Lady Poet

 

Who changed you, water lily, who betrayed

and left your leaves to sway half-drownëd here?

Your moon-dazed face is pale, night-sick, afraid.

Water lily so wounded, so austere.

You of many stems but a single face--

no voice at all except poems water-writ.

Who muddied the stars of your secret place,

and forced such a sorrowful alphabet?

________

A rispetto poem for What's Going On?--"The Dark" 

Music: the late Marianne Faithful Sad Lisa

My Rat Friend

 my rat friend

lives in my garage.

i feed him

kibble, neat.

friend owl is hungry as well--

they play cat-and-mouse.

moon is high

owl on the branch waits.

neighbor has

a floodlight.

when it shuts off, rat comes out.

so far so good, bud.

in summer

a hawk eats pigeons

rat is safe.

in winter

i watch owl watch my rat friend

feasting in the dark.

___________

a shadorma for Dverse OLN.

Cirque de Soliel

 

Coins fell from the sun--

I ate one and lived in darkness for a year.

I said to the sun, "I can never trust you again."

A peach appeared in my hand.

I hired a cook who worked in dough and ash.

I fed bread to my dogs and lived on the last.

Magpies fell from the sun--

they mated in my mirror and made eggs out of glass.

My cook killed the birds, my dogs killed the cook

and married me off to an eight-winged ghost.

My house has a thousand turrets and attics.

The sun rises pink and sets red, automatic.

I put a coin inside a peach like a pit.

There's a ghost inside my skull in a nest.

My dogs fuss and tear and bury the rest

in my heart with my hopes and such similar shit.

_______________

for Word Garden Word List--Kindred

Music: Jackson C. Frank My Name Is Carnival 

Equi Feri

 

We came out of the sun like flares

burning out our own memory,

landing like witless baby birds

and handed a brick in the heart before we even knew.

There is the sun, our personal searchlight

calling us not to sell ourselves for nothing. 

We played in traffic, drunk as monkeys,

carrying our Queen Boudica dolls for luck, dodging disaster.

Forever sneaks up, whistling our favorite song,

together with a creepy-crawly to keep us honest.

We have tried to express all of this, bright horses nickering

in the Earthbound Barn but meant for the roses, headlong, guided by the stars.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Klara and the Sun 

Music: Junior Brown Surf Medley

Ode to L.

 

Here is an ode for you, my dear

to celebrate your ferric heart

and an idiocy of intimacy

as valueless as modern art. 

Here is a pot of chrysanthemums

with viper heads on every stem

to commemorate the quacks you quote

and your absolute belief in them.

Behold the cradle that holds the child

who turned to fog before she cried

and the trivia you cared for more

than the funeral or the fact she died. 

Who holds the torch and crosses eyes

at you in imaginary dance?

You, the center of the world

departing now by ambulance?

We were once and once was us

in kinder intervals that fell

into the ditch like cur and bitch

chasing cast-iron kites through Hell. 

________

for Word Garden Word List--Hapax

Mi Loca Amada

 

The full moon scares me,

and always has.

I become a dropped plate 

shattering along its reflected lines. 

Bless the rainy night,

the wet leaf drip of solace.

Thick clouds hide me

burrow-minded from the mad moon.

My fear of what it might do,

or cause me to do, leaves me w(e)ary.

For tonight I am safe,

there is no moon, but mi  loca amada, no stars either. 

______________

for What's Going On? "The Night Sky"

Music: Snow Get You To The Moon

 

Ink Ribbons

 

This is not happening, does not exist

any more than Bogie on the flat screen smoking Camels

and looking world-weary at the bar.

Bogie's dead, eaten up by cancer,

liver hard and beaten-up as a gymnasium medicine ball.

And yet, here I am, and here is my heart

like a twin engine monoplane on the tarmac at Casablanca.

No smart suit and fashionable hat for me.

