Indian Rope Trick

 As a child, it was always expected that I'd climb.

For the rope trick to work, the jamoora assistant must be obedient,

but I was always more likely to be a burning bride,

going up fast, but on my own peculiar vertical gradient.

In the trick, a rope is left coiled in a basket

at some distance in an open field like a baby at a fire station.

It will then begin to rise like a bhoot as the fakir tasks it,

straight up--it's only disbelief or cartoons that add the ululations.

I was the skipper's little daughter, my father in his linen suit

who read me Longfellow--The Wreck of the Hesperus--

and planted without knowing it, the ghost, the bhoot,

that sank my obedience and scotched the trick for both of us.

When the rope has risen, the child is sent out to climb,

disappearing in the clouds, not answering the fakir's call,

He follows behind with a knife and rose in his smile,

to chop her up, bring her down, and reassemble her after all. 

Do you believe in all that?

Or the tales the Upanishads tell?

Do you believe the Victorian accounts as fact?

And the zombie obedience of jamooras as well?

Of course, the trick is just bullshit.

I disappeared into Ginsberg and Grover Lewis--that's real--

reassembled myself, got high then got straight,

and put my queer shoulder to the wheel. 

________

For First Poems: Door To The Wilder Eye at Earthweal, hosted by my dear friend Hedgewitch. She wants to know what instilled in us "...the  maker's rage to order words." 

Notes: The earliest poem I can remember being thrilled by was Longfellow's poem about the Hesperus. My father read it to me and showed me the book--which I still have--so that I could find it again and read for myself, which I did many times. Later, I found the same visceral feeling of discovery when introduced to Dickinson, Ginsberg (from whose poem "America" I have taken my final line), and my man Grover Lewis, all of whom crashed into my orbit and altered my trajectory by the time I was 18. I come from a family of achievers, and my great love of poetry, music, baseball, and not much else came as a sharp disappointment to my parents. But, the die was cast, and as Emily wrote: "The Soul selects her own Society--Then--shuts the Door"

The Indian rope trick goes pretty much as I have described in the poem. It is probably a Victorian fiction from the time of Empire, but who knows? A jamoora is a child assistant, blindly obedient to the fakir or magician performing the trick. The term can be used simply to describe a mindless conformer. A bhoot or bhuta is a ghost. The Upanishads tell a fable similar to the rope trick, except this time it's a juggler whose juggled objects disappear, then come back down and reassemble. 

 

Word Garden Word List #14 (Pablo Neruda)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings all. Hedgewitch (Joy Ann Jones) here, standing in for the redoubtable Shay Simmons, who is taking the week off. This week I have the privilege of featuring one of the great Spanish language poets, many say one of the greatest poets in any language, Pablo Neruda. 

Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Chile in 1904, was a renowned diplomat and prolific poet who produced a huge body of work, from the ardently political to the surreal, from lyric and beautiful love poems to odes to ordinary things like onions and soap, as well as a personal favorite, A Dog Has Died, in my opinion one of  the most memorable poems ever written about grief. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, and died in September 1973, shortly after the Pinochet coup d'etat that overthrew Chile's socialist president Salvador Allende. There is some evidence his death may have been politically contrived. He remains "one of the most influential and widely read 20th century poets of the Americas." (Poetry Foundation)

 

 

 

I have sourced the words for this list from my own two collections of Neruda's work, The Essential Neruda;Selected Poems, various translators, edited by Mark Eisnar, and Residence on Earth, translator Donald D. Walsh. Both are bilingual, with poems in Spanish and English. I've tried to choose words which are clear and free of any confusion or nuance derived from translated concepts.

As Shay says,: "What we do here is simple: use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in an original poem. Then just link up and visit others. This prompt stays "live" through Friday.  

 

 

 So, without further ado, here is your list:

arrow

awning

beating

cortege

dog

earth

falling

geraniums

honey

iron

kiss

listen

malediction

naked

origin

petals

poppies

sour

water

white

Geraniums (A Love Poem)

 

It was that time of year

when potted geraniums on their iron hooks

had turned sad and leggy

(as you were)

when you posed for a Polaroid

in 1972

before I was born

or after my death--

always unclear.

