Thought Broadcasting

"Nobody gets me"
is something the thought broadcaster never has to say.
She's a noisy spill, despite still lips.

She thinks, "I'm a bitch today. I need to get laid"
and some guy in China crashes his bicycle.

Diogenes meets her at the diner--
no texted invitation necessary.
She's his bae
bending spoons with hello.
_______

A 55 for my BFF.

Michigan Green Cab--A Eulogy

Dante was a cab driver.
He didn't have a lot to say--
pretty silent like the front coming in
or the energy efficient cab he drove.  

Dante kept a log--
place and time of pick-up,
place and time of drop-off,
miles traveled,
fare;
a whole day's work in neat lines and figures. 

Some drivers ask people questions,
talk about the sports teams,
or swing their arm across the back of the empty front passenger seat,
about an inch from your knees.
Some show up early, when you're still hopping around
with a heel in one hand and your phone in the other.
Others worry you, 
stopping for coffee or Red Bull,
showing up late and putting you past your time.

Dante liked living on his own,
down the block from the car wash.
No wife telling him to turn off the tv
or saying "we have to talk." 
No kids squabbling, bringing home trouble.
Nobody dropping in unannounced.

Every day, the roads could be depended upon
to be where they were the day before:
Walter P. Reuther Expressway,
Southfield Road,
Woodward Avenue,
8 Mile Road, Detroit side, suburb side.

He had a schedule--
don't ask him to switch shifts.
He had his log book
and lunch at 1 o'clock.
Last run as the sun goes down,
earth spinning slowly, 
dispatch taking the calls.

Dante will be glad enough to see Jesus, I expect,
as long as He has the good sense to ride quiet
and know where he wants to go.
_______

for Izy's Out of Standard challenge--Eulogy For A Stranger

Deaf Angels

"He's an angel, not a saint." --Michael

Deaf angels aren't much for music.
No matter the beauty of the harp, 
they're oblivious
and bored.

Deaf angels aren't much for prayer.
Unaware of kneeling priests in robes,
lofty Ladies, 
loquacious Lords.

But when you find you cannot speak--
the break too ragged, raw and deep--
Deaf angels come with silent arms
and balm not found in notes nor words.
_______

For Rommy's challenge at Real Toads.

Chatterbox

I chatter constantly
inside my head,
but to you I must seem silent, as remote
as a wild animal, distant by instinct.

All day it never stops,
continuing for half the night.
How I deluge you, and myself,
though my lips stay as still as a rock in a stream.

Leave, then, shaking your head, 
thinking "why doesn't she even try?"
I do nothing but talk, confide, confess,
but even as you go, I stay feral

and shy.
_______

for Magaly's "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" prompt at Real Toads.

Dorothy's Been Dead

Dorothy's been dead
for 76 years.
I don't suppose it matters that her light bill was late--
does it, dears?

Dorothy loved the flickers 
and dime store rings.
She worked in a stitchery til it turned her fingers rough--
for hardly anything.

Her parents spoke German.
Dotty spoke jazz.
At the last moment, she looked straight into the lens--
a look to last,

and it has. 
________

 
 

Incandescence

Incandescence
is hard to hold,
but harder
to hold inside.

Mary Pickford tried to destroy all her old films--
the fragile, flammable celluloid
her incandescence lived in.
A new generation found the silents simple and sentimental,
and their "talkies" stars spoke
in a clipped, faux-English way
while portraying canny, glib sophisticates.

Mary didn't want to be made fun of.
Honest emotion had gone out of style,
much as it has today.

Still, everybody wants to be made to feel
that their loves, hopes and desires,
their pain and struggles
mean something noble, something beautifully human.
Everybody would like to be young, beautiful, and in love,
and everybody would like to kick the landlord in the butt.

As the lady said,
silent stars didn't have words, but they had faces.
Florence La Badie can forever lean over a balcony,
gone for 90 years,
smiling for a lover dead for decades,
and she will always be gorgeous, and alive, and we will want to be her.

