2 New Short Poems

IN THE TIME OF SHORTENING DAYS

The crickets have come

to sing summer out,

smooth black invisible chirring

like planets spinning.

I have fed the little rat

who tips the tray--

each of us awake in differing skins,

on a yellow-leaf evening

under white stars

_________________

EMAIL FROM MY BROTHER

Hearing from you is like being operated on

by a blind doctor

trained in church

by the deaf dead.

_________ 

Lebanese Dove Lost in A Mexican Market

 

I awake on a sidewalk as a bird

and in a moment of comic idiocy

I fly into a store

                         where a woman swings a broom at me,

shouting, "Un pájaro!"

She misses me by inches

as I have missed so many things

by inches or miles

                             and if she breaks my wings

her dustpan will be my grave.

Once, I knew--or dreamed

your skin by Tiffany lamp.

In those days,

                      the mornings were quiet and damp

like a woods at first light

where we could go walking

and not worry where we'd been.

I careen into packages of pasta

which fall like pilgrims to the floor.

The woman spits, 

                              "Ay! Diablo!" and has no more

pity for me than a loaded gun.

How did I become a bird

in this ridiculous situation?

I remember the day when you left

with your bags like a brood of chicks

gathered at your feet

                                   in their nest of sticks

like burning incense.

Now, I am a mourning dove without a sky

with a new woman now, who shouts, "Diablo! Ay!"

_______________

For Word Garden Word List--Light, Coming Back

Music: Gary BB Coleman The Sky Is Crying

4 American Sentences

   The image above was first used with my poem "The Girl Who Loved Hemingway."
                  I suspect she might also love American sentences.



Allen Ginsberg's American sentence, in case you might not know, is a response to his feeling that haiku did not work well in English. It is simply 17 syllables arranged how ever you like, and it must be, of course, a sentence. (That doesn't mean it can't have periods within it.) While haiku are normally concerned with nature, an American sentence can be about anything. Kerry, at The Imaginary Garden, first told me about them. And so here are four I wrote today:


my joints grind like old bricks. 
garden warms.
my cane is sturdy.
sun is strong.

dog, i am your mother
though i am not a dog.
bed is yours to hog.

baseball on tv.
dog and me on couch.
we sleep through several innings.

in age i find beauty in more faces
than i ever did when young. 

And so, I have written 30 poems in 30 days this April. As I depart The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads--like a tv actress or a back-up singer embarking on a preposterous and disastrous solo career--I want to say that the inspiration from all of you has been instrumental in the writing of so many of the poems on this blog, Coablack's House of Pain, and Black Mamba. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything. I will still see you when I appear as a  "legendary" (read: washed-up!) guest on the show. (Fireblossom as Aunt Biddy, with one line: "Follow your heart, Chrissie!") xoxoxox

a little road music:

One Does Not Simply Walk In

Dread is a useful emotion--
it's nature's way of telling you something's wrong.

As the rodent considers the feline at the mouth of the burrow,
as the passenger considers the drunken buffoon sliding behind the wheel,
I consider your stupid bedside radio
playing your unbearable soporific radio station,
and dread of the next thirty years overtakes me.

It is then that I know that I-eye-eye
will not always
love you-OOOOooooooo.

However, one does not simply walk in,
turn one's delicate bangled wrist sideways,
and start blasting as you lay in bed dreaming of the stupid shit that fills your head.

One must endure the outings at your suggestion,
the lame, candy-cute destinations you choose for us,
eating away my free hours like a virulent, if wholesome, cancer.

I thought loving another woman would be better.
I thought there would be good sex (there was),
that my life would be free and fine and full,
and that it would rain ten dollar bills every afternoon at four.

I know now, that no sanity-saving modicum of happiness
will ever slip through the customs house of your insecurity,
the labor camp of your unreasoning jealousy,
or the passive-aggressive pogrom of your thoroughly fucked up personality.

One does not simply walk in and slosh an accelerant pell-mell.
One does not, then, offer you a light for the very last time,
gallant butch to the end.

But if one is lucky, very lucky,
one simply wakes up, and the offending clock radio isn't there.
YOU aren't there, and the dread slowly ebbs away,
giving way to gratitude and an intoxicating elation.

See how happy you have made me, how ever long it took?
One does not simply accept such bounty as one's due.
To do so would be to dishonor the Goddess who, in Her mercy,
gave me the great boon and gift

of your absence.
______

For my Fireblossom Friday challenge at Real Toads--"Dread".

 
"A circus of horrors, yeah that's what you are"--John Fred and his Playboy Band

Comic

Genius rides in the sidecar of a driverless black motorcycle
which is really a dark bird flying across the sun.

Look Ma, no hands.
There is really only one choice to make
if you are afflicted by the relentless beauty of angels--
suck it up, Bo Peep, and wave to your lovers and assorted vampires,
or make a daring leap onto the berm
and begin instantly wishing you were back on the road with sunspots in your eyes,
and who cares where the whole thing is headed.

Making funny out of don't-touch-me
can leave a person buried in a breathing graveyard,
calling for one's self, but one's self has left, or gone mute.
It's barbaric, but that is the price the muses demand,
that the genius ride that sidecar,
blindfolded,
cracking wise all the way.

All I can say is,
don't murder your angels
just because the imp in your head says to do it.
It is the angels who would have guided you home.
_______

for Get Listed at Real Toads