Philomela of the Bungalows

 

I feel forsaken

like a rolled newspaper in the rain.

Is that You? in the window box?

Is that You? magnificent in a woken engine?

I don't mean to be sullen,

a crushed flower with a brave yellow bloom--

I'm a vine growing in through the window

of your abandoned holy room.

Oh honey. My fingers flat upon

your smooth chest made of smoke,

I am rain falling ever further from her cloud.

Call me back---use your voice of spade-shaped leaves.

I will come, across the lawns and waters

to kneel at your feet

and sing.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--D.H.Lawrence

Music: John Waite "Missing You"

Hymn For Homeless Ghosts

 If I could lay hands on a visa 

issued by lost grandfathers--

some kind of ticket scented 

with summer dirt roads--

then I would wear a hat made of dandelions and leave.

The present moment

is just a rented room. 

Poor child, 

yesterday has vanished,

today was born already packing its case,

and tomorrow is asleep in a distant curtained chamber.

It was just a moment ago,

just a breath, when I was

new in the world and believed the world new as well.

Whose hand was on the door

that was closing even as it opened,

wearing the vanishing morning like fleeting fashion?

If I had a passport

made of more than shifting memory,

I would take a hired car

to shores where the waters say,

"Where have you been

delayed so long,

and why dear heart do you ask, through tears, 

                                                     to be told your own name?

_______________

for Six Sentence Stories, "visa". 

Music: Cesaria Evora Sodade

Things She Would Tell You If She Could

 

Romeo, gosh, I'm sorry how things turned out,

and sorry I didn't die after all like you thought.

I'm old now, you wouldn't look twice at me 

but I miss you still, even so, most definitely.

You could find me tonight across from a cornfield

working the St. Lucy's Fall Festival and how would you feel

about that, babe? I wear a lumpy old overcoat

and sell tickets to teenagers so in love they almost float.

I get feeling sentimental and sad about everything

remembering how you said you were the All-Powerful Weather King

and could make the sun come out if I wished it,

or kiss me and kiss me again if I told you I missed it.

My goodness, Romeo, you don't know how often I still think of you,

like when I saw some crestfallen kid with wild hair walking through

the festival like he had something on his mind

and he seemed lonesome, like you, and quiet and kind.

It's almost midnight and the lights are going dim

so I've got to pack up and go home alone again.

I wish so hard that things had turned out different

and I'd say, "Romeo, oh Romeo," and you'd know what I meant.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Tom Waits.

Music: Tom Waits "Blue Valentines"

Austin

 "Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack

I went out for a ride and I never went back" --Bruce Springsteen "Hungry Heart"

When I met you I was nineteen and on intimate terms

with Beat poetry and Budweiser,

sitting at the bowling alley bar, Howl in my hand,

sweat from a gin and tonic on the margins.

You'd read the books I hadn't even heard of yet,

an ex-teacher ten years ahead, 

scrawling The Wall, Jean-Paul Sartre in pencil inside the cover of a book I've still got

and I miss you every time I see it.

I was like a little firefly and you the night,

warm as July, funny as the best bonfire story,

drunk as skunks and amazed with each other,

we made Detroit seem like a thing worth doing twice.

I get that ache, you know, like looking at a night road,

maybe the one you took out of town to an interview that never was.

Couldn't you have given me your unhappy restless heart?

I would've done anything to soothe the blue if you had let me.

From nineteen to thirty is a long stretch.

Maybe it began to feel like a bad fit when I sobered up.

Didn't you know, you were my favorite high and I'm sorry

if your suffering got by me, and I lost you forever 

From being so sure you would always be there.

_____________

for the Sunday Muse #152.

No More Of Jerry

At some point, there was no more of Jerry
and yet, I kept walking him around anyway
no matter how he billowed and sagged,
no matter the film-melt at his hands, his feet, his face.

I kept thinking, this is Jerry, MY Jerry,
and he will rally, he will laugh it off and start dancing
even though we would both know it hadn't been a joke;
love can be that way, can't it?--illogical, like improv, chancy.

Okay, I lied.
We had got to that point of inattention where things get missed,
or recast, or denied,
and so when I walked down the street with Jerry I wore no black,
but the night lent me its share
and I wrapped it over my shoulders
and knotted it in my hair.

Look, Jer, I'm 3 a.m.--
your girl full of stars, still circling, ever faithful.
There's no more of you, but life is crammed with leftover me;
I don't know what to do, and it's lonelycold, unbearable, rainful.

'Bye, Jerry.
When dawn comes, I'll have to pretend there's a tomorrow,
and there it will be no matter what--
without me caring, without you there.
_______

For Karin's "No More" challenge at Real Toads 

 

 

Love Story

Down in the mines, Mordecai Centennial Brown finds Cerberus
guarding the gates of Hell.
He's alone. Spirits call to him. "Ah well," he says. "Ah well..."

Taking a triple headed dog by the jaw is a recipe for loss.
Any chippie at the lunch counter could have told Mordecai that,
but he never took advice about a dog, from a cat.

"Look at this blood, all this damage," said the doctor, shaking his head.
"Lucky you ain't going to lose the whole hand, young man.
Lucky you ain't dead."

Mordecai Centennial "Miner" Brown went on, with his acquired deformity,
to fashion a curveball that broke so sharply, so unhittably,
that it made him a star in the early days of the century.

Imagine the unlikelihood that he would wrestle Cerberus again,
get loose and come back, curving himself around your dreams
from underneath your bed.

He's in love with you, girl, or what's left of him is;
you with that Cubs cap hung on the bed post and your long smooth restless legs.
Hear him, how he cajoles. How he begs.

You don't look so good, showing up for work an hour late,
circles like coal dust under your eyes, too much for concealer,
and the witches in the break room whisper, "What's the deal with her?"

On October 8th, 1908, Miner Brown pitched his greatest game.
You weren't born yet, and he wasn't dead.
Now, all night, you see it, in dreams, in the rain, in your head.

He had that devastating pitch, and great command.
Being dead isn't his fault, being alone isn't yours--
Go on, fluttering bird, stop fighting. Let him love you. Swallow hard. Hold his hand.
_______

for both Karin's "remains" challenge, and my BFF Joy Jones' "poetry to the third power" challenge, both at Real Toads.