Bachelor Rat

 

There is a bachelor rat

living alone in my neighbor's garage

as I also live alone,

a single dog lady in my lighted box. 

I have begun to feed him

leaving a Tupperware of dog kibble,

french fries, a leaf of lettuce

or whatever, out for him last thing each night.

Watching from the window

I see him, five minutes later, skittering

across the yard like a pleasure

boat on choppy seas, to claim his plunder. 

I eat in the evenings

in front of tv, solving mysteries

as the bachelor rat

also does, always alert for killers.

Predators concern us both

(mine call me up, his lay low in the ground ivy.)

The neighbor behind tries

to poison him, as social media tries to poison me.

We just woke up in these skins,

he in his, me in mine, flesh costumes of the moment,

costumes that get hungry, cold,

ill, old, and any number of other similarities.

Why feed that bachelor rat?

some may ask, aghast. He's nothing but vermin.

I just feel like there are so many cats

set on doing harm to one little rat, or one old woman,

and so I set out his Tupperware

meal last thing while letting my dog out each night.

I wish him good fortune, my simpatico

bachelor rat, to make it through the winter all right.

_______________

Wings & Anvils

 

September was vivid as a kiss

or a hard push back then--

one scarce, one common.

The smell of a new eraser, the pungent insistence

of a just-opened jar of paste, the grind of a sharpener,

or the sound of snubbed scissors cutting through 

construction paper--I remember them all.

I loved the school library with the soft edges

of books read a thousand times, the dark wooden

window frames, the rows of tables like boats at a marina.

September also meant doctor's waiting rooms,

the assault of hospital smells and rooms full of

us guilty damaged goons, our mothers' faces

as brittle as dropped plates. We're defectives and know it.

I remember. Here is my hat being thrown ahead,

out of sight, down the hall. Here is the boy touching his face

while staring at mine, afraid he might catch the ugly.

Here are the mimics, a circus of relentless clowns.

I remember all of it, though to look at me, you'd never know. 

That child rides on my shoulders and inside my mouth--

the one that could not make herself understood.

I was educated and the lessons were both wings and anvils,

the thorn in my flesh that God gave His stunned child.

________________-

for What's Going On?--"Education."

Image: The Broken Witness by MistiStudios, redbubble. 

Music: Morrissey November Spawned A Monster

Maury Wills

 

When I see the blackbirds and sparrows 

                                          speeding low in the sky

                                          ahead of a storm,

They remind me of a childhood summer

                                         and Maury Wills, the

                                         stolen base king.

I remember my father's barber crowing at the tv,

                                       "What a crackerjack!"

                                       as I waited in a chair, feet dangling.

When I see the red squirrel take over the feeder

                                      despite being smaller,

                                       I think of Maury Wills beating the odds

and the throw to second.

He disrupted the pitcher, catcher, and fielders

                                    like the neighbor cat in the ground ivy

                                    sure to pounce, just a matter of when.

His feet were his fortune, raising the dust sliding in

                                     on legs purple with dreadful bruises

                                      and red with rash, the Dodgers' captain

doing whatever it took.

When I see the grackle strutting with its gotten peanut

                                  I think of Maury Wills'  bright jewelry--

                                  the Hickock Belt, MVP and World Series rings.

The resourceful chipmunk makes me wonder, what is it like

                                to be smaller, quicker, cheeks stuffed

                                 while the circling hawk goes hungry?

Then I realize that I already know these things, even as

                                the years steal on me and I grow slower

                                sitting in my sanctuary, watching the action.

_________________

For Word Garden Word List--Mary Oliver. 

Process notes: Maury Wills is a lifelong favorite of mine, first for his baseball skills, and later for other things as well. He grew up in the projects in Washington DC and had no idea a black kid could hope to play in the majors until a Senators player named Jerry Priddy showed up at his local diamond to talk to the kids playing ball there. Wills never forgot it. Too small to be a slugger, he learned to switch hit and to use his speed, a forgotten weapon in baseball in an era of burly bashers.

   It was a long road to the big show for him, but when he finally got his chance, he ran with it (pun intended!). He went on to become captain of the Los Angeles Dodgers, break Ty Cobb's single season stolen base record, win an MVP award in 1962 and the Hickok Belt for sportsman of the year across all sports. He even made numerous appearances on television variety shows, playing the banjo--typical of him to choose such an instrument. 

   When his baseball career ended, and everything he had worked so hard to excel at was over, things changed. A girlfriend introduced him to cocaine, and Wills fell down, all the way down, into full-blown addiction. It took time, but once again the tenacity and drive that served him in baseball served him again in recovery and like me, he lived sober for the rest of his days. Maury Wills lived by his own lights, found great success his own way, and beat the devil to finish up on a high note. 

   I have tried here to combine Mary Oliver's eye for the everyday wonder of the natural world with the story of a childhood hero, Maury Wills. 

Music: Tracey Chapman Fast Car

Ambition

I am not the girl for you.
Mornings and evenings, 
I am lost in the roil and flock of myself.

Here is the hungry
coming out from me,
motion by slim margins denied.

I'm all sharp looks,
resenting restraint,
ready to die
if by dying I rise.

Do you think
you're the sky?
You look to me like a stick on strings,
a store-bought bell.

