Stephen Miller Meets Adolph Hitler on the Tarmac at a Tesla Dealership

 

Ask the man

falling from a high building

whether gravity is a matter of opinion.

The ground will be

explaining things

shortly.

There are those,

bedecked with self-awarded

ribbons, who sculpt

with a hammer

and operate (on others only)

with a saw

and call it Vision.

Sipping from 

half-filled goblets

gilded with a fur of mold,

their soapy smiles house parrot tongues,

moonstruck by 

a slug in wolf's clothing.

Crows laugh

at windmills, and 

nobody is eating the pets.

Fearful shills leave poisoned sugar out for each other

and force feed it to everyone

but no hourglass

fills upward.

Ask the man

falling from a high building

whether gravity is a matter of opinion.

The ground will be

explaining things

with impactful clarity

presently.

________

I hate most topical poetry and almost never write it, but something came over me. For Word Garden Word List--Calling a Wolf a Wolf. 

Music: Emerson, Lake & Palmer Carn Evil #9

Mike Pence, Gemini, Visits The Mayo Clinic

We made our own zodiac from prayer books and beating-sticks, 
kept folded in narrow creases,
vermin parables for rot-paper effigies
writ down as paragons in the cheap potboiler of continuous torrent and industry.

Down at the harbor,
salt angels wave goodbye to ships laden
with cream-skinned babies in barrels,
alive in a circumscribed commerce
of palm
and funeral
and coral-colored sunrise.

We peddle our peculiar zodiac at stations
where all trains have evaporated,
the green and violet of bruises rain themselves clean,
and ballads are sung with lark tongues lodged
in mother throats that cannot exist, 
but which sing and sing and sing.

Come, find our graves in the rockery,
lend us new deaths by instant contract.
Arrange us on new stars aloft by decree,
and kill the old deities by stoning via television.
The night horizon will slide us
to the harbor,
to the arms of sirens
who will sing us, exploding, 
through dust-hearts and lie-lips 
to the stuttering surprise
of creatures too perverted and vile 
to carry the note that we plot, on charts, 
like a poem slipped beneath the door of permanent astonishment.
________

for Kerry's word list and Izy's prompt for the last day of April.

Wounded Deer

Quincy Washington "Emperor of Dawn"

I carry the dead with me and they are never silent.
When I whisper in your ear, listen for the echo of the dead,
those riders screaming.

Every moment spent forgetting
has been a revelation of peace.
But still, the dead, on the end of a chain, grin and wait.

You admire me, all the things I have done,
all the dragons in ditches by the roadside.
The dead take the teeth and stuff their yapping mouths,

Slurring that I'll never make it,
never be worth their spit,
never take another step,

But I do, and they are shamed with every movement,
my life a pulsing illustration
that the wounded deer runs fastest after all.
_________ 

for Real Toads Art Flash. I chose symbolic.

On The Popularity Of Zombies

I do not lightly speak ill of the dead,
but I will say this, as witness for myself--
the disagreeable word from a stranger's head
is not cause to take my gun from its shelf.

Look at them! They shamble!
Observe how they grasp and flail!
Easy to dismiss, without preamble
the groans and grins of those beyond our pale.

Enter the God, the Goddess!
Enter the anointed, the selected two!
Ignore the yoke, the chain, the harness,
as off to the kiosk go I, go you!

Undead mouthing nonsense vile
on social media--denounce, unfriend them!
Become un-human, toss brains on the pile;
attack the other, and those that send them!
_______

for grapeling's word list at Real Toads.

 

Lies Looking For Girls To Tell Them

Lies looking for girls to tell them
gather in groups--
little ions looking for a charge.

Girls grow up greedy to spout the wildest stuff
about each other
or boys
or you.

Girls spend hours in front of mirrors
telling lie upon lie.
I'm ugly/ I'm pretty/ that's enough/ never enough.

Girls grow and haul a whole hope chest stuffed with lies
behind them to college,
to the altar,
to the nursery.

Lies looking for girls to tell them are never lonely for long.
Diogenes ran a girls' school until he lost his mind.
The students lied and said he went sailing.

Sit with me. Talk.
Our mothers did the best they could.
We'll always be like sisters.
This tea is good.

Lies looking for girls to tell them
don't stop when friends go home.
They circle when you're
anxious
afraid
alone.

