Black Velvet Rose

When I was a child

I made a catalog of sounds.

My fingernail across upholstery,

birds calling to each other in the yard.

The world spun

in oval vespers

from day to night

as wind spoke to trees in whispers.

Why was my voice someone else

when hearing it on a recording?

Why did I wake up so often

to echoing music in the morning?

Now, when I am very tired,

I hear the dead speak again.

A siren goes past in the street outside.

"I love that sound," says the ghost in my mind.

Rain and rivers help me sleep

with a black velvet rose in my dream

and the kind-voiced sweetheart I've invented there

says that dawn, or the devil, may care.

________

for What's Going On? --"Sounds."

Music: J.D.Souther Black Roses, White Rhythm & Blues

Nutshell

 In a nutshell, meat and wings

and infinite other disturbing things

that rise and rule with iron fist

the little nest that crowns your kiss

Curse the summer, curse the tree

that swelled such nutshells patiently

gardener saw, gardener knew

even as those nutshells grew.

______

written for quadrille monday at dverse "crown"

image: syd barrett, a founding member of pink floyd whose life was derailed by mental illness. However, this poem is about whatever you think it's about.

Cartography

I represent actual things

with a representation of those things.

Come in,

sit down.

I'll select posture, expression and language

like semaphore,

 an agreed-upon symbology

like mailing some version of myself

to some version of you.

Behold this Orinoco

made of ink;

this range

comprised of bumps.

Roll your fingers over them.

That, is real.

Let us fall in love

with what we seem to be.

Let us share a border

clear on charts but apocryphal on scene

where we may meet and express our confusion.

I am a cartographer.

I can tell you how far from here

 to there,

from where I am

 to where you are,

and at how many degrees

 longitude and latitutude

we can expect to find various landmarks--

happiness,

children,

retirement and so forth.

I am a cartographer;

come live with me

and be my love.

Some day,

I may write you a poem

throwing everything we depend upon

into chaos.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #122.

The Thing I Couldn't Tell You

I wear black gloves, and in my palm
a white candle burns. The priest wears
a black shirt, and offers the wafer
from a silver ciborium lined with gold.

The magpie is a white bird ashed with black.
In its nest, the thieved medals of saints,
and a tryptich taken from my superstitious lips:
Good morning, Captain. Good morning Sir.

I have thick black hair, and on my breath
is the white lie I tell with the tongue
of a sanctus bell. In my palm,
the icon to whom I neither listen nor pay.

So you see, I am damned by the lie
and by the bird who stole my honest word.
My love is white but ashed with black,
stubborn as a mule with thorny roses on her back.
________

for Sunday Muse #99.

Aphelion & Perihelion --- A Child's Anthem

I was a wall-walking ballerina 
dancing in an incinerator,
arms out, bending each way,
light as ash but not consumed.

Now I'm heavy as an old oak clock,
creaky as a forgotten stair,
yet somehow, I know the language of birds.

I'm hard to see in bright light
~always was~
but I shine continuously, weightless.
_______

for Friday Flash 55 at VerseEscape.

Photography by Christine Kapuschinsky Johnson.

A House, In November

Wednesday, there are wind chimes in the Asian pear tree.

Thursday, a woodpecker visits the white walnut.
We watch the woodpecker; hear the chimes.

Saturday, it snows on the red leaves of the Asian pear tree.
Sunday, the woodpecker finds the feeder empty, and the chair.
Tuesday, the walk is thick with red on white--the chimes are silver.

Fascination

I defer in all things to the gray cat
perched on the porch rail as the sun goes down.
His disinterest is my fascination.

The moon slipping from the sky is another fascination
of mine, and too, I think, of the gray cat
though he is silent as he shakes himself and jumps down.

You are the one I can't forget, like a book I can't put down
written by a stranger untouched by my fascination 
with stories, with you, with the moon and the gray cat.

The gray cat pounces down on shadows; I watch in fascination. 
_____

a tritina for fussy little forms with Marian.

this poem is an homage of sorts for one of my favorite poems--"untitled" by Carl Rickert, which appeared in the September 1973 issue of The Speakeasy Culture. 

