Tricks

 I was playing cards against my own poem, penny a trick

and  

      had

            lost

                  thousands. 

"I brought you into this world," I began,

but she turned into a fog of lemon-fresh Glade,

then to a tiger wearing a bell,

and sat there smiling at me like a dime store Buddha.

She had the keys to me, that's the trouble,

and took them with her when she went. 

Strangers know me backward and forward

and I can only stammer at them, clueless and dizzy. 

She turns me to a gawky bird standing in the sawdust on one leg

while she builds her house around me. 

I am password protected, listed on the National Registry

and greenies stick spikes in me so she can't cut me down. 

I lay an ace and she

spreads out a peacock fan of kings and queens,

Russians and Persians,

lilacs and shade-loving violets.

I am playing cards with my own poem, stanza a hand,

and

       I

        am

             broke

but a newer poem brings me coffee, licks my ear

winds his slender self around me like a climbing vine as I

sweetly purr, "and I can take you out of it." 

_______

For Word Garden Word List -- T S Eliot.

Music: Josiah Bell Change In The Weather

Sadie Hawkins Dance

At eleven, we were hollow-stemmed, yellow-haired flowering weeds,

all taller than the boys,

chained around a crab apple branch like thaw drops.

We were departing swallows

quicker than afternoon;

smug with our lessers, cowed by our betters,

kites with cat-tails, casting for a clue.

Want to go with me?

Say no, say yes, say no, say yes!

Whatever they said, it would be years before we felt this power again,

at the high arc of a cycle of seasons,

calling the steps, knowing the music would change.

___________

day 16

for Rommy's "Fun and Games" prompt at Toads.

Reincarnated Grandmothers

Reincarnated grandmothers
have had it with knitting--
fuck that shit.
Now it's our turn to not visit you.
Check us out.
Send us money on our birthdays
cos we wanna drink it up and to hell with thank-you's.
Watch us steal your bae,
troll your page,
lie, cuss, catfish.
You want cookies? 
Buy a bakery. 
______

A 55 for my BFF.
 

20 Minutes of Action

Little green men arrive,
looking like seasick 98-pound weaklings. 
Some frat boys decide to have fun by putting one in a dog crate
and pouring beer on him to see if he melts or something.
They piss on him too (used beer! ha!)
and then roll him--still in the crate! too good!--down the apartment stairs
and into the swimming pool.

Finally, they pose, with boozy grins,
holding the drowned spaceman's head up like great white hunters on safari
while somebody posts it on YouTube.

When the Mother Ship arrives
(Who's your daddy now?)
the things that are done to the frat boys by the "rampaging inhuman monsters"
are fodder for outraged talking heads the next morning across the land.
Why did they commit such unspeakable cruelties?

The answer is just like always.
Because they could, boys. Because they could.
_______



for the mini-challenge.

The Fashion Sense Of Scarecrows

The fashion sense of scarecrows falls somewhat below
what one might wish for or expect, but let me be direct--

We are here by dint of some master's splintered stake,
charged with undertaking to repel, not attract

Those 24 that you've not caught, killed, tricked or baked.

The moral sense of scarecrows is something not often considered
as something pertinent to hired foreman or spurned bird,

But ruminate on this, as we have, long nights among the stalks--
envy of avian creatures gives rise to unwonted nocturnal talks

About how to catch and kill the critic, and leave him rotting intestate. 
______

10 lines it took me for-freaking-ever to come up with, for Kerry's "Eye of The Beholder" mini-challenge at Real Toads!

   

Cycle

A snake fell from a cloud
and was eaten by a bird
who then hid in the bush.

I found the bones of a snake
hidden in the bush
and took them home to make a necklace.

I wore the necklace to make you love me
to make you kiss me
which gave me the gift of flight.

Night wrapped around my necklace
which fell from my throat
whole again, escaping,

Mocking me with my own stolen voice
from the bush.
______

I was inspired by Sina Nkosi's fantastic poem "The Snake." Written for Kerry's challenge at Real Toads. 

Fox Confessor

Once upon a time, on the coldest day of the year,
a little red fox sat on the snow.
Before him, at the edge of a grove of frozen trees,
was a black-haired woman with the darkest, most bewitching eyes
that the fox had ever seen.

"I have black tea," called the fox,
"and I have black bread.
Come share them with me,
or you will soon be dead."

The woman at the edge of the grove
of frozen trees waved her hand,
and the sun, already weak, began to melt
right into her hand.
"What good is your tea," she asked the fox,
"without company?
What good is your loaf
without butter fresh and sweet?"

"I have fur," called the fox,
"and a sable blanket on my burrow bed.
Come share them with me,
Or you will soon be dead."

"Perhaps you are right," sighed the one so dusky and fair.
"Come here and I will tell you a secret;
Be quick, for it is the coldest day of the year...
I cannot walk and can no longer move,
But I will share this butter for your bread
and tell my secret in your ear."

Very slowly, the little fox came close,
with the tiniest steps and the most hesitant tread.
The fox meant to have both butter and bread,
And tea and secret, before the lady was dead.

The woman at the edge
of the grove of frozen trees implored,
"Come faster, dear fox,
come close, let us talk,
For I have but a single breath more."
Never confess to a fox, they say,
but more important than that,
Never trust a lady whose secret desires 
are tea, a loaf,
and a new fox fur hat.
______


My little poem has as its inspirations, the top photograph by Richard Schear and the Russian folk tale of the Fox Confessor. In the tale, a fox tries to talk a rooster down from a tree by pretending to be concerned for the rooster's soul. "Come confess to me," urges the fox, who only wants to eat the rooster.