Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Mongrel Angel

 

A mongrel angel in the dark
who wakes the dogs who start to bark
beneath the yellow windows in the rain
she knows the words and hums the tune
for lonely rabbits on the moon
who wear their pestles on a silver chain

A mongrel angel high at noon
comes uninvited to the room
where holy flunkies serve the business crowd
she knows where all the blossoms bloom
in graveyards where they dust their broom
and common kind is simply not allowed

And the mongrel angel lives halfway from Heaven on her own
like a fish out of the water or a turtle on a stone

A mongrel angel's setting sun
is just like any other one
but dialect of night's a special rhyme
that only dogs and she can hear
a melody of atmosphere
that leaves her breathless every single time

And the mongrel angel lives halfway from Heaven on her own
like a fish out of the water or a turtle on a stone
_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Cat's Cradle

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Word Garden Word List--Cat's Cradle

 

Hello my little Bokononists! You know, when I was in my 20's, I read a ton of Kurt Vonnegut's books. I loved God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse-5, Slapstick and Breakfast of Champions. I also liked Wampeters, Foma, & Granfaloons  and Welcome to the Monkey House. Twenty years later, I read Bluebeard   but cannot now recall a single thing about it. I may have read others; I was not yet keeping my book journal when I read all but that last one. I read so many Vonnegut and Kerouac books back in the day that I'm no longer sure exactly which ones except the favorites. 


So anyway, I decided to see whether I still like my old author pal. I did not think that I had read Cat's Cradle, so I got a copy and ripped through it last week. I am still not sure if I had read it before, but I enjoyed it. It concerns a scientist whose three children own a chip of a substance called ice-9, which can turn whole oceans--and people--to solid ice on contact. Not good for living things, clearly. These three adult children, plus the writer/narrator, all end up on a tiny island called San Lorenzo, where everyone follws a religion called Bokonon even though it is prohibited. (Oh, and its founder freely admits that everything about it is lies.) It's classic Vonnegut. So, that is our source this week!

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, and whatever you do, don't touch the ice-9! This prompt remains active through next Saturday.

And now, your List!

absurdity
angel
blossoms
blueprint
bubble
clownishness
college
dialect
hook
imagine
letter
models
mongrel
nervous
records
rockets
tombstone
turtles
unless
wicked


Friday, February 14, 2025

Tiger

 

there is a tiger
who travels through each of my arms.
One is filled with jacaranda
with the moon asleep in its branches.
the other is a dusty courtyard in afternoon
with a fountain 
and a small child who walks its low wall.

your little balcony
is where the tiger likes to go.
there is a purple reflection in the fountain--
the child 
peels an orange to find the moon at its center,
and me in your arms
near the jacaranda branches
where everything is harmonious
and fragrant.


Thursday, February 13, 2025

Saint Agnes On The Bus

 

On a bus in the city
on a slush-spattered morning
St. Agnes rode quiet to her grave.
Her sister was praying
her ear buds were playing
a song that was slow, sad, and brave.

The driver was sleeping
on a cushion of roses
and the wheel was a garland of sand
St. Agnes was pure
as few ever can be
mending wounds with a gold rubber band.

On the streets there were dogs
and they spoke of a healing
that cures every creature entire
St. Agnes is holy
and her sister is humbled
by the cost such devotion requires.

The bus turned to ashes
and the souls of the riders
had to carry all the things they must learn
St. Agnes beheaded
her sister lamented
that glory, to be sweet, must be stern.
_____________

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Snow Day

 
Bosco 2003-2014

Zacky, my spring-heeled dog, goes bouncing into the middle
of the flyers around the bird feeder--
his pure simple joy as he watches them rise.
his tongue hanging out, his eyes alight, defies the winter.

We have had snow, then thaw, then rain, then refreeze.
The world here is icebound.
The rain pooled almost to the doorstep, but the
still frozen ground could not accept it and iced over again.
The rinks have endured for two weeks now.

My dog comes to the door, exhilarated, certain
that his mama will be there to let him in for a cookie and a nap.
I am his open door, his open heart, his centering sun.
Someone I know has just lost her dog--
she is crying. I am crying for them.

Two to four more inches is expected here shortly,
while winter plays the immortal.
As I hold my smiling pal, I think of my old dogs,
Sundance and Bosco, and how much I miss them.
They passed.
Winter will pass.
I too will pass, along with all my stuff and memories.

