Ooga Booga

 

Ooga booga, darling.

It's me, sunflower face

the fox-hearted misdirected letter of your dreams.

I live in the space between the walls.

I play Candyland with brain-injured devils

for a pot of chilly blue dawns.

I raid your fridge while you dream of dolphins.

I tip-toe around your place, judging the art,

boiling the pasta, making a mess.

That's me saying, "love me" from the heat vents.

That's my voice on the tv during your ballgame,

making you fuck with the settings.

Give in, please. I haven't got all day.

Once, I was an Egyptian queen.

Once, I was a Dutch laundress.

Now I live inside your Jiffy-Pop, getting hot, expanding suddenly.

It's me, sunflower face,

the fox-hearted misdirected letter of your dreams.

You'll wake up in love with me.

You'll wake up as a black horse wearing a feather plume.

You'll wake up to find me in bed next to you, staring.

I've put my stamp, my kiss, my spell on you.

Easy, my high stepping Friesian, shh shh...

It's all right, I'm a specter and I've got the cure

for all your missteps, I'm an oval track, fresh spring clover,

a pinch of salt, and a lot of black cat. 

______

Motto

 

This is the hospital

where the nicked-up blown-up bastards show up.

We give them ice cream 

and a priest.

There is a river

down the middle.  We launch ourselves into the current

and it is unclear

who is drowning, who saving.

It's a system of gradations, and if you don't die in Emergency,

why then, we come into your room with cake and streamers.

Presto! You're ambulatory, then outpatient, then nurse, doctor,

surgeon, administrator, president emeritus, cutting ribbons

instead of flesh.

See one, do one, teach one is the motto. See the staggering

son of a gun falling to the floor with wounds beyond telling.

We lift him as if we were angels.

Yesterday, we were lifted.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Nothing stops the flow of the river or the flow of patients.

We are Boatmen, and Mermaids, reaching, 

saving, being saved. We are heroes of the

Carousel Horse Cavalry, coming over the 

hill, with bugle and blood pressure cuff,

dizzy with purpose, maybe dying, learning as we go. 

________

for Desperate Poets We Can Be (SUPER) Heroes. 

Music: Brass Band of Battle Creek Song of the Volga Boatmen

Nurse to the Water

photo by Jeanloup Seiff

 I am nurse to the Water,

Moon in a bowl at its bedside.

It looks back at me as if to say, "I am here,

deep and permanent; I will always stay,"

but its language is Leaving and every movement

is a perpetual going-away. 

I am bride to the Lake Grass

expending itself in a season's rising.

silent and thin, the Water its artist's garret.

It finds me neither interesting nor surprising

as I see to its unbordered house,

my face a familiar detail that passes. 

Are you dying, Water, a Gypsy in love with sand--

the sand in love with and holding the Cattails?

I make my rounds on the wooden walkway,

Child of trees the Lake Grass envies.

Death beneath my feet, mercy at my hand

I am the Double-Spirit who must be her own comfort

and work by Night, the sister-ghost of Day.

________

for The Sunday Muse #237. 

Music: Roseanne Cash Seven Year Ache 

A Season In Hell

Summer that year came with black wings

rising over green suburban trees

and found my blood-beat

like a smiling intruder delivering a shiv.

There is a horror of violation,

a new vocabulary of panic spoken

in chambers where

lions and phantoms trespass the flesh.

It gets dusky inside the mind,

The hiss of a projector spinning out a movie 

made of gin and dope,

actors who live in graves offering their gray stars.

The god-surgeon, numb expert bastard

taught his flunkies torture

and gave me a new face.

I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory.

When you always feel wrong, the world is a camera

and your crime is breathing.

There is an underworld with bootleg cures, so you go,

a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters

Who come out blinking, holding high 

the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--Jim Morrison. 

I had major surgery when I was 16.  That summer, "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm", both by the Doors, were getting heavy play on the radio I had at the hospital. Jim Morrison died right around that time. 

