Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Penance


I am a ghost looking for spirits; steam searching for smoke. 
I wear my long duster, and carry a kerosene sun.
I am a nun praying my penance; a singer struck by stroke.
I am your grave digger; you, better loved than anyone.

I wear my long duster, and carry a kerosene sun.
I am found by dire-light, turning scripture to palimpsest. 
I am never done, though my diet is the slenderest.

I am a nun paying my penance; a singer struck by stroke.
Collecting throats in my pockets, renaming them all night.
I have choked back every longing, and paled your name with white.

I am your grave digger; you,  better loved than anyone.
My all-and-none, my crossroads queen awoke,
I am a ghost looking for spirits; light transformed to smoke.
________

This is a trimeric, for Sunday Muse #184.  




Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Wild Tuxedo

Wild tuxedo
giving me that give-a-shit look

careful as a politician
cold as a chain link fence in November
eyes gorgeous as turquoise earrings.

Wild Tuxedo
mother to the one that lived
Is he lazing in someone's home?
Is he by the road and nothing but bones?

There is hunger and then there is hunger.
The set-out bowl is always empty
in the morning 
when the traffic hums.

Wild Tuxedo
distrustful as a third wife
hardy as a weed
I wake up worrying about you sometimes
because

There is hunger and there is hunger.
There is the moon,
the refrigerator kicking on
the clock ticking
and offered love you spurn without a thought.
_______




Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Good-Girl Dandy


It gave her pain
to part with anything
as if piss were wine
and pennies perfect
tears from Jesus' eyes;
as if fun were debit and deduction
from the piggy bank of Good-Girl Dandy.

It gave her pain
not to ledger the world
and if nails were dear
and the wood too fine
she would purse her lips
at the Sufferer on the tower, and
serve Him vinegar and year-old candy.
_______

for dverse poetics "Halloweeny Humans."




Sunday, October 24, 2021

To An Admirer

 "It's like being mailed into space" --Sylvia Plath

There are children
and a magnifying glass,
an ant
a sidewalk
and the summer sun, 92 million miles away.

The Prometheus ant will shortly know glory
and the eagle.
The children are its doctors
with their laser.

A poem on one's heart
is a volcano in a paper bag.
An old romantic
is an ant in a Hiroshima body.

You'll see me magnified, aflame,
for writing this poem about
happy children
in the summer sun.
________





Sunday, October 17, 2021

Ash


Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.
Colored flames flare the leaf that dies.
For a moment, the madman lucid.
Sweet milk in the sun turns putrid.

The bonfire kills the thing it lights.
Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.
You may find that devils may care
To catch and keep you with them there.

The young may sigh, slow, and sicken
to find their tongues gray and thickened.
Ash is blind and boneless, but flies.
A snare denies its bird the skies.

Don't be so proud, sure and boasting.
See the rooster, plucked and roasting.
The grave may loose the one who dies.
Ash is blind and boneless, but flies. 
_______

for Sunday Muse #182. This is a quatern. Thanks to LiJade.











Saturday, October 16, 2021

The Intermediary


I've left tea on the outside table
a baffle for whatever wanders the woods.
Lance-shaped willow leaves fall 
and alter the prescription, the drowse
of the day and the mind with confusing pall.

What lured these leaves from their mother-branch
to my poor care in the orphaned hour?
What strange embroidery can quicken them again
into their summer suits of pride and motion?
Autumn's alchemist brings gold, then lead.

Here is the potion, the breviary, the wine
fermented from pomegranates, swayed by tannins.
My faith is in teriac and the reading of leaves
in my baked clay mug and the struggling lungs
of my patients un-greening like harvested sheaves.
_________




Friday, October 15, 2021

Letter To My Indifferent Love


 I loved you. Forgive the triteness of my tongue,
I'm not the husky-voiced Delilah that I was when I was young.

