Bad Eye

 It's the harsh angle of the sun in August, I think, that tricks my bad eye. In the stillborn space where the walnut tree smothered its  lessers with shade, a cape of weedy green masquerades as grass, as lawn, a trickster for my blind spot. 

In the magnified bright reflecting off the house's siding in afternoon, the mulberry stump sends up a fresh forest of suckers, higher by the day. This is fool's summer, when what was is gone and what remains puts on a play, wearing a harlequin mask, and kindly saves a part for me, I tell myself "There is plenty of time, to repair, heal, do more than was done today." 

This is my bad eye telling tales and the iridescent image swims through a mirror that flows  in and out of vision, in and out of me, like life itself. 

______

for my friend Dora who is hosting at Dverse Prosery today. Her theme is "Luminous Accountings" and requires the use of the italicized section from "King of the River" by Stanley Kunitz. 

Process notes : I seem to be losing the vision in my left eye due to a mysterious spot that showed up on my eye exam in February. Some days it is just blurry, other days all I can see with it is shapes. Fortunately, my right eye remains just garden variety nearsighted. As if to make a joke as I wrote this, my  eye decided that an ocular migraine was in order. I get them sometimes. Not to be deterred, i counted the words up four times and they came to 144 each time. 

Last year my neighbor complained, quite reasonably, about my big mulberry tree that was scraping his roof and dropping berries pell mell on his porch, so I had it cut down, Then last month my beloved black walnut tree split in a storm and had to be removed. In the bare place where its shade prevented much from growing, there is now a carpet of some sort of creeping weed. Things come, things go--including me sooner or later--and are replaced by something else. Any passing dinosaur can tell you it's true. 

Wishbone

 

When I was young, I learned the art of

decisions made with wishbones. 

A living heart had informed them

with a love of yellow corn and a fear of silver hatchets. 

I came out of my shell one night during 

a traffic accident like waking during surgery.

Wrecked Chevies turn shy as little girls

but their drivers find illumination in oil and blood and pavement. 

Jail and church are cousins and I found

in one what had eluded me in the other. 

That morning they returned my effects.

A crow had nested inside my leather satchel like swag from limbo.

Why bring all of this up? Why now, when

October is just a penny on the railroad track

shiny and done with, like an old flame?

I guess I'm just telling how I got here, the whole swerve of my life.

Living alone takes nerve, more than I ever had young.

Magic never gets the laundry done, or the

chicken fried, but I have it in spades these

rainy days, when my hawk-heart feels the wishbone

and I wonder what it will tell about me, how it will split

between sweetheart and shrew, drunk and duena,

all the spilled tiles and tears that depicted my face,

the one I wore while here, doing the best I could, grandmother and memory.

________

for Word Garden Word List--She Had Some Horses

Music: Katey Sagal Bird On The Wire. 

Mount Pleasant

 "But in the grey of the morning 

my mind becomes confused

between the dead and the sleeping

and the road that I must choose"

The Moody Blues Question 

I remember a secret place behind new house construction

still untouched, with a little brook; I knew the hidden entry.

It was September, yellow leaves nattering on thick birches

with impossible blue sky behind. My solitary sanctuary.

I've not been back but know

that a sub and casino took its place.

SUVs, neon signs, leaf blowers,

but in my mind it's still my private place. 

My wandering discoveries now unfold in recurring dreams

of curious, fey, deserted neighborhoods found just beyond a rise.

The streets are new, but the homes deserted and crumbling

with just a face here or there behind a curtain, calmly waiting to die.

In these latter years, one seems

as real and compelling as the other.

I once saw a pheasant burst from a bush

and a grackle's lost feather flutter.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Autumn. 

Music: Frank Sinatra The September of My Years

Poem For Those Trying To Reach Me About My Car Warranty

 "I found that just surviving was a noble fight" --Billy Joel

If you're bleeding on my block

I'll call an ambulance.

If you're hanging around the kebab truck looking broke

I'll spring for some kofta,

but I can't carry the world's weight--

my own is enough.

It's September and once again I take stock. 

My trees are a little bigger--

I touch them with the flat of my hand as I pass

wishing them prosperity.

Sometimes a limb will fall;

I can see where the woodpeckers have been.

There are two different ones who visit--

are they the same ones as a year ago? Two years ago?

Am I the same as I was then? 

Will someone call an ambulance for me one day?

One night driving home I ran over a skunk.

My dog killed a different one on a different night.

I felt bad, but kept my car, bathed my dog.

He is my seventh dog. This is my only life. 

