The Vivid Dead

 

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead

winding wire around every bud in the garden

fearing poison in every innocent bed.

Making olive of jade and maroon of red

mixing invitation with heirloom toxin

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

Staking a world with only frayed gray thread

hoarding every sweet fruit left to harden

fearing poison in every innocent bed.

Mixing sugar and rot into every word said

a borer warden of self without pardon

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

Silence the dust-tongue kept in your head

and lie with your twin the idiot watchman

fearing poison in every innocent bed

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

______

A villanelle. 

Music:  Michael Kiwanuka Cold Little Heart

The Man With The Glass Eye

The man with the glass eye
possesses smooth clarity of vision.
He rolls his glass eye
to dispense balm for frail children who then recover.

Look into his glass eye.
You will see yourself split into fractals--
all the selves you are capable of being.
He greets each one
warmly, personally.

At night, he sets his eye on the nightstand
in a glass of solution.
It shimmers like a planet there, from which horoscopes might be drawn.
In the morning he replaces it and is filled with intelligent resolve.

If you meet the man with the glass eye,
do not ask what happened to his "real" eye.
It is in your head,
whispering sweetly.
_____

for Day 10 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

image: Tete d'homme barbu by Picasso.

April

We are playing softball
--orderlies vs. residents--
out on the lawn.

The sun is out at last.
A robin is playing short fielder.

Tyrone belts one
way out to the divots where 
Rita dug in her heels
screaming, fighting Tyrone,
who knew to leave the shiv in or she'd bleed out.

She did it to herself.
Today was fun, but
we missed Rita, who couldn't come.
________

"the flowers bloom like madness in the spring" --Jenny Anderson

"No matter how hard the winter, regardless how bumbling they were the year before, come April we always thought our team would be in the thick of it. With the ice melted and everybody 0-0, just the crack of the bat was enough to make the hardest of us believe that our hearts would not be broken this time, and that a benevolent God surely loved the Cubs, just as we did." --Jeanette Prolsky

66 words exactly, for Words Count with Mama Zen.

 

I Shall Use Vulgar Language When Simians Rise Aloft From My Netherparts

Marian says write a poem using words which begin with each letter of the alphabet in sequence. The task is beyond me, and so I offer this rarity from the immortal pen of Lady Constance Brillow-Wigg, the grande dame of  the Oriental fukyu form in English.

Ass baboons cannonball

down every fucking guano-hazed intestine,

jackassy kissass lickspittle macaques,

not odoriferous pyorrheal queasy rhesus shitheads,

thrilling unfortunate venereal wart xpressing yammering zombies.

Generally considered to be the most genteel of the British fukyu poets, Lady Brillow-Wigg shocked Edwardian society when she married a Bantu warrior and bore him thirteen screaming children. Living out her days as an expatriate with a dinner plate wedged into her lower lip for beauty's sake, Lady Constance eventually died at the age of 87 from an overdose of laxative. The loss of this great literary genius is still mourned today.

_________________