Two Sharks

 

I have two sharks inside me

swimming in tandem and holding my heart

between them like a little family 

walking in the dark.

I send them gulps of air from outside

as if I were some sort of oxygenated charity

with a face and feet, operating in the world

on their behalf like a proxy or prosthetic.

Oh fishies, confined and angry in the bowl of my ribs,

here come those old blues again.

Why does life go on so long, demand so much,

slowly dribbling out the cracked glass of years?

I have had ideas all along, fine ideas

to open a ministry in a dumpster,

a ballroom in an attic, a cemetery 

on a space station with the whole Earth for Ouija board.

I'm scared, fishies. Will the moon call you

and will you answer her tidal madrigal?

Will she require three voices, you and my heart?

Will you rise in glory, leaving me hollow, in salt and sorrow?

_________________

for Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

Word Garden Word List--How To Sell a Haunted House

 

Hello my little puppeteers and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! I recently finished a novel by Grady Hendrix entitled How To Sell a Haunted House, and I loved it.

It's about a brother and sister whose parents have both died in a traffic accident, leaving them to sell the family home. The trouble is, there's a haunted puppet named Pupkin in there. He's very charming unless he's turning you into his zombie slave or trying to kill you. Trouble is, he's almost always trying to do either or both. 

Grady Hendrix

The novel is half family dynamics and half horror, with a liberal dash of humor as well. I can't stop thinking about it. Hmm, could it be Pupkin taking over my mind???

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then be sure that new house of yours is really, actually vacant before you move in! This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List:

attic

bright

clown

cousins

dolls

dumpster

friends

hammer

haunted

jealous

jumbled

ministry

moon

puppet

remote

safe

scared

snotty

squirrels

thirsty

Peace & Quiet

 

Late for work third day this week

boss say my ice is thinning

can't find my paddle I'm sure up the creek

and I'm not too hot at swimming

Crashed my car late last night

that pole jumped right out at me

I signaled left but the world went right

and bent like origami

If I could only find a little peace

some place that's sweet and quiet

I'd get up off the floor, not do stupid anymore

at least I'd like to try it

My one true love says they've had enough

and got a judge to sign it

If I could get Jesus and still do my stuff

I might really get behind it

All I want is just a little peace

like a room in the Vegas Hyatt

I'll pray from the floor, spray tags on the door

and do the desk clerk to keep it quiet.

______

for "Yearning For Peace" at What's Going On?

Love Song For Donny

 He calls himself a cheerer upper

that drooling simp,

that cretinous, sludge-blooded

syphilitic pimp.

"Come on get happy

and make it snappy

or just shovel shit

if your hair is nappy."

We've had enough

of fatty with the golf cart

with the cabinet he got

on sale at Walmart.

The baby in chief

is just illusion super sized

whose stupid cryto coin

has 'em all hypnotized.

He's filling his diaper

at his ghost town parade

afraid that we're hip to

his strongman charade.

He's a crying, crapping, superannuated fake

with his spineless, goggle-eyed, parroting rummies

who will blow themselves up like fingerless rubes--

his red-hatted cosplay crash test dummies.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In the Rye

Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In The Rye

 

Hello my little outsiders, and welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt! This week we have a source novel that needs no introduction--The Catcher In the Rye  by J.D.Salinger.

I first read it in high school. My best friend had to read it for class and it sounded interesting. Now, at that point in my life, I was reading less than I ever had before or ever would again, but I read this novel and loved it. I loved Holden tap dancing on the floor of the dorm bathroom, crowing, "I'm the goddamn governor's son!" I thought it was tremendously funny and also poignant.

I read it again when I was around forty, married, and raising a son. This time, it made me want to help Holden in all of his confusion and hurt. I wanted to mother him. I had been where he was once, and hadn't forgotten. I read the book a third time last year, and once again it hit me differently than the first two times. I kept thinking of the song Ripple  by the Grateful Dead.

There is a road, no simple highway

between the dawn and the dark of night

and if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own, Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then make your wandering way back home. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

aspirin

bores

celebrity

cheerer upper

clock

corny

drooling

entertaining

glued

incognito

limping

madman

museum

nervous

record

school

sleepy

snappy

terrific

wuddyacallit

Travel Advisory

 

In Denver, poems stay up in the Rockies at night

only rolling down Colfax Avenue in bright afternoon,

hanging out in the vanished record store with

Allen Ginsburg, waiting for night to howl at the moon.

In Toronto, you can catch a touristy rickshaw

or hustle some change at night on Yonge street

depending where on the grayscale you fall,

and the poems there wear boots and are desperate/sweet.