I've told it all, about the PTSD, the alcohol, the depressions,

and also about recovery, coping, finding joy where I can.

You want to talk about wars and rumors of wars.

Whose side am I on? Aren't I outraged? Don't I care? 

It's September and the sky is that glorious rare blue.

The jays have been by, and the grackles.

I did not drink today or wake up screaming. 

I did not consider methods of suicide.

I wish all of this for you, too, but peace

is too precious a thing and I'll only give what I can spare.

________

for What's Going On? --"Finding the Balance"

Incarnation In Red

 

"Go to this place," I was told

or perhaps I told myself.

"You will be no one's darling,

and you will always be cold."

So I went, wrapped in damaged flesh.

My mother said, "Let's not show her to the neighbors."

In time, I showed myself,

swinging from our elm like an ape.

"Doesn't she ever stop talking?" someone asked my father,

He answered, "Not if I have anything to do with it." Bless him.

Once grown, I did all the usual things, had all the usual hopes.

Passed out with strangers. Saw spiders on the ceiling.

Angels came in dreams, and as animals.

I was helped by a man in a western shirt, and another with a Fu Manchu.

I decided, more than once, not to kill myself.

I was healed, more than once, simply by asking.

Always, I had roses wrapped in broken glass; I said a million times,

"I can do a thousand things with red, all of them fucking gorgeous."

"Why does she think she cannot be loved, why does she think she is ugly?"

Time said, "Because all the mirrors are warped, and the devil loves constancy."

"Go to this place," I was told,

or perhaps I told myself. 

I was gone so long, I stopped believing, except to be certain

that I am no one's darling, and will always be cold.

_______

Image at top is a manipulated image of Sleeping Lady Mountain, Alaska. 

Music: Lisa Gerard Sacrifice

Birds At Dawn

 

Dawn mists shroud the preening swan

forever in her bridal gown

down near the shore where footsteps end

then floating out to mourn again

This is the pond where my true love drowned

never seen and never found

by water lilies twined and kept

in green and silent alphabet.

Dawn obscures the calling crow

forever dressed in black who goes

along the branch that holds the knot

and every cherished thing he's got

This is the tree where my true love fell

as gracefully as Pachelbel

a dancer to adagio

as far as woven strands dare go.

Dawn comes dim and damp in hours

just light enough for owl's eyes

that see the hidden bower nest,

where silent birds don't sermonize.

This is the hour when my true love comes

in melancholy misted dawn

to call me on and call me down

demanding his sine qua non. 

_______

Seaside Jump Rope Chant

 

Take me down to ocean side

where sirens work in vending stalls

selling sea glass by the pound

and tide crabs leave their gazing balls.

I was young once, for an instant

and strewed my bones with bright confetti

made myself a red flag flying

as storm surge overtopped the jetty.

I married well, a starfish navvy

who built the seaside park their Ferris

They paid his labor with box jellies

who by their envy made him perish.

I asked the sirens for a chocolate

to hide from gulls who ate the season

when I was halfway into evening

and honey sunset let the bees in.

Take me down to ocean side

bring the digger in common clothes

to move the sand and move me on

in my folded-handed pose.

________

Bridge Over Water Lilies

 My heart rides in the petals of a water lily--

my coat a pebbled shore.

Here is the bridge of turquoise stones,

magpie calls, and bamboo bones

with the blind sky waiting, waiting, evermore. 

My heart rides in the blind sky waiting--

my love a wounded bird.

Here is the bridge of mica memories.

the lost valise, and aromas of home

with the blue water singing, singing, a flowing word. 

My days are blue water singing--

in a ewer made of hours.

Here is the bridge of goldfish scales,

old china dishes, and copper nails

all riding in the petals of a lily, a lily, my water bower. 

______

for What's Going On? "Bridges"

"Water Lily Pond" by Claude Monet

Music: Aisha Badru "Bridges" 

Final Take

 

Take me in your arms, though they and I both tremble.

Take my ticket, in the shape of a falling fruit tree leaf,

light and red and now yours, after all this time.

Take me to the harvested fields, cleared of crow and ear.

Take me as I am, with my empty emblems in a cherrywood box.

Take time to be silent, and in being so become my healer.

Take all that I have loved or shattered, planted or trampled.

Take me to my wedding, that melody in a dead bedroom.

Take me to my grave, where I will subside at last.

Take a photograph and give it to the waters beneath the bridge.

Take down everything the river rocks say--that is my epitaph.

This is the take to keep at last--it is all there is or should be. 

__________

For What's Going On Take This Poem.

Top image created by Bing A.I.

