I Am a Human

 I am a human

raised by a robot

cut loose in the garden

carried on the water

carried on the water

cared for by the winter

and my mind--that's ice

nice nice very nice.

nice nice very nice

making poetry from paper birds

and a magpie in flight

under a fragrant sun

under a fragrant sun

cut loose in a garden grove

where the robot rusts, in time we trust

carried on the water like the rest.

________

for What's Going On? BEING HUMAN

one line is taken from the Ambrosia song.

they stole it from Kurt Vonnegut.

Travel Stories For Girls

 

Someone messed with my story when I was still young,

trying to bend it like a bonsai tree

and so I wrapped it in paper and hid it away

in the throat of a bird, clandestinely. 

I was obliged to call my assaulter "mother"

and expected to pretend devotion.

Her mask was on her face so long

that her true face had become the illusion.

Grown, I went where the robins gathered

and found the cardinal who carried my loss.

It was in a grave, wrapped with quilts, 

but had marked its place with two twigs crossed.

I put it back in my body and felt its ice,

then its beat and its fine red heat.

There is nothing I love more than the thing

I smuggled past the killer-- the best of me.

That is not to say that all survived--

those who say they love are heard as fakes,

assassins or fools; give this hungry woman jewels

and see what a pretty figure my turned back makes.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Sula 

Music: Damien Jurado Orphans in the Key of E

Poets' Bento Box

 I dug our grave with a silver spade

and a paper bell in the coffin shell--

a bento box where our lines were laid.

I dug our grave with a silver spade

but then in a dream, a kiss delayed

like a sweetly sorrowful gift from Hell-- 

I dug our grave with a silver spade

and a paper bell in the coffin shell.

_______________

a triolet for Word Garden Word List--The Return of Ellie Black

TLDR:

Dave Van Ronk, in the song Motherless Children, sings these lines:

Dig my grave with a bloody spade when I'm dead

dig my grave with a bloody spade when I'm dead

dig my grave with a bloody spade

make damn sure that the digger gets paid

He also does a song Old Blue about a beloved dog who dies. He sings:

I dug his grave with a silver spade

lowered him down with a golden chain

I kind of combined the two in my triolet, which is not about motherlessness or dogs, but is about an old relationship. The bento box denotes the compartmentalization of it. 

In the 19th century, there was a great fear of premature burial. A solution was offered in the form of "safety" coffins, which had a bell above ground attached to a string underground and placed in the corpse's hand. In the event of premature burial, the person could ring the bell to summon help.

Finally--and my process notes are now quite a bit longer than my triolet!--I had a dream recently that a person I had put out of my mind came to me and kissed me tenderly on the cheek, bringing back old feelings, if only in that moment. A paper bell, if you will. 

Music: Elton John Funeral for a Friend/ Love Lies Bleeding

Birmingham, 1963

 

Russian sage

Russians have taken over our gardening shed.

I see them, surfer-ish blondes and fierce Tatars

ambling among the trowels and bushel baskets,

planting their tri-color flag in the petunias. 

My brother has a train layout in the basement

set up on an old ping-pong table. I invite

one of the Russians to come down and see it.

He turns pale, looks funny, leaves in silence.

I go out to the garden shed with a notebook

like Lois Lane. I flip it open for an interview.

Why are you using our garden shed? 

I stand there with my pad like a waitress.

At night the Russians sit around and smoke,

private thoughts burning under a suburban moon. 

Don't they miss the Volga, the Dnieper?

Then in late June they are gone, leaving

only half a muffin behind like a broken heart

laid tenderly to rest amid the tall, fragrant sage. 

_______

for the Word Garden Word List--Pages For You. 

Music: In The Garden

For S.

you

my heart

my teacher

fool and angel

whose mighty heart beat itself out too soon

if there are words for how much i miss you

they elude me

but longing

and love

stay. 

_______

for Dverse "numbering ten"

hosted by Laura Bloomsbury

The February of a Heart

 

Here is something from the February of a heart,

cigarette smoke caught in a bell jar,

roses in river ice.

She was dark haired--half onyx, half common crow,

a revised edition of herself,

a slow-fused Chinese firework.

What is there to say now, in too-bright summer?

Her presence made one feverish,

a Vienna of the blood, a powerful champagne.

To be delirious is to be happy, as falling birds are, briefly.

