Casa Tiger

 

Every movie can be improved by adding a hungry tiger into it--

a bullet-proof tiger who can talk, but

only speaks in aphorisms and maxims.

The tiger's voice should sound like broad green leaves 

and love language.

High Noon with Gary Cooper, bad guys, and a bullet-proof tiger.

Citizen Kane with a talking tiger on a sled.

Casablanca with a tiger behind the bar, saying,

"Love is like the stripes of a zebra; 

bright and dark touching but still apart and always moving."

Real life could be enhanced as well. 

The tiger could eat people who don't allow their dogs upstairs,

who cut in line, and who take duckface selfies.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away!"

the tiger would say while standing over their bones,

full with both flesh and satisfaction.

You could come over.

We can watch movies--with tigers in them!--

spouting maxims and bromides,

wrestling feverishly with each other and with the notion

of tigers knowing anything about zebras or hearts

except that they are foolish things

made of meat

and consumable.

____

for Shay's Word Garden Word List--Incidents Around the House

Snow Day

 

Bosco 2003-2014

Zacky, my spring-heeled dog, goes bouncing into the middle

of the flyers around the bird feeder--

his pure simple joy as he watches them rise.

his tongue hanging out, his eyes alight, defies the winter.

We have had snow, then thaw, then rain, then refreeze.

The world here is icebound.

The rain pooled almost to the doorstep, but the

still frozen ground could not accept it and iced over again.

The rinks have endured for two weeks now.

My dog comes to the door, exhilarated, certain

that his mama will be there to let him in for a cookie and a nap.

I am his open door, his open heart, his centering sun.

Someone I know has just lost her dog--

she is crying. I am crying for them.

Two to four more inches is expected here shortly,

while winter plays the immortal.

As I hold my smiling pal, I think of my old dogs,

Sundance and Bosco, and how much I miss them.

They passed.

Winter will pass.

I too will pass, along with all my stuff and memories.

Today I will sit stroking Zacky and watching out the window

as the snow falls and falls. 

Winter will have its day but will fade, as will 

presidents and peacocks,

blue jays and babies,

a constant falling, 

with all of us aboard for the ride.

(Detroit Michigan, 2/13/25)

_____________

Written for What's Going On? "Landscapes."

Music: Dave Grusin The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter theme

Gray Area

 

Impossible things--when I was little

there weren't very many of them. 

I thought--I might be like a girl I read

about, who woke up speaking Italian

though she never had before.

I thought I might discover a talent for

playing the piano

or hitting a softball

or performing feats of memory.

As time went on--well, you know.

Good at this, not so much at that.

Lucky at neither cards nor love. 

You have--oh, where should I start?

(should I start?) 

gray eyes like my father's,

amused and kind, but in a woman's face. 

I like--how you look in that flannel shirt

of gray, blue, and white, with the maroon henley

underneath, and old blue jeans. 

I like--your bedroom with the pastel

gray walls and cream trim. Yes, I looked

on my way to wash my hands

with your milk & honey soap. 

I'm nervous--but in such a delicious way.

Should I tell you what I'm feeling? I could

ruin this bright beginning, I know...

Your hair--it looks good gray

I want to touch it, touch you,

but chances have gone wrong before.

It's a gray area--how you might react,

how these things are done 

when nothing is familiar or sure. 

Impossible things--Alice's Queen believed

in at least six of them before breakfast

I'm wondering, could you?

Would you--take a chance on Wonderland with me?

________

for What's Going On? Colors Passing Through

Music: Denise King Stuck On You

Stone House

 

There is a stone house

with a soft bed

on a metal frame.

The sheets are sky-stolen blue,

the blanket tartan.

I have the feeling I was

a child there, or died

or held someone with love

or was held.

The air is fragrant

like a meal just finished

or being prepared.

I feel sure that you are there

in the next room

or arriving or remembered.

I wrote this poem

yesterday or some other day

or will write it soon.

Now the door is open.

Come in.

_______

Music: Cat Stevens Into White

Blue Train

 

Come on, we're taking the blue train.

You've tried crack, Coke, Eckankar and cans of spinach,

but all you get is dry sex with stick men

who babble all night about can't-miss ground floors in clown shoes you must be this dead to wear. 

Come down the gone escalator to the blue train.

Do a swan dive into a crystal bowl of beautiful doubletalk

and meet us inside the celestial suitcase,

lost between Rome and Bangkok but returned in the ice cream morning

to the hotel squirreled away in the pocket your spontaneous anthem.

Come in, we're just leaving to catch the blue train.

It's the overdose you can't find in stores, the big bass beat

the blood makes in your ears each time you dive off an ordinary Wednesday.

Nurse is here in case you faint, Electric Jimmy is here in case you don't.

Get into this, get right, get straight, get after it,

get in loser,

we're taking the humdingity third-rail high-speed no refunds blue train.

________

for The Sunday Muse #220. 

Poet

 

Loving you is like dreaming I am made of water

and then trying to run within myself.