Music: J P Jones Prophet In His Prime

The Mandolin, the Bouzouki, and the Oud

 

As we mount the scaffold

(and when

have we not been climbing?

when?)

let there be 

the marvelous kiss of a lively mandolin.

the wry, sensual bouzouki

or

at least, 

the mournful deep pool of the oud.

Let the hangman arrive

on a plumed black Arabian,

the doula with her arms around his belly.

(and when

have they not been so entwined?

when?)

Let her feed him Greek Easter bread from her fingers

with blackberry jam

and churned butter.

There is no word for him 

or us

to say.

Allow him these joys before his task.

Let there be wags

irreverent, wearing bright smocks.

(and when

have they not appeared costumed this way?

when?)

let them tell jokes and ribald stories

so that we might forget our aching knees and hearts.

Let them tilt back their heads 

lifting geysers of Athiri wine up to God

alone in His white pagoda.

Let the blind boy in his dusty thawb 

hand us grapes 

as we ascend.

Let him strike the gong 

announcing our circular travels.

(and when

have we ever left these stairs, even in dreams?

when?)

Let a young woman lead a gray donkey

peacefully across the streets we leave behind.

Let the sky be almost clear and blue

but for one cloud, one bird,

and one sun unblinking.

Let the rope be strong and well tested.

Let the holy man sleep,

his book falling from his lap like a restless child.

Let our memories 

explode like confetti,

and sleep like lions.

Goodbye, the world will say

and then again, always again,

Hello.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--George Hitchcock

and The Sunday Muse #245.

Music: Zorba's Dance-Sirtaki

Self Portrait

 

There's someone in here,

inside my

skin,

someone Frankensteined

up from a girl

I used to be or

never was

or

someone on a greased slide

to the boneyard

(yep, that was

me)

but she got

off at

El Paso

sweet little woman get along.

See, I'm living for two 

now,

preggers with myself

and way

overdue

but we're cute af

in certain light

or in 

my imagination

or 

in the sight of God

with a 

heave

and a

ho

I just couldn't let her go.

_______

Seventeen

 The summer I was seventeen,

I read The Bell Jar

Howl

A Coney Island of the Mind

and Lost Weekend.

The neighbor's garden had

decorative bells

hung above the river stones.

Every tongued bell

is keen to find language

for (w)ringing out its pain.

_____

for dverse quadrille for whom the bell tolls

music: judy collins the bells of rhymney

Trill

 

The planet itself sways--

every sailor and starfish knows this.

It was my mother who was stillborn, 

and I have ever since 

searched for a heart beat to lay my ear to.

Language seduced me in a railroad car,

a constant leaving, one destination after another,

all the way to the horizon.

All my devotion has bought me is these bowling ball souvenirs,

these anvils in interesting rows.

But music! Even urchins carry flutes,

cows in fields wear bells, and Tartini's Devil left him a trill.

Music has been mercy,

from Janis's blue sandpaper

to Vivaldi's honey-hive violin,

I lay my ear on my own heart and hear the mermaids sing.

_______

For Sunday Muse #222. 

Isla de los Fantasmas

 

On the Isla de los Fantasmas, the keeper's wife

spends dawn searching out exhausted birds on the pebbled beach.

She comes to them as if she were light itself

and believes herself to be light itself

but she is as broken as they are.

Realizing this, and wishing to compensate her for her kindness,

they transfer to her their laments, worn around her heart

like dolmens of sound. Within each one, she dies.

With each dawn, each bird, each song, she dies.

The wind is the keeper's wife singing.

It is not the currents of sky or water that exhaust the birds.

It is the endless impassivity of the surface they cannot bear.

Their wings are the pages of hymnals

their bodies are the bindings of hymnals

that can only close at last on the Isla de los Fantasmas.

The keeper's task is to keep the enormous eye of the light

emptying itself out at the water, and the weary birds.

The light comes to them as if it were the keeper's wife,

and believes itself to be the keeper's wife,

but she is down on the pebbled beach, in her dolmen, singing.

_________

for Sunday Muse #219. 

Isla de los Fantasmas = Island of the Ghosts

a dolmen is a table-shaped tomb made of large flat stones

Common Fence

 

Some kind of poison, like a wounding word

has found the vines on the common fence.

My neighbor, fond of bottles,

goes around spraying when he's sober enough--

whole years go by when he's not.

I love the vines, the green view, their wild blind reaching.

They have more faith than a cleric,

more will than any new arrival with a nickel.

The vines are sick and brown on the neighbor's side,

thick and green on mine, and yet,

at the tips of the sick stems healthy tendrils have appeared.

