I Gave You What You Asked For

 

I gave you what you asked for--

a funny book which I know now

you surely never read.

I gave you what you asked for--

someone you could maneuver into

saying, "I thee wed."

I gave you what you asked for--

someone to tie the tourniquet

every time you bled.

I gave you what you asked for--

a foil to be the fodder for

the monsters in your head.

I gave you what you asked for--

seven years of love alive and

six more stood up dead.

I gave you what you asked for--

my heart's writing you called "nice."

That's when I gave you all my scorn

and back your rotten rice.

________

for What's Going On?--"Home Made"

Music: Sara Bareilles Wicked Love

Wedding Song

 

Please buy me a rose of bridal white

placed in a vase of anthracite

Wear your suit of wool and flint

and on my tongue a peppermint.

Please buy me a rose of pleasing pink

placed in the pool to turn and sink

Bring the singer who loves the blues

and bury her bones beneath the pews.

Please buy me a rose of funeral black

buy me a dozen, all in a stack

Make the ring from a hangman's rope

Invite the judge, the devil, the Pope.

Please buy me a rose of brilliant red

and remind me you did until I'm dead

Bake the cake with sugar and tar

and preserve my heart in a Mason jar.

________

for Word Harden Word List--Ishmael Reed

Pomegranate & Oleander

 

I traveled through an arid land

where pomegranate trees bent like new widows

to find myself in a room with white stucco walls,

an almond in batter, with oleanders in a vase. 

Scarlet oleanders, delicate and bright, fragile

pages of dawn in a book of finite days.

The windows are narrow and look out on the bay

blue with white edges, sewn for a tide that never stays.

White boats like a spray of Nerium oleander

on a blue-edged plate set in a shifting hutch,

or whites of eyes from evaporated dreams

of a lover on an iceberg, things slowly lost and such.

I traveled through an arid land

a museum of what not to become,

born from a pomegranate seed,

fed on oleander, a gull duty-married to a setting sun.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Joy School.

Painted Meat Envelope

 The painted meat envelope in its gauzy cocoon 

opened its food hole to show its bone rows,

Charming the larger meat envelope, who vocalized:

You're the most beautiful bride ever, Gina."

_____

for Sunday Muse #180.