I want my father's old fedora and his jacket I used to wear

because I loved him, and we both

drove my mother to razor blades like matching bookends

around a collection of Hem and pulp novels and every page

read to her like THE END THE END THE END.

This is prop whiskey, the gin is Dasani water but the lime is real.

This mood, though, it's the view from a blacked-out liner

at night and I can just make out the lanterns at a cafe on the shore

where they drink the real stuff,

spread lovely lies like butter on bread,

and the solitaries read James Joyce with their works in their pocket.

The off-duty ferryman raises his glass. To me? Not possible.

I am the woman with ink ribbons in her hair, erstatz ether bows

imaginary like the humming presses in a 1940's movie scene.

Edit out the brassy blonde coming through the door,

there's only room for one hard case here

with a PI license and a heart of paper, cotton, leather,

but never even around the corner from silver or gold.

So bottoms up, sobersides, please rush in from the rain I've drummed up

and say something nice. It's always 3 a.m. in these scenes

and I long for morning,

                                       and lanterns lit

                                                                 like my father's smile. 

___________________

for Desperate Poets "I wake up screaming: Desperate Noir." 

Image at top: Bing AI

Music: Billie Holiday Willow Weep For Me

Coffee Can Cosmos Can-Can

I wrap myself around a stem,

serpentine.

A green throat waving, a 

Chinatown

dragon

but its teeth are on the leaves

to devour 

the sun,

and here I am 

in my taxi yellow dress with black frilled cuffs

a vagabond imposter,

a fool in the sky.

The Tiger Moth and I shared a womb,

our mother

a razor blade in an oxblood robe,

sash tied off like a wound.

Colorful sister, 

displayer of dialects across each wing,

our delirium

has made us.

Look at the dough-ghosts jeering

as they

sag in a bag of ashes.

Shine, inventing parlance with every flutter.

I wrap myself around the wolfs-bane,

my house a blue

roof over

green walls.

I carry solace sticks in a wicker basket,

tincture of Tiger Moth,

and false sun for pale children slate-stone weary.

I slip into the sky

as if it were a jersey

a Merino

atmosphere

that needs me, like you need me

though you don't know it yet,

poor cold

baby,

mon pauvre petit ange!

______

a second poem for Word Garden Word List--A Season In Hell.

Image at top: Clémence Poésy 

Music: The Rolling Stones "She Comes In Colors" 

Bareback Rider

 

When I was a girl, I often dreamed

that I rode a haunted horse whose head was ether

and its steady breath was my own pulse

sounding through my ear pressed hard upon the pillow.

We rode in slow procession through 

the house gone unfamiliar in weird shadows

pulling a death-carriage behind us

and it seemed that I labored while the horse hovered

With lantern lights for eyes

on each side in concert with the slant moon

dim-blind through silver windows

but watching as the horse's flanks rose and fell.

A bareback rider, I hooked fingers

through streamers of jet mane like widow's weeds in a breeze,

hoping to hang on, to wake up

only to see Thanatos the ostler smiling and standing

At the stable door holding a gleaming dark apple for his charge.

_________

For Sunday Muse #236.

Music: Snakefarm "All The Pretty Little Horses"

The Blind Doves

 

We are the blind doves

as bright as bells in our tree made of moonlight.

In the morning,

children find silver apples which redden with the rise of the sun.

The old priest comes out with his broom,

and the church steps stay still like ponies for the currycomb.

A young woman comes in the evening.

She holds an apple in her hand and cries because she has no child.

There is a pie cooling in a window.

We can feel stars appearing and hear the howl of the lonely dogs.

We are the blind doves in our tree made of moonlight,

silent as spirits, and bright as brides.

________

for Sunday Muse #206. Birds are the theme.

I was keen to use the painting "Moon Over Harvest Village" by Amy Scholten, but it is copyright protected. You can see it HERE.

Linguist

 It's like a telephone call from the gut,

a mirror garlanded with white dahlias where the moon lives

behind the glass, shifting,

swinging a railroad lantern,

calling you by an unsuspected name.

