Elemental

 

I thought that you would be like water

in summer

even if the lake lay

beyond the brambles.

On a road trip, the heat mirage oases

seem nearer

like objects in the mirror

where I first saw you.

In summer,

birds bathe in the dog dish I set out--

they fly without rising

in that finite sky.

Your dark hair seemed to flow and called me

like a siren

whose face is obscured

like her every word.

I still set out that dog dish for the winter birds

in their need.

Mornings I set it steaming

only to find it frozen by afternoon.

There are things that flow, comforting things

already changing.

I remember your reticence and kick the bowl of ice

coming free, ungiving, falling hard and only once.

_________

for What's Going On--"what cold is"

Music: Julian Lennon Ruby Tuesday

Black Sylvia

 

Black Sylvia, moon-pale reflector of ten years' light,

I went down in the mines of you with a mule and bible.

Down there in the bloodstone

with my rock hammer and a rose,

thinking your heart was above me on the widows' walk

or below me on the skewer of a devil,

when there was never anything at all except a stupid fairy tale I told myself in a dream.

Black Sylvia, rocking funereal ribbons and indigo jewels,

tatting dry bouquets from empty veins in the phantom quick-strike,

I panned for what I could get.

Down the shaft was no place for a woman like me,

with my gingham and candles,

but I Morse'd  you a ladder of stanzas while you nodded

at the station with a spike in one eye and a deadgift in your arms, petting it.

Black Sylvia, living somewhere bedecked with onyx spangles

carrying a lockbox under her tongue, bought a black parrot

and killed it with a song.

Now it flutters against the bus-station glass of our two hearts.

A red snake like a caduceus 

wraps itself around her anger, first doing harm, then regretting it--

a living wreath of neurotoxins

hung on the mine entrance where everyone died,

                                                though they whisper like lovers in these lines.

________

for Desperate Poets "Desperate Desires."

Music: Delta Cross Band She Moves Me 

Beautiful Is A Tired Word

 

Beautiful is a tired word but I found you so

with the intensity of your obsidian hardness, and silver starburst flaws.

A black-leaved water lily with 

blooms of conventional white, like a nun

if the nun were carnal, and clever, 

and forever drowning in her own roots.

How like the Host are your white blooms,

a transubstantiation from habit-black to bland bright,

a false face like a lady's fan

or a death's head

and I just had to touch, take into me, and be wounded by

the carmine-edged cuttings you took from yourself.

Weren't we beautiful, for an hour as the day turned crimson,

making poetry from nothing but dirt and gold?

We wore only our flimsy paper costumes 

printed with deadnames and roses

and a garland of sun-shy violets for a crown. 

Finally, we saw each other for what we were--

one a shadow inside a censer swung by the claw of a talking crow

and the other as dim as a dog and as keen to roll in the foul thing it finds.

Beautiful is a tired word but I hung it around your neck

like a prize won for knocking down milk bottles on the midway.

a feat remembered with both pride and shame for far too long.

___________

for desperatepoets LOVE SONGS ON A GHOST JUKEBOX. 

images created with Bing A.I.

Music: The Japanese House Dionne

Not In Love

I'm not in love,
and won't be again.
No rooster in the dawn.
No eggs from the hen.

See the sky gone dark blue late.
No bird nor dumpling on the plate.
No stars, no moon
to compensate

for fools who feel like I did then.

The School For Brevity

meets only on monday.

masters stern as a disease
cut you dead off at the knees.

come be silent, locked away
before you half begin to say.

________

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