It's like taking a beating underwater,

the way I still feel for you

or might have felt for you--

slow, 

the kind of pain that poppies soothe.

It's an origin story delivered via candle wax arrow

explaining everything

or nothing,

and told by someone's widow, lover, grandmother, daughter.

I make no sense

even to myself

a child scrambling on a broad expanse of lawn chair

or a biddy past caring at the head of my own cortege.

I loved you.

I would have loved you.

I press white lilies between album pages to preserve them

only to find that there is no album, and I have no hands.

You were lovely that day

or had not yet arrived

or had already left

but the geraniums were fresh and pink by way of recompense.

___________

for Word Garden Word List #14 (Pablo Neruda), hosted by the amazing poet Hedgewitch.

Apes In The Coffee

There are apes in a woman's coffee.

"We warm ourselves against a hostile environment," say the faces upturned in the steam.

"Asian disciplines,

activism,

on-line broadsides,

these failed.

But this warm pool...is become our haven."

The woman's mind and limbs are heavy as asteroids, 

her heart a falling anvil,

her simian teachers ascended, sanguine.

_______

for Flash 55, hosted by the amazing Hedgewitch O' The Wilds, noted connoisseur of cofveve. 

__________

Cirque du Folle

There are other things we can do
in this time of dead clocks.

We can interview the air, jammed with blackbirds.
We can discard our clock-lungs,
turn our hearts to fragrant bowers. 

We can tightrope, half-awake
over the roofs of our old loves,

and fall into chimneys like bones into limbs,
fantastically existent, howling, dumbfounded.
_____

poem #5 of my 39 in 39 days.

for Friday 55 at Verse Escape, hosted by the incredibly fab Hedgewitch O' The Wilds.

Danger

Danger is everywhere--
at the bottom of a tea cup,
hidden in the fold of a newspaper,
tucked under the curve of your lover's breast.

Go ahead, scream;
it's your perfect right.

Those trapped in nightmares are paralyzed.
"You sustain me," is a sibilant statement,
often sincerely lisped by those with lipstick on their teeth. 
________

Another Flash 55 for my BFF.  

 

Floral Arrangement

When time has come for me to rot,
forget forget-me-nots.

Place touch-me-nots upon my grave--
no rose, nor lily, nor daisy;
and dig it far from madding crowd--
the loud, the false, the crazy.

Say few words, if any you must--
and lace them through with laughter
that unrepentant madmen know--
then silence ever after. 
______

A flash 55 for my BFF's weekly bacchanal. 

 

Friends, and a book review

One of the best things that can happen is to find a good friend, someone you can share your stuff with, the highs and lows, the triumphs, tragedies and trivia of daily life. It's even better if that friend becomes an old friend by sticking around through all of the twists in the road. 

I have the good fortune to have the world's best BFF, Joy Ann Jones, aka Hedgewitch. She has kindly written a fantastic review of my newest book, "Catechism For A Girl On Fire", on her blog. Please go read it HERE. Honestly, I am humbled by her kind words about my work. Joy, you're the best.

 

Space

Never mind how I got here;
I'm here, that's enough.

Dear Joiner,
take your bell cow and your suit case and your squee face
and go back. 

This is my Carnival Library--
Shhhh, quiet in the funhouse.

"Aintcha lonely?"
No. 
At least, not for you.

I'm the zero-grav cartwheel solo warp pilot.
Rogue star
shining.
__________

A 55 for my BFF.
 

Graduate Studies

She kissed me, but she 
did it symbolically,
as part of her final exam with Professor Goodbar,
known far and wide 
for his success with electricity, molasses, and girls who wear glasses. 

She attached a papier-mache head to a wheel, and 
turned a crank;
never did a lump of dailies and glue
express such dumbstruck speechless desire for me.
It came around, leaned in by means of a flexible metal vetebra,
and laid one on me.

Oh the hours
we had spent
deposited across her bed like rag dolls,
discussing emotional boundaries,
primitive impulses among Thai villagers,
and deflecting each other's endearments and tender fumblings.

