Consummation

I would tell you absolutely anything
if my mouth did not fill with pebbles,
my teeth to a breakwater,
my tongue to a dying whale
each time I try.

See how the sun hangs in the sky, lugubrious as a defective,
lighting our possibilities with its dusty shine?
I would dance for you
except that ravens have collected my shinbones and tarsals
as trinkets for their nest.

Still, joy is possible.
You shove the Universe, I'll pick its pocket
and we'll set up the world's most elaborate lie
to stun ourselves into devotion.
That's when you'll guess my name, Mary of the Maritimes,
and skip yourself over my body like a thrown stone.
_______

A second poem for camera FLASH! at Real Toads. Again, I was inspired by the lighthouse card, already posted on this blog with my first effort.

Pharos

There has been terror, walls of water, nightmare monsters!
Our hands around splintered oars.
Our hands around twisting lines in desperate storms.
Our hands around our bodies in the freezing nights.
Our hands around each other's throats in frenzies of despair.

There has been light, safe haven, mighty walls!
Light from a sturdy tower.
Light revealing gray-white gulls.
Light in our captain's steady eye.
Light at dawn, on a rocky shore.

Strange, the solid ground our legs shift upon.
Strange, the women bringing children to the docks, who call.
Strange, the endless streets, the many doors, odors, sounds.
Strange, the urge to sail again, to leave this tranquil harbor.

No wonder we stagger in the street, thought mad by both priest and whore.
We are mad.
Only the swell and fall of the sea can receive our pitching souls.
_______

for camera FLASH! at Real Toads.

"Pharos" image created and provided by the mystic and magnetic Kerry O'Connor.

Brenda Lee

Why is Brenda Lee so sad
crouching inside the juke box in her bullet bra? 
Does time fit together like black and white checkered flooring,
and is Brenda Lee blue over a past life she cannot alter?

I would kiss Brenda Lee if she were not imprisoned 
by the black edges
of phonograph records. 

I would kiss her, though I am not the boy she longs for,  
or a boy at all,
and I would give her the Coca-Cola clock
right off the wall as a cure for longing.

Why is Brenda Lee so sad?
If I could, I would gather photographs of fine days gone by,
arrange them in a photo mailer,
and address them to Brenda Lee,
inside the Wurlitzer,
Future, USA.
_______

for Camera FLASH! at Real Toads.

 
 

Fermi LeBouche

Fermi LeBouche killed his wife. 
It was done thus:
"Here's what I think..."
"What you have to understand is..."
"So I told them..."

Neighbors noticed she seemed unhappy.
Then tormented.
Then dead.

One look at her lying there, bleeding from her ears
was all the gendarmes needed.
Fermi was arrested, tried and sentenced to the guillotine. 

"Monster!" cried the crowd.
Down came the awful blade. 
Someone grabbed Fermi's head from the basket.
"In my opinion...."
"Let me tell you something..."
"What you don't understand is..."

Fermi LeBouche's head kept talking.
It criticized the executioner's methods.
It held itself blameless for the death of Mrs. LeBouche.
It told a series of very tired old jokes and laughed itself giddy.

Month after month, his head kept talking.
"Why, in my day..."
"That reminds me of the time I..."
"If you want to know what I think..."
Finally, a soldier returning from the wars was riding on a wagon 
with Fermi LeBouche's endlessly loquacious noggin.
On and on, opinion after opinion,
story after story,
unsought advice after unsought advice.

They say that Fermi's last words were
"You can't kill Fermi LeBouche with that little thing..." 
but though he never admitted it,
he was badly mistaken.
________

for Camera FLASH!

 

Lily

Direct sun is bad billet for cuttings.

Lily was long-stemmed, 

half drunk

half honest

night-starred

giving head to a bottle in a graveyard.

She never chose her own tattoos--

just once born, once baptized, 

seven times left crying  by the roadside.

Lily likes her Ginny with Georgia lime.

O Lily fair, Lily bright,

gives all her love 

to a runaway cat

and salts her bath with anything white.

Lily used to pose on a coffin lid

half sweet

half willing

 half live, half dead.

Long-stemmed Lily talking out of her head

to the peonies out by the garden shed. 

Of course she loves you,

tap-water blank with soft pale hands.

Lily fair, Lily bright,

long-stemmed Lily in your circle stands

almost straight

almost strong

almost saved, and almost 

gone.

_____ 

for Camera FLASH! at Toads.

"Barcarole For Bathtub"

The following is a selection from Miss MacF-P's collection "Poesy In Pastels."