My title is, of course, taken from Rimbaud, a favorite of Morrison's and of mine.

Violent Gingerbread Assassins Lead Singer Dead At 47.

 

The lead singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins reports for his autopsy.

Electric bone saw in hand, the medical examiner for Los Angeles County tips up his protective face shield and speaks:

"Mr. ..."

"Lo Bo To Me," says the rock star. The medical examiner seems confused, so he adds, "I used to be George Binker, but changed it to Lo Bo To Me back in '97. You can call me Lo."

They then spend several minutes discussing the fact that the rock star isn't yet dead, to which he points out that VGA's radio exposure is down to almost nil, and years of various drugs, questionable sexual practices and a love of In-N-Out Burger has him as good as, so why procrastinate?

They begin.

"How did you get this scar just here, on your shoulder?" The medical examiner touches it with his finger as if summoning an elevator from inside the rock star's body.

"A groupie with a hatchet freaked out and thought I was a ghost trying to suck out her soul through a twisty straw. She thought my strawberry shake was the essence of a previous victim, her stupid friend Pamela. So she tried to off me, but only cut me a little. I threw the shake in her face and then she thought she was an ice sculpture. She was catatonic for ten years after that, and when she woke up she screamed 'Where is that bastard?' and then fell over on the floor. A roadie told me all that. I guess he married her or something."

The medical examiner suggests that the autopsy be postponed. George Binker a.k.a. Lo Bo To Me responds with a non sequitur, asking the M.E. if he's ever heard VGA's song "Clogged Synapse Fantasia."  

"It changed my life," he admits sheepishly.

"A fan! I knew it! Hey doc, what's that thing?"

"Why, a twisty straw, of course. I use it in my work."

The singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins sings:

Bay-beh do me do you!

Like a reptile crawling inside my heart,

layin' eggs of love that 'splode apart

in crazy fractals like La Jolla ocean blue!

Bay-beh do me do you!"

Later that day, reports of the passing of Lo Bo To Me, lead singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins, dubbed "Lo, the Noble Savage" in an old Rolling Stone article, spread across social media. Fans hold candlelight vigils and sales of their songs on digital platforms exceed all previous markers. The medical examiner for Los Angeles County holds a press conference, expressing, between sips of a strawberry milkshake, the exact circumstances of the singer's death. "The main cause was tooth decay, exacerbated by poor posture."

Why would he lie?

______

A (sort of) Edson-ish prose poem for Word List #8 (Russell Edson).

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...."

 

Her Real Name Was Lexi

In a classic case of form over function,
Doctor Dal Canton transplants a candy heart into Sugar, the topless dancer.

It melts immediately, as did Doctor D. upon seeing her the first time,
up there,
like an aspiration.

Later, in custody, Doctor D. insists
that it is his heart which is broken. 

Authorities disagree,
punishing doubly, sleeping well.
_______ 

a flash 55 for my BFF. It's 55 words if you always count the doctor's name as one word.

JAMA to this, motherfuckers

I had a little ache in the heart,
and so sought the cure prescribed in pop songs
with you
and you
and you
and you
and you.
Results ranged from muttered obscenities Q 2 hours as needed
to inability or disinterest in getting out of bed, observed for up to 3 months.
In sum, none of it was worth
the elevated heart rate, 
the altered mood,
the little swimmy endorphins which followed my boat after you'd been aboard.
Darlings,
all of you may kindly fuck off.

Contrary data poured in in response:
"She is mercurial, alternately combative or child-like,
not as interesting as she seems at first,
too solitary, talks everything to death, 
writes those god damn poems afterward."
They allowed as to how I could kindly fuck off as well. 

