Dear Katie

 

Dear Katie,

                  please pardon the confusion--

mine,

yours,

the weather's.

Today in group they wanted us to talk about

someone who really loves us.

I started to laugh

                            like slipping on ice

I couldn't wave myself fast enough

                            to save a fall

and the laughing became an ugly cry.

They like us to do things with our hands here

so I made

                a love potion for you.

Yeah, too late. like checking a smoking oven.

But,

       I can still portion by intuition

like how much to kiss you in the morning.

I used

a pinch of rust from a love lock

the memory of five black tulips

and 1 tsp essence of caramel fudge ice cream--

       Jeff Buckley ballads to taste

        baked at 350 until the moon turns silver like your poetry.

Gosh Katie,

                   they took away my books,

said I needed to engage with others.

I went back to group today and said, whoa, back up--

let's do that thing

                              from yesterday.

I pulled my shit together this time, not like before,

and I said,

                Katie mon amour

                 Katie je t'aime je t'aime, je t'aime.

This one bitch goes, you're not French,

you're not even Canadian you fucking freak

But she never stumbled drunk up the stairs with you,

poetry ringing in our ears and the summer night on our skin.

More to be pitied than scorned,

                                                    I can hear you say.

Anyway,

              love ya girl

Katie mon amour,

              Our Lady of Tulips and the Silver Moon.

________________

for Dverse Poetics, "From Your Valentine" hosted by Sanaa.

Music: Chantel Chamberland-- Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Back-Up Bliss (Blues Lyric)

 

You know I love you baby

you know I crave your kiss

you know I love you baby

you know I crave your kiss

so don't act all broken-hearted

when I say that you're my back-up bliss

Slip out the back door baby

when you hear the front door key

slip on out the back door baby

when you hear the front door key

now don't get sad

dontcha get all mad

cos back-up bliss is what you are to me

Come and rock me baby

smooth and sweet as summer wine

come on and rock me baby

as smooth and sweet as summer wine

main squeeze ain't got nothin'

that could make me give up this

time with you, my cool and crazy back-up bliss

__________

Process notes! I was blasting Robin Trower's Rock Me Baby while putting away groceries. Now there is a coffee creamer I just have to have, called Natural Bliss brown sugar oat creamer. The store doesn't always have it, and it lasts for months if it isn't opened, so when I get about half done with my current jug, I buy a back-up before I get too low because running out just isn't happening, not at my house! So, I was putting away groceries and grabbed the new Natural Bliss and said, "Oh yes, my back-up Bliss!" That's when the light bulb came on over my head. Sounds like a blues rock song! And voila! Here it is, with tongue firmly in cheek!

Music: Robin Trower Rock Me Baby

Lies I Tell Myself

Born to make up stories,
here's one I told myself
last night
so as not to cry,
because
crying upsets my new puppy.

I told myself whoppers
just as if I were a country rube;
stuff about wooden porches,
citronella torches,
and a '64 Pontiac painted custom blue.

I'm old
and will just get more so;
any warm body I'm likely to touch,
lay down with me a good long while ago.
But Goddess bless lies,
cos Jesus loves a little yarn.

So I told myself
--on a particularly lonely night--
--so as to spare puppy any perplexity--
that it was sweet July
and a baby blue beauty had just come for me up the gravel way.

I was about to say
that the driver, with her arm stretched lazy across the wheel,
was Emmylou;

but no.
I made it better.
She was you.
_______

For Corey at Real Toads. He said to write about your first car, but mine was just a nondescript hand-me-down on its last legs, so I have written about something else, but still a car. I don't think Corey will take away my lily pad for this small infraction, will he?

 

From The Curve Of A Blue Womb

From the curve of a blue womb,
the one at the far reaches,
but as close as the next breath or the first,
the last,
spun from the flung white shine of a million stars,
into this space as narrow as a letter slot,
delivered by a Divine hand into a bone bowl,
blinking,
sitting here, writing this poem.

