Emily the Innocent

 

Our Lady of the Upstairs Apartment

tired saints sharing cushions on her couch

welcomes you with chocolate or a half mint

and her kiss at the corner of your mouth

The landlord carries rain in a bucket

collected from the cripples in the hall

no desert-born demon can obstruct it

if a judgment or her lashes start to fall

Our Lady of the Wooden Table Kitchen

serves you holy water in a little cup

and speaks to you in such a soothing diction

the bedtime tales the sofa boys made up

The weary stars lie down upon her rooftop

and she covers them with blankets made of smoke

In the morning they roll cigarettes and wonder

at the comforts as they slept she kindly spoke

Our Lady of the Upstairs Apartment

with her crosses made from cherry wood or teak

she laughs and calls you Emily the Innocent

and leaves you with her kiss upon your cheek.

launch code

 

soul is constant

a bell whose rope is already pulled

ringing in my ears all day long.

my body is its dog

sticking close, loyal as hell,

but short-lived. 

stars are soul

that couldn't be contained

kissing the dark with intention.

one day my body

past all nursing past all curing

will open like an underground silo

and everything

will expand in an instant BOOM

wow, hi, i'm not

an ant, i'm

a piece o' god on fire across the sky--

icarus eat your heart out.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--Gerard Manley Hopkins 

Music: Shay Torrent Flying Fiddles

Self Portrait in Red and White

 

I was just out of the hospital. It was snowing,

and my spirit was leading my body around

like an old dog

on a long leash.

Nurses are funny creatures, kissing the glass

of the locked cabinet as if it held a month in the country

where fountains flow patients

to the bathroom by themselves.

As a child, I lay in the snow sideways to the sky

and believed I would always have a place to go,

full of tomato soup 

and rag rugs for the floors.

That day, though, I was just out of the hospital

and been beaten up besides, for the fun of it

by someone younger

with healthy fists.

Bent like a damaged tree with red leaves,

I fell into a cab and got the stink eye from

a driver concerned 

about his upholstery.

At the hotel, in my sixth floor room, I kissed

the mirror above the sink. It was cold and smooth

with always that little

gap denying contact. 

With my prescription lost, real pain embraced me,

saying, write about the red of the blood and the white

of the weather,

the gray of cement and concussion.

I wrote the red of a fire welcomed by wood, a white bird

on a black branch outside the window from a warm bed

and a day that ended

years ago where I mended, more or less,

I still have that poem, a good one, full of the best of me,

a beautiful thing

still whole and fine

and standing on its own

when all the rest has gone.

_______

for Desperate Beauty at Desperate Poets. 

Your Only Love

 

A priest arrived by ambulance

to bless our sudden kiss

A doctor brought his bag but cannot

treat such things as this

My jewelry is just colored rocks

like pretty polished hollyhocks

in silver settings gone to curls

the same as any other girl's

but I could be your only love.

A flautist played our melody

in notes so fine and clear

That summer brought her midnights close

so that the moon could hear

the notes, the song so marvelous

the player played so long for us

the priest laid down his holy flask

the doctor blushed before he asked

if I could be your only love.

An urchin took a photograph

of you in uniform

You gave me spice and chocolates

to keep my fever warm

and lucky is the lucky bird

who calls and calls a wafting word

In this peculiar pregnant dawn

his curious and constant song

that I could be your only love.

________

for Word Garden Word List--13 Rue Therese 

Music: Denise King Stuck On You

Poets of Light

 

You said you like the curtains drawn

that lips are best in the dark

and that such things as kissing your ring

should be done in a circle of salt

that the kind of love

that you speak of

when your seance is channeling

old Poets of Light

wearing cloaks made of Night

appears and then quickly is gone.

You promised that on our wedding night

your kiss would wear a new face

a stand-in for your heart would come

and deal the Ace of Spades

for love of the black

you've stuffed in the crack

between three, and two, and one

where my love grows ill

on your window sill

and dies with all its might.

________________

for Dverse Poetics: prelude to a kiss. 

Music: Labrinth Jealous

Carnival Rhyme

 

The curtains reach out

moved by the breeze

for as long as she shall stir them

but they cannot hold the breeze.

In love with the brass bed

the breeze winds around it there

caresses it to move it

but the brass bed couldn't care.

You are a carnival

so the fortune teller swears

in the mirror where the Gypsy

weaves narcissus through your hair.