Poor gentlemen, when we harpies hand 'em
our hearts like letters stuck in tandem
by a bit of glue from horses rotten
sidesaddle ridden and wrongly gotten

Like you, dear sir,
when life was kind 
leaving apple blossom 
scent behind

When red curls fell,
escaped their pins,
while apple cores
curled brown in bins

I loved you. Please pardon my hand laid on your sleeve
as delicate as a caught disease.

Poor object of my heart's desire,
though altered, I'm yet yours entire,
no stepping back and calling for Jesus
I don't think one so holy can see us.

I loved you. As red-handkerchieved consumptives do
the dry air of their coffins, too.
________

for The Sunday Muse #182, where I am hosting.





Wednesday, October 13, 2021

The Year Of Broken Birds

 

It was a year that broke open every bird,
killed the sky with loneliness
and choked every throat with the smoke of its own songs, burning.

It was the year my son lived on earthquakes,
the time of blade tongues
and poison drugs, ugly betrayals and back door bullshit.

When divorcing, wear a black wedding dress,
drain love like old gasoline
and kiss stench-breath vultures like you mean it.

The good man grown is still the coffin of the boy I raised.
Who is this, holding my grand daughter?
We tried to save each other, and did, but with new skins.

Starlings nest noisily in dawn chimneys.
Blackbirds wear old angers coolly on their shoulders.
I learn from them,
learn from solitude,
learn from time passing,
and am content enough, having done all I could.
______________

for dverse poetics "from a place of pain"




Saturday, October 9, 2021

Queening

 "It wasn't chess, it was checkers." --Ian Anderson to a critic who had said he plays chess with his audience.


That's a neat trick, you with the blade,
filing your teeth into chess pieces in your sleep.

You'd prefer the whole board gray,
every piece a bishop, coming at an angle,
lifting scripture from both cheeks.

Don't talk with your mouth full,
don't run that sideways stuff at the magic hour
with a rabbit in your hat, it's a tired old trick.

Such stale gambits won't maneuver me
into doing what you lack the guts for yourself.
I'm retiring from this bullshit, let's try a new game, it's called

Truth Or Dare, and I play it with knives.
_________





Friday, October 8, 2021

Eyeglasses Like Morning Mist


1.
Eyeglasses like morning mist one wakes to
or a neighbor's house seen through falling snow.
I can't recall or summon up the moment
when they began to film, smear, obscure
and soften every object like a too-polite host.

2. 
He is a secret creature, keeping his own counsel,
his heart right there in his eyes, but his eyes useless.
"Here, boy," I say in my love-voice, as if I were a river
and he the one born in love with the blind leap.
He fears nothing, I am his safe shore, kind, constant.

3.
I was twenty, though I was sixty, in love, sitting alone
with my novel when the bus creaked up, its numbers
broken, aslant with rain. I closed my umbrella, got on,
dropped my change in the box, swayed when we moved
and saw through the window my book, blurred, forgotten.

4.
After, you know, I saw you everywhere, and never again.
A certain wave of black hair, someone's careless rhythm
crossing a parking lot, swinging a bag or a child's hand,
I mistook you everywhere, nearly kissed strangers, blinked
back sudden tears, so angry, so confused, so blind sad.

5.
Eyeglasses like morning mist when one wakes to
to find the beloved novel on the floor face up
and opened to the wrong page. Was I on pavement?
in the back yard? in bed? in grief? when the stars tilted
and I knew I had lost the heart, the luxury, to leap.
_________




Monday, October 4, 2021

Oreithyia

 

I've caught this bird
with a thorn under its wing
and laid it by your beauty
the same as everything
I've ever brought you.

I've wrought this bell
from soapstone green
with its tongue struck mute
the same as anything
that's ever loved you.
____

for Quadrille #137 at dverse.



Saturday, October 2, 2021

Painted Meat Envelope

 The painted meat envelope in its gauzy cocoon 
opened its food hole to show its bone rows,

Charming the larger meat envelope, who vocalized:

You're the most beautiful bride ever, Gina."

_____