Each morning I go out with my dog to check the vines.

I move slowly. Sleep is an old love whose face is a memory.

The seasons come and go, one dog is followed by a new one.

I worry for the vines, though they seem to be immortal.

The neighbor is the third there's been on that side.

My dog is the seventh of seven and may be a charmed soul.

I can't remember when the vines first appeared, or how the sun

got so high. Ten years go by in an afternoon.

I'm tired and call my dog to go inside. He follows me instantly,

with no thought for the vines, and no doubt at all

that he should follow me. I could cry for loving him so.

_________

for Sunday Muse #217.

A Spilling of Ephemera

 

My life spilled out and spread.

The glass lay on its side like a drunk or a sleeper.

"I await my dream lover," it said, and I called the police. 

One cop turned out to be the Right One and they jumped the nightstick the next day.

"I can't even get arrested in this town," I bitch to my spilled life.

It never says anything back.

I try staring it down but all I see is my reflection and every time it's a draw.

Art for art's sake, just like in the movies. Me in the role of me.

I plunge into my spilled life like a mermaid,

wearing it like a scaly tail. I sing to sailors and to other mermaids

such lovely songs that end in ruin. I am a chest bobbing on the surface,

a promise I can never keep to you or to myself, 

a bright reflection in a dazzled eye, 

a quicksilver tease of things rich with remove, 

a luminous dying and deathless ephemera.

___________

for Sunday Muse #216

Vagabond Ball

 You can lose the colored ball that rolls under the fence and into the weeds.

You can lose the puppy you slept with, the blanket, the bed, the parents as well.

You can lose your shoes when the roommate stretches them,

lose your virginity and barely remember it,

lose your bestie, your internship, your single room, your shine.

You can lose a husband or wife, that bastard, that bitch.

You can lose your tolerance, your keys, your court case, your kids.

You can lose yourself and wonder how in the hell.

You can lose and not be able to let it go.

You can lose your shit, or sigh and say, "oh well."

You can lose your composure when you see how far you fell.

You can lose the booze, the dope, the sex, the waste.

You can lose the name you started with and choose another one

that doesn't have the sting and shame, the stopper and the bung.

You can lose the demon and shame the devil.

You can lose who you weren't and gain who you are,

no matter how unexpected, how hard, how glorious, how far.

Your soul's the same, untouched after all,

waiting in the weeds with the vagabond ball.

_____

my attempt at "a little repetition" for dverse. 

Remember The Alamo

 

"And now! What did we wish to say, that we were not able to say?" --St. John Perse

"Love is a stranger in an open car" --the Eurythmics

When love is a stranger, things can get twisted.

A girl can get sick, being the McDonald's drive-thru of eating shit.

She may cop an attitude, or hear the cop say

to his partner, "That chick might as well just shoot herself."

That stuff sticks.

When daddy and his strophe wife, the replacement who shoots up Thomas Mann say,

"We'd like you to move out," after just a month of nervous dumbshow confusion,

the mulligans are running out and the road calls.

Where else you gonna go, baby?

When love is a stranger, there are still poets, painters, 

failed academics, leering dittybops, locust nutjobs

and grandfathers walking with canes into

the roaring pandemonium of downtown San Antonio.

There are still stricken drunks on pulpit stools

to tell you, baby,

let's get out of here,

I know a slaughterhouse on the south side

where a girl like you could see god in fumed gold Krylon.

When love is a stranger and the bones bend 

like spines of books with pages knifed out 

to hold some lack-rent new straw man's works,

it's time to get knocked up with an idea,

blood out a new plan and join the shanghaied sailors

at the 12-step dock in the free lunch church downtown.

When some oxford-cloth fuck tells you not to come back,

You come back anyway, you find a new high,

you start scudding down San Pedro with no idea

and no wheels, but a sacred heart, a votive candle,

and maybe a shine-ghost mirage of something better.

Slide into the Olmos Theater,

start tatting together the film edges until you spill

out with the rest of the film buffs,

find a tarantula on the pavement on the way home and say,

"I will not die here." 

That's when you pick up some pride, some Spanish 

and some mom and pop Texican deliciousness

before doing the dishes to pay.

Hey chica,

it doesn't have to be this way.

New friend Jake tells me that til it rings my ears.

He buys me the leather jacket I was jonesing for,

and suddenly it's my world too,

holy fuck, I have the right to be here,

and I am walking down Alamo towards the cenotaph

thinking maybe being a live coward or dead hero

are not the only choices that I have.

_________

For Word Garden Word List #3, Grover Lewis.