Too bad
that we arrived exchanging charm and kindness,
only to follow the usual course of dis-ease
to a trading of vitriol and silence.
The good news is
that we are immune now,
free to walk again among men (or women) without fear or hope, either one.
Dig my dead smile
promising nothing,
desiring nothing,
done and cured after all,
patient X back at ground zero, sick of love but medically cleared--
a success story in journals that do not publish poetry.
______

for "Love Hurts" at Toads.

 

Logicians In The Sanitarium

Logicians, lit weakly by the skylight,
find each other.
Overtaken by passion, they posit avidly.

"Which," they wheeze to each other, holding bony hands,
"of the following is true, if any?"
1.If infirmity, then writing.
2. If writing, then infirmity.
3. red on the handkerchief reveals the heart's longing to express itself.

Doctors smile at the logicians, but hate them.
How are you feeling? Does the treatment seem to help? 
Who the fuck cares? Move to Arizona and die there, albeit a little more slowly. 

Dizzying excitements exhaust the logicians.
Staff wheel them in chairs out to the verandah, buried in sober wool blankets.
The sun stutters on the horizon.
The world displays its affliction in tones of slant red and crumbling orange.
The logicians gasp, but their minds race with articles
and the heady imaginings of each other's naked admiration.

And so here is what I want to say,
to you, to God, 
to anybody whose conveyance is locked to guard against accident. 
When medicated, 
when not hacking to the point of collapse,
I dream of the most illogical things.
I pretend that my body is not made of disintegrating papier mache,
and that you want to fuck me,
like somebody used to, in some other place, once, that I can't quite remember.
I see you and hope
that you, whittled down to nothing, incontinent and demented,
want the same illogical things.

That's when the logicians recognize it in my face like an obvious error.
They laugh uproariously,
joined by their new friends, the doctors,
who lobotomize me,
wait for me to babble through the froth,
and say, "See there? You're making sense," and walk away on skis
like giant L's held stiff by the wax and starch of correctness and clarity.
______

for "Aspire" at Real Toads

Two Rondelets

 TELL ME, DOCTOR

Tell me, doctor
about disease, about malaise.
Tell me, doctor
what your nurse saw that so shocked her--
experiments that left their trace--
then, after you arrange your face,
tell me, doctor.

PRETTY DAISIES

Pretty daisies
and daffodils around the lawn.
Pretty daisies
soothing agitated crazies
their natures all to hell and gone
mad in evening, calm at dawn.
Pretty daisies. 
_______

Rondelets for "Fussy Little Forms" at Toads.

The Broken Glasses

My glasses fell, broke, went blind in one eye.
Not much that I lose (anymore) upsets me very much,
but the world has lost its bones and I feel like a stranger.

Faces become pillows, buildings blobs.
Only my heart retains its hard edge, and I bleed myself dizzy every night.
"Look," say the pillows, gathering around my wheelchair

Like dumb birds for bread. They think I'm blushing
when I'm dying and hang little samplers on the walls of my room.
"She's as rosy as a girl," they say, silly chatterboxes

Without faces, but with mouths as big as the white shadow that doctors know.
______

mini-challenge.

Suit Case / Stair Case / Head Case

Lisa Gordon Photography

These days, I want everything made of wool and fire.
I count fireball sheep, but never get to sleep.

Mama said, I'm at my wit's end
with you, girl.
Mama said, you got the devil in you,
and that I can't abide.

Doctor Willoughby asks, why did you set the fire?
Do you remember setting the fire?
His eyes swim in turpentine.
I dream of painting him; painting him on fire.

At home, I went out of my bedroom at night,
down the double rut path that cuts through the woods.
Mama found out.
Mama whipped me good.

I brought a suitcase here, and inside it are postcards
of famous pretty people who cannot sleep.
(I know because I watch them.
Their eyes never close, so I scratch them out.)

Dr. Willoughby speaks to my mother in private.
I don't know what he says, but she never comes back.
That is the end of the good news.
The bad news is that he is worse.

He tells me that I am full of sexual waywardness,
and moral decay.
He asks about boyfriends, again and again.
I tell him Mama kept the rooster, cut the head off the hen.