See the little dog running down the dirt road
after the Gish sisters.
We hope they turn around.
We hope he catches up,
because we all know what it's like to be found
or left behind.

"They're so blessed, so lucky,"
we say of movie stars,
and we wonder why they flicker,
though it isn't such a mystery.
 
Incandescence 
is hard to hold,
but harder
to hold inside.
________

for Kerry's silent movie challenge at Real Toads.

dead beauty

Professor Christophe Keskesay adored beauty,
sought it,
championed it,
would have liked to wade right into it, if he could.

"You little troll," said his wife.
She had once been a dancer, but was now a horror,
sucking on black cigarettes,
and as wrinkled around the lips and eyes
as if she had kept them open while kissing Decay on the mouth.

Professor Keskesay could have forgiven her churlish bad temper.
He could have forgiven her grasping, shallow nature;
but her ugliness pained him to his core.

It seemed to him that the beauties of an earlier era
possessed a rare charm that had been somehow lost over time.
How they shone!
How their sepia faces made his heart quicken
and his soul expand!
Why would they not speak to him?

Finally, he could stand it no longer.
Sharp at midnight, he went to the famous cemetery where the beautiful slept.
He passed the poets, disregarded the financiers,
and strode straight to the marker of Babette Jolie-Fille
the celebrated star of the silents.

He dug her up.
"Still enchanting! Still a goddess!" he exclaimed,
casting away his shovel in order to embrace her.
From then on, the joyous Professor Keskesay could be seen
tooling about town in his 1929 convertible,
with Babette leaning against him, her scarves flowing in the wind.

Shyly, blushing like a girl, he confessed to her
that she made him feel more alive than he had felt in years!
How his fine sensitivity had been wasted on his gruesome wife!
He thanked her with diamonds, stoles, and endless passionate desire!
Though she never spoke, he understood her perfectly.
She was the Queen of the Silent Screen,
and to speak would only ruin everything.
How wise she was, in addition to her matchless beauty!

The Professor presently divorced his hideous cow of a wife,
and married Babette, in a necessarily private ceremony.
So composed she always was,
knowing how just the right pose and poise
could bring the world to her doorstep--
a dazzled Mountain coming, hat in hand, to her,
the most voluptuous and female Mohammed ever to grace the garden
where Professor Keskesay liked most to place her chair.

Together, of an evening,
they would watch melting, disintegrating celluloid reels
of Babette in her heyday,
the Professor scarcely glancing at the screen, but rather,
gazing continuously at her, seeing only her fineness and her pulchritude.
After many years of this, the Professor died--
his love had built to such a pitch, that his heart simply burst,
and he keeled over at Babette's tiny feet.

The silent vixen was buried in the cemetery for the famous,
with Professor Keskesay beside her--
her second interment, his first.
Some said she was rotted away,
nothing but bones and gray tendons in a bejeweled gown;
but to the Professor, she was always the ideal of feminine perfection,
and because of this, as any woman who's been truly loved could tell you,
she really was,
and their souls still entwine
demurely out of the sight of unbelievers.
_________

for Izy's Out of Standard at Toads.

Vamps

The beauty of it, honey,
Is that we don't know what we're doing.

We're like 1916 silent movie queens--
Stars of a medium too new to have any stock scenes.

Let me cake on the raccoon eyes and vamp--
You drive the open-top car, and we'll both wear enormous wide-brimmed hats.

We might be speaking Russian--
The silents keep it hid;
We can never say the wrong thing, honey,
Nor confess it if we did.
_______

The Method of Madame K.

If I were a princess, a grand duchess like the rest,
Plucking rounds and diamonds from the lining of my dress,

Would you say to me in Russian, "Little faker, fair of face,
Prove to me you're royal," with your hands beneath the lace?

If I had a little derringer tucked within my clutch,
If my ribboned wrists hid poison pills, cyanide and such,

Would you take them from me, one by one, a sweet preserving djinn,
Then trail the feathers from my hat along my lamp-warmed skin?

Raven-haired Inquisitress, who takes the truth by kiss,
Can you believe confessions you have won from me like this?

