Things Placed In A Velvet Box

It doesn't matter to me, anymore
if your buried name feeds flowers or wasps or nothing at all.
All day there is bread on a board, and a book's pages rolling with the breeze.
There is rain and minutes dying and both the best and least of these...

The things I placed on velvet, in a box
as children or idiots do, with fistfuls of forget-me-nots 
staining fingers blue, as ink will do
when spilled across pulped pages, entre nous...

It doesn't matter whose way 
is the less foolish one
or which moon 
will rise on the ash of a setting sun.

_______

for micro-poetry. 

Origami Angel

A local origami angel, 
aged out of foster care,
kept a treble clef  in a wicker cage
perched on a wing and a prayer.

I kept dying and coming back 
all that winter, every time we kissed.
In spring the treble clef infected us with sense,
took back its hour and scorned such pious ornithologists.
_______

a 55 for my BFF.

In The Rhambangle

In the rhambangle, the climbing vines
looped themselves up and through the latticework
like emotions falling from a dream.

You loved the soff birds who made their nests
in the high corners; feathered deities
without ceremony but stuffed fat on our adoration anyway.

I liked your boots, especially tucked beneath a wicker chair 
in the moonlight, lost to your feet
but called snarfdiffanous by the avante garde among the moths of local wing.

I haven't said it well, I realize. My sunglasses kept the words
after I first saw them in morning light.
It's lalamilty, so they say, making these sounds no string nor key would own,

but I keep trying, because I love you and your shossy half-turned smile.
________

for "Stuff & Nonsense' with Rommy at Real Toads. She asks that we use her invented words rhambangle, snarfdiffanous, and lalamilty. Soff and shossy are my own. 

Violent Vegans Speak Peace

At the rally, the crowd was already at a rolling boil
by the time I climbed the makeshift stairs to the platform.
I gave them truth!
Fire!
A little leg!
They responded with howls!
Bouquets!
Bottles!
Drunken gunfire!

I am the associate director and alternate treasurer
of Violent Vegans Speak Peace.
We have our own passwords,
catch phrases,
gestures;
you may have seen people making a vee with their fingers
and waggling their tongue.
This is the Violent Vegan trademark, a call to speak peace around the world.

In New York, Oslo, Paris and Moscow,
we spread our message
with pamphlets,
sit-ins,
arson
and instructive art.
In each city, I deliver my spiel--
I talk and talk and will continue to talk until the creature-eating stops.

Dar L., our leader, handsome in her beret and boots, is concerned about me.
She says that my workshops,
broadsides
and letters to the editor 
have become infused with nonsense about Mariah.
Her who-me? smile,
her widow's peak,
her clever use of rude language,
and my increasing--and, in this case, irrelevant--speculations about her sexuality
have begun to turn up regularly in my polemics.

Dar L. is right, of course.
I believe in the V.V. cause and all that,
but where my genuine passion lies is in imagining that Mariah carries my pamphlets in her boho bag,
that she is there, at the edge of the crowd,
wearing her turtleneck and tam-o'-shanter,
listening raptly as I talk about
revolution,
kindness,
hand grenades and the shape of her incredibly sexy lips.

I am in danger of being expelled
from the Violent Vegans Speak Peace movement.
My loose lips,
my never-ending single-minded sick-making sappy bullshit about Mariah
flows like a Niagra of smitten idiocy
and my inability to stop yapping about her is costing me everything.

Nonetheless, here she comes,
up to my table
with the stickers,
manifestos,
and vegan refreshments.
I can see it in her face, she has heard everything, knows everything,
except for the one thing I have managed to hold back
for fear she might stop doing it if she knew.

Oh sweet reward! There it is,
the who-me? smile,
the "hey, whatcha doin'?" from her impossible lips.
oh goddess
oh goddess
oh gee
aw shucks!
"Want to get out of here?" I ask her, the boldest thing I have ever said. 
"Want to grab a burger? or...."
She does! Here's to my secret slyly kept,
though everything else be compromised, ad infinitum. For Mariah! For love!
__________ 

For my "Secret Love" challenge at Real Toads.

