Don't Clown on the Waitress

 

Don't clown on the waitress, fool.

She writes in hieroglyphs on a pad made of stardust.

One click of her pen can make you shudder and drool

sucking like a baby on a bread crust.

She takes breakfast orders; the cook creates worlds.

Order an egg and it evolves right on your plate.

Don't clown on the waitress; she's a woman not a girl--

in your orbit, never still, never simple, never late.

Don't pick at the sugar packets or leave your napkin in a wad.

You're going to have to finesse it--no menu, no calorie chart.

Museums will bid on your bacon, at auctions with a nod--

Don't clown on her, just appreciate that you cannot hurry art!

______________

for Word Garden Word List--The Rosie Project. 

Miracle

 

Will it take a miracle

(they asked)

for me to get my head out

of my vast

open

spaces?

It would be a miracle

(they said)

if I ever

got ahead

with my dreamy dumbbell drifting ways.

All roads lead to Rome

(I answered)

for me and all my sister

second chancers

sobering up

right under your noses.

There is no miracle

(they insisted)

that could drive home the wisdom 

you've resisted 

until you see how

we only diss you 

because we love you,

silly cow.

The only miracle 

I find in it

is that they may all

eat sh--

elled peanuts without me 

at the circus I miraculously

ran like hell from.

______ _

For What's Going On?--Miracles.

Music: Entry of the Gladiators 

Eddie and Sylvia

Eddie is fucked up again.
He is supposed to be mucking out the stalls, 
but there is a problem, the same problem as always--

The elephant shit looks like an old man's giant brown head,
the straw in it the hair, the shovel so handy!
He bashes at it with all his might, then runs for his wagon, and his pen.

Later, he is sorry.
Sylvia has him sitting in a trough, naked, red-eyed,
and she is tenderly washing away the last specks of dung from his face.
"You are a genius, Eddie," she says softly.
She wrings out the cloth, folds it neatly and lays it over the trough's edge.
"It's a brilliant story."

Eddie stays sober for a week.
Looking at the elephant shit, he sees Mount Olympus;
the straw in it is wings! Wings of the Immortals!
Thinking of his late mother, and of the women in whom he finds her kindness,
he throws down his shovel and runs for his wagon and his pen.

"Fuckin' ay, Eddie!" the crew boss roars, gesturing vaguely with his cigar.
"Can't you just shovel shit like I pay ya t'do?"
He can't.
He burns with shame and promises to do better,
but all the while he resents this cretin, this imbecile and his petty concerns!

Soon, Eddie is fucked up again.
Sylvia comes around to the animal trailers to try to soothe him.
Last time, she found him asleep in the tiger's cage;
she lifted his head from the cat's rough tongue and placed it upon her bosom.
This time, she finds him staring at elephant shit, his shovel forgotten.

"What is it, Eddie?" she asks, her voice betraying her worry.
"The birds!" he points, agitated and trembling.
Sure enough, crows are feasting on the droppings. 
He is still thinking about the Immortals. "Pallas! A bust of Pallas!" he cries.
"Eddie? Are you sure you're all right?"

But he is gone, off to his wagon and his pen.
This time, the crew boss will fire him, 
and the hopelessness of it all, the futility of Eddie's brilliance and her love,
sinks into her bones like sickness. 
"I'll be in the kitchen," she calls after his back, but she knows

by the time he comes looking for her she'll be gone.
_____ 

for Ella's very cool challenge at Real Toads. Combine a favorite poet with a circus setting.

ringmistress

Nobody told me it was Cirque de Soleil in here.
When I was five,
every time I closed my eyes,
colors, creatures, patterns, movement.

Mama, you saw the vacuum cleaner,
or me staring out the window.
I saw my head exploding behind my eyelids.

All any adult ever told me was
pay attention
apply yourself
stop daydreaming and listen.

To what?
To the ghost-man nobody else seems to know about?
He followed me halfway up the stairs.
He chased me out of the basement.
He lived next to the water softener,
but could also come upstairs.

To the voices I hear when I'm tired?
Men, women, chattering away in snatches about nothing.
Or, to you?
To my brother?
I soak up your anger, your confusion, your frustration,
till I can't tell what is mine and what isn't.
"Why are sitting in here by yourself?"
Jesus Christ.

There is a difference between a trained tiger and one that's loose.
Nobody told me it was Ringling Brothers in here,
or that it isn't the same for everyone.
I grew up a little stunned, overwhelmed, spinning in the storm.
Now I call down the thunder,
and people say, "I want to spend an hour inside your head."