I weigh 
nothing,
amount to
nothing,

like love, or thermals.
But instinct drives me,
driven spiral-mad to know

That the rodent heartbeat of my inborn ambition
is out there,
stirring the leaves,
heading for its hole,

While I strain and scream,
knowing I can never spot it 
from here.
______
 

Successes, Enumerated

I.

Congratulations! I didn't get the job.
Useful degrees never bore my name,
but the inside covers of used paperbacks did.

Tolstoy, Ferlinghetti and Bronte made poor references,
had no current phone or email,
and though I came to know them well, they had little to say about me.

Way to go! I stayed for years in part time positions
because there was staring out the window to be done,
bad poetry to be written,
and rain to be contemplated.

II.

Fan-freaking-tastic! The acrimonious divorce,
the shit-canning of thirteen years of trying to be
straight,
responsible,
respectable, and all that jazz.

So sorry, Mr. and Ms. Notgoodenough.
Hello, solitude. Hello to bashing away at the hunk of marble
inside of which I had been hiding.

I got rid of my slave name.
I loved several wrong but exciting persons,
too much and briefly, but oh boy. (though most of them weren't.)

And now here I am. Ta-da! 
With the house on fire,
my tail on fire,
and my words on fire.

Don't call 9-1-1, I want to burn.

III.

Somewhere, in some non-existent suburban shadowland,

there is a sensible person who put her books away

along with her red shoes.

She is liked, I guess, by all,

whoever she is,

blinking on and off as required, like a traffic light.

______

 
For Izy's Out of Standard at Real Toads.

 
 

Poetry, Writing Itself

I am not a Tweet.
I am sequential and chaptered.
You can't scroll to the good part.

I am not a plastic flower.
I am a bag of seeds,
and the picture on the front is only a hired artist's notion.

I am a vine that's been winding for years.
I'm not what you're used to.
I am rare, and thorned.

I have a bed, but you're not invited.
Not yet.
Grapes aren't wine fresh off the vine.

I am poetry, writing itself.
I am gorgeous blooms.
I will be these things seen or unseen, by sun or by moon.
_______

art at top by Gustav Klimt. 

Dorothy's Been Dead

Dorothy's been dead
for 76 years.
I don't suppose it matters that her light bill was late--
does it, dears?

Dorothy loved the flickers 
and dime store rings.
She worked in a stitchery til it turned her fingers rough--
for hardly anything.

Her parents spoke German.
Dotty spoke jazz.
At the last moment, she looked straight into the lens--
a look to last,

and it has. 
________

 
 

Letter To My Love

My love, beware of snakes--
skin they understand, but they have no arms,
and so, in jealous anger, will do what it takes
to see you come to bitten harm.

Use every skill, every charm
to remind them of their low degree,
and then, carrying their empty skins, ride on untouchably.

Peacock feathers in your hair
denote the flight of thought and dream,
with beauty a posing passenger there,
mere shade to what you are, and seem.

The leopardess, that lonesome queen
bestows her outer cloak enchanted
to help you leave the snakes laid low, their venom weak, destroyed, recanted.
______

A rhyme royal for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads, featuring the art of W.T. Benda.

 

banshee

I am not here at your summoning.
I do not blush,
and while I am obedient in my own way,
at my own peculiar hour,
you don't know a thing about me
nor command me in any manner at all.

At the edge of the green-gone woods
where the mist, like souls, shall rise,
you will find me washing the bloody husk
of the brave one who slowly, stoically, dies.

I move through the world in hag-face,
appearing ancient, for I am ancient,
but not weak.
That's for you, the young man who called to me,
mistaking who and what I was,
and when I turned my head, said,
"Don't look at me bitch!" and laughed along with your friends.
Did you feel the ice snake curl around your heart?
I had already looked,
and once having looked, I cannot look away.

At the edge of the green-gone woods,
where the peat fires burn unseen and deep,
you will find me bent to cradle the head
of the brave one whose heart slows, sinking to sleep.

This is the age of superfluous racket masquerading as song.
Myself, I do not sing--
my throat is too thick with writhing crows,
my nostrils too full of ash
for me to do anything but keen.
I am Morrigan, and I am a banshee;
when I open my mouth, the razor flock flies,
a black scream for the extinguishing stars.

At the edge of the green-gone woods
where bat and raven at twilight cross,
I am the coarse-cut shriek of death
the voice of grief, the soul of loss.

Young man, you don't want to know what I do
about the bad cast
and the locked door.
Beneath my crone's costume, I carry my beauty in reserve--
it is formidable, and fair,
and kept for the deserving.
Remember this: I will not keen for you.
What comes out of your mouth is yellow dust;
what comes out of mine is a glass-shard hurricane.
Your future holds the thing you know nothing about;
what awaits you just around the next coward's corner you come to,
will be all yours as I walk away--
utter
stillness.
_______

For Kerry's fantastic "Old Gods" challenge at Real Toads. 

Check out the amazingly cool journal that Margaret Bednar gave me, for my poems. I can't say how much I love it. Next to it, is the beautiful Celtic necklace given to me by Lynn, of Good Things Happened. I wear it a lot. Thank you, dear ladies. Your kind gifts mean so much to me.  

Music Box

I brought a music box in from the snow and raised it.

It called to me in the deep blue nights, and I wrapped my body around it to give it lullabies.

It gave me being needed, and there we were--

flesh and cylinder--

a blizzard of simple melodies in the middle of the night.

_____

55 words for the G Man.