Now you are a brick and must throw yourself.

Now you are a throat and must sing yourself

until you fall to the flagstones empty, an overturned ewer.

Desert the war, go home to your bed with its hand-sewn quilt.

There is a woman there

or a man

or no one--it doesn't matter. Go. 

Now you are a blooming vine, and the earth moves 

with you each time you step.

Beware the imbecile with his scythe.

Carry the fragrance of God in your laced boot.

Use playing cards to confound thieves.

Find Venus on the night horizon during a crescent moon.

Keep an oriole, a falcon, and a buzzard.

Live alone, 

but with the door open

so that April can call you with her rain-voice

like a petal volcano

birthing bees from your tongue in new language,

the thing you longed for

now--in astonishment--named.

_________

for Sunday Muse 202. 

Alley Cat Queen

 

There she is, the one the cats call queen,

the one you find fearless,

standing by the resale store

holding the rising sun in her half-curled fingers.

You quit getting stoned when you heard the trainman

blow his whistle in a nightmare at noon,

but now look--you're wasted on this woman.

Her, with her corona of crows, and pigeon entourage.

Love is lazy, chica. It sleeps cos it feels like falling,

and only gets up to set the winter on fire.

You need those ice-bones that doxed a coffin

but you're pouring yourself out like a tapped sugar tree.

I know, baby, I know. Love the buzz, hate the forecast,

but here's religion, honey, here's firecrackers on the altar:

the bright on her body, the heavens in her hand?

It all came from you. She's just a moon, reflecting,

And she blinks out every time you close your eyes.

_________

for Word Garden Word List #4 (Laura Nyro).

image: Chinese actress Fan Bingbing

Eyeglasses Like Morning Mist

1.

Eyeglasses like morning mist one wakes to

or a neighbor's house seen through falling snow.

I can't recall or summon up the moment

when they began to film, smear, obscure

and soften every object like a too-polite host.

2. 

He is a secret creature, keeping his own counsel,

his heart right there in his eyes, but his eyes useless.

"Here, boy," I say in my love-voice, as if I were a river

and he the one born in love with the blind leap.

He fears nothing, I am his safe shore, kind, constant.

3.

I was twenty, though I was sixty, in love, sitting alone

with my novel when the bus creaked up, its numbers

broken, aslant with rain. I closed my umbrella, got on,

dropped my change in the box, swayed when we moved

and saw through the window my book, blurred, forgotten.

4.

After, you know, I saw you everywhere, and never again.

A certain wave of black hair, someone's careless rhythm

crossing a parking lot, swinging a bag or a child's hand,

I mistook you everywhere, nearly kissed strangers, blinked

back sudden tears, so angry, so confused, so blind sad.

5.

Eyeglasses like morning mist when one wakes to

to find the beloved novel on the floor face up

and opened to the wrong page. Was I on pavement?

in the back yard? in bed? in grief? when the stars tilted

and I knew I had lost the heart, the luxury, to leap.

_________

for dverse Meeting The Bar, "Cadralor."

Attraction

 WordCrafter word list: Property/ Bizarre / Mercury / Melancholy / Indigo / Light / Languish / Purity / Thirst

Purity may be found

secreted behind that borrowed rib

a little southwest of the heart.

It uses serrated light

from the #39 bus,

its lit numbers visible only to those bleeding.

Mercury stepped on your kindness

and pawned his pride

for three dollars and a rolled bandage.

Melancholy Jane saw it all,

handed the driver a bible

full of indigo blues and lighter fluid,

Said, "Home, James,"

in your voice she had recorded under her tongue

like a password.

I hid purity in my messenger bag,

an inherited property, a ball and chain

made from beer tabs and lipstick.

All I want now is to languish famously,

pull poems out of top hats

and remember the bizarre attraction

you keep by the roadside

for marks and suckers

you turn to perfection on the wheel of your kiss.

_______

On The Subject of Enduring Love

I have sent my driver, with the map in his head.