This is when something went wrong.
Just as my Inner Wanton was awakened
by the kiss of her oscillating manufactured surrogate,
in walked Professor Goodbar and oh,
the smile she gave him.
Oh the sugared data.

There's a limit, you know,
to what a girl can take, 
even in the name of course completion.
I realized I had been a dupe,
a foil,
a representation
of fetish and fantasy, of foolery and fuck-headedness,
trotted out like a show pony with a little engine hidden in its tossing head.

Well.

For months, 
we had learned symbology, transference, 
normal and abnormal expression, data collection and interpretation.
But when I brained the Professor with my darling's papier-mache double,
THAT was real and he fell face first into her lap
like unexpected erratum,
mumbling some other woman's name
and it felt good, yes so good, to walk out of there and become a 

guitar shredder or a softball pitcher instead.  
________

For Play it Again, Toads and Hedgewitch's Get Listed challenge.

 
 

 

The Smugness of Sirens

The smugness of sirens
is both heavy and intangible.

Easy in their enormous house,
they sing and sailors fall.

What do they want with me, a woman,
surely a sister of sorts?

The mother of mermaids
is the moon, and though all her tears have settled on them,

She still commands.
They have everything except authority.

The sirens smile
and beckon me down to join them--

It is a casual cruelty when they invite, saying,
"Please sing with us, sister,

Sing like anything, the way you've always longed to;
it won't kill you."

(It is the instinct to breathe again, after,
that will.)
______

For (Non--)Fireblossom Friday with Hedgewitch, at Real Toads.

Image: Moonrise, Beaumarais by Clarice Beckett.

 
 

Sky, Earth, Sky

sky,
earth, sky,
never try
piloting prop
when you're sad and high.
last night i dreamed that i
cleared my head, got out of bed,
and walked down the wing to kiss you.
never take random pills with warm wine--
sky, earth, sky, fall, roll, rise, you, us, i.
______

an Etheree for Play It Again, Toads.

All Revealed

Florists
often sing each to each
from beach and gondola
and also from pier and bay.

Water, they know, is essential to soul,
and no drop can exist removed and solo.
Like floral film-makers, they study p.o.v.,
framing, lighting and, in every arrangement, fragrance and hue.
What results is a visual sweetness.

Florists wait until the optimum moment to speak,
as if words were buds blessed in shades of crimson, saffron and blue.
From pool and bowl and vase they call,
vining and trailing over container and wall,
as simple as sparrows, and as mysterious as Anasazi.
________

for Hedge's challenge at Real Toads, featuring the art of Odilon Redon. At top, find his painting "Flowers."

 
 
 

Zulu Cat and Her Many Disciplines

I was at my doctor's office,
in the waiting room,
gestating the latest creature within me,
when the door opened and she invited me in.

Her fern plants swayed as if we might soon be plucking doubloons
from chests heaved up on the surf from storm-sunk galleons.
Did I mention that my doctor is from some island?
Off the coast of Spain?
Majorca, I believe.
Maybe Easter Island,
because I have sometimes interrupted her at her carvings,
and had to stand there under the withering stare
of some ancestor or other.

My first inkling that she was in a rare mood
came when I noticed that she had become a cat.
A gray cat, specifically,
or was she tortoise shell?
The light kept changing, due to the swaying ferns.
She meowed, but I plumbed her meaning immediately:
she was in the mood!

Now, you will argue that I was irrational,
deluded, hallucinating, or worse.
I tell you, I am as precise as a court reporter.
I relate only facts, 
repeatable data from the snow globe of my therapy.
How I love the little cabin inside it,
the fireplace,
the polar bear rug!

Setting aside her Zulu mask and disguise,
my doctor demanded of me a tribute, a token,
a task to be undertaken,
if I truly wanted to be hers.
(In a therapeutic setting.
Under control of protocol.
In the name of science!)
How incredibly thrilling it was,
to see her jump onto the desk and switch her tail!

I crossed my legs,
I looked shyly down,
then up again,
my head tilted to one side,
my tongue playing at the corner of my lips.
I was a woman singularly eager to dispense with boundaries,
and to publish my name into the text of her desire!