Singer & Song

vintage Russian post card

No matter the storm
and the lightning bones that dance across the night--
no matter the bear
who wakes hungry from a winter of dreaming you--

No matter the snowdrop and crocus
who lie and tell you to leave your clothes by the frozen pond--
no matter the evergreen
claiming to be constant from behind its newly fledged fingers--

I will sing, 
as the blackbirds do,
for you, no matter how hopelessly, how strangely--
I will sing for you.

No matter the goat with its bell
who eats the shoots of grass before the sun can set on them--
no matter the shepherd's dog
who has run away and left the flock to whatever may pass--

No matter angels or devils
who quarrel and pose never-endingly under their different banners--
no matter creatures who hide 
and wait, only to have remained too long as you passed by--

I will sing,
as the blackbirds do,
for you, no matter how hopelessly, how strangely--
I will sing,

Sing for you.
______

Come To Me

Come, though I have no claim on you,
and you have none on me.
The first wet snow arrives tenuous as a schoolgirl's crush,
and yet, there it is, on every edge of the still unfallen leaves.

Along the rail fence, and in the saucers of the flower pots,
pale and perfect as stationery just bought,
is the signature and sign of what you are to me.
Everything that was there before, remains, but changed in spirit, subtly.

There is no way to explain the ineffable,
or my simple wholehearted pleasure at what is given and become--
Just promise me that you understand,
and that, one more time, you'll come.
_____

for Grace's mini-challenge at Real Toads.

From The Curve Of A Blue Womb

From the curve of a blue womb,
the one at the far reaches,
but as close as the next breath or the first,
the last,
spun from the flung white shine of a million stars,
into this space as narrow as a letter slot,
delivered by a Divine hand into a bone bowl,
blinking,
sitting here, writing this poem.

From the curve of a blue womb,
by way of the jaws, the wound, the perpetual shriek
of the keeper, the watchman, the madwoman,
set into a ready cage,
stripped of language and sex,
set out to dry and called art
by blind idiots with broken hands holding dawn in a coffee cup.

Something has been making its way up the stalk of my spine,
by increments, by prayer, by instinct, by race memory,
an insect, an emotion, a soul-flag strung on a line,
lifted by animus, by glory, by reflex, by holiness,
a mouth on a face on a body on its way
from solar plexus and on out through lips as an anthem or a gasp.

I'm telling you these things in your arms, in confidence,
in darkness, in fear, in recklessness, in sound mind,
in breakdown, in nakedness, in touch, in aphasia,
everything that curls and weaves and strikes within me,
this storm passing over the island of your body-sanctuary,
and losing strength even as strength is gained,
leaving bootprints in blood all the way from the start of the circle
to its end, a path out of myself,
through an impossible gauntlet of everyday 
spiraling up from the half-lit heavy pool of me,
aiming for an element only dreamt of in fevers and in ecstasy,
promised by absent angels speaking from the aviary of flesh and spirit combined.

From the curve of a blue womb,
I come spouting rot, nonsense, paperback scripture,
recipes for holy observance, bank holidays, disaster, doubletalk,
finding only in your kiss a distillery for spirits and the restless dead,
the quick, the clever, the blessed, the crazy, the torn apart, the unsatisfied,
the wise, the wept, and simple coneflowers
tossing like anti-aircraft gunners in the breeze
at the foot of your steps,
inviting me to at last fall into them, 
into you,
into some kind of peace I barely remember,
and which only comes back, for a gorgeous moment
when I am loving you.
_______ 
 

How A Girl Gets To Your Door

I find my way by landmark--
compass points a confusion;
my map margin-ed with love poems.

The train station wasn't landmark friendly--
Signs, riveted in place by men in boots on cherry pickers,
knew me for a foreigner.

In my northern accent, I asked a woman--
By the University? Black coffee eyes? Soft lips?
Castlerock.
__________

for flash fiction 55 with hedgewitch, at Real Toads this weekend.

 

Zulu Cat and Her Many Disciplines

I was at my doctor's office,
in the waiting room,
gestating the latest creature within me,
when the door opened and she invited me in.

Her fern plants swayed as if we might soon be plucking doubloons
from chests heaved up on the surf from storm-sunk galleons.
Did I mention that my doctor is from some island?
Off the coast of Spain?
Majorca, I believe.
Maybe Easter Island,
because I have sometimes interrupted her at her carvings,
and had to stand there under the withering stare
of some ancestor or other.

