Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Sunday, June 27, 2021

El Lobo Herido

 


Injury requires solitude

for the blood to slow.

Cold water soothes the throb

and so he walks the river bed.


His belly is empty as the sky

but turns over sickly,

his body's shock at violation.

Up, through the grasses, silently.


He will stay here, concealed

on his side, panting.

Licking the wound, resting

he will either heal or not--live or not--


the same as any other day he has known.

_________

for Sunday Muse #166.





Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Michigan Vacation, 1967

 


"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places." --Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms

"Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling." --Ernest Hemingway, Big Two-Hearted River part one.

_______

Michigan Vacation 1967


When I turned twelve, Michigan blessed me

with a love of lake water.

Rain on wood rails. Cold green waves. White sails.

Goodbye in the eyes of my father.


Solitude in a red paddle boat

watching the sea-weed swaying.

White sails. Cold green waves. Rain on wood rails.

A time cut short. We won't be staying.


That summer, Detroit and drift wood burned.

My paperback left behind.

Rain on wood rails. Cold green waves. White sails.

Something born or dying. Something fine.


When I turned twelve, Michigan blessed me

with a week that never leaves.

White sails. Cold green waves. Rain on wood rails.

How to love well and then, how to grieve.

________

Process note: My father had a particular fondness for Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. I can't read them without thinking of him.

For Dverse Poetics "One True Sentence." This form is called a ZaniLa Rhyme, invented by Laura Lamarca. 



Sunday, June 20, 2021

Bird


 There is a blue and yellow bird.

He can say "pretty bird."

He can take off your finger before you know it.


There is a room with a large cage,

or that is a large cage,

with a sentinel window where only light passes.


Say that this bird is yours.

Say that he lights on your shoulder.

Your skin will envy the window glass, and long for distance.


You can sit quietly in the evening.

The bird can strut and scream on its perch in the afternoon.

When you die, tomorrow or ten years from now,


The bird will tilt its head, fluff its feathers, tap its mirror

tap tap tap

in boredom or in victory, a line of sun across its rope trapeze.

_______




Saturday, June 19, 2021

On The Subject of Enduring Love


I have sent my driver, with the map in his head.
He'd be better off blindfold.
Better off dead.

Banter with him as events unfold.
Pretend you've not gone mephitic and old.

Forever is the thing, forever is the word.
Forever the mounted, desiccated bird.

I have sent my car with the soft leather seats.
All the ash trays nailed,
sick with sweets.

I wait for you breathless, gloved and veiled
tubercular, powdered, primped and paled.

Here love's cricket who last night chirred
lies dead in the mouth of that god-damned bird.
____________

for The Sunday Muse #165, where I am hosting. 



Sunday, June 13, 2021

God, In Youth and Age

 


Mistakes were made. Things were done.

There in the void, scattering lava-spitting planets from Hell to next Thursday,

kid must have been stone lonesome.

If He drowned his toys in the bathtub for forty days, hey, it was The Exciting Game Without Any Rules. 

Bitter little bastard, and so would you have been.


Time goes by, tick tock.


Awkward with girls, He just popped one pregnant.

Fast forward, single father with a son.

Awake at night, His fuck-ups from years ago torture Him still,

all the aggression and acting out.

Stone tablets just made it weird for everybody,

but He had to learn on the fly, no teachers, no friends.


What a smoking pile-up.


So there's His only son, chopping chairs and hope chests out of trees in the shed by himself.

"I'm gonna give you twelve friends, let you see the world, set everybody straight, do and have everything I never had!" Big smile, open arms, well? Well???

Jay turns back to planing the edge of a door. 

The flying chips remind Him of His old lava-spitting planets, most of them rocky and dead in the end, and He goes off.

Presto, Jay's in the desert with the devil, for the good of all concerned. 


Oh, He talks to the neighbors about sacrifice and salvation,


But every time He sees the hand-crafted coffee table out in the garage, 

dusty,

forgotten next to the Jarts and the lawn mower,

He dips His old white-haired head,

leans down with His spotty hands on His knees 

and whispers, "I am that I am," to nobody.

_________

for Sunday Muse #164




Saturday, June 5, 2021

Duet

 


The cello began to make demands.

"You must make allowances for me," it said.

"I am overfilled with grief, like a suicide's bathtub."


"I will bow you more gently," said the girl.

"Gently shmently," said the cello.

"Make me a tree again, restore my rings and skin."


"Cash me ousside, how bow da?" said the girl.

"Cry me a river, cello.

We both moan from inside our changed bodies,


Bowed by handsy players who take bows for our fracaso."

-----------

for Sunday Muse #163. 

fracaso--Spanish for defeat, ruin, downfall, calamity, destruction