Half Past Bitter Sweet

 

There's a peculiar kind of holy naive feeling that I get

when you step out of December

and through my box of memories that never happened yet.

Here's the ring that fell from a lost sea shell

and broke in shades of lonesome

to set the bungs and tie tongues of those who crave to tell.

In my dreams you are a hunter

when I'm falling in my sleep

and I can't put my finger on it

but its far and fey and half past bitter sweet.

You'd tell me it's just bullshit if you talked to me at all

so I spend the hours wounded

making feathers for a blackbird who sold them for a call.

In the garden Quasimodo is looking for his bell

and hes crying but can't hear it

except when he gets near it and can't say if it will make him worse or well.

In my dreams you are a dust-star

when I'm flying in my sleep

and I can't put my finger on it

but it's far and fey and half past bitter sweet. 

_______

for Word Garden Word List #6 (Laura Marling)

Note: this poem has nothing whatever to do with clergy. I liked the picture for other reasons. It's a love poem.

Our Bear

Our bear

smells like an old cottage rug;

is partial to sleep

and us

and loaf

and jug.

Our bear

dreams of honey hives;
leaves the shine of
Ursa Major
and Minor
in our eyes.

Our bear
is our bruin castle keep;
we whisper in his ears
one left
 one right
constellated, constant, sweet. 
_______

for my BFF's weekly 55 thang

Dido

She's so proud of her jugs, but they're only full of wash water.
Who else would wear diadems and diaphanous gowns to do a load of colors?

She says she gets a weird high down there in the basement,
and tells the future to Pecky, miserable in his cage,
more fascinated with millet than prophecy.
The sun, to him, is a fairy tale;
the rattling furnace is as close to a tree as he'll ever get. 

God, I hate her. She's so nice, and so stupid.
Going through the pockets of her man's jeans, she pulls out a diamond
from among the phone numbers and weed dust.
She sticks it in her eye and starts speaking in tongues. 

For fuck's sake, the cycle's almost done,
her kid is howling upstairs because Thomas the motherfucking Tank Engine ended,
and now I have to pick up her slack while she la-dee-dah's around 
like a brain damaged nymph.
"Snap out of it!" I screech, and she blinks, then frowns,
then flips open the machine.

"When did you buy that?" I ask her. What about your precious jugs?
She waves her hand.
Her one diamond eye sparkles, the other looks vaguely up at the ceiling.
Pecky screams, apropos of nothing.
"Bless your heart," she says. 
The furnace kicks on.
Her dog comes down and circles three times, then shits next to the dryer.
"We're blessed," she adds as she hefts a plastic basket on her hip,
then turns and rises up the basement stairs 
like carbon monoxide inside a party balloon. 
_______

for Camera FLASH! at Toads.

Versions Of Heaven

In a Lilith Fair version of Heaven,
I met a clover-honey molasses cookie kind of woman
whose skin was like a Spanish shore,
and so I
shipwrecked up against her; softly as a cat.

"Look at you," she said,
"A real foam and lace wave of a woman.
Where's your half shell?"
Oh, her smile,
arch and sweet as a peach.

Now listen, I know
that I am a tyger, a big striped stinky star
with golden eyes 
and toes that end in sharp detail.
I lay on my side in the sand, hoping she would take my teeth for starfish arms.

In a fresh-sheet bed and skylight version of Heaven,
this woman and I, we touched caramel, lavished cream,
saved pink for last, and when we slept, it was in a cradle of waves.
How hammock-easy were my dreams.
How contented were my cat-sounds in the jewelry box of her arms.

In the morning she said, "Tyger mine and Tyger sweet,
did She who made the Lamb make thee?"
She laughed and offered me an orange section, 
then went out to the veranda.
Oh, imagine my surprise to find
my claws and stripes turned back the way they used to be,

so I spread them wide, my shoulder-wings
wet from the surf and drying now 
in the spilled divinity of early light.
_____

for Turning Pink at Real Toads.

Promise Me

Promise you'll always love me
as we sit with pastries and a cup of coffee before us;
say it after the bar holding up the awning of the cafe has fallen,
dazing you.

Say it now, when the sun is as bright over your shoulder
as a hijacked 747.
Say it now, when we can have the moment as lovers,
not as litigants;
soothe me with the words I long to hear.

When we were young, we believed
in every fantastic happy fiction we found in the sticky pages
of our heavily illustrated story books.
Then--
tornado.
Then--
regime change.
Then--
attractive others, smiling, as kind as undertakers.

Promise you'll always love me,
say it now, before the Narcan kicks in.
Say it now, while my heart is full for you--
don't wait until the mail comes,
full of better deals, and introductory rates.
Don't wait until the gurney begins to roll, 
and some sensible doctor gets a hold of you, making you sign things,
agree to things, and do things, on Wednesdays, when his office is closed.

Listen, life never turns out the way we pictured it.
Quick, before we crumple with age,
before our fingers curl back at us like strangers,
dropping things,
lost and pissing our pants a block away from home.
Promise me
that you'll always love me.

Then we'll finish our pastries,
and walk hand in hand until neither of us can tell anymore
why we came this way,
or how we managed to stay on our feet without each other.
That will be enough for me--
I give you my word.
_______

For Karin's mini-challenge at Real Toads: Promises

 

You

I was thinking about you,
as the fan hummed in the window--
as the stars spun slowly above my little street--

I couldn't help myself from thinking about you,
as five white birds skimmed over the near rise--
while their mirror sisters gathered--
first one,
then two,
into their warm nest--
the other three fluttering near.

I was thinking about you, Sweetheart.
Did birds fly across the stars outside your window?
Did you know?
 

My Love and her particular language

Her smile cool dark and promising,
like the cap coming off a glass Coke bottle.
Her lips, oh mercy...
the sugar
and the bite...

yes.

ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Comanche Lily

 

Where you've touched her,
she has left herself--
stepped outside herself--
double-deviled, smoke-boned,
back for more.

She kisses you,
but watches from some broody shadow--
she is the dark leaf beneath the bright bloom--
poppy-strong, moon-hearted,
and all yours.

(isn't she?)
________
 

The Queen Of Picher

The Queen of Picher
loved the wife of a Baptist preacher
and every night she dreamed she kissed her
in a rowboat on the poisoned red waters of hell.

But it wasn't enough to dream it,
so she went down in the old mines to scream it
til her throat was raw as fresh-rolled sin
and she felt as bright as a Baptist bell.

On Saturday nights she ponder and think
of forty-five ways to wring a preacher's neck,
Then Sunday come and she sigh and sink
into an ass-killin' pew, and the sermon last a week.

Rock of ages,
cleft for me--
let me hide
this sweet burnin' desire for thee.

The Queen of Picher couldn't get her
self in hand, and so she kissed her only love
in broad daylight in the middle of town--

But knees and mines can both go weak,
and by the second kiss, the whole damn street
went down, baby, they fell through thin air straight down.

The Queen of Picher and the Baptist minister's
wife now lie entwined at the bottom of the shaft--
in the shadow of the chat heaps...
and that was that.

________

top photo by my friend Daryl Edelstein, featured today at Real Toads!

bottom photo is of an abandoned church in Picher. To learn about the modern day ghost town of Picher, Oklahoma, click HERE.

optional musical accompaniment available HERE. (opens in new window)