Today I will sit stroking Zacky and watching out the window
as the snow falls and falls. 
Winter will have its day but will fade, as will 
presidents and peacocks,
blue jays and babies,
a constant falling, 
with all of us aboard for the ride.

(Detroit Michigan, 2/13/25)
_____________

Written for What's Going On? "Landscapes."

Music: Dave Grusin The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter theme




Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Dear Katie

 

Dear Katie,
                  please pardon the confusion--
mine,
yours,
the weather's.

Today in group they wanted us to talk about
someone who really loves us.
I started to laugh
                            like slipping on ice
I couldn't wave myself fast enough
                            to save a fall
and the laughing became an ugly cry.

They like us to do things with our hands here
so I made
                a love potion for you.
Yeah, too late. like checking a smoking oven.
But,
       I can still portion by intuition
like how much to kiss you in the morning.

I used
a pinch of rust from a love lock
the memory of five black tulips
and 1 tsp essence of caramel fudge ice cream--
       Jeff Buckley ballads to taste
        baked at 350 until the moon turns silver like your poetry.

Gosh Katie,
                   they took away my books,
said I needed to engage with others.
I went back to group today and said, whoa, back up--
let's do that thing
                              from yesterday.
I pulled my shit together this time, not like before,
and I said,
                Katie mon amour
                 Katie je t'aime je t'aime, je t'aime.
This one bitch goes, you're not French,
you're not even Canadian you fucking freak

But she never stumbled drunk up the stairs with you,
poetry ringing in our ears and the summer night on our skin.
More to be pitied than scorned,
                                                    I can hear you say.
Anyway,
              love ya girl
Katie mon amour,
              Our Lady of Tulips and the Silver Moon.
________________

for Dverse Poetics, "From Your Valentine" hosted by Sanaa.


Music: Chantel Chamberland-- Smoke Gets In Your Eyes





Sunday, February 9, 2025

Word Garden Word List--Sula

 

Hello my little wanderers! This week's Word List is taken from a marvelous novel I recently read entitled Sula  by Toni Morrison. She is also the author of Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Tar Baby, and many more.


Sula 
centers on a pair of childhood friends; Nel, who grows up along the expected lines, marrying, having children, not making waves, and Sula, who is a wild spirit who does exactly as she pleases, and then lives with the consequences, as do many others in her wake. I loved this book. It moved me and I find myself still thinking about all the characters. 

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, and then read some Morrison! This prompt remains active all week. 

And now, your List:

bird
bizarre
cook
gossip
grace
grave
joke
kissed
mask
paints
pony
quilts
robins
screen
soap
songs
story
touched
true
voice

Travel Stories For Girls

 

Someone messed with my story when I was still young,
trying to bend it like a bonsai tree
and so I wrapped it in paper and hid it away
in the throat of a bird, clandestinely. 

I was obliged to call my assaulter "mother"
and expected to pretend devotion.
Her mask was on her face so long
that her true face had become the illusion.

Grown, I went where the robins gathered
and found the cardinal who carried my loss.
It was in a grave, wrapped with quilts, 
but had marked its place with two twigs crossed.

I put it back in my body and felt its ice,
then its beat and its fine red heat.
There is nothing I love more than the thing
I smuggled past the killer-- the best of me.

That is not to say that all survived--
those who say they love are heard as fakes,
assassins or fools; give this hungry woman jewels
and see what a pretty figure my turned back makes.
______________

for Word Garden Word List--Sula 

Music: Damien Jurado Orphans in the Key of E


Thursday, February 6, 2025

Freezing Rain On A February Evening


inside, the pages, outside, the ice
outside, the night, here sweet delight
inside the tale, outside rages
a frozen fall of rattling white
playing out on facing stages
outside, the ice, inside, the pages.
_______

a sparrowlet
with a nod to William Blake's
Auguries of Innocence
hosted by Laura Bloomsbury

Music: The Doors
End of the Night



 

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Lady Poet

 

Writing poetry is a fine thing,
to laze in one's garden wearing a sun hat
as a lady may do of a June afternoon.

Poetry is the Boston Marriage of the arts--
termed by some a higher devotion
and by others a harmless quirk.

The lady poet must avoid unpleasantness
and lift her literary skirts
above the puddle in the road.