He'd be better off blindfold.

Better off dead.

Banter with him as events unfold.

Pretend you've not gone mephitic and old.

Forever is the thing, forever is the word.

Forever the mounted, desiccated bird.

I have sent my car with the soft leather seats.

All the ash trays nailed,

sick with sweets.

I wait for you breathless, gloved and veiled

tubercular, powdered, primped and paled.

Here love's cricket who last night chirred

lies dead in the mouth of that god-damned bird.

____________

for The Sunday Muse #165, where I am hosting. 

Haint Blue

It is those with glass bones I fear,
bones full of empty
where the shot bird leaves its ashen song.

Night is a damply rotten blindfold
where the goblin-mother
stitches madness into nightmares.

I pay the wind to betray glass riders
who place black plumes
on the panicked heads of their Arab stallions.

I call for my blue sister who fell unborn
from the goblin-mother
in disguise of oleander and moonflower.

I paint my tongue haint blue
and call her here
to grow vines of sibling song,

In threads of peace, protection, 
and soft dawn light
braided on the morning glory bloom.
___________

For Sunday Muse #91, where I am hosting.

Lightning Bugs In July Darkness

Lightning bugs in July darkness
make me think of your Indian hair by firelight.
It's like being hit in the head, these tiny stars--
this pleasant longing with a barb on its tail.

Air is a funny thing, especially at night.
Like you, it seems expansive while obscuring entire worlds.
I need wings to keep from falling, writing poems on foolscap
about you, and eyes that can't help but follow 

The foxfire there-and-gone glow of lightning bugs
In July darkness.
_____

for Wednesday Muse "Night Sounds." I see now that I have written about a night sight instead and hope to be pardoned this departure from clear instruction. 

In The Silent Hour

in the silent hour
indigo of night sky
through branches of walnut and mulberry
full moon shines on
my dog as he wanders
while i stand hugging myself, waiting, watching
while i stand hugging myself, waiting, watching
my dog as he wanders
full moon shines on
through branches of walnut and mulberry
indigo of night sky
in the silent hour. 
______

for the Wednesday Muse--night sky.

There must surely be a name for this type of poem. Anyone know what it is?

Terror

They terrify me.
Turn in any direction, they follow with their
ear-splitting shrieks and horrible, unreal faces.
"Do you see them?" I implore.
None do.
Babbling about leaf-turn and sunsets,
my companions are blind to the horror
of these squealing dwarves.
"Join us in the light," these simpletons urge!
They don't believe in the living. 
_______

Wondering if ghosts are scared of trick-or-treaters for Flash 55, hosted by my BFF Hedgewitch.
 

Ice Cream Walk

You never know how it's going to go.
Early evening, book aside, tv on,
dog asleep and smiling,

I went all zen over the ice cream tub.
Too much for one time, but 
not enough left for later.
It's like someone in your bed asleep-- a familiar sweetness
that disappoints unannounced.

There's someone else,
or you're someone else from who they thought.
The door closes, the tv blathers on,
the dog goes or stays, the book marker is lost.
Better have all the caramel cookie dough now.

So I couldn't sleep, after.
After what? 
After any of it.
It made my stomach hurt, so I put the dog on his leash
and took a turn around the neighborhood in the dark.
He was hot on the trail of something--
I know the feeling.

The further we went, the less sure I felt.
It seemed like a good idea at the time--how often have I said that?
Passing the light manufacturing strip
with its trailer offices and loading docks,
an acorn fell on a tin roof like an angry word.
The street lights were impassive.
I walked faster--no objection from the dog.

Here we are, I said, home in sight.
Crossing the tot park, my dog searched for nightcats,
I watched for pervs or stoned teenagers
on the swings,
in the shadows. 
Three houses up, lights on inside--
We're waiting for us, in there,
our other selves who go shhh shhh shhh
like I've heard that mothers do, when things go wrong in the night.
_______

for Sanaa's "Of Muse & Me" at Real Toads.