In Manila you can take your poem to a fine hotel

or share Italian in a restaurant where they let you write on the wall,

then get starry/holy at one of the cathedrals

and set out before dawn to hunt up some warm pan de sal.

But in London there are no poems, they've all

fallen into the gap, been run over by trains,

gotten rat-tired of curry and black-coat robots.

Nerves fried, orphan-empty, they sick in the streets, 

cut out their tongues, and die whenever it rains.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

Music: Leo Kottke Eight Miles High

Word Garden Word List--Iron Horse

 

Hello my little travelers across space and reality, and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List. This time our source is Allen Ginsberg's Iron Horse. The poem is part of his The Fall of America: Poems of These States sequence of poems, and uses the locomotive as a symbol for the destructive nature of modern society and the loss of individuality.

Allen Ginsberg

My copy was published in 1973 by Coach House Press of Toronto, Canada, but I bought it on a swing through California at about that time. In 1992 I met the author and he signed my copies of Howl  and Iron Horse. He asked me where I had gotten the latter and then went through it and corrected three mistakes with the same pen he had used to sign my book. He knew exactly where they were. I still have both of the collections he signed.  In fat, I still have every poetry collection I ever bought, that meant something to me, and I bought a lot of them when I was young. Not much has survived with me through all the years, but my poetry books have. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then travel by train across America. 

And now, your List:

actors

baton

bulletins

busted

electronic

empty

hamburgers

leafy

nap

nerves

orphan

phantom

poem

public

robots

slag

stale

starry

train

voice

Winter & Wanting

 

You wanted

To break my cold reserve

To be a flame on the frozen stream

I wanted

To protect my stillness

To be snow in the presence of May

Charming one

You remind me of me

When I was hopeful and still believed

I thank you

For the moment's respite

When you touched my sleep with honeyed light.

______

For Dverse MTB "A Lover as Second Nature" hosted by Laura B.

Music: Jai Jagdeesh In Dreams

Ice

 

Winter went too far that year

like a friend who shows her ugly side,

as heedless as some smartphone fuck in a bookstore

as numb and hard as a cop's baton.

Southern beauty, transplanted lady

brought here as a baby, 

my English walnut tree was shivered--shocked--

a dazed involuntary wandering the halls of summer for years after.

This year, unfed, the bandit squirrels stopped knocking down 

her new growth bouquets.

This year her gown is lush, her branches heavy with baubles,

the first walnuts in five years.

I love to sit beneath her, bathed in green

and the susurration of her clustered feathers.

No silent era star wearing ostrich plumes

could compete with her now--she preens in the pleasant weather.

This spring, she is an Impressionist lady 

holding a parasol over me as I am shivered--shocked--

by my country showing her ugly side

my sanctuary soft and sweet, the future hard as a cop's baton.

________

for Dverse--"A View of One's Own" hosted by Dora. 

The images are taken by me, of the walnut tree in my yard. 

Music: Glee cast Don't Make Me Over

Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Word Garden Word List poetry prompt. I'm a day early with it since I didn't post one last week. Our source this time is Anne Sexton's collection entitled To Bedlam and Part Way Back. 

Anne Sexton

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

Your List:

animals

begat

calling

carvings

cures

elephants

erasers

hotel

jackpot

madness

mine

noon

poets

postmarks

radio

roller coaster

rowboat

silk

spoons

wooden

My Child

 

My child was born over the radio at noon

calling, crying, appearing--clearly mine.

She displayed an instant madness, an affinity for the moon

accepting only pomegranate and warm plum wine

as Nurse counted up the medications and the spoons.

We communicate by carvings, deep and raw

and love words mercurial and gritty as a dune,

that respect no wound, no custom, no law.

My elephant child, heavy, hunted, wise

eludes rubber-handed teachers of the exhausted strike

arriving in little rowboats in full courtly disguise

to mine my little darling as she rides her phantasmal bike

down to the grave of stars to kiss the thing that dies

in a tiny wooden cradle beneath a concrete sun

to bring it back, to make it rise

and then her work is done.

Come, child of animals, black earth and fire

to the shelter I have cobbled from discarded turtle shells

where poets burn on pages, porches, pyres

and all variety of heavens, limbos, hells

to arrange your dolls named Judgement and Desire

who sit on silken pillows or in coffins fit with bells

to call their mothers, those beauties, belles and hags

combined into an advocate for my child with tongue flat-felled

by a celebrated seamstress, dumbly mute and dressed in rags.