My first inkling that she was in a rare mood
came when I noticed that she had become a cat.
A gray cat, specifically,
or was she tortoise shell?
The light kept changing, due to the swaying ferns.
She meowed, but I plumbed her meaning immediately:
she was in the mood!

Now, you will argue that I was irrational,
deluded, hallucinating, or worse.
I tell you, I am as precise as a court reporter.
I relate only facts, 
repeatable data from the snow globe of my therapy.
How I love the little cabin inside it,
the fireplace,
the polar bear rug!

Setting aside her Zulu mask and disguise,
my doctor demanded of me a tribute, a token,
a task to be undertaken,
if I truly wanted to be hers.
(In a therapeutic setting.
Under control of protocol.
In the name of science!)
How incredibly thrilling it was,
to see her jump onto the desk and switch her tail!

I crossed my legs,
I looked shyly down,
then up again,
my head tilted to one side,
my tongue playing at the corner of my lips.
I was a woman singularly eager to dispense with boundaries,
and to publish my name into the text of her desire!

Coyly, she asked me my name.
Constance, I told her.
Beelzebub, Candy, Electra, Spuddy, Spock,
anything you like, babe.
She wrote them all down.
Tell me about your dreams, she said.
You. They are all of you.
Tell me about your mother.
You.
Tell me about your father.
You.
Imago?
You.
Fetish? Obsession? Idee fixe???
You, honey. All of them.

With that, she stopped being a cat, and returned to being a woman.
Doubloon? she said, offering me one.
I took it and bit the edge. Real gold!
She beat her spear against her stretched hide shield:
boom boom boom, like our hearts!
She had a Rorschach birthmark on her thigh,
and I kissed it as if it were the Blarney Stone.
Hypnotize me, baby, I said.
Already done! she assured me,
and from the things I went on to say to her while I was under,
she is clearly the marvel of the swinging watch,
my counter-transference chica 
with the cool cat claws and the sexy librarian smile.
______

for my BFF Hedgewitch's word list challenge at Real Toads!

mad skillz

Forget the bathing suit--
burn it.
It is always stormy in my world;
the trees are like crack ballerinas--
never still.

I wonder if you could help me--
you, with your mad skills.
I don't like grease, unless it's in the pan;
but I do admire arcane knowledge--
such as rests better on a girl.

Take a look, touch inside--
be a whisperer for my ride.
Smaller hands are better fitting;
prove that purring
suits this kitten.
_________

Prairie Rose

When you shuck off your sweatshirt
and shake your hair out with your hand,
I can hardly bear to let you go
to shave your legs
or write a poem
or to admire the dark summer color of the prairie rose.

I gather in your abandoned second skin,
wrapping the sleeve around my wrist
so that I can tell time by the you-warmth still there and pressed at my pulse points.
There is mojo and sweetgum in everything you have touched--
it is medicine for every longing.

Outside the window is the redbud tree,
scratching on the glass as if it were some beautiful prisoner.
Come back to bed, honey--
I crave the tang and scent of you,
and to brush my face,
my fingers,
everything I am and all my desire
against the dark summer color of the prairie rose.

_______

for Karen's word list at Real Toads.

I wanted to add Roxy Music's song "Prairie Rose", but they didn't have a good recording of it.

News note: today is my birthday! 

The Storm Chaser

The storm chaser
found the narrow way
down a straight road
into the wind's dark blue heart.

There, she found
Athena with her bolts,
wearing a silver-black snake around her arm,
falcon feathers in her hair,
and not much else.

When the storm chaser kissed Athena--
rippling strikes across the sky.
When the storm chaser loved Athena--
hail from the heavens, honey on her thigh.

When the storm chaser got home,
there was no sign of the damage to her car.
She had swapped out the mirrors
and bumped out the dents
herself, at a truck stop in Stephens County.

"Where did you go?"
"Shopping," she said,
with a forked tongue as sure and sweet as tupelo. 
_________

_________

Scorp Angel

Often,
I come half awake
in the hour before dawn.

I keep my room dark
but I rest easy,
knowing that something is rising just east of my dreams.

Still,
nothing else is so pleasing to me
as simply knowing that there is you in the world.

Whether you are near me or not,
I always hear your voice in my ear,

and the sound is
soul-soothingly familiar
and sweet.
__________

top image: Cristina Scabbia

music: Jewel "Angel Standing By"

 

Meghan

The grass that April seemed stunned,
as if winter had kicked it out of the house.