No you don't. 
The circus is permanently in town,
the gate is open,
and while they are used to me, and willing to perform,
my tigers don't know you,
and I can't be responsible for what they might do to a noob.

_______

for mag #219

not really a poem, but still

"Be that girl who never backed down."
Sounds good on paper.
Sounds fierce, but I don't know what kind of girl,
what kind of woman,
that could even be.

Never backing down is the stuff of certain mens' conversations;
you know, the ones with the flags in their back windows
just above the plastic beer coolers.

If you want love in your life,
if you want peace,
if you are wise enough to choose your battles and think,
then you must learn the art of backing down. 

There are words for those who never back down, and they aren't pretty:
bitch
blowhard
zealot
tyrant
Reverend
Grand Dragon
case #
inmate #
the Republican senator from--

Backing down doesn't mean giving up.
Those who have pissed off
the woman who prepares their food,
the woman who delivers their mail,
the woman who buys their wives' birthday gifts,
the woman whose hand rocks the cradle,
have found this out
no matter how long it took for the other shoe to drop.

Of course, there are times for not backing down.
The Sioux and Sans Arc taught this to Colonel Custer.
The women inside the Alamo,
who could have left, but chose to stay with their brave men,
demonstrated this.
There were no pop divas inside those adobe walls,

but there were willows at San Jacinto.
That's all I have to say.
_________ 

Two Ways Of Courting Lorelei

I gave Lorelei the usual sweets--
she cursed the stuff and spat;

I charmed the birds down from the trees--
Lorelei played the cat.

I hid my heart, denied desire,
and waited where I sat

to hypnotize, but Lorelei's
too wise, by half, for that.
_______

Exactly 45 words for Mama Zen's Words Count

Mime

when you pontificate
from a to
z,
i seem to agree
if tacit-
ly.

when you decide
uni
lateral-
ly,
it never bothers
no, never mind
me.

i'm not a wife
who nags or sighs;
but don't think i'm
some saintly mime--

the officer asked me,
were you
here?
perhaps in
bed?
or even
dead?

far be it from me
to bend his ear--
and so,
I haven't 
exactly
said.
_____

for Kay's challenge at Real Toads
 
 

The Crap Poet

The crap poet
writes a crap poem
about her weak love
for a weak man,

and it takes her
(yes)
a week to write.

"Perhaps some mythological references," she thinks, distractedly, choking on smuggled French cigarettes.
"Perhaps adherence to a form no one gives a framed, numbered, limited edition shit about," she muses, head lolling in the oven, dramatically.

My love, &etc, she begins.
The next line has to do with the ovaries of cetaceans,
and the next devolves into impenetrable multisyllabic gobbledy-goop.

It wins an award.

The crap poet goes on to write an entire volume in which 
all the line breaks follow prepositions,
and articles are entirely absent.

Passing by
Arc de Triomphe in
ambulance with
salmonella kisses for
donkey-faced driver named Despair.

This shit wins a Pulitzer.

All hail the crap poet!
She blogs a free verse broadside twenty-eight miles wide
and ten feet tall.
It takes her five hundred followers two and a half seconds
to skim carefully down it all.

"Brilliant! Brilliant!" they cry.
"Here's mine!"

Crap poet soar!
Crap poet shine!
Within the year she is declared
Divine.
______

for dverse open link #64, hosted by the preternaturally talented Hedgewitch, a.k.a. my BFF!  

 

 

Boffo

The horror of living becomes too much for Boffo the Clown.
Smacked out on junk,
He plunges into a hellish nightmare world of
Pointy hats,
Seltzer bottles,
And furious addiction.

Children sense the clown's smoldering despair;
They are bold with unkind remarks,
And stomp on his toes,
But his enormous footwear stands him in good stead.

People seem bizarre and frightening to Boffo,
Groaning under the weight of their stupid pretensions,
Stuffing their phony, painted-on smiles
With inedible gobs of sickening cotton candy.

Boffo's life becomes a dull round of farce and fixes.
He is so sick of balloons!
Twisting them, nearly strangling them,
He makes another dog,
Another horse;
Once, he made a balloon that looked like a Cass Corridor whore,
The very image of his faded and vacant Linda.
The child threw it down, screeching ear-splittingly for Boffo to "do it right".

Another night, sitting in front of his mirror,
Boffo carefully places a neon green fright wig on his head,
And adjusts his bulbous, bright red nose.
He wonders,
"Are we really beautiful to God, as some say?
And if so, why then does He toy with us,
Setting us down in a chaotic and violent world?"