Barcarole for bathtub;
glub-de-glub-glub!
A perfect place to place my posterior.

"Neath the the window!
'Neath the glass!
An arboreal assignation for my ass.

Knock knock!
Who can it be?
A husband, a child, or some vagabond
needing to pee?

Here, with ferns and candles
and easily accessible senior assistance handles,
I sit and sing
(my words taking wonderfully to wing!)
my Barcarole For Bathtub
sung
by me
to
my knee.
_____

for Camera FLASH! at Real Toads.

Note: Millicent MacFarquhar-Pellington's masterpiece "Barcarole For Bathtub" was published by Snoot & Sons in 1923 as the centerpiece of her fifth collection "Poesy In Pastels." Millicent's first four volumes--including the celebrated "Mongoose Sonnets" sold more than 3 million copies and have been translated into German, French, Urdu and Icelandic. A two-time winner of the Blemish Prize For Literature, Ms. MacFarquhar-Pellington remains beloved today, twenty years after her passing from combination skin in 1998.

 

 

The City Of Concrete Birds

In the city of concrete birds,

shoulders lately blessed by a lover's face

--an egg on her tongue, feathers in corona around her eyes--

bear risk as heavy as Sisyphus' tears.

In Paris, the paradise of concrete birds,

tablets are struck from the hands of poets in cafes.

Hats must be sturdy,

utility workers must brim in stadiums,

never resting.

Every morning, I leave you without leaving.

I wear a dress of twigs and string,

perpetuating the world;

my bones double helixed

 from Billie Holiday records and plaster,

I am a nest for concrete birds.

We must be careful, as we promenade.

The Luftwaffe are old leaves blowing,

but when we think of each other,

what to say,

how much to lie,

which tender sensibilities to spare,

Waiters in doorways open their lips to birth air raid sirens.

The concrete birds select our skulls,

without pity or malice

 landing in our destruction like swans in summer,

at home there,

symbols of love lifted by our obliteration.

_______

for Kerry's "Camera FLASH!"

 

The Woman Who Does Not Trust Roses

The woman who does not trust roses
consults a dream her lover has left
concealed between sections of orange.

Breeze loves roses, 
both stem and bloom.
The woman who does not trust roses
reads by fingertip the morning moon.

Her lover's dream 
is of breeze in a secret bower,
and crescent hips gone almondine. 
______

for both "camera FLASH! at Real Toads, and Flash 55 hosted by my BFF Hedgy.

Almondine:
 Adjective

1. Garnished with almond slices.

Usage notes

Unlike most English adjectives, almondine typically follows the noun it describes, rather than preceding it.

Origin From French.

Noun (plural almondines)

1. A gemstone that is either a deep red garnet or a purple spinel.

Ditch Diggers

Ditch diggers make fine lovers
if you can put aside all that fussy shit you love so well.
They don't bring flowers
or some stupid-ass wine;
they bring shovels that scratch the wood of the floor and the wall
when they prop them there 
to hold you 
like flotsam after a shipwreck.

Ditch diggers don't fuck around. 
They get right down to it
and could care less about the shams or the thousand count sheets.
Grit is good, 
shut up and kiss your ditch digger, girl.
Learn to love the sweet earth smeared across the queen size.
Ditch diggers get up early,
do what needs done;
come nightfall, they sleep righteous right next to you
and don't listen to you yap about your classes or your bullshit.

Go down, girl
to the new roadway in the rain.
Meet that ditch digger's eyes.
Then go home, leave the door unlocked.
The world will never miss the poem you would have written
tonight at your tidy desk
wearing your white dress
like a bride stood up and shamed despite all her careful preparations. 
______

for Camera FLASH.

Of Course Of Course

They'd come a long way just to see him, these believers.
"Everybody has done us dirt--
taken our shop, our church, our children right off of our laps."

They'd hung on for a long time,
getting angrier every year.
"Where are we supposed live?
What has happened to the world, while we were working?
Who are these strangers?
Does anybody care how we feel?"

All they ever got was:

Look certainly at the end of the day freedom constitution committee values God tradition questions concerns contribution stand for investigation thorough Americans protect promise taxes statement position this office bluh-blah bluh-blah bluh-blah. 

So they voted for someone else.

They'd come a long way just to see him, these believers,
only to find the barn door closed
and Wilbur under investigation and under house arrest.

They can hear him talking (and talking and talking),
but he's turned the wrong way, this equine head in the bed of state,
just a new horse's ass doing all the speechifying now.
___________

for Camera FLASH! at Toads.

 
 

Dido

She's so proud of her jugs, but they're only full of wash water.
Who else would wear diadems and diaphanous gowns to do a load of colors?