Her smile a trespasser, she owns unsteadily, carelessly, 

one's fine, burning, hotel of the moment.

Here is something from the February of a heart--mine.

One recovers precariously from enchantment,

feather in hand, but sorry the way birds are, when they die.

________

For Word Garden Word List #1. 

art: Gustav Klimt "Golden Tears and Kiss"

Kill All Monsters

Mirror, mirror on the wall--

be honest with me one more time

before you go blind;

before I disappear and you start to lie. 

I am ugly,

so they say and have said

for as far back as my memory reaches.

The unkind ask straight-out,

"Were you in an accident?"

The kind remark on my beautiful eyes

and let the rest hang in the air like lost birds.

It's a great day for my mother,

hiding in her space suit of conventionality. 

The doctor in whom she has such faith--

who treats me like a block of wood

and speaks as if I weren't sitting right there--

thrills her when he holds my nose up with his thumb

and she gushes 

that now I look like her darling, my sib.

Mirror, mirror

tell it to me straight, as a sweet sixteen gift

before you lose the truth forever

and I vanish into this involuntary shift.

I know that others find me ugly

and that my mother finds me ugly

because she comes right out and says so.

But I am not ugly to myself--

I am simply me.

After tomorrow,

after blood and blades and anesthetic,

someone will heal and go back to school and marry and grow old,

but she won't be me.

I'll be riding inside, in my island prison, unseen.

Someone will say, "You look so pretty,"

and it will mean nothing to me,

it having been said about someone else,

this mask-face I can never take off even for a second.  

Mirror, mirror,

tell me the truth before you deceitfully bend--

before I submit to the will of others

and am never seen again.

_______

Dedicated to the disfigured, the different, the intersexed, and all children whose bodies are altered without their consent.

And in memory of Lucy Grealy, author of "Autobiography Of A Face." In the arms of the angels, Beautiful.

For Fireblossom Friday "This Is (Almost) The End" at Toads.

Image at top: Adele Exarchopolous from the movie "Blue is The Warmest Color" 

Soft, The Dove

Butch, the top hat,
the collar and tails.
Soft, the dove,
in your hand for all of that. 

Rusted, the band,
the wheels in their wells.
Gone, the dove,
and the cocksure sleight of hand.

Empty, the trunk,
the wine glass by the bed.
Dove, a failed trick,
when the blackbird lands instead. 

Many, the props,
the act in its details.
Several, the doves,
their eyes, their cooing calls.

Returned, or so it seems,
conjured in my sleep.
Soft, the dove
I capture, then release.
_______

for Magaly's Heart-Bits. Writing IS magic. But, to quote the poem/song, we decide which is right and which is illusion.

The included video unfortunately does not include the poem, but was such a good version otherwise that I have chosen it anyway.

 

The Winter Guest

You were the winter guest
wrapped in scarves and leather,
and I was the girl with red hair
and a dollar on the dresser.

One night, eating on the cheap
at the Chinese restaurant downstairs,
you turned an egg roll into a talking dog
who called me her Heart....her Air.

Do you remember when I played you
the song about a nightingale in Berkeley Square?
You called me a granny and kissed my ear,
then dropped your coat on a kitchen chair.

I loved the delicate balance
of my quilt on your back--
candle light in my bedroom--
and all of that....

You were the winter guest
wrapped in cable knit and leather;
now I'm a lonesome nightingale
with a scarf on her dresser.
______

from a word list.

 

Light

Light
as new snow, my words for you
dropped in your coffee, sweet
jesus I can be
bright 
as December sun--

so drink deep. Soft kisses so near after night
mimic closely
what I really felt when we began and I would have
bought and ground your favorite beans
to place 
real heat
before you, holy as an offering.
_____

Art by Jenny Leslie. Posted for Real Toads' "Snow-Birthed Tales."

Bird

I took a bird from your hair when I was kissing you
--or, perhaps, I placed it there.
You see, I become as forgetful as surf, as unreliable as air.

That night, I carried my stolen bird inside my sweatshirt,
the one you lifted off my arms,
to sample the warm melt of me, a lighted wick within a wax-filled jar.

That night, the bird sang, causing the moon to rise.
How can you send me away, alone,
when the sun is none the wiser and my heart, like my bird's,

beats so rapid--poor brief thing!-- and so strong?
_____