Upon discovery of my desire to be a lady poet,
my father entombed me with his own manuscripts
mummified by papier-mache and shellac.

My mother tried to can me with her tomatoes
to debut at some later date
in a more malleable and acceptable guise.

Writing poetry is a fine thing,
to jump in the blood and guts wearing suspenders
and getting arrested after midnight.

Drunk on gin, turns of phrase, and love of fire
to dwell in the house of the falling crossbeams
for seven years give or take

And then to sleep with men, sleep with women,
sleep with marvels and nightmares
such as no one ever speaks of, and then to scream it.

After all of this, it will be a fine thing
to laze in the garden wearing my scars and hip-hoorahs
as a lady may do of an October afternoon

My father dead in his grave, my mother careful in hers,
and my many selves rolling over in theirs,
all for this higher devotion, this quaint quirk, this thing that I live for.
______________

For Dverse Poetics: Reimagining the Familiar hosted by Dora

and What's Going On--"Morn of Restoration" hosted by Mary

Music: Chantel Chamberland Temptation (written by Tom Waits)


Monday, February 3, 2025

Imagine My Surprise

 

Imagine my surprise
when I noticed that your body beside me
was a cello
and when you snored,
the sound was the most beautiful thing
I had ever heard.

Hush now,
do not speak
or get up, standing stiffly on your one leg.
There is no ceremonial dance to be done.
Our people have all fluttered
away, a cloud of crows
or treble clefs
dotting the air like ellipsis points.

They seed the sky and make it rain
golden notes
glittering dreams
wild and giddy
like experimental harmonics.
You have my ear, darling.
Speak and be 
the instrument of my glorious undoing.
___________

for Word Garden Word List Chouette

Music: Sunny & the Sunliners Talk To Me



Sunday, February 2, 2025

Word Garden Word List--Chouette

 

Hello my little life rafts! I have been drowning lately in a sea of disappointing--dare I say disgusting--books. Did I say a "sea"? It was just two, but allow me my dramatic moment. To begin: horror isn't a genre I read a lot of, and when I do it is almost always either Stephen King or Clay McLeod Chapman, author of the much beloved (by me) "Ghost Eaters." So, imagine my happiness when his new novel "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes" came out and I got my copy! It's about people who watch "Fax" News and turn into demented zombies. Sounds great, right? Well it wasn't. It was just gore, body horror, weird sexual situations, and did I mention body horror? right from page one. I got half way through and DNF'ed it when the family dog met a horrible end. Really, Clay? I'll never read you again. 

Claire Oshetsky. Stay away from me, Claire.

So I wanted to read something lighter and my eye came upon this 2021 novel called "Chouette" by Claire Oshetsky. The dust jacket features a wonderful woodcut of an owl sitting in some foliage. It's about a woman having an owl-baby and the problems that causes. It sounded like a charming little fable or fairy story involving birds--what could go wrong? Lots, as it turned out. This book was just as gory and disturbing--and even had a dog come to a horrible end!--as the one I just threw in the trash. 
This book shelf ain't safe!


Not wanting to DNF two books in a row, I hate-read this one all the way to the bitter end. Most reviews hail it as being some sort of genius statement on motherhood and feminism. My review differed. I saw it as the delusions of a mentally ill woman living in a fantasy world and exercising a destructive obsession regarding her owl-baby, who may or may not have actually been an owl or done any of the violent things the narrator claims. Don't read it, it's awful, a sort of cross between "The Bad Seed" and "Helter Skelter," but I do still like that woodcut. I may read "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" next, just to be safe!


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, and be kind to doggos. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

absent
cello
ceremonial
dream
flutter
gaze
giddy
golden
grit
miracle
napping
ominous
owl
shrieking
slippery
speak
stiffly
swoop
wild
yabber-yabber (talking without saying anything.)


Saturday, February 1, 2025

Evening Out, Recalled

 

It was a delicious meal.
My heart pumped all through the time I was eating it
as it had before and has continued to do every moment since.

As it was in the beginning, 

It was snowing outside
but the restaurant had a fireplace and was softly lit.
You were there, and as I ate, I loved you and felt happy.

is now

On my plate, the gone moments
of a breeze and the scent of new grass; the rhythm 
of a place and season. The ability to move and exist.

and ever shall be

I remember that evening
even as it has vanished, as you have vanished,
as the meal and place and I myself have vanished

world without end

The gold of the brandy
in your glass, the smoothness of the skin of my hands,
all appears and vanishes in my memory as it, too, vanishes.