With some trepidation, I am adding Carl's poem here because it is impossible to find and should be read widely, imo. I have tried to search him out to get permission, but after 45 years it's impossible. Carl, if you see this and object, let me know and i will remove it. Again i stress that the following is a poem by CARL RICKERT, not me, but my poem at top is an homage to it and its ideas about gray cats.

"Untitled" by Carl Rickert

No one at all that night

saw the moon drop from the sky,

save myself

and a gray cat walking by,

looking

perhaps,

for another gray cat,

looking

for something,

looking,

maybe,

for me,

because I am the master of the gray cat,

and life,

my life,

the cat's life,

your life,

maybe,

if you give it to me,

and the gray cat,

The gray cat helps me make my decisions,

decisions on life,

my life and your life,

if that's your desire,

The gray cat has no sense of responsibility,

seeks only pleasure

and other gray cats,

at night,

or in the day

if it has that feeling,

but I seek his answer,

perhaps because of that lack of responsibility,

I have that,

you know,

responsibility,

for the gray cat,

and you,

if you would like,

my life would change,

and yours,

and the gray cat's,

but chances

are born in the moon we watched,

until last night,

when it dropped from the sky,

and only I was the witness,

for the gray cat

upon questioning,

saw little

save another gray cat,

or the hope of seeing another gray cat,

so you'll have to take my word,

and the fact

that the moon no longer appears,

and that despite the change in my life

I still want you,

waiting of course

to see what the gray cat will say.

Blue Swans, Blue Stars

He said I was blue swans, blue stars,

a painted cup on a sill, reflected  lights in the rain.

I said I am a burning book, cinders, char. 

He said I was blue swans, blue stars.

I said I am a loosened stone, gravel, tar.

He whispered, honey and  hemlock sing the same.

He said I was blue swans, blue stars,

a painted cup on a sill, reflected lights in the rain. 

_________

day 17

 

In My Room, A Cricket

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Outside, his million brothers, star-drunk beneath a lemon tree.

Why these walls? Why his song? Why my clocks, taken apart?

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Why alleys? Why walkways? Why my brushes sick from art?

Why my open window and the summer drowsing carelessly?

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Outside, his million brothers, star-drunk beneath a lemon tree.

_________

A triolet for day 12.

 

Warmth From Other Sources

Hidden in a bear's pelt
government bean counters discover
the weather thief.

Clocks being notoriously duplicitous,
they call in the air strike,
but the pilots, raw with romantic disappointments,
stay drunk on the tarmac.

Winter comes. 
Whole departments are deleted.
The bear sleeps.

And the weather thief?
She escapes to find
warmth from other sources. 
______

for my BFF's Friday 55. 

Between Order And Chaos

Between order and chaos,
in the interstice between air and swallow's wing--
in the silent interlude between rippled pond and snow-dusted ice,
there lies the thing I have wanted to say.

I have been thinking about the difference between old glass and new;
whether the wave is perceived or actual--
in the pane, the mind, or somewhere beyond.
And....is the smooth order of new glass wanted--needed--
in every window, upstairs and down, from vane to garden shed?

Today, I thought of your hands,
swallow-small; and like them, never still.
I thought of you holding a knife, an orchard apple, a fallen bird, my face.
I knelt among the tomato vines held on their stakes,
thick with green leaves going yellow around red offerings.
I sobbed. 
I couldn't help myself.

In the indigo between coin-moon and a million stars,
between ink and score where the fermata speaks to a single heart beat,
there lies the explanation, the cold-water borderline
between order and chaos, wrapped in silk, 
held between fingers like a tarot card.

Oh...chaos the surface and the core at once.
Order, these lines, these rows, these days and weeks;
the ones I live in now,
with my routines, my dog, and this terrible, lovely music
pressed between my ear and the late-year air--
for you,
for angels and devils,
for sane and insane,
carried on a gust that swirls forward in a round dance,
no end or beginning,
called by no one, moving through rows and woods, over water, into winter.
_______

Strange House

I lived for years in a strange house
where the sun only rose when it would
and sporadically.

The fields around this strange house
were stunted, though I crouched and sang
Billie Holiday for the yellow shoots.

In the night--which lasted days at a time--
I wrote letters and mailed them at the foot of an oak.
In the Fall, I could not tell them from the leaves and acorns.

