Painter

image by Ali Falik

She is the painter with the borrowed style,
squinting as if every thing and person were the sun.
On canvas, her stars struggle.
Here is her garret, on stilts, shifting in the wind.

She is the painter with a surgeon's skill.
Her models go home with acquired malaise.
In space, she paints solar flairs as ruined starlets,
already seen, grasping, scorn in every stroke of her brush.

She is the painter with one set of supplies,
mail ordering locks from ghosts with discontinued accounts.
Galleries are cruel, declining her work before she creates it,
claiming they know as well as she does the grays of cats in the dark.
______

for Sunday Muse #70

Ceremony

The sea offered a knife for ceremony
carried on the tide to my feet.

At first, I refused. 
At first, I sheathed my face and pretended spiritual palsy.

The sea spoke, insistent, saying, "The world is empty.
Your body is dark earth, a mother for every seed."

In those days, electrical storms were continuous.
The beach was strewn, as all beaches were, with fragmented glass.

"Must every edge open a new mouth
before any creature can sing?" I asked.

Wearily, I took up the knife for ceremony.
My blood became cities. I became the sea as it became me.

Find fools, we urged ourselves.
Offer ceremony.
Insist, until the sky calms, 
and if the world then writhes, 

Blame the doppelganger god who sent us in the first place.
_______

for Play It Again at Real Toads. I used grapeling's Pablo Neruda word list.

When There Were No Connections

When there were no connections
between us, our senses, our skin
and the world we were living in,
the white smear erasure of our minds made us birds in an atmosphere of anvils.

Survival left rippling cracks in the plate glass
of our temporal back-beat;
People mistook us for Dada tickets but we were 
just a wedge in a bar of a song in our heads

To be remembered each Fourth Of July
as we concuss, diffuse, and catch each other's eye
even in gravity boots,
even in the dark.
_______

for Kenia's guest post at Real Toads. I chose the following song:

In Case Of Typhoon

"Lion Afternoon" by Jacek Yerka

In the event of typhoon, 
hurricane,
sandstorm
or other natural upheaval,

the gathering of certain objects and creatures is advised.
Clocks, for their numerical appeal and sense of order;
flowers in vases whose delicacy illustrates contrast;
and lions, generally useful in all situations.

When traveling by public transport, always be sure
that you have fed your lion beforehand. 
Consult with drivers before installing fountains, saplings,
or other decorative additions.

When hosting relatives, serve ham w/ pineapple;
if a lover, light cakes or honey tea.
When arriving as a guest, be sure to bring your own seating and lion,
as your hosts may lack these essentials.

Finally, treat typhoons, tornadoes, landslides and such as equals--
talking down to them or shouting does no good.
Invite lions into your home.
Serve hors d'oeuvres made from antelope or cape buffalo.

Follow these simple instructions and avoid high winds,
use bus and train systems without worry,
and assure yourself of being welcome in the best venues
in tandem with a lion who neither owns you nor is owned.
________

for Sunday Muse #69. Carrie kindly stepped in for me with this fantastic image, because, like a blithering fool, I simply forgot I was supposed to do the post today!

Cicada

A cicada is a simple thing.
Given the power of speech, it would say,
"I am respectable;
I have worked years for this."

The tree upon whose branch the cicada clings
has stood on the same ground for decades,
but is not unchanging.
"As with me," the cicada would opine.
"I am a miracle of industry,
creativity
and purpose."

On the August breeze, birds float like daydreams,
their songs summer scarves folded on a table by a vase of cut flowers.

A cicada has shed its empty brown skin.
It would tell us, "I have left myself behind on a journey to myself.
Admire me,
collect the lessons I give,
strong, solid and marvelous."

On the August breeze, birds float like daydreams,
their songs summer scarves in myriad tones of impossible variety.

Then, the cicada,
droning its unmusical single note,
proud,
stupid,
insistent that its noise and buzz is all there is
because that is all it hears or can imagine.
______

for Wednesday Muse "Cicadas!"

From A Shell

From a shell came Divine instruction
insistent as a drowning man's hand,
his ear a barrel of seven-year whiskey.

As his bones grew longer, firmer,
the ground gave way so that he was always at sea,
a perpetual castaway in the solid world.

A woman, his mother,
said his head was in the clouds;
another woman, undressed and unhappy,
said he never heard a word she said.

He hears, but his heart is a barrel of seven-year whisky
a sea within a sea within a man
at the mercy of the Selkies who shed 
their seal-coats at his feet and sing.
______

for Sunday Muse #68.

A Peculiar Blindness

"If I were blind, would you be my eyes?" --Todd Rundgren "Pretending To Care"

It's a peculiar blindness
so many of us have. 

There you are, little bug, looking for a place to land
never giving much thought to how you came so far.

That's why a breeze brought you me.
You think you are small, unremarkable,

but I can see your big glorious wings
spread out like an exclamation

right behind you,
in fabulous display,
plain as day.
______

for Wednesday Muse "butterflies."