From the curve of a blue womb,
by way of the jaws, the wound, the perpetual shriek
of the keeper, the watchman, the madwoman,
set into a ready cage,
stripped of language and sex,
set out to dry and called art
by blind idiots with broken hands holding dawn in a coffee cup.

Something has been making its way up the stalk of my spine,
by increments, by prayer, by instinct, by race memory,
an insect, an emotion, a soul-flag strung on a line,
lifted by animus, by glory, by reflex, by holiness,
a mouth on a face on a body on its way
from solar plexus and on out through lips as an anthem or a gasp.

I'm telling you these things in your arms, in confidence,
in darkness, in fear, in recklessness, in sound mind,
in breakdown, in nakedness, in touch, in aphasia,
everything that curls and weaves and strikes within me,
this storm passing over the island of your body-sanctuary,
and losing strength even as strength is gained,
leaving bootprints in blood all the way from the start of the circle
to its end, a path out of myself,
through an impossible gauntlet of everyday 
spiraling up from the half-lit heavy pool of me,
aiming for an element only dreamt of in fevers and in ecstasy,
promised by absent angels speaking from the aviary of flesh and spirit combined.

From the curve of a blue womb,
I come spouting rot, nonsense, paperback scripture,
recipes for holy observance, bank holidays, disaster, doubletalk,
finding only in your kiss a distillery for spirits and the restless dead,
the quick, the clever, the blessed, the crazy, the torn apart, the unsatisfied,
the wise, the wept, and simple coneflowers
tossing like anti-aircraft gunners in the breeze
at the foot of your steps,
inviting me to at last fall into them, 
into you,
into some kind of peace I barely remember,
and which only comes back, for a gorgeous moment
when I am loving you.
_______ 
 

You

I was thinking about you,
as the fan hummed in the window--
as the stars spun slowly above my little street--

I couldn't help myself from thinking about you,
as five white birds skimmed over the near rise--
while their mirror sisters gathered--
first one,
then two,
into their warm nest--
the other three fluttering near.

I was thinking about you, Sweetheart.
Did birds fly across the stars outside your window?
Did you know?
 

Book/ Lover

I was keen to find God,
but books were closer at hand;
so I kissed words through indigo, blue, azure, 
and on until daylight.

If only your shirt were on the chair,
and your body next to mine in the soft dip of my bed;
honey, if you were close at hand,
then I wouldn't need books at all. 

 

Revolution

We are the Workers and Peasants Red Army,
victorious in the smoky lunacy of 1949.

We shoved those kissers of Imperialist ass off onto their island,
where they may kindly sip tea and go to hell.

Of course, we don't believe in it.
Hell, I mean,
even though we have just slogged straight through it,
men and women together,
blowing our enemies' brains out, hoo rah.

For a while, we had to join forces with them,
because we both hated the Japanese more.
The Flying Tigers came up from Burma and helped us;
each plane with a mercenary white man crammed into its cockpit.

Enough of that.

Now we have kicked tail and this whole smouldering shit pile is ours.
My love and I, both wearing military uniforms and our revolutionary caps,
wandered in a dull moment through the ruins of a museum.

We held hands, rifles slung across our backs.

Miraculously, we found one perfect unbroken vase,
and we turned it in to our commander.
He probably swapped it for cigarettes or sex,
but we did the right thing, we honored our ancestors
and then went back to shoving our bayonets into people's bellies.

In a stolen moment, my love said to me,
"I always think of them as babies.
I think how they had mothers; that someone loved them
and had hopes for them."
Here are your hopes, the glorious Red Army.

I spoke gently in my love's ear.
I said, "Don't. You'll lose your mind, thinking that way."

We have blown limbs and heads off,
all in order to establish a perfect Communist state.
Now, order.
Now, equality.
Now, a great China united in accomplishment and nobility of purpose.

My love is the most beautiful emblem of Chinese womanhood.
Me, I'm the girl who found the vase, and turned it in to our commander,
but we don't tell him, or anyone else, about ourselves and our passion.