During the performance that evening,
Another clown, Bird Brain, trips Boffo while they are chasing the clowns' fire wagon with leaky, polka dot hoses.
Boffo falls.
The crowd guffaws.
Still face-planted, Boffo reflects upon the terrible schadenfreude that characterizes human struggle.

Back in his trailer,
The opiates sometimes make Boffo contemplate the Divine,
Though, just as often, he simply nods in front of some ridiculous infomercial,
Linda comatose and drooling at his side.
Occasionally, these ponderings stay with him into the next day.
Stepping into a pair of gigantic yellow pants,
Taking care to rig the suspenders so that the pants will fall down at the proper moment,
Boffo wants to know--
Is life just some sort of silly joke?
But then it is show time,
And he follows the plumed horses and the acrobats out into the lights.
_____


linked to dverse OLN

Descanso

The road weaved off ahead like the 
messed-up
more adventurous friend
who says, come on, let's pick the lock,
snap the chain,
and goose the gods who brought the rain.

This road is the place
where the one I was
met the lead-foot driver of who I would be;
and you know what they say--
women drivers
no survivors.

Oh, little tornado-heart,
shed that leaden skin.
Let the poison out, let the Jesus in.
Honey, a red car is the only car--
no you anymore, but only us...
I'll carry the best of you fast over asphalt and tar,
and leave the husk with these crosses
in the roadside dust.

_____

for Real Toads OLM

 

Sunday Poem

When the new day comes,
I will wrap the sun in a fresh newspaper
Like a bright baby,
Nestled close beside the long wet stems of irises.

When the new day comes,
The characters I love best from books will start heart beats--
Antoinette,
Cece,
Flannery,
Dressed down and lazy in white chairs on the flagstone porch.

When the new day comes,
I'll keep the moon in a cut crystal bowl outdoors,
And jay-blue feathers will float down
From the branches of the ash tree,
To take my arm like a favorite sister.

But until then, I am getting older,
And expect to remain alone--
With cagey time always diminishing,
And this sunflower-dust disaffection
From skin down into bone. 

_______

Antoinette is from Robert Girardi's "Madeleine's Ghost."

Cece is from Julie Anne Peters's "Keeping You A Secret."

Flannery is from Sylvia Brownrigg's "Pages For You."
____

Take Osgood J. Wordwell's Poetry Workshop (and remain a cretin)

"No, no, this will never do!"
Cried Aldous Guggenheim Minton II.
"Not enough syllables," moaned McTibbles.
"Too many!" opined Millicent Duckworth-Fine.
"I've read it and now am losing my mind!"
Cobwebby critics, guarding the door,
Hope that you will not write anymore.
Learned women, serious men,
Hope that you won't write
Better than them!

____

a 55 for G Man

Skay Boder!

Tonight I had to go to the pharmacy to get Bosco some more insulin. In line, I was behind a pretty woman and her toddler son, who sat backwards in the cart, facing me.

He looked at me for a moment, and then got this gimormous smile across his face. He pointed and said, "hemmet! hemmet!" The woman turned around, looked at me, smiled, and said to him, "That's right! She's wearing a helmet!" He was so excited about my helmet. It was adorable.

Then, bouncing in his seat, he crows, "Skay boder!!!!" His mom goes, "Skateboarder? I think she's probably on a bike, honey." I fessed up that I was.

That little boy was soooo excited about it. Fireblossom, sk8ter chick? Hmm, maybe not, but I walked away grinning.

Homecoming

When robots are born, their mothers are machines.



This is not to say that they are lacking in any way.



Floating in the aquasphere in the mid-levels,

New robots are happy--

They revolve like eggs in a pool,

They hear Mozart in the humming workings beyond the walls.



Then, goopy and stunned, they are carried head-first into production.

Some become domestics.

Some, soldiers.

Others, traffic signals, or automatic nannies.



Always, they dream of escalators.

Sometimes, when switched to stand-by, they imagine they are being carried up, returning.

For some, this brings terror and electrical malfunction, purposeless flailing and an alarming grinding within.

In others, the notion is sweet and sought-after,

Becoming stronger,

Like the siren addiction of lubricants.



These latter begin to falter--

They park the children in the underground reserved space,

And put the Chrysler into bed and sing it Irish lullabies.



Finally, they are taken out of service and sent back to base section.

They rise without effort, like buns,

Where it is warm from constant rotation.