I write this poem for ticket

to the carnival of rhyme

and curl as the curtains curl

as on the bed you lie.

Yellow the narcissus blooms

and lonely pale the breeze

lovely as you lying there

as empty as you please.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--Jackson C. Frank. 

also shared with Dverse Open Link, hosted by Linda Lyberg.

A Hollywood Haibun TLDR

 

On the set of the submarine movie, famous actress Natasha Krinkova is having an argument with the director. He says the other actors have complained about her three pet porcupines, Fremont, Lodi, and Malibu, who accompany Ms. Krinkova everywhere, including the cramped quarters of this undersea adventure epic.

"The fucking things stink," gripes one of the other actors, a man known for playing kindly uncles and benevolent bosses, but who could curdle milk with his off-camera personality. 

"They're wonderful, gentle creatures," protests the famous actress, tilting her chin as she did in Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire, a meandering detective yarn in which she played an extraterrestrial hooker. 

"They should be shot," says the kindly uncle actor. 

Yesterday was Fremont's birthday, though it's unclear how she knew. She set up streamers and had a concert pianist pop out of a giant birthday cake to play the Beatles ' Birthday for the rodent as it sat there twitching its nose like a palsied bunny with very sharp fur.

"Go play in traffic," sneered the kindly uncle. Fremont raised his quills. Lodi had an accident in the radar room of the submarine set. Malibu wouldn't come out from under a pile of Natasha's kimonos. The concert pianist segued into Octopuses'  Garden. 

Ms. Krinkova demands that the porcupines be written into the submarine movie. The kindly uncle shoves Lodi into a storage hatch and turns the latch. A fire breaks out in the torpedo bay, which is actually made of painted cardboard. There is panic and the sound of fire extinguishers. Somehow, the actress playing Lieutenant Mitford gets quills in her ass. There are tears and accusations. 

Watery Grave is never completed, and sinks the production company. The director's drinking gets worse. The kindly uncle actor wins an Oscar for his work in a subsequent film entitled Lassie In Space. Natasha Krinkova sells her gowns from the musical Chiffon Switchblade and uses the money to set up a trust for Fremont, Lodi, and Malibu, but unfortunately, Lodi wanders off somewhere and Ms. Krinkova sees to it that the nanny never works again. This series of events is hotly debated on line at Am I The Asshole?

quill is sharp but pliant

porcupine enjoys cherry blossom

but stinks like dumpster

(Excerpted from Hollywood Haibun: An Anthology of Japanesque Poetry From The Shelves of The Screen's Biggest Stars by Babs St. Argent, Pompano Publications, 2021)

___________

I have broken my own rule for Word Garden Word List #16 (Donald Barthelme). 

The Ash Tree In Winter

 

In winter, the ash is a liar like me

no different in the copse from its fellows

a beauty in death for its filigree.

Its costume of stillness and symmetry

in the fullness of summer turned yellow.

In winter the ash is a liar like me.

It looks to the wind to lend piquancy

by enlivening motionless sorrow

a beauty in death for its filigree.

The green of the ash has invisibly

diminished as the borer could tell you.

In winter, the ash is a liar like me.

Quick heart gone dry inside of the ash tree

A dancer swaying beneath the gallows

a beauty in death for its filigree.

A carve that kills leaves it fine and fancy

from just the proper angle, heaven knows.

In winter the ash is a liar like me,

a beauty in death for its filigree.

______

for Dverse Poetics: Pounding the Pantemeter, hosted by Ingrid. 

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.

Agua

They search for water with their fat fingers
but would settle for water vapor, thin as faint praise
from a black-dress mother with her big back turned.

Visors are a view of the future,
misshapen fish-eye suns,
blank faces reducing enormous fires to cold coins.

Stumbling weightless vagabonds 
stab pennants into wastelands and wear our emblem,
the sprinting antelope carcass
multiplied like useless inflated money 
for buying phantoms from vacuums where skulls sing anthems

To agua that mummies crave and parade in dreams,
life sustained but life so desiccated it dissolves
for waste and want of agua.
_____

for Earthweal--"water."

In Age

In age, I dreamt myself a child again--
a blown leaf, my parents the wind.

Alone, I dreamt of family again--
my son a child, I rose and fell from the west.

Adored by a dog, I dreamt of dogs--
alive again, and my heart was calm.