There is a limit to the Communist ideal,
run as it is by men who began as farmers and ditch diggers,
and that limit is found hidden in the nerves at the tips and every touch
of our fingers.
______

for Hannah's challenge at Real Toads

Third Moon

The moon,
the usual moon,
set itself in the dark of your hair.

At your shoulders,
waves took on silent motion,
but I stayed quiet, having seen that before.

A second moon
lit the dampness on your skin,
making anyone who saw you, dream you.

In strange light,
the long hair down your summer-colored back
looked like tiger stripes, and seeing, I was bitten.

I could still have lied to you, then,
could still have gotten dressed, exhaled, escaped,
slipping sly across a thorn stem.

But oh, Love, how you command the third moon,
the one behind your eyes,
that leaves me thrilled, speechless, compromised.
______

for Words Count with Mama Zen at Real Toads. At 105 words, I blew the count again, but maybe she'll forgive me since I did such a nice job with the theme of threes. :-)

Wicked Chuck and Stilt Laura

Wicked Chuck, the Christian taxidermist, is in love with Stilt Laura, but she doesn't care. Cramming filler into yet another fishing trophy, Chuck wonders if Stilt Laura can read the serial numbers on airplanes as they pass overhead. The pilots must nearly crash their planes, he thinks, at being noticed by such a beauty as her.

Stilt Laura is smudging her friend's rec room, walking around with the burning sage, driving out negativity and also her friend's husband, who says the sage smells like marijuana. Stilt Laura has to duck under the archway on her way into the living room, where she recites some pantheist nonsense in hopes of rescuing her friend from angry spirits, and also, perhaps, to land in bed with her while her husband is at the muffler shop. He doesn't need a muffler, but he likes to hang out there. By chance, it is right next door to Wicked Chuck's Christian Taxidermy.

When her friend Stilt Laura kisses her, Gina is surprised, but not. She saw it coming, saw that train coming on in to the station, saw the bunting and heard the band, but kind of hoped it would hit a switch track or something. When Stilt Laura sighs and kisses her again, Gina steps back, makes a joke, picks up The Holy Bible and smashes a fly with it, then is bothered by the gross little splotch on her end table which she can't clean up right away because of the look on Stilt Laura's face, which can probably be seen by Russian satellites in space. She is crushed, and Gina feels bad. Stilt Laura had obviously been screwing up her courage for weeks, to do this, to take a chance, and if you fall you fall. The problem is, Gina would rather kiss Wicked Chuck, the Christian taxidermist, preferably not while he is working on some poor dead critter, but still, kisses sound great, if they came from him, not from another woman, and not from her husband, for the love of God.

Wicked Chuck sighs and sets his taxidermy aside. Stilt Laura will never love him, he knows this. He is just a bug, to her Statue Of Liberty. Stilt Laura turns around in Gina's living room, hesitates for a moment, trembling, and then walks out quickly, gets in her car, and promptly runs over a small winged cherub carrying an archery set. I couple of minutes later, Gina pulls up behind her in her silver Saab. She'd been worried about her and followed her, and now, she sees the awful mishap.

Gina and Stilt Laura walk in to Wicked Chuck's Christian taxidermy with the cherub held limply in Stilt Laura's long arms. Gina asks Chuck if he can help them. She's all damsel in distress-ing it, because guys eat that stuff up. Chuck isn't looking at her, though, he's looking at Stilt Laura, who is looking at the door, where Mr. Gina has just walked over from the muffler shop. "What the fuck?" they all say at once. This question is at the heart of all religion, art, romance, and even taxidermy, and yet, broken hearts remain, everywhere, and there is little to be done about it. 
_______  

 with apologies to Jean Paul Sartre.

My wish for you

If I had just one wish for you,
it wouldn't be for anything stupid like money.

I would whisper you my wish,
until it refused to be denied.

My wish would be this:
A 1969 Pontiac GTO, 
black as your hair,
for you to drive, hella fast

with my tongue in your ear,
fuck yeah!
______

a selfish wish in 55 words for STWIASD  (and  G Man) from me!