If I had wool and fire, I could keep it quiet inside my head.
They fill it with fireball sheep, and afterwards,
I can't remember things,
and sleep for most of a week.

Dr. Willoughby asks why I set the fire.
Do I remember setting the fire?
I tell him that ever since I was born
I've only wanted to be warm.

Somewhere in an attic several floors above my head
(my poor head),
is my suitcase.
It's up the staircase.

I'm not a rare case, says Dr. Willoughby;
but when he forgets and sets his pen down near my hand,
I can think of nothing but his eyes--fire and eyes-- 
when he sighs and shakes his head.
________

for Margaret's super superb challenge at Real Toads. She asks for a first person account inspired by Willard Asylum.

 

Come

Come up these stairs,
down this hall--
There's nothing to worry about--
hardly anything at all.

Remember the fire escape,
The window's too small--
and if anything should happen,
I'll try to stall.

Now, this is Bessie.
Give her your bag.
She knows what to do,
should we hit a snag.

It's all right, I'm a doctor,
and also a priest--
with city hall connections
by arrangement with police.

Do you have the money? All of it?
A tiresome detail, it's true--
Ah, that's fine, thank you my dear.
Right this way. After you.

Your dress is remarkably lovely,
and naturally must come off--
then, please, lie on this table,
and breathe deeply from this cloth.

I'm here to help. 
I'm here to fix.
It's normal if you're feeling
dizzy and a little bit sick.

Science! It's wonderful.
Medicine! The same!
I'm seeing a slight inflammation
originating in the brain,

flowing through the limbs,
and settling in the womb--
Bessie, would you kindly
set up the other room?

Can you hear me? Miss?
All right, she's out.
Let's get on with it, Bessie--
the same as the others, no doubt.

Hand me that.
Dammit, woman, the other one.
Did you hear the joke about the midget,
the rabbi and the nun?

This is getting a little dicey.
Come on, you little rat.
Hell's bells, I guess she won't be
having another brat.

All right, that's it,
can't put the bark back in the hound--
put my tools back in my bag,
then bring her back around.

Hello, how are you feeling?
We're done, you did just fine.
Others have lost far more blood.
Others have lost their mind.

With Bessie's help, do you think you can stand?
I'll help you with your coat.
Go home and rest, drink some tea--
and, perhaps, a little toast.

Tell no one of this. Forget you were here.
Forget this place, 
this room, my face...
and the shame of it, my dear.

Ah well, she's gone, that went all right.
She'll live to ninety if she lives the night.
Did you know her fiance is a financier?
Clean up, then Bessie, let's get out of here.
_______

 for Mag 207

haiku (watdafukizit TM)

Don't feel like writing real poetry? Try non-prescription haiku. Haiku users have, however, reported the following: nausea, confusion, lethargy, skin rashes, radical changes in personality, strange or upsetting dreams, incontinence, and the urge to bomb Pearl Harbor. Ask your doctor about haiku. He'll say, "You batshit crazy asshole! Stay off that shit!"

Presented as a public service in conjunction with G Man's friday 55!

this is just to say

this is just to say
that I was
saving those plums,
but you go ahead.

So much depends upon
a red fire department
ambulance

as your eyes glaze
and water.

Forgive me
the plums were poisoned
so sweet and
so cold

beside your white
selfish chicken ass.

______

I hate William Carlos Williams poetry, and I especially hate "This Is Just To Say" and  "The Red Wheelbarrow." 

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold 


The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


Both above poems by William Carlos Williams. Parody at top by me for Real Toads mini-challenge.   

Truth In Advertising

I COULD BE YOUR DREAM GIRL

SGWF
seeks same,
for friendship, romance,
long walks in the rain.

I've got big green eyes
and a very open mind;
clear delicate skin,
and fingers long and thin.

My heart is near the surface,
and always plain to see;
but I can be tough, and I've got guts,
you'll see as you get to know me.

