What I Did Instead

 

Swans came to me 

as they frequently have,

in flocks like nuns

and in nightmares

rising from lilies pressed

in the pages of a bible.

"You must forgive," they said,

"to turn dust to bread."

Wearing a black masquerade

mask, the nearest said,

"You will feel better." So I shot it

and immediately did. 

A crowd cursed me and called

me a devil. They kissed the swans,

held them like bouquets,

offering them to me like scripture.

Now, I carry a thorny rose in my teeth

and wrap the vines around the beaks

of every talking bird I meet. 

I eat my black bread with red jam,

my face a volcano, my heart a ringing forge.

_________

for desperatepoets "wrestling angels". 

image: unknown artist, found on Pinterest. 

Music: The Animals It's My Life

PlasticHead

PlasticHead, Our Weeping Lady of Sorrows,

does not see herself in mirrors.

Like a tortoise, drug addict, or victim of a head injury,

her protective helmet lets in nonsense, 

but does not eliminate it.

PlasticHead therefore believes herself a kind of shithead,

her mind a terrarium made of one-way glass.

Her parents hand her texts substantiating this,

wrongheaded maxims, ill-timed remarks and iffy teachings.

Playmates bash her plastic head on the sidewalk.

Enter alcohol, religion, relationships.

Tossed up on the shore of adulthood, 

PlasticHead looks back and sees the smoking pile-up of her various endeavors.

It's all been a lie. 

PlasticHead, manufactured plaything of Heaven,

find angels in the pockets of your apron.

The molded face that took the place of your true visage

was nothing but assigned artifice, fiction, dressage.

PlasticHead reacts with cold anger, freezing herself solid,

thus further and finally shattering the hated doll head.

Her mosquito-pond blood reddens and warms,

evaporating her tears into a silver fog--she breathes herself in,

embraces the Divine like a gator wrestler, 

sleeps well for once,  lives another ten minutes victoriously,

then expires.

PlasticHead, inspirational story to finish the broadcast,

you have no weepy present, no golden future, no awful past.

Be absorbed into the One Mind, The Magnificent Place,

regard in a Mirror of Stars, your true, your perfect, absolutely front-page Face.

_________________

For The Sunday Muse #170, where I am hosting the masked ball.

Problem Solver Hat

Let me put on my Problem Solver Hat;
you, the Leotard of Cosmic Awareness.
At the Millinery of Magnified Presence
I purchase the Fez of Authentic Living,
the Tam O' Shanter of Burnished Truth,
and the Toque of Conscious Benevolence.

At the Holy Haberdashery,
you shed the Muumuu of Self-Doubt
and don the Necktie of Numberless Eternity.
To this you add the Cummerbund of Creative Existence,
the Skorts of Peaceful Intention,
and the Jeggings of American Luminescence.

Exhausted, we tumble to the Divan of Divine Passion
but find ourselves encased in cocoons of unending cloth.
I murmur to you from under heavy layers of gauze
and you reach for me through geologic strata of material.
How can this be?
The frustration is maddening!
What to do?
Let me put on my Problem Solver Hat...
_______

for Just One Word at Toads.

Danger

Danger is everywhere--
at the bottom of a tea cup,
hidden in the fold of a newspaper,
tucked under the curve of your lover's breast.

Go ahead, scream;
it's your perfect right.

Those trapped in nightmares are paralyzed.
"You sustain me," is a sibilant statement,
often sincerely lisped by those with lipstick on their teeth. 
________

Another Flash 55 for my BFF.  

 

Dirt

What's under the dirt
in the garden by the moon-gray shed?
What's under the bloom 
and the petal walls in my head?

Dangerous, it's dangerous
hooker red and high like this.

What's under the beat
in the heart of a summer night?
What's under your skin
where ravens go blackly bright?

Dangerous, it's dangerous
hooker red and high like this.

What's under your smile
curved with fearless faint regret?
What's under our tongues
gone dawn dissolve and yet....

Dangerous, it's dangerous 
hooker red and high like this.