That was the year of the fiery crash
and the bullshit sermon.

Daisies came up in the graveyard,
and the spring sun went down easier than it rose.

You were Meghan of the tractor pasture,
my baby of the barbed wire ditch.

You showed me, all those times under a sickle moon,
how a Scorpio's kiss can make the earth move.

Mama said it was the mines settling,
but all I believed in, that April, was the gospel of your arms.

Summer came, and the cicadas sang, then died.
Later, we knocked pecans down from the trees,

gathering them in our jean jackets spread on the ground to be forgotten
as we got drunk on illegal beer and each other's skin.

April is always a rainy, uncertain month,
and summer, here, can put a good woman in the madhouse.

Anyway, it's only March, and colder than a banker's smile,
but I woke up thinking of you, Meghan, so I called in queer and wrote you this poem.
________ 

image: Emmylou Harris

 

Recipe

I live
in a tiny house with gingerbread trim.
I live
on molasses cookies
and moonlight falling across my body and my bed.

I come out
to tend my purple night blooms.
I know one song;
I sing it to myself.

I keep seven cats. I sleep until noon.
And always,
I think of nothing, and no one
but you.
_______

Natalya The Psychic

Que sera, sera
was fine for the fifties,

but now there is Natalya the psychic.

Be nice to her.
Feed her, take her to bed;
whatever it takes,

because

she can pull visions from out of thin air.
She knows if you're gonna fall down the stairs,

but if she likes you, she'll take your arm,
smile like a Russian Blue,
and say, "Honey,
let's go down in the elevator."

Natalya the psychic
will know if you're faking.
Don't tell her you love her
if you're lying.

Pianos fall out of the sky every day,
and she'll send you on your way
without a blink or a word of warning
if you've been telling tales and screwing with her heart.

Love her,
fuck her sweetly on a Sunday morning
when you should be at church.

Pour the most inventive, smoldering, sincere confessions
from your lips to her ear,
as you move over her, easy, like cream over corn flakes.

Do these things and you'll have the love of a Russian Blue.
Lucky omen.
Lucky you.
_______

Vamps

The beauty of it, honey,
Is that we don't know what we're doing.

We're like 1916 silent movie queens--
Stars of a medium too new to have any stock scenes.

Let me cake on the raccoon eyes and vamp--
You drive the open-top car, and we'll both wear enormous wide-brimmed hats.

We might be speaking Russian--
The silents keep it hid;
We can never say the wrong thing, honey,
Nor confess it if we did.
_______

Sweet Things

Fox sleeps
Under a whipped cream moon
Dabbed into the sky
By the baker Goddess.

Fox curls
In her deep blue bed
With her kit's heart beating
Soft against her side.

Red fox, white fox,
Mad fox, mine,
As you dream, I'll whisper sweet things
Thirteen times.

________ 

Gypsies

There must always be Gypsies.
There must always be
Stones rounded by the river,
And the Sun
Must always lift her skirts and run.

This is the fiat of the window glass
In the morning.
This is the parable of the rising biscuit,
And the sweet icing stolen
At the tip of a finger.

There must always be your glasses
At the edge of the blonde wood table.
There must always be your book,
And your lips against
White linen.

There must always be silver cuffs
And hoop earrings to balance the universe.
There must always be a yellow moth
On the dry side of the rain-leaf,
And barefoot children
Wandering.

I feel certain that God would like
For Romany to survive and be spoken;
And if God does not,
Then God is wrong.

There must always be Gypsies.
There must always be your face,
Because without the yearn of this spoked wheel within me turning,
Life would be too terrible
And still
To endure.
_______

Thank you to Hedgewitch, who introduced me to the poetry of Gabriel Garcia Lorca, which always inspires me.

Linked to Real Toads Open Link Monday.
_________
 

Wheat & Lavender

The sky is always in motion
As are the swaying heads of wheat or lavender,
Whose very roots are carried with the turning earth
Moving, like the blood within our veins,
And our passions born there.

My darling, you are always near me;
Even when we seem to exist apart, please believe
That soon enough, you will hear me
Coming back again, through wheat and lavender,
To hold your name as close as skin to breeze.
_____