Amen, my love. Amen.

__________________

Music: Vivaldi Gloria


Thursday, January 30, 2025

My Rat Friend

 my rat friend
lives in my garage.
i feed him
kibble, neat.
friend owl is hungry as well--
they play cat-and-mouse.

moon is high
owl on the branch waits.
neighbor has
a floodlight.
when it shuts off, rat comes out.
so far so good, bud.

in summer
a hawk eats pigeons
rat is safe.
in winter
i watch owl watch my rat friend
feasting in the dark.
___________

a shadorma for Dverse OLN.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

River Under a Stone Bridge

 

The river runs under a stone bridge
down where no one ever goes
a place for old men where the trees bend
and ask, "Pourquoi chercher autre chose?"

Its source is hidden as is its end
this river that barely flows
where the trees bend, a place for old men
who ask, "Pourquoi chercher autre chose?"

Where the stone bridge breaks, it cannot mend
what deep January froze
a place for old men where the trees bend
and ask, "Pourquoi chercher autre chose?"

______________

pourquoi chercher autre chose?  =  why look for anything else?

A ZaniLa Rhyme for What's Going On? "In Your Deepest January"  The instructions require that phrase or "In my deepest January" but there were two problems which I hope that our wonderful host Sherry will let me slide by with. One was, that phrase just doesn't sound like me, to me. The other is that a ZaniLa Rhyme has a syllable requirement of 9-7-9-9 and a rhyme scheme and inverted third line that would have made it almost impossible. The prompt phrase is 8 syllables all by itself, so I almost had to shorten it, and so I did. If Sherry sends the Prompt Police to collect me, I will understand.

Music: Simon & Garfunkel Old Friends



Monday, January 27, 2025

Cirque de Soliel

 

Coins fell from the sun--
I ate one and lived in darkness for a year.

I said to the sun, "I can never trust you again."
A peach appeared in my hand.

I hired a cook who worked in dough and ash.
I fed bread to my dogs and lived on the last.

Magpies fell from the sun--
they mated in my mirror and made eggs out of glass.

My cook killed the birds, my dogs killed the cook
and married me off to an eight-winged ghost.

My house has a thousand turrets and attics.
The sun rises pink and sets red, automatic.

I put a coin inside a peach like a pit.
There's a ghost inside my skull in a nest.
My dogs fuss and tear and bury the rest
in my heart with my hopes and such similar shit.
_______________

for Word Garden Word List--Kindred

Music: Jackson C. Frank My Name Is Carnival 




Sunday, January 26, 2025

Word Garden Word List--Kindred


 Hello my little time travelers! This week our source is a fantastic novel that I just recently read entitled Kindred by Octavia Butler. Although this book is classified as sci-fi, it has nothing to do with robots or space ships. Think buckboards and slave holders.


Published in 1979, this is the story of Dana, a young black woman living with her older, white sig other in Los Angeles in the year 1976. Dana is "called" back to the early 1800's by her ancestor Rufus, the son of a plantation owner and slave owner, every time he is in danger, and Rufus manages to get himself into dire situations on the regular. The first time, he's drowning. The second time, there's a fire, then a fight. Each time, Dana has to not only save Rufus, but she also has to navigate and survive a world where a black person is viewed as little better than a working animal. She never knows how long she'll be stuck there, but when she flips back--even after months on the plantation-- only a very short time has elapsed in 1976.


I first became interested in Kindred when i watched the mini-series on HULU some months ago. In that, Dana lives in the year 2016 and instead of an older man, her companion is a doofy waiter she just met, one of those young adults who forgot to grow up. In the book, the man acts the part, but in the mini series, the waiter has to always ask Dana what to do and he's just annoying. This is important when he gets flipped into the past with her on one of her trips. Anyway, I bought the book right after seeing the HULU series, but it sat on my shelf until a week or so ago when I ripped through the whole thing in a couple of days. It's awesome. 

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, and then sit back and be glad you aren't getting flipped back in time to a plantation. This prompt remains active until next Sunday.

And now, your List:

ash
attic
coins
cook
dizzy
free
horse
hungry
jumped
kicked
knack
map
peach
rage
skull
star
trip
trust
vanish
woman