At sunset I shake all my gathered lies from my apron to the sky,
and when they work together,
oh my,

how the feathers fly.
_______

 

Ellipse-stick

Crows quilt the clouds until they've stitched a story.

^^^There's my beginning. Pretty, right? Almost Amish.
Crows have no time to embrace or deny,
and what I love about them--
they never lie.
They cannot lie. 

Please stay still while I fire hose some crows inside you,
like filling walls with insulation.
You look good this way--
real women have crows moving around inside them.
You can trust a woman who has crows in her mouth.

^^^There's my next section. A little macabre. Even violent.
It's over the top, I'll have to change it.
I'll use the heel of my hand like a big eraser--
Oops, I smeared it; now it's morphed into art.
It needs more crow. 
back to the start...

Crows quit the clouds once they've ditched your story.
How did you compromise them?
The crows, in their dark majesty,
how did you get to them?
*smacks forehead*
Of course! With your same old nickel-for-a-dime.
With lies.
________

A Liar's Prophecy

"You will never be anything,"
my mother told me often,
"Least of all beautiful.
Least of all loved."

She also told me that I never listen,
though I do.
I listen, but I keep my own counsel as to what I think about the things I hear.

Years later, I slipped into sleep
like bare feet off a smooth shoreside stone,
and slowly sank.
My hair was long, so long,
that it trailed in the currents
around the coasts of South America,
and I held starfish in my hands
which sang, impossibly and in languages beyond interpreting.

I stretched myself naked on the backs of orcas,
and across the arms of pink anemones,
but it wasn't until near dawn
when true beauty found me and settled itself in my humble flesh.

Still drifting, I stretched my legs out together,
long and sleek like a mermaid's tail;
I felt the rise and fall of the waters I belong to,
and those currents
those warm, containing currents
were just your arms
circling in sleep, around me.
______

for A Word With Laurie at Real Toads. We were to write something "phantasmagoric." 

Charity

She wrote the most horrible poetry.
It lurched and jolted across the offended, blameless white page--
a disturbing circus of malapropisms and non sequiturs,
all set down in her charming, flowing, feminine hand.

"Do you like it?" she would ask,
offering from her perfect tapered fingers a page--
a floppy, oversized, extra-holy communion wafer.

Can the mind recoil even as the heart yearns?
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Are bears Catholic?

Dumpsters and notebooks can be the same--
their compromised converts diving in,
bawling their pleasure,
making asses of themselves.

"I love it," I would tell her,
but I must be pardoned for this crime against literature.
The saints must intercede for me;
celestial judges must consider my intentions.

Reading, fighting down bile or guffaws,
I could, all the while, feel her vulnerable sweet heart beating,
just beneath the jade pendant that she wore--
the one with the antique silver setting.

What could I do?
What kind of monster, faced with her guileless, saucer-sized eyes,
as hopeful as a resurrection of doves,
could twist their tongue enough to tell her the truth?

"It's brilliant!" I enthused, no longer even looking at it,
setting it blindly aside,
admiring her pendant,
moving it blindly aside,
and pressing my lying lips to her blameless white skin
in kindness,
as encouragement,
in nothing but forbearance and
Christian charity.
_________

_________

for Real Toads mini-challenge, thunk up by my BFF Hedgewitch!

artwork: "Birds" by M C Escher. 

Saph Says What

Like the old record should have said--
hit me, babe.
I'm nothing but a bell girl,
nothing but a plain spoken girl.

Hang me babe--
haul down on that hemp.
Swing me babe,
and I'll sing it, like truth down from the mountain top.

Ring me babe--
with a Claddagh or a Labrys;
or deny, and deal with my silence--
no more sugar on a Sunday morning, no more sweet talkin' tongue in the bell.
_______

for Marian's Music Challenge: "Soon Enough", the music of Aimee Mann. I struggled with this; it took me three days and a near-total rewrite, but I finally have something I am happy with. Here's a Til Tuesday song that I used for inspiration.

...and also the Doors song I referenced in the poem. Robbie Krieger wrote this song as "Hit Me", but Jim Morrison refused to sing it that way. If you listen carefully, you can hear that the band had some fun with it as they chant the old Ajax laundry detergent jingle "stronger than dirt" at the end.