Sweetheart, I surrender; adoring you I fall,
And any other claims I made, matter not at all.

______

A princess poem for Real Toads mini-challenge.

The vintage photo is of Maria Doro, silent era actress, 1909.

A little bit of background: In 1920, a woman was hospitalized in Berlin following a suicide attempt. She claimed to be the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was presumed executed with her entire family by the Communists in 1918. Her claim gained attention, and even some Romanov relatives believed she was indeed Anastasia, despite the fact that she did not speak Russian! The case remained a mystery for decades until modern DNA tests proved that the woman, Anna Anderson, could not have been the late Grand Duchess.  

Rhinestones & Ash

Don't say a word--
Rhinestones and ash, that's the sum of it.
Could anything wonderful come of it?

Don't say a word,
Just reach out your hand and ask me to dance.
We are not young, but the night is,
And suddenly, almost in spite of us,

The feeling comes back
For one last dance.
Darling,
Don't say a word.
________


for Ella's movie prompt at Real Toads.

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen

(Note: my power has been out for some 50 hours, until tonight. I was very disappointed not to be able to be part of Sheila's excellent silent movie prompt at dverse,  but my dear friend Hedgewitch stepped in and saved the day. First, she patiently transcribed my poem over the phone, and then posted it on her own blog, Verse Escape. You can find it, and the comments that people kindly left, HERE. Thank you, Hedgewitch, for being a true friend above and beyond the call of duty, and also for resisting the urge to add Vikings and brush hogs to my poem!)

The LDR Of The Silent Movie Queen


The silent movie queen
drops her parfait spoon,
and up comes her arm,
bent at the elbow,
delicate fingers curled at her cupid's bow mouth;
a single tear
falling from her fabulous raccoon eye.

Who should be watching this--
Who should be riveted by this--
but the talk show radio host.

Given a mobile of microphones
by his parents
as a baby,
his mother cradled him, drenching him in her love,
and whispered,
"We're on the air."

The radio talk show host
dreams of surrounding the silent movie queen
with his mellifluous devotion.
Above their bed,
a red light;
next to their bed,
a bank of telephones,
all off the hook.

He believes that she
can teach him not to fear being seen.
He believes that she,
enraptured by his kisses,
might express her joy
on a charming sepia-toned
dialogue card.

The silent movie queen
tilts her head,
seems to laugh, almost child-like
though she must now be over a hundred.

Her curls,
her dress,
her wide-brimmed bouquet of a hat;
all of these fill the radio talk show host with longing,
and strike him dumb with desire,
just as the ending credits come up.

In the dark, no one can see him.
In the dark
he hears her calling him
from across the years.
Calling,
calling,
caller,
(he whispers)
don't hang up.

_________ 

top photo: Mary Pickford

bottom photo: Theda Bara

 

Silents, Please

It might seem strange for a gal who is all about words to have a fascination for the old silent era actresses. But I do, I love them. 

After all, what were they? They were storytellers. They came to a brand new medium, usually from difficult backgrounds, and made it their own. Because the "flickers" were new, there were no traditions, no rules, no customs set in stone. It was wide open and nobody knew just how it ought to be done. 

At first, all the shots were long, as if seen by an audience sitting in a theater. After all, so many of the people making early motion pictures came from vaudeville backgrounds. But when the camera came close, that was when these women cut loose and made moviegoers fall in love with them.

In a silent medium, it did no good to be subtle. The expressions, the gestures, the emotions, were all big and bold. I love that! Further, the movies were seen as hopelessly low brow in the early days, and so the story lines tended to be populist and sentimental. Fine with me!

Of course, it hardly even needs saying that these gals were beautiful, and I think their old-timey dresses, hats and hair are all as charming as the day is long. But don't be fooled. These were some tough cookies. Mary Pickford was a shrewd businesswoman, and it was Mabel Normand who fought to get a second chance for first-time fizzler Charlie Chaplin.

So, I love them. Maybe you will, too. Enjoy the video!
___