They touch the passing steel with their alloy fingertips, going by--



They think,

"How like me,

Smooth and silver,"

And are accepted back,

Perfect match.

______

for One Shoot Sunday

Photograph by James Rainsford

The Canadian Space Program

The Canadian Space Program languishes.

They can barely coax a four seater as far as Yellowknife, let alone launch a space station.

All Canadians drag a heavy anchor of shame behind them, because of this.



Imagine if Ottawa established a vibrant new agency, and Canadians pushed towards the stars!

Imagine handsome strong men and beautiful capable women dressed in uniforms which honor the fabled Leafs and Habs with their blue and red colors!

Imagine transmissions coming in from amazing new worlds, in both English and French, eh?

Sure, no one would have any idea what those excitable French were saying, but so what?

Alors! Allons nous!



Some chick and her cats are launched towards Mars.

They travel at umpty billion kilometers per hour, but it feels to them as if they are floating like dandelion fuzz.

Canadians pour into the streets, cheering.

In an access of enthusiasm, they take Detroit and Buffalo, and launch them into space as well.

Soon there are Timbits on the moon.

Can anything stop the Canadians?



It is discovered that the dust of the lunar surface is just like snow.

The 2018 Winter Games are awarded to the moon, under the auspices of Canada!

Drunken lumberjacks shout and pummel each other in a spontaneous expression of joy and national pride.

Winnipeg, gloriously inspired, brings the Stanley Cup home to Canada, and they don't even have a team!

All across the north, it is a new day.



From space, the chick and her cats broadcast on Christmas Day.

"In-fucking-credible!" she reports, and the news media repeats these now famous words endlessly.

It's better than a visit from the old-ass Queen of England any day.

This could be your legacy, Canadians!

Up! To work!

To the very heavens!

We have lift-off!!!

Oh hell yeah.

________

Panama Jim

Panama Jim falls in love with Rosaria Morales in the middle of a performance.

Panama Jim has a flaming sword half way down his throat when she flashes past,

Standing on the back of a horse as white as clouds,

As white as cocaine,

As white as sheets in a five-star hotel,

And she has her arm extended and the smile of a transported saint on her (truly lovely) face.



Afterwards,

Panama Jim searches the tents until he finds her,

Then spouts half a Neruda love poem before kissing her as if she were some sort of impossibly hot

South of the border blarney stone.



They do it.

Under the caramel corn wagon, they do it,

Then do it again,

Until the spoked wheels bow out from the sultry conditions,

And Jim and Rosaria relocate out of fear of a caramel avalanche.



Panama Jim has been a fire eater for seventeen years,

But suddenly,

All of that seems like ice cream,

Like laughing gas,

Like popsicles,

Compared to the inferno he falls into in Rosaria's arms.



Love is like canoeing on lava!

Then the canoe is gone,

And Panama Jim flails in the white-hot rapids,

Letting Rosaria polish his bones with her kisses.



Anymore,

(thinks Panama Jim later)

You don't meet a woman like this.

She doesn't just come riding by, on a coke-white horse,

With a rose in her teeth.



But this time she did,

And Panama Jim is glad.

_________

for One Shoot Sunday

Ashes, Jasmine, and Molasses

A witch fell in love with the Autumn,

And with her rich golden-brown skin.

The witch longed to place her lips to it,

And trace runes there with her tongue

Like an apple and its stem

Falling on perfect Earth.



Autumn called the witch from her dreams at night--

Her nail gliding along her hip in bed,

Like an old iron hook on a porch door.

There is power in orange moons,

And weakness, oh glorious weakness,

In love.



The witch, at this time, had a job at the post office,

But she couldn't resist gathering up gas bills, catalogs, shopping circulars,

And burning them at midnight.

She collected the ashes, adding jasmine and molasses

Until, with a snap of her wrist and the right words,

They became love letters.

The Autumn received them

And smiled without a word.



The Autumn shook her thick brown hair,

And leaves filled gutters, streets, and fading gardens

Like straw fills an effigy.

Crows gathered on her shoulders and she cooed to them, as if they were her babies,

Each so black,

So peculiar

And so faithless.



Autumn knows that her beauty is as one with her dying

And the witch, her admirer,

Dies too, for love of her.

But yet, they remain

In everything that is paired--

Like two posts of a rail fence, two cats in a driveway, two forks of the same stream,

They kiss and part,

Then,

Come together again

In the night

In the dark

In the Fall

Like twin spirits satisfied at last,

They run together,

Whole.

______

for magpie 35