I hallucinate a sun that rises in you refracting,

while the real one grows dull and tired turning grass to hay.

I compose ridiculous letters on bird feathers about the sky and its desires

with dust ink and lead bindings, to be read in the dark.

Nonetheless, all the brilliance with which you rule me, all the fascination you wield

is just a trick of reflection and depends upon this whim I dress up as magic

like a rabbit out of a hat, a thing that seems like a better thing, grand, ordinary, pure trickery.

____________

for Linda Lyberg's Poetics: Breakfast At Tiffany's. I used the following quote:

“It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes.” 

― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories

Refraction

 does light lie?

do these leaves deceive? 

what is green 

but a word for a thing 

we see a certain way

inside our skulls where no green thing grows?

here is my yellow dress.

my yellow hair.

and yellow fields stretching flat and far.

inside, my reasons.

outside, the sheltering trees, 

our house in their lee.

also, your face, the flickering planets, and stars.

i want you, but i want the wind.

you say i deceive,

but what is wanting

but a word for a thing

for which there is really no word at all?

does light lie?

here is the yellow sunflower

and the yellow night-window

but they never

called themselves those things.

here is my silver ring and my yellow ticket--

i love your face, even though you don't believe

and wish me damned and dead because i go.

____________

for Sunday Muse #204

Geraniums (A Love Poem)

 

It was that time of year

when potted geraniums on their iron hooks

had turned sad and leggy

(as you were)

when you posed for a Polaroid

in 1972

before I was born

or after my death--

always unclear.

It's like taking a beating underwater,

the way I still feel for you

or might have felt for you--

slow, 

the kind of pain that poppies soothe.

It's an origin story delivered via candle wax arrow

explaining everything

or nothing,

and told by someone's widow, lover, grandmother, daughter.

I make no sense

even to myself

a child scrambling on a broad expanse of lawn chair

or a biddy past caring at the head of my own cortege.

I loved you.

I would have loved you.

I press white lilies between album pages to preserve them

only to find that there is no album, and I have no hands.

You were lovely that day

or had not yet arrived

or had already left

but the geraniums were fresh and pink by way of recompense.

___________

for Word Garden Word List #14 (Pablo Neruda), hosted by the amazing poet Hedgewitch.

Hornpipe

 Everything is fine until it isn't.

Stars wheel in the sky, then turn back upon themselves

as we have, deaf dancers to music with too many sharps.

Gazing at constellations,

no one sets out to disarrange them.

Most of us aren't cruel by nature, don't dark our own world,

we just forget to tend the light, like distracted keepers

who look up and lose hope,

the shore obscured,

the hour too late,

the storm already arrived where no soft word

or brave promise can stop it.

________

for Dverse "Dancing Queen"

Mariana In The Morning

 Mariana in the morning

by Morning's light possessed

all afternoon she walks the cliff's edge

trying to forget.

Mariana by the window

in a yellow aster smock

She knows November brings the end

of all your foolish talk.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

they ask her for her anodyne

then ask for nothing more.

Mariana, bride of Sorrow

in Sorrow's cottage kept

She counts the coins the stars deliver

and medicates the debt.

Mariana, in her silence

braids the horses' tails

She knows November brings the ostler

with his shoes and nails.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

asking for her anodyne

then asking nothing more.

_______

Mi Amada

 

The Moon is sleeping

in a pool of rain water

dreaming of tides, solar winds,

and the last words you said last night, mi amada.

The crow wears his feathers

like an old man's overcoat

at a train station

in early December.

He wraps used alphabets

around the Moon in payment 

for memories,

some false, some bittersweet.

The crow will stay

as long as the Moon does.

The Moon will stay

forever, but often hidden.

The rain water

comes alive at a touch, 

receding even as it returns

in spite of itself or anything said last night, mi amada.

_______

For Sunday Muse #162

Interview

It is not new

this interviewing of myself.

In a dark or dull hour

ghosts rent my tongue,

black flocks rend my mind's sky.

I called a nightmare by name

to break its back.

Making a paste from fury and innocence,

I conjured a papier mache landlord,

all purpose, no heart.

The renters scattered.

The birds flew into a vortex, blind and damned.

Moving into my own skin,

I learned new oxygen

with my keys held tight between my fingers

just in case.

______

for Sunday Muse.

Helpmeet

Come on in, the water's fine.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

He who hesitates is lost.

Are you calling the plumber, or shall I?

Call 1-800-WET FLOR.

Call upon God in times of crisis.

Bring a positive attitude.

Bring it, come at me, bro.

Bring in the left-hander.

Bring that up again and see what happens.

How long can you hold your breath?

How far is it to Katmandu?

How deep is your love?

If you laid the Bee Gees end to end, what good would it do?

Stay on point.

Stay on topic.

Stay. Sit. Roll over.

The water do wave, the water do roll.

Do the water a pour into this little bowl.

Climb up, climb out, do a cartwheel and a bow,

and see what I've got planned for you now.

______

for Sunday Muse #136.