_____

for Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

Music:

Sin City 

Cowgirl's Lament

 

Yippee yi o

and ki yi yay

I've got just one 

more thing to say--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Across the mesa  

and through the pass

Old Scratch has gone and 

nailed my ass--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Around the campfire

with beer and beans

Who knows what the

hell it means--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Kiss me, cowboy

and trim the wick

Had no notion

I was even sick

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

Here's a letter

here's my will

The night is silent

sweet and still--

Please don't let me

die here all alone.

_______

No List today--under the weather. Back next week. 

Word Garden Word List--Bittersweet

 

Hello my little holiday weekend warriors! You may be suffering from too much potato salad or the aftereffects of that spiked lemonade, but I know what real  suffering is. I have just hate-read to the bitter end of Michael Ondaatje's overwritten, torpid, preachy, over-ornamented, meandering, disjointed mess entitled The English Patient. Now, I usually cull your weekly List from something I have recently read, but that turkey is snug in the bin and is not ever seeing the light of day again and soooo... I have decided to feature and old favorite, Nevada Barr's Bittersweet. 

Nevada Barr is known for her mystery/thrillers set in various national parks and those are fine reads, but Bittersweet is a love story between two women in the old west. I love it and thank my BFF for gifting it to me. 

Nevada Barr

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of our own. Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then sit back and read something more like Bittersweet, and less like The English Patient. (I did love the movie, though.) This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List!

autumn

basket

bible

birds

candy

crush

doctor

dreams

frizzy

glasses

honey

kitten

mail

moon

onions

shyness

soft

stars

texts

watercolor

Greenhouse Afternoon

 

There should be a bible for things like this--

something dependable

something I could grab onto

when I feel bewildered,

   dizzy,

from your smile and your scent

when you stand closer

   than I expect.

Such a bible would have shed its

shall-nots

in favor of

more love-thy-neighbor

   especially

when the sky is full of soft stars

and you remove my glasses

   along with my reserve.

This bible would be full of watercolors

and nested in by drowsy birds.

This bible would be

   lit like a greenhouse afternoon

or suggested in midnight indigo.

Lay hands on my shyness

   and let me lay my burden down--

turn me to the text of oh-gosh-yes

   like a prodigal

whose lips can finally confess.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Bittersweet.

Music: Denise King Say You Say me

My Gibbet

My gibbet is a fine and private place

where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon

elevated and untouchable--

an ideal love just out of reach

like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.

Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,

pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose

carrying his harmonium

singing about plutonium,

barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.

He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite

dangling above the street in my gibbet

making other women's children

point and cry

demanding candy or weather reports.

Someone climbs up and ties tin cans

to the bottom of my gibbet

in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.

I die and begin to stink

pieces falling away like confetti.

Here I sway to this very day, high above 

the Emily Dickinson Parkway

a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,

dead as hell

black as a bowling ball

ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife, 

until gentrification when they'll take me down

because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,

like poetry, 

like dead dodos

like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.

_______

for Word Garden Word List.

Word Garden Word List--Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl

 

Hello my little repeated themes! Welcome to this week's Word List poetry prompt which features the same author--Diane Seuss-- as last week but a different source book. This time we zoom three years beyond last week's collection and land at Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, from 2018. 

Chick just won't leave and go home

Everyone seemed to like her, so I figure if something was fun once, do it again, right? Pass me another piece of that cheesecake mmm, remember (I say while chewing, holding up an index finger), moderation in all things is my motto! 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own (and don't try to squeak by with a haibun). Then simply link up, visit others as you are able, and then paint a lovely still life involving birds and bowls of fruit. This prompt remains active through next Saturday. Enjoy!

And now, your List:

aura

blur

barefoot

cattails

charmingly

colonial

flock

gangplank

Ginsberg

holiday

levitated

mallet

minks

nobodies

peacocks

pilgrimage

schoolmarm

smuggled

spangles

tabernacle

Espantajo

 Espantajo,

I kissed you

but my lips knew no remedy

for you, standing cruciform

  in a desert wind.

Espantajo,

wrapped in

  cornhusk feathers,

no sky knows you.

Espantajo,

I could not move you

from your place in the night.

   For you,

all things rise in the west

sleep in the west

make love in the west

and die in the west.

   You married a northern woman

like un espirito muerto

   appearing in a photograph.

Espantajo,

Face away from my house now. 

I have green glass

   bottles sleeping 

in the branches all night

   to snare spirits.

Espantajo,

The same old wind

rattles you

   and you call it talking.

Silencio, damned scarecrow.

If you can't love,

can't move,

can't hold a woman,

   what good are you?

_________

For Dverse Poetics "I Have No Word In English For..." hosted by my friend Dora.

The formal word for "ghost" in Spanish is fantasma, but espantajo, while literally meaning "scarecrow," also colloquially refers to a ghost or apparition.