At Breakfast

 

at breakfast

your smile

made me want to smash it

as bravely fragile things

sometimes do.

at lunch

I called you

like climbing Everest

because it is there

and like a metronome

because it always has.

At dinner

I made something nice

that our son wouldn't eat.

I said,

starve then.

you said,

what would you like instead?

At midnight

you wanted it

but I

kissed the dog,

told him I love him

and rolled away from you

like a pearl

from a broken strand.

______

shared with WGO? open link

Clover Flowers

 

I have a memory of a clover field--

white flowers in the warm June green

like spilled sugar on a farm wife's sleeve.

I have a memory of a spring lamb--

carried to the shed as the ewe screams

under a summer sky blank as muslin.

In the farm house, an old couch.

a television, and a sturdy oak table.

There is a savory aroma and mint jelly

set out with the white china plates.

My memories mix like a bowl of vegetables,

gravy on the tablecloth, blood on the ax.

I don't like to remember,

even in summer, on a bright afternoon.

_______

for What's Going On? "Memory"

Music: Cat Stevens Into White

Ode to Jimbo

 

"Kitten," he said to me,

"you are the worst kind of witless cow,"

adding, of course, the rest of the usual blandishments. 

What he meant, translated from Jimbo-ese

and run through a blender filled with

fresh fruits and nectar, was

"You are the sweetest, most appealingly goofy lovebug

that anyone could ever meet, and I am delirious with joy

to know you are mine, my little millstone." 

This is how I ended up on the beach, albeit the one

grandly known as the Salton Sea. Like Jimbo,

it is salty and ruined. Like him, it needs me.

There are locals here, and they eye me dubiously

but warm up and offer encouragements like

"Who the fuck are you? Are you stupid? Get lost."

They've made me feel right at home, they are so like my Jimbo.

I pick up a dead fish and wonder if I could save it.

Just some Evian and Aveeno could work wonders.

My Jimbo lies over the ocean; my Jimbo lies over the (Salton) Sea.

No wait, he's right here, dropping the butt of a Lucky Strike

onto the gray, contaminated sand. "Come home," he says.

He looks like a lost puppy wearing a days-old shirt

and is eating something he probably shouldn't. 

I say, "Miss me, dontcha?" Jimbo squints. "Shut up."

(That's Jimbo-ese for "Yes, baby.")  

Aw shucks and shiny silver dollars, 

if that's not love, I don't know what is!

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Last Seen LeavingLast Seen Leaving

The List

Get on the list.
You can't do that unless you're on the list.
Tell me your hopes, desires, etc.
Then let me check them against the list.

Once upon a time, there was a list.
Through all the ages,
through every epoch and century,
the list endures.

Behold a lamb, stumbling through the verdant fields of April,
aware only of its mother's calm presence,
the sun warming its back,
and the list.

Those not on the list will be stopped,
tuned up,
seized and thrown from moving vehicles into ditches
where they may contemplate the majesty of the list.

In the Great Hall of the List,
a lamb clatters aimlessly across the marble floor.
Where is its mother?
Where are the dewy clover stalks, 
the fragrant dawn-lit pasture,
the benevolent black-and-white dog, the lamb's guard and guide?

The list is silent.
You should be, too, except to sing its praises.
_____

for The Sunday Muse #101 and for day 6 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

Canaan

I keep a lock on the fallboard 
to keep silence on the keys.
It's not there for kitty, but for the Destroyer, 
the Hell-spawned vaccuum-souled Imp
who leans in the doorway and pipes up
that the adagio is "nice."

Follow me to my playing place,
and I will knock you down the stairs with a spiked club. 
I do this for the sake of my instrument, 
blind and trusting in every way that I am not.

If we have just made love,
our breath as close and sweet as roosting doves,
do not think that now you may ask me to "play something."
The window is glass--you will fall two floors with the shards.

I have preserved this spare garret
through hundred-year storms and momentary bullshit
using every avenue of preservation a girl can summon.
Now, in even solitude, I free the fallboard,
set fingertips to white strikers, 
and look to kitty, in his terrible authority.

As before? I ask.
His eyes are unblinking, 
and His instrument fills like a ewer in Canaan.
________

for Sunday Muse #97.

Dogs

There are dogs who carry Winter in their mouths
and when they smile, it is your smile
with teeth as white as pitcher-cream.

Like you, the dogs do not speak
because what they want cannot be put in words.
With eyes like November noon-dusk,
they radiate need and knock my heart over
low enough to be carried off and cached.

In frost-dark, I am the Moon,
and the dogs are rings around me.
We howl at every kindness because we know
it isn't freeze that makes us flinch, but thaw. 

Like the dogs, I carry Winter in my mouth,
and when I smile, it is your smile
like a collar around my tongue
from a Master who wanted me
silent, but devoted, and other such prideful notions.
______ 

Woman Of The Year

Sylvia Hawthorne-MacNaughton opened a can of whoop ass,
but it must have been expired, or something, because
nothing happened.

There she was, in the girls' bathroom, quiet as a church,
still as a mountain spring at midnight,
and boy, did she feel stupid.

She went on to be given a swirly by a pimple-faced girl with stick arms.
She went on to become a lexicographer.
She went on a long trip to Tibet, having lost her faith in the order of things.

Who is Sylvia, what is she, the peace movement's fairest darling?
The number one non-violent nun of the year,
the fruit that fell from the fuck-up tree?

All her life, Sylvia Hawthorne-MacNaughton resents that moment,
when the can of whoop ass let her down.
Seven presidents and prime ministers attend her funeral at age 92,

Droning on and on about what a beacon she was, and blah-de-la.
She would have gladly traded it all to have stuffed stick girl head-first
into the trash basket, when she was fifteen,

With her own plan for her life, before God hijacked it
and turned her into Woman Of The Year, holier than Jesus, nicer than Santa Claus.
________