Winter & Wanting

 

You wanted

To break my cold reserve

To be a flame on the frozen stream

I wanted

To protect my stillness

To be snow in the presence of May

Charming one

You remind me of me

When I was hopeful and still believed

I thank you

For the moment's respite

When you touched my sleep with honeyed light.

______

For Dverse MTB "A Lover as Second Nature" hosted by Laura B.

Music: Jai Jagdeesh In Dreams

City of Crows

 

In the city of crows

in the time of autumn,

over the rainy streets the trees

bend and hover like dying grandmothers.

I have been down these streets

on evenings when I did not want to keep living,

and they gave me their susurrations as a balm. 

In the city of crows,

a small village where

everyone in the world lives,

I met a woman who was two shadows,

one behind the other but it was a third who spoke.

I saw only one shadow, heard only the words I already knew.

Now there is no woman, and I know less than when I began.

In the city of crows,

by the canal where the

coins turn to fish of white, gold, and black,

my blood turned to cold water, stopping my heart.

An old acquaintance brought a loaf of bread to my side,

still warm from my own oven or so they said. They hit my heart

with the fist that had held the loaf, and I lived again but in their debt.

In the city of crows,

there is no newspaper, 

and the devices there die

each year when dusk paints the days.

If you want to see me, listen for weeping

in the forest of shadows, where night and leaves fall alike.

I am there, reciting this poem in a second language made of regret,

shame, love, hope, and death. My body is a wick, time the wax,

and the crows the scattering sly-eyed ash.

______

for Desperate Poets. 

You

"Maybe tomorrow honey

Some place down the line, I'll wake up older

So much older mama,

I'll wake up older and I'll just stop all my trying." --Jackson C. Frank

You, wearing your father's coat

and a ribbon in your hair,

you're the one I spoke to in a blackbird dream.

You, like a pocket sun,

burning down and rising up in continual blaze

all while reading a book, riding the bus, counting raindrops on the pane.

At home you wear a long shirt

made from calendar pages and paste.

Both are white as summer light, or a fallen blue jay's breast.

You, in love with Michigan in the fall, Morrocco in hazel eyes.

In your boot, a trove of travel tickets,

bad paper, and the echo of smoke-gone nights.

You lay your heart in the curve of the sickle moon

and claim to have no desires,

but they leave your skin and howl in the hills all night. 

You, with a sense of home in your chest like a tumor,

wounding and soothing you like the gin you used to love

until you can hardly stand it anymore.

There is a house from 1925, with a Packard in the drive.

Someone is washing it as if it were a memory

there on the tarmac arc beneath the pear tree.

You held your dolls up against the leaded windows

before you were born, after you died, 

before any of this thorned tapestry you're stitched into now.

The leaves are turning red, the nights are cool.

There is no kiss that holds a hospital for souls,

no soft-bound convent that knows the right prayer.

You can just listen to the yarn-ball clock and when you're ready

let it fall, think of nothing, and find yourself home

where we're waiting for you, those whose names you knew, and now recall.

______

shared with Desperate Poets open link. 

Music: Janis Joplin Little Girl Blue

A Man

A man grew
up, out of the April Michigan ice
in my brown grave of a garden.

This man was never a child.
He never bounced some goddamned ball
or climbed into my lap for a story.

What I'm saying is, this man wasn't natural,
though he grew there
among the astonished screaming jays.

How can I sleep, knowing this shapeless bastard
is leaning upright out there,
moaning like the last lover on earth?

For now, the hard earth is his vice,
he stays half-born, entire,
fucking with my head, expecting some sick future.

Slashing rain and warmth as sudden and wrong
as a stranger in one's kitchen
will free him, he will roar the mud from his throat and tarnish my name on the dead medicine of his lips.

He will call, I will come, terrified and scalded,
to be touched and opened by him,
to weep in his arms, hissing damn you, darling, damn you."
_______

for day 13.

The Cleric Crow

art by Toril Fisher

Crow, with your blackberry voice,
your hand-feet praying to grass blades
and sunflower stalks,

Come to my violin-framed bed of soft Gypsy songs.
Dolorous crow, in my elbow crook,
barter with corn kernels
for my robe spun from comb and tears.

Crow, with your harsh voice,
I must remember;
I cannot forget.
My skin hums with wings and stingers.
Your skin blooms with smoke and stars.

Crow, small priest of the northern window,
I have done so much
accumulating only to trinkets and sighs.

Take them, give them to the mourning dove.
I am useless but yours;
Distinguish me, by your bright vision, from pavement, 
from waste.

Crow, with your amorous voice
made from cat-tail and winding vine,
I must remember;
I cannot forget.
Make me your bauble,
give me to God
high in the branches of the swaying locust.
________
 
 linked HERE.
 

Three Short Poems

"Jones"

Jones
finds Empty
and fills it
with lonesome lies
in a fake truth suit.
There were better Parts Unknown meant for you.
_____

"Chop Shop"

Chop
this shit
into lines-
it still won't be
poetry, baby.
You have to pay to learn that foreign tongue.
_____

"Mercy Clouds"

Look--
water
ripple-topped.
Gone tomorrow
with the mercy clouds.
Kiss me now. The sun will warm my suitcase.
______

for Fussy Little Forms--tetractys. 

Suicide happens when a person's emotional pain exceeds their ability to cope with that pain. But there is help. If you are in trouble, pick up that ten ton phone--tomorrow can be better, even if you don't believe it right now. National Suicide Prevention Help Line: 1-800-273-TALK.

"Goodbye...my friend. I didn't know you, but I've been places you've been." (Tim Hardin)