I Linger In Dreams

I linger in dreams,

large as unspoken devotion,

warming a small world from its center with my body.

Brenda Lee, "Little Miss Dynamite"

whispers sweet nuthin's in the bowl of one ear,

her body a soft jukebox, my tongue coated with quarters.

Billie Holiday, "Lady Day"

sings desires, a pigfoot and a bottle of beer

to the spoon of my other ear like a sweet poppy mother. 

Above, jostling spheres, circular activity, temples, threnodies.

I linger in dreams, a small world warmed from its center 

with hallucinations, 

hagiographies,

harmonies.

_________

for Sunday Muse

The Nazarene

I wonder if we have some say
--I mean, with that other voice, the one we forget--
over how many bulls there'll be by the box car,
or how many bricks in the barrow?

Some do well in salt air,
bones rusting slow like the axles on the double wide.
Others show up at the old job with bent smiles
and die before the year is out.

So, I wonder, when I'm out collecting shells
in my sandals and straw hat,
what if that was the Nazarene in the camp chair there
with the cup untouched beside him on the sand?
_______

for Sunday Muse #92. 

"What Now My Love?" had the original French title "Et Maintenant?" or "And Now?"

In The Yellow Kitchen

In the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window,
spirits come in from indigo hours
looking for words kept in earthen jars

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters.
We keep a coffee pot of enamel
cream yellow to soothe late hour drowsers
unseen and hungry for a kiss, a ribbon, a caramel,

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window.
Mornings as easily as ghosts arrive, like spring snow
collected on sills as the May-crow appears

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window
and spirits come in from indigo hours.
There is Mucha on the walls, Parrish on a matchbook

in the yellow kitchen with the rose-colored counters
where green ivy vines surround the window,
and spirits come in from indigo hours
looking for words in earthen jars of cinnamon sticks, brown sugar, and flour.
_______

untitled 55

Sound isn't what you think.
Your boot soles flat on the wooden floor
is how your feet make fools of your ears.

"Forever" is the froth
offered up by every stranger I have loved.
I turn to it like a bloom,
but fissures up my back 
is how time finds the fool in the room.
______

A 55 for Kerry.

Loves Me / Loves Me Not

 I must now consider, I suppose,
that I have failed again
to do the right thing,
to puzzle out what's expected of me.

I didn't make your bed
deep enough, it seems;
and it's like you said...
before your head full of leaves
and purple-ebony hand on the grass.
Will I always fail you?
or can I fix us, at last?

My mind is a little spider on the edge of a cup
filled with blue rain where in awful dreams I scramble, 
all eight legs feeling in the air. 
You rose, didn't you, to exchange our different slumbers?
You came to me, down the path, softly disintegrating
though my anguish never does.
I breathe for both of us the smoky air of loss.

I have fallen short again, like a sky never holding sun rise,
a pale after-image, watery, foul,
not worthy of this place where grackles strut like Aztec kings.
I have brought the orchid, and the lily
to place in your eyes to disguise my ugliness with lovely visions.
Forgive me for what I have done, and how I have failed.
I am barefoot, like a twin
and will wait here--the least I can do--
making of your rags and sinews my costume of chains and rings.
_______

For Get Listed at Real Toads. I have used all twenty words.

 

yulimajiri

A ceramic cup

--winter-white--

is my body--my bones are

stems of brushes--

my blood is paintwater.

The window is nine panes.

The walls are blank, the door to the hall ajar.

Outside,

wintry mix.

Traffic, graylight, finger-wind.

Rain falls of its own weight--

snow's geometry fragile as dreams.

When they kiss, one disappears--

the dull shine of sidewalks

leads everywhere, nowhere.

A ceramic cup

--winter white--

is my body.

I touch yours (again) in the stems of brushes,

soft tips brilliant and singular

then done, swirled

in the cup's anonymity.

_______

for Toni's "Shades Of Rain" at Toads.

Jose Feliciano's amazing rendition of a Fred Neil song about rain:

 

 

 

 

Devolution In Akron

When I devolved,

it was late afternoon.

I lined old nickels along the window sill,

vending extinction and electrical deluge

from the absurd Akron sky. 

I'd had enough.

Rubber companies once existed here.

So did enormous bird-creatures

who spoke languages no automobile can mimic.

I leaned out,

watching the BP sign on the corner seize in the wind.

Behold the power of natural vocabulary. 

Akron is the birthplace of the soap box derby--

gravity-driven containers carrying children at high speed.

When I devolved, I grew a shell

and time propelled me backwards

past divorce, failures, rejections, geographic landmarks,

changes in bone structure, loss of logical reasoning and 

vestigial tail.

You cannot find me where I've gone.

What was your name?

Why did your skin matter to me?

Why us, and not someone else?

Why not birds,

insects,

volcanoes,

earthquakes,

fireballs,

oblivion?

When I devolved,

it was late afternoon.

By evening, huge, stupid and dying,

I discovered that it hadn't mattered at all--

I'd lost time, nickels, everything Akron could offer,

but retained the ability to cry.