Indolence

"There you stood on the edge of your feather/expecting to fly" --Neil Young

April rain came like a too-long book.

Aimless starlings, poised buds, everything waits as I do also, indolent, supposing suns behind closed lids.

_______

for Wednesday Muse "Busy Body" .

Sounding

There were bells, and shaven-headed monks in saffron.
Prayer flags whipped in the wind.
There were stepping stones and a cat as silent as a yogi.

There were bells and waist-high goldenrod.
A gust caught your open shirt like a sail.
There were tiny drops and your hand sure and solid holding mine.

There were bells and a nine-paned window;
my desk permanent as a tattoo.
I wrote this poem to the sound of bells, from my fingers, the walls, the sky.

There were bells. 
There are bells still, 
sounding from every form and object, and in every tone. 
______

for Susie's "Bits of Inspiration" at Toads.

 

Library Science

"Goddess, make this mirror your river...
show me what you would have me see." 
Another woman walks in
as I stand at the sink taking in
my own face and flaws and shaking in my boots.

Silly girl.
Silly woman.
Go out that door and up to the reference desk.
All this time,
all the books checked out,
and I still haven't talked to her--not really--yet.

I wonder what's in her mind?
Austen? Ferlinghetti or Faust?
I wonder what's in her bag?
Lipstick? A leather cord with an ankh?

Goddess, make my lips your instrument,
let me say what you would have me say.
I want to kiss her. I want to hear her whisper "yes..."
I want her not to think me a fool. 
Goddess hear me, Goddess bless.

She's with someone...at her desk. In her life?
Is my boho baby someone's girl? Someone's wife?
Gee I love her hair, her smart-girl glasses, 
her long fingers, her long skirt.
I think we could be really beautiful
or I could just look stupid and get hurt.

(Anyway, here goes nothing.)

Goddess, make my lips your instrument,
let me say what you would have me say.
I want to kiss her. I want to hear her whisper "yes..."
I want her to see me, and understand.
Goddess hear me, Goddess bless.

Now's the moment. Smile! 
Say something! "I...."
She tilts her head, I think she knows...
And then, so softly, "Yes?" 
________

For my last Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads. "Love."

I love this song. Good grief, scratch a cynic find a romantic, I guess.

 

The News From My Bed*

"Got to keep the loonies on the path"--Pink Floyd

The news from my bed is that the wall is gone.
At least I think it is. Things tend to pull the old switcheroo on me lately.

There's a guy standing there, by the jagged concrete and snaky rebar. His shirt is open and he's holding a Burger King wrapper to his bloody forehead. He looks a little dazed--meds? Or bombs. Not sure.

I get up. Yeah, I can get up. Nothing buzzes, no orderly or bitchy nurse appears. No doctor from Bloomfield Hills ladling out patronizing bullshit. If it's bombs, I hope they blew his golf club all to hell and gone.

I say to bloody forehead guy, "Hey." He blinks, hesitates, then does the guy nod. Maybe I lost my mojo in here. I tilt my head, look up at him with my soulful fucking brown eyes. "'Sup?" His knees buckle and he goes down, half over what's left of the bottom of the wall. Okay so. I get up, look around. What else is gone is the secure doors. And Madison, my roommate. She's hung up in the broken glass of the nurse's station. Poor Maddy. I notice she's wearing my Mickey Mouse sweat pants. 

I fuck with my hair, step over the wall that isn't there, and Burger King guy. I'd help him if I could, but I'm just a loon, right? Before I can decide anything, this awful tremendously loud roar happens and then there's a concussion and dust blinding me. I'm on my ass without knowing how I got there. I hear a heavy vehicle going by me, close.  I get up, my left leg won't work and I drop hard on my tailbone. So, I don't know a good affirmation for all of this. I don't know how this makes me feel, except that my leg and my ass hurt. The dust clears and I can see the buildings on fire and a freaked-out cat with its back arched and eyes big as next Tuesday, crouching and yowling as the rockets land. You and me, Puss. It takes a minute, but I scoop her up and off we go, me limping bad, Puss in full what-the-fuck mode, the Russians or the Koreans or the Martians raining shit down on our heads, and us doubtless sending it right straight back to their fucking pagodas or whatever. Holy shit, Puss. And they say I'm crazy.
_______

*my title is a brazen rip-off, as per instructions HERE.

Day 11 of the April thang, and I'm still rockin'. 

 

My Dog

"Let me in!"

My dog
has short stubby legs
and a ginormous barrel chest.
People laugh and say,
"He's put together wrong!"
He likes to dig,
play tugga,
and once,
he killed a skunk.

Evenings, while I watch tv,
he snoozes with a big doggy smile on his face.
If I stop rubbing his belly,
he opens an eye, lifts a paw and wants more.
I like to watch him sleeping
with his little legs
and barrel chest,
all the while marveling
at his little body in its Perfection. 
______

For Day 9 of the April thang.

Edwina Eileen Etiquette

Edwina Eileen Etiquette
got all she could getiquette.
She caught her neighbors' Galliformes
and turned them into Maniformes.
Exclaim! Exclaim! (went other dames)
and loosed uncomplimentary names,
but were her needs all metiquette?
Edwina says, "You betiquette!" 
__________

Galliformes = chickens and other large ground-feeding birds.

For day 7 and for "Just One Word" at Toads.

Ugly Bag Of Mostly Water

It's like being a fag hag except with space ships.
Oh yazzzz,
I love a man with a literal heart on his sleeve.
I love a woman with spots down her spine and two tongues.
Who's a girl got to kiss around here to meet a Venusian? 

Problem is,
that cute double-brained hottie with the exoskeleton flinches when I reach for him.
And my burbling hydro creature recoils when all I want to do is kiss her delicately foamed lips. 

Ugly bag of mostly water, they say.
Weird split biped without means of unassisted flight, they sneer. 
Hey,
so uggos don't need love, too?

It's like being a fag hag 
except they don't appear as dancers in revivals of "Guys & Dolls" and get me tix
and they don't
"Oh honeyyyy" me when I'm down. 

Still, I don't think they really mean their GTFO's. 
Do they?
____

Watching too much Star Trek on Day 4 for Wordy Thursday.