American Pandora

 

Pandora admires her stack of new moving boxes from U-Haul.

After the debacle last time,

any problems should be small

like the railroad apartment she's leaving.

Pandora was a gifted kid, winning science projects and writing ribbons

tacked up on a bulletin board,

but like many to whom much is given,

she never expected the burn-out and the drifting.

Buck up, girl! she tells herself, and starts sorting gewgaws and hair bows.

I was set up to fail, she thinks,

loaded up with junk and mottoes

from all those uncles appearing from workbenches with scavenged parts.

She'll pack these boxes and mail them to herself out in Santa Fe

where the Land of Enchantment

waits with its southwestern way

of letting hope grow like junipers around the foothills and her heart.

____________

Don't forget that the Word Garden Word List is good through Saturday. Come, on, peek inside!

Fetch

 And now comes my fetch in the mist by the slough

unnoticed by the sheep who eat the bursting sloes.

An unwelcome messenger, my double pale and blue,

to snap the stem that holds my soul and reap what doesn't rot.

I'm an altered, repetitious hag, with just the grave for new,

my breakfast made of river stones and set on plates of ice.

The horse may shed its harness, the ship may shed its crew.

I likewise shed this life entire, and no more question pose,

then--like the laurel root--decay, dissolving where it grew.

_______

for Word Garden Word List #19 (at The Sunday Muse.) 

this poem is a "Magic 9" poem, with rhyme scheme aba cad aba, or "abracadabra" minus the two r's. 

when laurel grows in a swampy area, or "slough", the roots will rot. 

Autobiography In Miniature

It was in Oregon at the sliding icing end of the 70's.
A bus had brought me there,
barfing me up a block from a cafe where my boots dried out and so did I, more or less.

"Danny's" it was called. The goth chick looking out-of-it in the back corner claimed to be a succubus.
Whatever, honey.
We all suck at something.
It might as well be souls.

I scammed a tampon off of her and swore
that if I were still here by Wednesday I'd be a different woman,
open a kissing booth at the county fair or
marry a soccer star from Brazil and crank out kids.
I was certain it could be easily done, here on Highway 61.

So, how did I ever get from there to here, you ask,
spinning at my keyboard loom, all these poems and whatnot?
It was when I winged a napkin holder at my imaginary friend
there in Danny's Coffee Shop, Anytown, USA,
bruising her imaginary eye and changing the look of myself,
that I found The Way.

Blurring the edges is all I've done,
but the gray in my hair elicits assumptions
that I'm basically good,
can bake,
and have fifteen cats at home destroying the sofa.

You know what, Bo Peep? Two of those things are true--
Three guesses which.
______

From a word list kindly provided by *. I used most of them and gave the rest to The American Haiku Foundation.

Oregon

61

kissing booth

sapphire 

foursome 

keyboard 

cafe 

blurring the edges 

tampons 

bruising her eye 

candles in the rain 

soccer shirt 

The November Eye Of God

Born with a Fleur-de-lis birthmark,

I said, "De la paix du ciel, 
je suis venu pour la guerre."

Men who spoke against me,
who minced and mocked,
have seen their teeth and tongues curl and fall
like leaves under the November eye of God.

Now, as rodent churchmen scurry to lay a puny trap,
I light candles for those I pray for,
and dance on the graves of the rest.

I am not afraid; I was born to rise in righteous flames untouched
to Heaven and there be judged--
leaving behind the clever, the craven,
and just my body's dust.
________

This is a rewrite of an earlier poem "Novembre" which I have reworked for Brendan's "hero" challenge at Toads.

 "De la paix du ciel, je suis venu pour la guerre." = "From the peace of Heaven, I have come for the war."