 

Fever

In the day of the fever,
at the end of the war,
you'll take up my hand and I'll give up my place--
my customary place--
in the hall, on the floor,

to go riding with you.
Remember the days when willows leaned low
over the canal, where we girls used to go?
And oh, the things we liked to do.
But you, dear, my Only One, you already know.

In those days when the voices were sweet in my head,
the willows leaned low, as if putting babies to bed;
there were no air raids,
no rubble, cracked and sharp-edged--
just mama's little angels passed out in the hedge.

So now...what, My Pet?
Kisses to catch up on?
Rooms to let?
Do you want to fuck me slow and easy?
I'll take all I can get, I'm not so far gone
that I would say no to that.

In the fields at the far end
of the old road to town,
you can see the hulk of the Junker
that the home guard shot down.
I just like to think that it fell 
from its bedding of clouds
like a baby...My Baby...
where the willows lean down.
______

 

Three Wishes

This day,
as I lay musing with my cheek upon the chopping block,
I may as well wish for anything.
What's to stop my REM-eyes from following
what they will while they can?
Who's to tell the old bird
that she cannot sing while circling
earthbound on one good and one broken wing?

I have three wishes, and the first wish
is for the Amish, the Amazon,
the changeling who bears the mark of my tribe.
Like me, she wrapped herself in plain disguise
before trying talons and flight feathers rare and serious.
What wish might I find fulfilled
while looking into 
her eyes
my eyes
eagle to eagle
eye to eye?

My second wish is a southerly desire,
a migration my lighter self yearns to undertake.
Could I just let go and fall, find myself in gulf-warm waters,
where what is spoken is often sweet but never simple
like the bible hidden under the bed,
filling with better psalms by proxy,
strung out and sung on the heard sighs of women instead of
ladies, promenading and proper,
privately contemplating sultry summer on the church steps 
while holding folded gloves empty and colorless as a northern winter?

My third wish is as southern as the second,
though a hickory wind has swept out the ashes of the morning
to be built back into fire all the way to the match tip strike.
Silver is a fine color for the sky in such dreams,
and whenever I spare a girlish glance at the expected blade,
and shift my unkissed cheek as the executioner sets aside my hair,
I think that surely now is the time
for dreams that can never be,
desires that laze just out of reach,
because, after all,
if my wishes are worth the quicksilver they are drawn upon,
a girl could find herself together again
with the wished-for squeeze, and why not?
If I'm to be mistress of my own madness,
let it be all that I imagined. 
Let it be soon. Let it be sweet.
_______

for Real Toads mini-challenge featuring artist Lisa Graham. The image at top, "Wishing Sisters" is hers, used with permission.

Process notes, only for the truly curious. If my poem pleased you with no explanations, then skip this!

After a month of living my life unencumbered by having to go to work, tomorrow the salt mine beckons. Hence, the images of pending execution. But while a girl sits daintily on a hard bench in Hell's waiting room, she can dream, can't she? And so my three idle wishes involve my three celebrity crushes, in ascending order.

First, Kelly McGillis (on the left above, with Jodi Foster), who is as tall as I am, and who is also a lesbian, making her doubly "one of my tribe".  She starred as an Amish woman in "Witness", and so there's the Amish and the Amazon of it. The "plain disguise" is because she says she didn't think she was attractive as a girl, and in fact was teased for being "fat". I didn't think I was attractive, either. But we grew, into nothing so predictable as swans, but rather, birds to be dealt with!

Second, Sela Ward, who is from Alabama. She's got that whole southern charm thing going on, and is just ridiculously sexy, seemingly without half trying, which I think is an art. I went into deep mourning when I ran out of Once & Again dvd's to watch, and have been reduced to watching her on CSI:NY instead. Nonetheless, her Once & Again character Lily Manning is my favorite, though I never know if I want more to be with her or just be her. Yes, I know, she's fictional, but we're talking wishes here.

Third, and most ardently daydreamed over, is singer Emmylou Harris who was born in Alabama and grew up in North Carolina and Virginia. I referenced some of her songs, "Hickory Wind" (also associated with Gram Parsons), "We'll Sweep Out The Ashes" and "Together Again." Silver is a fine color for the sky and also for Emmylou's gorgeous hair. She said she started going gray in her 20s. 