She says she gets a weird high down there in the basement,
and tells the future to Pecky, miserable in his cage,
more fascinated with millet than prophecy.
The sun, to him, is a fairy tale;
the rattling furnace is as close to a tree as he'll ever get. 

God, I hate her. She's so nice, and so stupid.
Going through the pockets of her man's jeans, she pulls out a diamond
from among the phone numbers and weed dust.
She sticks it in her eye and starts speaking in tongues. 

For fuck's sake, the cycle's almost done,
her kid is howling upstairs because Thomas the motherfucking Tank Engine ended,
and now I have to pick up her slack while she la-dee-dah's around 
like a brain damaged nymph.
"Snap out of it!" I screech, and she blinks, then frowns,
then flips open the machine.

"When did you buy that?" I ask her. What about your precious jugs?
She waves her hand.
Her one diamond eye sparkles, the other looks vaguely up at the ceiling.
Pecky screams, apropos of nothing.
"Bless your heart," she says. 
The furnace kicks on.
Her dog comes down and circles three times, then shits next to the dryer.
"We're blessed," she adds as she hefts a plastic basket on her hip,
then turns and rises up the basement stairs 
like carbon monoxide inside a party balloon. 
_______

for Camera FLASH! at Toads.

A Pose Of Monkeybones

This isn't just a pose of monkeybones--
no one made of flesh ever willed a fever down,
or talked sense when fingers curled just so to make the nightstorms roll.

You might think I'm made of straw and stone,
a long-skull girl with marrow-eyes in every broken bone
so close to heart and beat and breath--
Mercy tangled in my hair, out of reach except
for the loud-strike, rain-shriek
inside these abandoned bones--
woman, monkey, open sky that shakes and moans
until there's nothing left.
_______

for Camera FLASH.

Rapunzel's Hairdresser

Rapunzel's hairdresser was one lazy bitch,
with sporadic, unpredictable hours,
and a shop inconveniently located smack-dab center of a perpetual rain storm.
And so,
when contestant #15,383 said, "Great hair!"
and really meant "How desperate are you to be seen, 
complimented,
valued,
loved?" and, more to the point, 
"Are you willing to fuck me to get it?" 
Poor Rappy lost her shit right there in the coffee bar. 

It's hard, if you've never tried it, 
to saw off ten years' growth with a plastic knife meant for
spreading cream cheese with,
but our Raps found herself filled with Messianic vigor, 
and, too, her cause was flat-out righteous.
Have you ever seen a perfectly normal girl with really unbelievably long hair
arch her back and hiss? 
Here was your chance,
and pity if you missed it.

Her girlfriends call her "Berry", which started as
Rappy, then Rappy Raspberry, then just Berry.
Now they say,
"Lookit YOU, sugar!" and rise out of their mid-afternoon drowse
and make all appropriate noises one makes about a girl with a fresh style.
So, when contestant #15,384 asked if she was a dyke,
out of jealousy or fear of female power or 
by way of eliciting a shame response or something,
she was Teflon,
she was made of gold,
gloriously side-shaved and in the moment,
too cool for fools and he walked out, hands in pockets,
back to his wife and the 
apartment above the empty shop in the never-ending rain storm.
And our Berry?
She does her own hair now. Word.
_________

for Camera FLASH!

 

Diving Bell

Give a girl a diving bell and she'll get the message
that you think she walks on water, or dances on it, or
some romantic fah-de-lah like that.
There was whiskey on the wreck out by the sand bar
and the barkeep went there in waders, then wondered
how he'd get back to the tavern with all those bottles without drowning.

I said, hey ho, here I am, a girl who owns a net.
There aren't a lot of us left--
not since that weird with a beard came around
and everybody wandered off to do open mic about looking up, not back.
Here's a confidence, Mr. Barkeep
(I'll bet you hear a lot of them)
I'm not forgiving those assholes.

Give a girl the time of day around here
and she'll think you walk on water, or waltz across it, or
some low self-esteem rigmarole like that. 
I'm not that way,
but I'm willing to help you get the hooch.
Alls you have to do is come around and fix what needs fixing,

Including the broken window, 
and my child who needs to hear a dopey joke.
Do that, and I'll lend you my net, and all my old boyfriends, too,
to help you stock your larder, as it were.
(Like how I said that? "As it were.")
So let's just be real, okie dokie artichokee?
Fortune favors the bold, and I'd say
it looks like I'm your lucky starfish, Captain,
ain't I?
_______

for Camera FLASH at Toads.