Now

 Now,

I kiss ice

I kiss the wind

I kiss the wounded whose souls have rattled loose.

I have found

that brew is made of boneless angels

gathered from mountainsides where monkeys roam.

There was a time

when minutes spoke, gods lazed,

and I loved you, in pure honesty, like a novitiate.

Now,

I listen for leaves caught in river ice,

and run my fingers across the skin of a sacrifice.

My skin flushes firebrick red

from this cup which holds my fever.

I kiss ice.

I kiss the wind.

I kiss the wounded whose souls call from distant hills.

Weebles

 

Remembering my dollhouse,

full of thalidomide Weebles, armless, legless

and sleepless as well--always upright,

awake all night wandering the rooms.

No use locking the doors or pulling the shades--

the entire back of the house open to flood and tornado.

The whole place an ossuary--urn your keep, Weebs.

And me, Queen of the whole shebang, a six-year-old Persephone.

No surprise, then, to find me in new adulthood,

still covered with the vernix of near-innocence,

living on tuna fish and rainwater, perched

in the henhouse on my hope chest, waiting.

That was when you appeared, rising like a helium balloon,

floating in place beneath the crude umbraculum

with a censer in one hand and a lily in the other,

in full Papal costume, my real-life Weeble-God. 

We fed each other party crackers and absinthe,

le fee verte, "The Green Fairy," faux artists in our henhouse garret. 

Our flock all turned from Rhode island Reds to common crows.

We are a House that cannot be toppled, like Weebles ourselves,

though the giant half-grown bitch beyond the open back wall

keeps trying to poke us, smoke us out, or otherwise tamper

with our great love and legacy--hers if only she would pause,

consider, and accept us as deities. cast in plastic and immortal.

_______________

for Word Garden Word List--Four-Legged Girl

Music: Van Halen Little Dreamer

 

October

 

These early evenings, the sun sinks slowly,

like a 'do-ragged painter down spider-leg scaffolding.

We are all weary these days

as the world rolls beneath us and we logwalk,

our eventual fall following beside us like an unpredictable dog.

Then quietly, as crickets guard the evening filigree,

your ghost comes to me

where I smoke in the Adirondack

under the weak-sister yellow moon of the outside light,

to portend a storm that's already passed and gone.

In a canning jar, under the basement stairs, 

I have kept your hoodoo,

that sacrifice chant-dance made of woodsmoke and razor grass

that you wove to your bones

to make me love you as if you were food, as if you were solid earth.

Whether in Butte or Chicago, Pushmataha County

or Devil's Hand, it makes no difference.

Even the ocean is not shatterproof, so my bags drowse in the attic,

with old costumes and dressmaker's dummies

that you went to while I slept off the soft poison of your words.

I know why you're here.

I know why yellowjacks have stingers

and I can't write these poems forever just to stave you off.

You'll use the knife I gave you as a pick

and play some stupid banjo breakdown at my funeral

as if it were spring, as if you were sane, as if I didn't matter.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Ric Masten.

I don't smoke. The poem lies!

Music: Gordon Lightfoot "Dreamland"

Successes, Enumerated

I.

Congratulations! I didn't get the job.
Useful degrees never bore my name,
but the inside covers of used paperbacks did.

Tolstoy, Ferlinghetti and Bronte made poor references,
had no current phone or email,
and though I came to know them well, they had little to say about me.

Way to go! I stayed for years in part time positions
because there was staring out the window to be done,
bad poetry to be written,
and rain to be contemplated.

II.

Fan-freaking-tastic! The acrimonious divorce,
the shit-canning of thirteen years of trying to be
straight,
responsible,
respectable, and all that jazz.

So sorry, Mr. and Ms. Notgoodenough.
Hello, solitude. Hello to bashing away at the hunk of marble
inside of which I had been hiding.

I got rid of my slave name.
I loved several wrong but exciting persons,
too much and briefly, but oh boy. (though most of them weren't.)

And now here I am. Ta-da! 
With the house on fire,
my tail on fire,
and my words on fire.

Don't call 9-1-1, I want to burn.

III.

Somewhere, in some non-existent suburban shadowland,

there is a sensible person who put her books away

along with her red shoes.

She is liked, I guess, by all,

whoever she is,

blinking on and off as required, like a traffic light.

______

 
For Izy's Out of Standard at Real Toads.

 
 

Daffodil Namaste Chooses A Head Scarf

Hi.
It's me.
In you. Part of you.
Natural as can be.

Nestled among my pretty neighbors.
Singing to them, endlessly,
the traditional song of my people--
"Die, you jackasses. Make more room for me."

If I had a mind,
it would have a voice:
shredder, chipper. 
White noise.

I give the gardener
something busy to do.
Listen to my heart beat:
"fuckyou, fuckyou, fuckyou..."

Love me or nuke me.
I don't care.
I'm nature's perfect engine.
Growing. Gaining. There.

Girl, I feel good,
but you're starting to look like shit.
I do what I do, that's Ms. Nature to you,
frightening Miss Muffet to bits.
_______

For Real Toads mini-challenge, "Making a heart out of wild plants." I chose the weed.

 

Digital

Hands cannot be made of water,
And yet water holds ships, islands, continents.

Hands cannot be made of fire,
And yet fire has fingers and throws what it has burnt into the air.

Hands are angels sent by whichever evil or fine masters they belong to.
Hands are mute, and yet say what words cannot.
_____

teh deep, I haz it.

for G Man's Friday 55.