My life of freedom and happiness may soon be over, but perhaps one of my honeys will swoop in at the last minute and support me in the style that I wish to become accustomed to. What, I'm the only one here with rescue fantasies??? Send me my Dyke In Shining Armor, even though two of them are straight. Damn. But hey, my wishes, my rules! :-) 

dog years

I love you in dog years, seven for one.
I love you in predictive quatrains and in the secret language of twins.

My love is revealed in weather anomalies,
sea changes, and the Rorschach of sunspots.

Here is the reason for my fingertips:
your hair, your skin.

Here is the sure sign of intelligent design:
your dark eyes, the smile at the corner of your lips.

In the madhouse, men think they are God.
Churches become madhouses for doing the same.

I am mad enough--I want to say to you, girl,
fuck my brains out, make me beg to get inside you,

marry me, tie me up, get me pregnant,
make the room reek of us and then write poems about it.

Kiss me in the middle of the mall, hold my hand.
Duplicate my desire in an uncontrolled environment.

Love me in dog years, seven for one.
Viva la revolucion.
______

 

 

Curious

I am curious
and I am not the first,
but I am the one who is here now

And perhaps,
my curiosity is the kind
that your secrecy has desired.

I want to know
how your dark eyes look
when you're restless under the pull
of a full moon;

I want to know
how your skin feels, palm to heartbeat,
smooth and wild and ready as a paint pony
at sunrise in the high grass.

I am curious, and keen to find
if my curiosity is the kind
that your secrecy has desired.
_______

Recitation

There is one book I want to read
above all others.
Please keep it at your finger tips as you sleep,
on the far side of the bed,
so that I must reach across your warm bare skin
in seeking it.

I admire crows
more than any other bird.
You have stolen them,
all of them,
so that your hair against my face
becomes a night composed from a million dark wing beats.

There is a house,
a small house,
I have seen in my dreams.
You were there, my love,
asleep in a cloud of small swirling bodies,
the most beautiful woman I have ever seen--
with a book half open at your finger tips
as if it might, at any moment, speak your name.
_______

Gypsy

I'm a Gypsy--
kiss me hard, see if I'm not.

Ain't no peace in the graveyard, babe--
onliest choice is dance or rot.

My scent's like leaves, like rain near dusk--
chase that scent like the wolf pack does.

Squeeze my throat with a soft sure hand--
Gypsy heart at your command.
______

Summerdale

At Summerdale,
big cats got right up on the dining room table;
They leapt over our shoulders
as we sat sipping tea, still wearing our robes.

Tiger swallowtails swarmed around the sweet-cube bowl,
while sailors called from the samovar;
A thousand sets of hooves thundered down the hallway,
rattling the pictures of our forebears in their frames.

Wolves and wild dogs sang us lupine,
as your dark almond eyes brown-sugared my bones.
Your lips had the power to make eye or wing flutter,
and I love you now as I loved you then
at Summerdale.
______

for STWIASD, with her beautiful dark eyes and her sexy lips!

Sweet Things

Fox sleeps
Under a whipped cream moon
Dabbed into the sky
By the baker Goddess.

Fox curls
In her deep blue bed
With her kit's heart beating
Soft against her side.

Red fox, white fox,
Mad fox, mine,
As you dream, I'll whisper sweet things
Thirteen times.

________ 

face

if you see my face some time
on another woman
when you have her in your arms and her smile pleases you,

if that face fits your bed,
your breast,
your dreams,

remember, she is a thief.
while i masquerade in the streets, wearing old leaves,
that woman has my face
and your love
because of it.

if you see me some time
walking in the autumn,
staring at a blue sky stranger in the surface of the canal,

i will be alone,
always,
without remedy,

in love with you, and your beauty, as evening comes
and you put your arm around the imposter,
under the pretty, lit globe of a light by the walk--

it will illuminate

what was rightfully mine,
but never had the simple grace
to find me.
__________