Coyly, she asked me my name.
Constance, I told her.
Beelzebub, Candy, Electra, Spuddy, Spock,
anything you like, babe.
She wrote them all down.
Tell me about your dreams, she said.
You. They are all of you.
Tell me about your mother.
You.
Tell me about your father.
You.
Imago?
You.
Fetish? Obsession? Idee fixe???
You, honey. All of them.

With that, she stopped being a cat, and returned to being a woman.
Doubloon? she said, offering me one.
I took it and bit the edge. Real gold!
She beat her spear against her stretched hide shield:
boom boom boom, like our hearts!
She had a Rorschach birthmark on her thigh,
and I kissed it as if it were the Blarney Stone.
Hypnotize me, baby, I said.
Already done! she assured me,
and from the things I went on to say to her while I was under,
she is clearly the marvel of the swinging watch,
my counter-transference chica 
with the cool cat claws and the sexy librarian smile.
______

for my BFF Hedgewitch's word list challenge at Real Toads!

shhh

Shhh.

be still.

Curl and breathe,

turn heart's blood rich,

never minding the

tiny mote in the flesh,

so small, but more powerful

than all, a shadow that will fill

and then destroy its fragile cocoon.

Shhh, be still, be perch for dark butterflies.

__________

an etheree poem for my Witchy BFF.

Near-Sighted MacFiggin & The Coquette

Professor MacFiggin,
whose vision was blurred,
was dining on pheasant
or some kind of bird

when he heard a voice
belonging to Fran--
a wasp-waisted lady
in search of a man.

"Enjoy some wine!"
(He hoped it would tweak her)
so he held a carafe
which was really a beaker

he'd brought from his lab,
filled with--well--something
that could not have been wine
but it set his heart thumping.

"I've got giant white caterpillars
here on my cheeks,"
he said with a smile,
"and they've been there for weeks!"

"I've got a crustacean
perched on my head,"
said Fran, quite boldly
suggesting they wed.
_______

Cafe In Paris by Joaquin Sorolla

for Hedgewitch's mini-challenge at Real Toads to write something in "approximately 100 words or less." This is 106. Goddess love approximation!

 

 
 

Scene Beneath A Quarter Moon

Appetite honors no fences,
senses trespass where they will;
killing the smaller, the weaker, and the rolling in my gut,
but attaching no moral reckoning.

Singing to the moon, because she, too, is alone,
bone and blood keep body and soul together
whether my mark or your boundary approve;
moving, always closer, as the moon reflects in my eyes and off the barrel of your rifle, tracking each other, unpitying and relentless. 
_________

A chained rhyme for Sunday Mini-Challenge at Real Toads, hosted this time by my dear friend Hedgewitch.

Charity

She wrote the most horrible poetry.
It lurched and jolted across the offended, blameless white page--
a disturbing circus of malapropisms and non sequiturs,
all set down in her charming, flowing, feminine hand.

"Do you like it?" she would ask,
offering from her perfect tapered fingers a page--
a floppy, oversized, extra-holy communion wafer.

Can the mind recoil even as the heart yearns?
Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Are bears Catholic?

Dumpsters and notebooks can be the same--
their compromised converts diving in,
bawling their pleasure,
making asses of themselves.

"I love it," I would tell her,
but I must be pardoned for this crime against literature.
The saints must intercede for me;
celestial judges must consider my intentions.

Reading, fighting down bile or guffaws,
I could, all the while, feel her vulnerable sweet heart beating,
just beneath the jade pendant that she wore--
the one with the antique silver setting.

What could I do?
What kind of monster, faced with her guileless, saucer-sized eyes,
as hopeful as a resurrection of doves,
could twist their tongue enough to tell her the truth?

"It's brilliant!" I enthused, no longer even looking at it,
setting it blindly aside,
admiring her pendant,
moving it blindly aside,
and pressing my lying lips to her blameless white skin
in kindness,
as encouragement,
in nothing but forbearance and
Christian charity.
_________

_________

for Real Toads mini-challenge, thunk up by my BFF Hedgewitch!

artwork: "Birds" by M C Escher.