Winter came; then Spring. Fall followed,
then Winter, and Winter again.
I had a million scarves. Hundreds of boots. A candle. Half a ring.

Why did I stay? It seems so foolish now.
I made biscuits and pies just to fill the strange house,
if only with aromas. The sun rose less frequently.

Finally, a letter came. 
"Please leave now," it read.
And I did.

Neptune's Dinner

Eileen searches pasta packages for bird's nests;
the banister for bowling balls. 

When she makes spaghetti for her absent son,
there is a great flapping and avian concern--rightly so--
about the eggs in the colander.

On the way to the guest room, strange ghosts who arrived by train
are sent to the sides of the staircase by a perfect hook.
Eileen apologizes, though they are incorporeal
and therefore unhurt.

She feels responsible, does our Eileen,
for perished sparrows and
heavy accidents.

Eileen descends to 20,000 fathoms
for some solitude and quiet,
but at her feet she finds little lobsters with rubber bands around their claws.
They are intended for Neptune's dinner,
and cannot deliver the mail.

Where is Eileen's son?
Is he happy on a beach somewhere, with a girl Eileen hasn't even met?
She joins a bowling league, but they don't bowl--
they rescue birds from tornados, and in doing so find purpose
and a comforting sense that when they are ghosts
wind won't matter anymore.

Neptune dissolves at last, perhaps allowing Eileen to believe again in something--
maybe lobsters signing the Gettysburg Address for the hearing impaired
under a blue sky
where being alone is common
and doesn't make her feel ashamed, and like dying.
_____

For "the crack in everything", part of Play It Again Toads.

Wreath of Roses

I used stems to hold them in my hair,
the red of roses balanced there
to fire a fever in my head
a senseless sleeping, loved instead

Of you, a pool of glossy surface,
silent as some deathly circus
where all is mud and lily root--
cold lips to do what kiss can do

When offered with such artful lack
to turn my wreath of roses black.
______

For Karin's "artifice" challenge at Real Toads, which gave me the poem I needed to go with the image for Mag 301. Image by Ed Ross.

Note to my readers: comment moderation is now enabled. 

Rose

What a pretty pram, my dear, so fey and queer and quiet--
Emptiness so elegant I feel compelled to buy it

And fill it full of roses, dear, their heads cut clean and slanted
At each stem like diadems of royalty recanted.

I'll roll them 'neath a crescent moon, my dear to soothe your sorrow--
To plant again by Gypsy men I'll hire for gold tomorrow.
______ 

For Kerry's micro-poetry challenge at Real Toads.

This is the first poem written in my gorgeous new journal given to me by Hedgewitch. 

Black Walnut

The moon shows through the filigree
of my black walnut tree's
branches.

All summer, the boastful sun 
kept after her, one
day into the next,

And though she did not love him,
she needed him. She thinned
by degrees.

The moon paints my black walnut tree silver
where the thick green of her
is gone.

The sun comes less and less, bored
with his conquest;
the moon stays, but is mad, 

And my walnut tree lays her beauty down
upon the earth cold and brown,
indifferent as a grave.
__________

Wampus Cat

They said I was sneaking around,
soft-stepping,
silent as a grudge,
listening in on their conversation.

It's their council fire, you know.
They discuss lacrosse,
and similar such like.
They imagine that women burn to know what they yap about.

The shaman set aside his jerky,
and rose up.
My half-grown niece has more magic in her Juju dolls
than ten medicine men working the mystical expression.

Anyway, they think they turned me into a wampus cat
as punishment for my wicked spying.
Rare, the wampus cat
that I already was, already was, already was.

Many's the dawn when I saw white man's angels coming down;
many the feathers in my wampus cat mouth
by the time I was finished fooling with them
and the sun rose high.

Lacrosse player,
where is your wife?
Soft stepping with the wampus cat
to a place where fallen pine needles are welcoming and warm.

They said I was sneaking around;
I was.
They said the shaman turned me into a wampus cat;
too late for that.

Good thing, I think,
when men get solemn and injured like they do,
that a wampus cat, like any cat,
cannot smile and is sly enough to keep her eyes downcast.

_______

for Margaret's challenge at Real Toads!