Chronics

 

In the rehab place where wasted hearts

sleep too much like buried creatures

the nurse dispenses dreams from a cart

and the worst of us become the teachers

If you're feeling sentimental

aversion therapy works the best

and for something supplemental

try stuffing newspaper in your chest

We the burned, we the bruised

nod in our not-quite present way

shock-shelved inventory seldom used

but trotted out on holidays

A waitress serves the plates--we break them

to wake ourselves like catatonics;

we choose a new mistake at random

we the dazed romantic chronics.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Warren Zevon

Music: Damien Jurado Kansas City

Hyena

 

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

faceless blank walking the orchards in a black duster,

you've brought wine

and dying birds

for my birthday, five months late. 

There are no seasons scenting your skin anymore,

you're a false summer,

holding up a pennant

that says, "I am here. Drop everything." 

In love with folly, and mock moons, I turn into midnight and let you in.

So tenderly I used to touch the icicles in your hair.

If there are graves in Heaven,

that is where your bed beckons

and always there is a woman reaching up from it,

a hallucination who would do anything for you, even as a phantom.

I told my girlfriends back when you caught me in your spring snare

and I starved very prettily

in your net like a sachet,

I said, "I have kissed a hyena and borne its laugh.

Collect my bones and boil them, my mother-song will stun every April blade.

Charming razor, second-hand heart,

frost your sham love with French cream so that I can bear the taste

as I spit it out.

Bring your playthings

so that I can crush them with the pestle of my tongue and destroy them,

especially my old devotion that spoke such fine poetry in your scavenger ear.

________

for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.

Shared with The Sunday Muse #246.

Image: I Dream of Reaching by Ivan Pili. 

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa Your Heart Is As Black As Night

Molasses Girl

 

The starlings. They protect my heart.

Kiss me and you can feel them fluttering.

"Aren't you happy?" you ask.

It is only the starlings rising in black unison

because your desire has disturbed them.

I am a molasses girl. I am what is left

after refinement. My heart is a vat.

Open it and drown

in starlings sugar-drunk and rushing

headlong into whatever will make you go away.

If I talk in my sleep near dawn,

it is just the starlings screaming from every tree.

I will bathe in the oven,

until my body is a cookie you can carry.

My familiars will follow, testing, screeching, objecting.

They are my dark dowry, the price you pay for more.

________

for Dverse "Strange Houses" (of Lee Madgwick) The art at top used with permission.

Music: Jonatha Brooke "Made of Gold"

Wounded Deer

Quincy Washington "Emperor of Dawn"

I carry the dead with me and they are never silent.
When I whisper in your ear, listen for the echo of the dead,
those riders screaming.

Every moment spent forgetting
has been a revelation of peace.
But still, the dead, on the end of a chain, grin and wait.

You admire me, all the things I have done,
all the dragons in ditches by the roadside.
The dead take the teeth and stuff their yapping mouths,

Slurring that I'll never make it,
never be worth their spit,
never take another step,

But I do, and they are shamed with every movement,
my life a pulsing illustration
that the wounded deer runs fastest after all.
_________ 

for Real Toads Art Flash. I chose symbolic.

My Love & I

Here is your church,
the one you threw us out of, my love and I--
with its pews like boxes
holding captive monkeys forbidden the fez.

Organ grinder, 
create a distraction while we rob, my love and I,
this financial institution with its tellers
become oracles inspired by vapors and pride.

On the beach, 
discarded gods half-heartedly deal tired goddesses--
they use their umbrellas for bicycle wheels,
spinning like starfish back to the sea.

My love and I,
we are dual queens in the card game of time,
clocks and mattress ticking
the only clouds we allow, fiats from the feathers of talking birds.

What does it mean,
you'll ask between mouthfuls
of the stew we serve from peat bog and nightmare--
what does it mean? It means-- go back to your church; die there.

Have chattered your benediction from the primate pulpit
while my love and I spend your money
with Cpl. Jesus in a sidecar
down some sunny, narrow street you'll never find.
__________

 

Good Woman

Baby, I'm a good loving woman;
I can make you feel like birds are flying all through you,
and singing their heads off, too.

Honey, I'm a good faithful woman;
Once I'm yours, I go deaf and blind to anybody else,
knowing only the braille of a singular devotion.

Sleep in, sweet thing--
I'll put on heels and get a job.

Anything you want in this big round world,
I'll find it,
fetch it,
bread it and fry it.

Sugar pea, did I ever tell you how my last love kissed and crossed me?
Never mind, I made your favorite dessert!
Just sit.
Just enjoy.
Just try it.
__________

Some culinary foolishness for LolaMouse. The image is "Always" by Jim Doran.

The Stoned Cheerleader

The stoned cheerleader has chosen her activity unwisely.
Capricorns who carry pom-poms display a classic symptomology--
Clawing of the hands and digits,
Homicidal ideation,
And digestive upset.

Her cheers are different, and to some, mystifying or offensive.
Two, four, six, eight!
Who do we
tol-er-ate?
Homeville! Homeville! yeahhh!

or

Three, four, five, six!
Pencil necks and limp dicks!
Homeville High,
Score this time!

She is removed from the squad, and in short order, from the school,
After she assaults the Math Club with a fire extinguisher stolen from the hall.

Is there no sanctuary for the stoned cheerleader?
No tonic for her malaise?

The Accord of 1519
Outlines an agreed-upon series of steps for the banishing of witches.
Learned men hand down a list of crimes punishable under their aegis:
Intoxication.
Divination.
Conjuring.
Promiscuity,
and "The utterance of profane or unwholesome cheers, such as may cause others to stray from proper teaching."

On the evening of Graduation Day,
The Homeville town fathers arrest and try the stoned cheerleader,
After offering her the chance to wear long dresses, speak mildly, and attend Wednesday night bible study.
These kindnesses are met with hostility
And a suggestion that the mayor and aldermen should form a circle jerk and yank each other cross-eyed.

The unfortunate cheerleader is burnt,
The smoke from her body curling straight down to the devil.
The mayor is re-elected,
And the following year, Homeville High goes 9-1
Inspired by the new head cheerleader,
A Pisces.
_______

for Flipside's word list 9

stay tuned next time, when we find out why Scorpios make poor nuns!