Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Power Couple, 1970


 She said,
"I shall strike a sewing needle through your heart
for a gyroscope to keep me level.
Spin, wounded dancer,
declare yourself a world."

Spinning and bleeding, he said,
"Primp yourself a pelt
for ornament and testament.
Live your life upon my wall,
to collect and devour each passing eye."

And every bird begins its bower
with a glittering bauble in the early hour.

Wearing him as he wore her, she said,
"Make yourself a mummy,
preserved forever in cement Jello.
I shall bury you with various anchors
I calve from the ice of my womb."

Tearing himself away,
he became a skeleton, dancing, playing a flute.
"I have found a new mask to marry,
made of prescriptions and rococo furnishings.
She is a lovely acid, a suicide waltz."

And every bird in its rotting nest
fades with its bauble low in the west.
______




Friday, August 20, 2021

Watercolor

 Last night I remembered you into being
like rose-colored paint swirling in a water glass 
from brushes dipped in street scenes and night windows.

Remember, black-eyed susans sleeping by the step,
remember, rain caught on the upturned leaves of silver maples,
recall, to no point really, the dusty lanterns on the lawn.

Last night my fingertips wandered along the lines of this poem,
looking for the place where your body moved like a brushstroke
looking for me, the way I was, the way I loved how you were.

Last night, I remembered you into being
and the moonlight on the wall made me afraid, of time 
and of memory, and of these lines where they meet, like mourners.
___________




Thursday, August 19, 2021

Wild Garlic

 


wild garlic grows
between our teeth, those fallen stones
from the ruined church of our mouths.
wild garlic roots
are round and thin,
a lie we wear as shoes.

we waver, tall and gaudy,
our white flowers like lace,
seeding every time we prate our nonsense
no more significant than
the markings of wandering dogs.

we are legion, the first to appear in Spring,
a disease of the soil,
dying even as we conquer everything
even the air
with false plenty,
and the thoughtless vanity of pretty parasites.
______

image: The Muse Inspiring The Poet by Henri Rousseau





Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Benediction


There is a bell in the tower by the lake of the swans
and a blind priest with his stick on the path.
What hymn can matter to these bickering birds?
What pew can comfort the bewildered dead?

The swans trick the dead to come into the lake
and fool the bell to fall from the rope. 
The priest is found on the bench in the dawn
his mouth filled with feathers as if they belonged.
__________



Saturday, August 14, 2021

The Mountains Have Heavy Hearts

 


The mountains have heavy hearts.
The earth, like a fussing grandmother,
feeds them altitude
and early light.

Inside each house
is a beautiful girl, waiting.
Beneath each house
the earth understands what waiting really means.

My hands are like broken hinges
on a door warped from rain.
In my mind, grandmothers and mountains.
In my heart, my love, rushing. 

I have cared for a woman, perhaps.
I have cherished a dog for years.
He drowses to the touch of my big useless hand
on his back like a happy burden.
________

for The Sunday Muse #173, where I am hosting.

the art is "Self Portrait With Accordion" by Guido Vedovato




Saturday, August 7, 2021

August & Crickets

 

As a girl, I carried the cage I was given
and searched for the bird with the duende call,
its heart spread thick by a grandmother's hand,
there in each prayer and then not there at all.

As a girl I was given soot in a basket
and told not to sift but to husband it close
then sent to a seaside cliff via landslide
where the mayor of filth gave himself the last dose.

O bird! O sky! O flesh made of lilies,
grow light on the bones of the bird on the stalk
of my sorrow, my bloom made of August and crickets
transformed in its throat to an arcing flock.

As a girl I was given a purse with a ticket
to a room with stucco walls and a bed
where a woman crawled from the wreck of the fire
and stood by the window, my bird on her hand.
_________





Tuesday, August 3, 2021

My new book is out!


 My new book "Gypsy Bird Cage", 25 pages of fierce beauty, is available now at Amazon! 

Contains:
In The Garden of the Moon
Aberdeen
The Last Auk
10 Lines About Lucy Medicine Crow
The Angry Damned
Michigan Vacation 1967
On The Subject of Enduring Love
Mi Amada
Mermaids
Stunt Pilot
Green
Black Jaye
Fox With A Feather
The Stag At Evening
The Mercy of Tigers
Moon Rabbit
Cirque Du Folle
The Thing I Couldn't Tell You
Lilies On The Altar
Incantesimo
Swans & Roses
Anodyne
Wolf Pack
Apple On The Sill