Dangerous, it's dangerous
Yes.
______

Bee On My Tongue

There is a blush on my cheeks,
the devil in my eye,
and an angel on my shoulder.

I am a red leaf on a white breeze.
I am the woman who can be counted on
not to do what you have told her.

Still, hold me.
Fuck me if you want.
I'll be waiting for the moment when I speak of my desire. 

As a girl, I went to school
and church as I was bidden.
I learned a lot on empty pews in the dark long after choir.

Now--
hold me. Wrap me up and say I'm home.
I'll press my lips so silent-grateful to your ear.

On my tongue, a hidden bee;
queen of sweetness, queen of sting--
feel my fingers in your hair. Hear and shiver. Show no fear.
_____

for Magaly's mini-challenge at Real Toads. Obviously, I wrote about bee #3.

Memento

You gave me a lock of your hair,
and said--

Well, I can't recall. Something about love.

From the lock of hair,
a head

began to grow, but with lips no one could kiss.

The gray skin, the eye askew, the wild black hair,
half dead--

it spoke in the night and told me you don't care.

Your body is sweet, but the head is there
when you are not,

and honest. Oh, the things you kept from me!
and so much
it has to say.
______

Ursa

A bear is no creature to be trifled with.
She's a ferocious mother,
out there in the piney woods, making something out of nothing,
top of the food chain,
taking out a hiker or two any time she wants.

Still, with all her talents,
she's got a fat ass and smells bad.
She sticks her snout in old rotten logs going after termites,
and when she vocalizes, 
she sounds like a old city bus.

So,
spray her with a little lavender.
Have you ever seen such a nonplussed look?
You can almost see the memories floating reluctantly up 
from the deeps of her big bad bruin brain,
reminding her of a time when she was young enough to think
that she might one day be pretty
or popular
or loved.

There was a time, indeed, 
when she could go up a tree as easy as a breeze in June,
and look out over everything from a height,
thinking she was just mighty special and fine.
Goldilocks had nothing on her,
and even though she could put away all the porridge in three counties,
she was still cute,
and young,
and full of herself.

These days,
--at least right up until you spritzed her--
she wanders the forest on ankles that ache every time it rains,
and a back that feels like a creaky bridge.
She looks behind her for her cub, only to recall
that he has gone off on his own long ago,
and has grown to twice her size.
Now, he leaves her a carcass from time to time,
looking after her instead of the other way around.

Oh well, now there will be a temporarily sweet-smelling bear out there,
rooting through the town dump for treasures, 
or breaking into somebody's car for Tostitos.
Maybe she'll get a wild hare and take a loping run at some hikers
just for old time's sake;
hidden in her goofy gait will be the girl cub of so many summers ago,
running just because she could,
because it felt good,
and there was the whole wide world to head into
top speed,
with nothing out there big enough or dumb enough to stop her.
______  

Opening My Heart

I opened my heart,
but it was no Up With People moment.
It hurt, so I worried at it
until it cracked and split.

From within,
a small dragon.
I fed her Poe and Rimbaud,
Ferlinghetti and Neko Case.

She grew and ate Detroit,
then was sick on the rug.
I led her on a chain,
her head searching side to side
and her haunches high.

Now she's Out, breathing fire.
Beautiful. Angry.
Loose.
_____

73 words for Words Count with Mama Zen at Real Toads

Angelina Aztec

Angelina Aztec, pretty as a poisoned pie--
her snowstorm hair melting at a touch;
she loves the spring
and birds that sing--
just not very urgently;
not very much.

Take the high steep steps to Angelina's place--
bring her tiny sweet cakes, and jelly in a spoon;
put your flowers in a vase,
set them in the fireplace--
lean always toward her lips
as enticing as the moon.

Angelina Aztec is an old-fashioned girl--
she picks apart the artichoke, leaf by leaf;
paper birds, silk blooms,
placed all around the room--
turning seed-sown love
into ribbon-wrapped sheaf.
_______

for Real Toads mini-challenge

artwork by Kim Nelson