your face, your skin, your fire,
but also the ashes, the waste, the blight.
The curse of the dragonfly is to see ahead and beside,
but never clearly, and--in singular blindness--not at all behind.
________ 

for Bits of Inspiration--dragonfly

 

Raucous Bird

I've got a million morning dreams, 
but in the way of casual cruelty,
despite trying to tuck them to me like a marked book--
they scatter and leave no sign or scent to help me look
for my lost dreams.

I've got a million folded paper notes
floated on the morning pond, bent carefully into boats--
but in the way of casual cruelty,
they love a water lily more than me
and do not return.

I've got a million songs that line my throat,
pin feather sharp, short-lived, half-grown,
but in the way of casual cruelty,
my cricket legs won't carry me to that place I've dreamt of passingly
where I'm a raucous bird. 
_______

for Get Listed at Real Toads.

 

Paper Wings

Here are candy hearts,
paper wings,
sailing charts, and a thousand things

I made for you
in hopes they'd do--
oh can't you hear

how my paper bird sings?
______ 

For Karin Gustafson's "Flight of Write" at Real Toads. The artwork is hers. 

cerulean

The Moon is 238,900 miles away
in a sky
so immense
that it may as well be asleep inside itself;
and you,
me,
we are less than motes--
less than the least detail
of a dream
spread out from cell to cosmos
like reflected sunlight
caught in an iris
at night on a small patch of grass.

Do you miss me?
How long will I live?
What is the funniest joke
anyone has ever heard?

The Moon is
238,900 miles away, but seems as if
it would fit inside a tea cup
and that is because
we taste its light in dreams--
we hear its gravity in the lakes of our bodies
as the next moment arrives and there it is---
what?
The Moon, pale as certainty
in the lightening morning sky.
_____

for "synethesia" at real toads.
 

In The Rhambangle

In the rhambangle, the climbing vines
looped themselves up and through the latticework
like emotions falling from a dream.

You loved the soff birds who made their nests
in the high corners; feathered deities
without ceremony but stuffed fat on our adoration anyway.

I liked your boots, especially tucked beneath a wicker chair 
in the moonlight, lost to your feet
but called snarfdiffanous by the avante garde among the moths of local wing.

I haven't said it well, I realize. My sunglasses kept the words
after I first saw them in morning light.
It's lalamilty, so they say, making these sounds no string nor key would own,

but I keep trying, because I love you and your shossy half-turned smile.
________

for "Stuff & Nonsense' with Rommy at Real Toads. She asks that we use her invented words rhambangle, snarfdiffanous, and lalamilty. Soff and shossy are my own.