In sleep, I dreamt of youth--
desire and sweetness came down from the hills.

In morning, leaves tap the sill--
dog and I raise our heads to the early breeze.
_______

for Micro Poetry at Toads. "Fill the empty parts."

Easter Sunday

Late April 
Sunday morning 
silent but for
shifting winds.
Dead leaves 
hurry toward 
the roof peak,
then, dizzy,
off the edge
to thin air.

I miss you.
I don't--
miss you. 
I've put my 
sweater
on and off a 
dozen times.
My dog likes
facing into 
the breeze.
He can't
decide, can't
stay still.

Easter morning,
Sunday silent 
but for
shifting winds.
I listen
for your car
on gravel
and for 
birds who
out-quicked
the cat.
They are
restless--
they search and
search.
I get up to 
leave, but 
stand there.
My dog looks
a question.

I miss you.
I don't--

---.
___________

for Sunday Muse #52. I am hosting. You are invited!
 

Ugly Bag Of Mostly Water

It's like being a fag hag except with space ships.
Oh yazzzz,
I love a man with a literal heart on his sleeve.
I love a woman with spots down her spine and two tongues.
Who's a girl got to kiss around here to meet a Venusian? 

Problem is,
that cute double-brained hottie with the exoskeleton flinches when I reach for him.
And my burbling hydro creature recoils when all I want to do is kiss her delicately foamed lips. 

Ugly bag of mostly water, they say.
Weird split biped without means of unassisted flight, they sneer. 
Hey,
so uggos don't need love, too?

It's like being a fag hag 
except they don't appear as dancers in revivals of "Guys & Dolls" and get me tix
and they don't
"Oh honeyyyy" me when I'm down. 

Still, I don't think they really mean their GTFO's. 
Do they?
____

Watching too much Star Trek on Day 4 for Wordy Thursday.

Space

Never mind how I got here;
I'm here, that's enough.

Dear Joiner,
take your bell cow and your suit case and your squee face
and go back. 

This is my Carnival Library--
Shhhh, quiet in the funhouse.

"Aintcha lonely?"
No. 
At least, not for you.

I'm the zero-grav cartwheel solo warp pilot.
Rogue star
shining.
__________

A 55 for my BFF.
 

Stars and Such

I'm tired of the mudmouthed,
with their venom lips--
wasp's nests on neck stalks, talking all day.

There must still be a place on earth
where a woman can do nothing and do it marvelously--
I want to wear clothes so soft they make birds jealous.
I want to sleep during daylight, in turquoise silence.
I want you, wordlessly, like always.

In that place, I could amaze with the impossible,
saying exactly what I need, simply and at last.
There, the moon would rise--
a hidden spring matching my pulse points;
turning to stars and such, I would be

Brilliant, beautiful, but with warm bare skin you could touch.
______

For "The Heart's Desire" at Real Toads.

Lune

On the Moon, a girl can be what she wants.
Strangled critics turn blue and bounce away.
White cat on the sun side, black on the dark.
It's all avec fromage at restaurants.
She can spend all day on a roundelay,
and next to nothing on a place to park.
On the Moon, a girl can dress as she please--
skirt to her ankles, her hips, her knees.
Moon ring, moon pendant, moon necklace, moon cuff.
Black leggings with five-pointed stars and stuff.
She is Queen of seas that hold no water,
and boats with sails that nonetheless brought her.
On the Moon a girl can swing side to side
in a silver hammock to charm the tide.
_____

A silly sonnet for your Monday.

 

Spotter

I have written often about astronauts,
and yet,
there are very few of them in my neighborhood
and none
in my bed or at my breakfast table.

I wonder if the loneliness of the moon
stayed on them and around them
like a gray empty dust,
keeping them from kissing anyone?

I have often wondered, too,
at the way they only endure my tender attention to their visors
with my lavender-scented cloth
and my blush.

Here you are, made of stars, taking my breath away
with just the swirl and fact of you.
Knock knock--
it's me.
There were dogs sent up before me,
and you loved them;
why not love me now?
I have the same easy eyes
and goofy logic.

"She's a space case," they say about me.
"She's way out there!"
but I'm not,
I'm right here,
standing on the bright red X of my heart,
up on the tips of my toes, searching the skies,
trying to flag you down
win you
spin you
guide you in.
__________