So give me a call, I'm a fly on the wall,
just listening for the right one--
and if she's you, with sweet love true,
just watch me come all undone!
______

A little light-hearted poem for Real Toads mini challenge #24, in which we get the chance to write about some truly remarkable dolls. This one was created by Emma Whitlock. Great job, Emma!

Infirmity

Dr. Van Stiefer, a man alarmed by illogic
and disquieted by the slightest chaos,
opened his surgery on Carriage Road East
to very little fanfare.

That would shortly change.

As a medical student, Van Stiefer could barely contain
his boredom when faced
with the halt and lame.

At St. Cecilia's Hospital,
attendings had to stop the young man
from amputating in cases of sprained ankles
out of ennui and expediency.

But now,
now is his moment.

Dr. Lars Van Stiefer has a revolutionary idea.
He hopes it will alleviate, or entirely prevent
an array of difficulties and infirmities.
He will treat romantic love as a neurological disorder,
like tremors, or rabies.

His patients, beset with every variety of odd behavior,
will be brought in by stretcher,
sedated,
and he will bandage their hearts, tightly,
with clean bandages,
leaving only the tiniest new scar.

Good order will be restored,
and following a brief period of recovery, 
they can go back to work,
or to their wives and husbands,
ready to face life with new health and calm.

Dr. Van Stiefer is celebrated, feted, 
asked to speak before august gatherings of renowned physicians.
The dreary halls of St. Cecilia's fade into dusky memory,
and the doctor takes to his celebrity
with dignified grace.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Van Stiefer's womanly emotions
begin to wobble on their axis.
When the doctor arrives home,
without ceremony,
without display,
without humor,
she broods, and piles his plate with medical texts,
inviting him to use them as
supper or suppositories,
though she does not phrase it exactly in that way.

Unknown to him,
she forges a sympathetic connection with his nurse,
a certain Miss Pelby.
By the time they have lunched once,
been to the variety stage show twice,
and kissed a third time,
the wheels are greased for her own severe case of nervous illness--
that is to say,
Love.

No surprise, then, that Dr. Van Stiefer,
faced with the unfamiliar landscape of this domestic hiccup,
should have brought her,
the very next day,
to his surgery.

Was Mrs. Van Stiefer homicidal?
The doctor's own writings declare this an impossibility
in a woman of good background.
Still,
she was found in the waiting room by a medical equipment salesman,
with a bloody sleeve and a fit of the giggles.

Dr. Van Stiefer's esteemed colleagues,
arriving at graveside,
discussed among themselves what ought to be done for the new widow.
"Death by misadventure" having claimed her husband,
it was decided,
for her,
by these learned men,
that the prudent thing would be to recommend her into the care of the late doctor's nurse.

Mrs. Van Stiefer stayed on in her house,
under Miss Pelby's expert care
for the duration of her uncommonly long convalescence.
________

Thank you to Shawna for the word list!

The House of No

Here is the House of No.
Has your trip been long?
Please remain standing.

Examine our literature,
Our list of the one hundred most beautiful words.
Wear this mask. Keep silent.

We've seen your type before, a thousand times;
We know how your arms ache for her smooth skin.
Hold them up--
We will teach them tolerance, wrapped in heavy casts.

We're wise to the way she falls from your mind in sections...
Sweet, as if her ribs had called your fingers from a dream,
To lay tender stripes from their tips to her heart.
No more of that.

We give no sympathy, even in extremity,
For the memory of her breath, warm and close on your face,
Or the turning up of her shoulders when she kissed you the way she did.
Empty your bag.
Give us those.

In time, you will no longer feel riven in two with impossible desire.
One day, her name will cease to seem holy, or even noteworthy.
Until then,

Come to breakfast,
Accept the cup of dust we offer;
Trust our healing methods.
Stop moaning.
Eat your rind.
______

for Real Toads Open Link Monday and Shawna's Monday Melting.