I'm adding these images, as several people have mentioned having to look up what I was writing about.

Claddagh ring

Labrys ring.  

Medusa In An Unguarded Moment

I want to talk about the beauty of snakes.
Such a long backbone...
no one is going to fast talk them into a compromise.

Let's talk about the economy of fangs.
Two
will do nicely, thank you.

No hands means no handshakes, no bro pats.
A snake just waits
without ceremony, until you state your damn business.

Snakes don't go to Sandals,
they don't cruise the Mediterranean, hobnobbing with assholes.
They just sun themselves on the nearest rock.

No power suit.
Shed that skin, start over again,
brighter, better, and every inch of it comes from within.

I want to talk about the kindness of snakes.
They kill with an embrace.
They can unhinge their jaws, a practice many people should adopt.

In short, I love snakes.
I keep them in my hair, graceful charmers of every hue.
Don't turn away; love them too. 

And look at me when I'm talking to you.
______

This poem is for Fireblossom Friday, where I have asked people to hand me a great big pack of lies. The truth is, I don't like snakes at all, they give me the creeps. 

 

My Sixth Life

for Elizabeth

I brought her early light in a leather pouch,
And a snake's head in a handkerchief.
What a fool I was.

Every April, she crouched on the muddy roads
Like something not human.
First warmth carries taint,
And she rolled until she was filthy with it;
Don't think there weren't those who admired her.

A sick sky will deny that it ever held clouds
And a thousand lies without pause will make it rain,
If only in the upturned palm of a lunatic.

I brought her a ring made from poisonous metal,
And instructions on how to drown herself.
A gray cat is no haloed nun,
So if I grew claws from the ends of my fingers,
It was only to prove before the maypoles went up
That God was mad or that she was. 
________ 

And Now, The Fabtabulous Truth (and one lie) Revealed!!!

Petlets, it's time to reveal the truth (and one lie) about Fireblossom! You'll recall that in my post Fete Me Baby I listed five statements about myself as part of Sioux's Memetastic Meme. Four were true and one was a big whopping doozy of a lie. Did you guess which one was not true?

1. I said I sleep with a night light. True. I didn't until about the age of thirty. Then I started having trouble with something called night terrors, which differ from nightmares. They usually happen to children (I always have to be different, as my mother has been known to bitterly complain), and they usually happen within an hour of falling asleep. They don't have a storyline...just a shadow or some other vague threatening presence takes the mortal terror from zero to 90 in about three seconds. They involve physical thrashing and screaming and all sorts of neat stuff like that. Anyway, I discovered that a little bit of light where I sleep prevents them. So, let there be light. A night light.

2. I said I can't sleep in a silent environment, either. True. I use a white noise machine. I prefer the "waterfall" setting. I lurv my little white noise machine! It's either that or run the dryer all night every night. The noise machine is cheaper! As a child, my parents took me with them to the Great Smoky Mountains one year. We stayed at a place in Gatlinburg that was right on a rocky stream. I never slept better in my life. All night long, it seemed to go shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I need something like that to stop my brain from thinking and keeping me awake.

3. I claimed that I lived in San Antonio, Texas, for six years and never owned a car. True. I used public transportation. I was your friendly neighborhood stone-broke artistic type. I spent most of my twenties doing two things...drinking and studying, though never at the same time. I self-educated. I worked part time to keep body and soul together, and used all that extra time to read everything I felt a young wannabe writer should read. I read Kerouac, Brautigan, Burroughs, Dreiser, Hardy, Lawrence, Amy Lowell, Christina Rossetti, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Kesey, Vonnegut, everything I thought I might learn something from. And guess what? I couldn't have spent my time in a better way. I learned how the masterful use words, how the brilliant think about things, and how the greatest hearts express themselves. And I learned a great honking wealth of wildly diverse trivia. 

4. I said that, the summer I was eleven, my middle brother got married. True. And that the best man stayed at our house. Also true. I said that I didn't like the girl my brother was marrying. True true true. I went on to say that I hid the best man's shoes, thinking that then the ceremony would have to be postponed. Did you pick that out as the lie? Because, if you did, you were right.  I never hid his shoes.

5. And finally, I said 

I don't care if I'm stange, I ain't gonna change

And I don't give a damn about my bad reputation!

True!

_________