Mistral

 

In Spring the madding winds arrive

and leave the winter to its dreams

of fools such as my love and I.

In your eyes Provence does lie--

false Spring is never what it seems

when Mistral sings the lullaby. 

The ring is left to rust and die

by drowning pool or icy stream

while scudding clouds above it fly.

Your wind has temper come alive

to kill the bud or turn the cream

and howl unchecked to Italy.

So comes the Mistral, mad with spring

My love, destroying everything.

_______

for Dverse Meeting the Bar "Wild Wind."

The mistral is a strong, cold, northwesterly wind that blows from southern France into the Gulf of Lion in the northern Mediterranean. It produces sustained winds averaging 31 miles an hour.

It is said that madness occurs particularly often in the Spring. I believe it.

La Vigne de Lierre Magique et Très Sage (The Magic and Very Wise Ivy Vine)

 

The queen who kissed the garden wall

was snookered by an ivy vine

who made her head a cannon ball.

You see, dear queen, this magic mine

(said the speaking ivy vine)

Has launched your bean, my airborne queen

to blow the Brits to smithereens!

______

First written down by the French monk Gustavius Petitgrand, this well-known rhyme royal depicts the Battle of Camembert Castle in 1599. Beheaded by an angry mob of lettuce cutters in the streets of Paris, Queen Amie de Chateaubriand's head had to be used when the French cannoneers ran out of ammunition. The Queen's head landed in the officer's tent where British commander Lord Bupkus Kewgarden-McWeatherstone, Second Earl of Weevilwiggen was dining. The head is said to have spoken to him, though the exact words have been reported differently by various sources. In any event, so terrified was His Lordship that he immediately surrendered his army as well as his collection of chessmen carved from candle wax. This battle and the resulting French victory was a key turning point in the Twenty Minutes War and insured that no French child would ever be named Basil again. Vive la tete! (Alouette!) Ahhh!

For Word Garden Word List--Classic Fairy Tales. 

top image: Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse

Music: Choral Saint-Jean Alouette

City of Crows

 

In the city of crows

in the time of autumn,

over the rainy streets the trees

bend and hover like dying grandmothers.

I have been down these streets

on evenings when I did not want to keep living,

and they gave me their susurrations as a balm. 

In the city of crows,

a small village where

everyone in the world lives,

I met a woman who was two shadows,

one behind the other but it was a third who spoke.

I saw only one shadow, heard only the words I already knew.

Now there is no woman, and I know less than when I began.

In the city of crows,

by the canal where the

coins turn to fish of white, gold, and black,

my blood turned to cold water, stopping my heart.

An old acquaintance brought a loaf of bread to my side,

still warm from my own oven or so they said. They hit my heart

with the fist that had held the loaf, and I lived again but in their debt.

In the city of crows,

there is no newspaper, 

and the devices there die

each year when dusk paints the days.

If you want to see me, listen for weeping

in the forest of shadows, where night and leaves fall alike.

I am there, reciting this poem in a second language made of regret,

shame, love, hope, and death. My body is a wick, time the wax,

and the crows the scattering sly-eyed ash.

______

for Desperate Poets. 

Coffee Can Cosmos Can-Can

I wrap myself around a stem,

serpentine.

A green throat waving, a 

Chinatown

dragon

but its teeth are on the leaves

to devour 

the sun,

and here I am 

in my taxi yellow dress with black frilled cuffs

a vagabond imposter,

a fool in the sky.

The Tiger Moth and I shared a womb,

our mother

a razor blade in an oxblood robe,

sash tied off like a wound.

Colorful sister, 

displayer of dialects across each wing,

our delirium

has made us.

Look at the dough-ghosts jeering

as they

sag in a bag of ashes.

Shine, inventing parlance with every flutter.

I wrap myself around the wolfs-bane,

my house a blue

roof over

green walls.

I carry solace sticks in a wicker basket,

tincture of Tiger Moth,

and false sun for pale children slate-stone weary.

I slip into the sky

as if it were a jersey

a Merino

atmosphere

that needs me, like you need me

though you don't know it yet,

poor cold

baby,

mon pauvre petit ange!

______

a second poem for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.

Image at top: Clémence Poésy 

Music: The Rolling Stones "She Comes In Colors" 

Hyena

 

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

faceless blank walking the orchards in a black duster,

you've brought wine

and dying birds

for my birthday, five months late. 

There are no seasons scenting your skin anymore,

you're a false summer,

holding up a pennant

that says, "I am here. Drop everything." 

In love with folly, and mock moons, I turn into midnight and let you in.

So tenderly I used to touch the icicles in your hair.

If there are graves in Heaven,

that is where your bed beckons

and always there is a woman reaching up from it,

a hallucination who would do anything for you, even as a phantom.

I told my girlfriends back when you caught me in your spring snare

and I starved very prettily

in your net like a sachet,

I said, "I have kissed a hyena and borne its laugh.

Collect my bones and boil them, my mother-song will stun every April blade.

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

frost your sham love with French cream so that I can bear the taste

as I spit it out.

Bring your playthings

so that I can crush them with the pestle of my tongue and destroy them,

especially my old devotion that spoke such fine poetry in your scavenger ear.

________

for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.

Shared with The Sunday Muse #246.

Image: I Dream of Reaching by Ivan Pili. 

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa Your Heart Is As Black As Night

American Girl In Euro Kicks

 

After midnight on the narrow street

high on a memory magnolia sweet

like a magnet where you don't belong

smiling lady sings a lonesome song

Across the plaza, under the bridge

where the cognoscenti live

down where a butterfly becomes a dove

what in the devil are you thinking of?

No mashed potato, no lime and gin

where the crows get black

sleep on the foxglove, dream of a peach

on a honey stack.

Hands like a swan's wing, feet like a hoof

slip the landlord, sleep on the roof

and in the morning, fleece the mark

mix with the rando's who live in the park

No chocolate candies, no baseball game

where the crows count six

collect the cats eyes, call off the dogs

keep the licorice sticks.

______

for Word Garden Word List--William Wordsworth

There You Are, Little Sparkler

 

"You are everyone to me,"

said Caligula, and he gave me a scarf

to hide the hickeys--

when you split with a devil

it gets tricky

not to fall apart.

Spending Christmas at Joan of Arc's

with real saints, a faux fire

and presence under the tree--

I can't think exactly which to do

for truth or dare

except to keep my tail clear of the rocking chair.

Joan's guest room smells like

balsam and baguettes

and oh you crusty evergreen--

who's the fairest

of them all?

Who's so full of shyness

that she can't steal on down the hall?

That Frenchy firework, me

mais oui. 

____________

for Word Garden Word List--The Smiths. The middle section has been edited.

Music: The Smiths Ask