Mi Loca Amada

 

The full moon scares me,

and always has.

I become a dropped plate 

shattering along its reflected lines. 

Bless the rainy night,

the wet leaf drip of solace.

Thick clouds hide me

burrow-minded from the mad moon.

My fear of what it might do,

or cause me to do, leaves me w(e)ary.

For tonight I am safe,

there is no moon, but mi  loca amada, no stars either. 

______________

for What's Going On? "The Night Sky"

Music: Snow Get You To The Moon

 

Lessons Learned In Childhood

 

My mother called mahjong pieces "Chinese tiles." 

They were a pretty mystery to me.

A symbol can be like a mute with something to say;

its tongue tied by one's own ignorance.

Gingerbread men have commonalities with real ones.

They can be sweet, or fragile,

and (some of them) smell good and draw me in.

Sometimes there is another one after this one; sometimes not.

At thirteen I was prescribed eyeglasses.

Astigmatism made everything unclear but luminous,

sending blurs of light out from their centers.

You are still unclear to me. You still send out light from your center.

A finger's width is the difference between the next stair

and a broken leg. Catch your heel

and life takes on a whole new itinerary.

There are springes everywhere, so my mother said as she laid more for me.

I couldn't trust my mother, and she taught me

not to trust myself either.

I was in love with the neighbor's purple peonies, so brief and lovely.

I am both fox and hen, and don't know how to love you.

You are Chinese tiles. I am mute. I'm sorry, and can't explain why.

________

for Word Garden Word List: Amy Lowell. 

springes = traps

Music: Steve Nicks "Talk To Me"

Jenny Mechanical

 

Jenny Mechanical is too mecha for the main house

but too human for the tool shed.

She can turn stripped screws, whip up a perfect grilled cheese,

provide power during an outage and mow and mulch while she's at it.

She also dreams of a recharging kiss and poems appear at her fingertips.

Jenny had a little lamb whose fleece was made of synthetic polymer

and everywhere that Jenny went, the lamb was sure to follow.

See Jenny Mechanical, stopped in the middle of the front yard,

telling her lamb to look at the new leaves with its LED eyes.

She has always been a perfectly average 5 foot 3, can open any jar, pick any lock,

but she is crying into its faux wool because of something beyond utility.

She is needed but not loved, maintained but casually disposable,

and the poems at her fingertips have diverged from factory settings,

glowing pink

then rose

then lavender

then blue

then indigo

like space that has no atmosphere yet sustains those billion burning stars.

_________

for Sunday Muse #213. 

Testament

I folded a love letter

inside a bible

and left them both

on a table

in the garden

overnight

in the rain.

As expected,

my new lover 

appeared

wearing the sun

and the wind

like epaulets 

on his shoulders.

With a strong open fist

he broke my loneliness.

A dove flies

to cold

lofty

Ararat.

_____

for my BFF's most entirely awesome 55 thang.