When She Was A Boy / Kiss Me

Today a double post, both poems inspired by the photographs of Rosie Hardy at One Shoot Sunday.

WHEN SHE WAS A BOY

When she was a boy,
She wore the same eyes.

When she was young,
She was salt water ice.

Underneath,
Was a whole shit-hot world, baby.

As the days dragged by,
She gathered up her guts and left home.

She carved herself good and sharp
Right down to the bone.

They say don't read your own tarot--
But she did.

They say you can't donate your own marrow--
But she did.

Down under the ice--
A shit-hot world,

And born from that--
A beautiful girl.

____________

KISS ME

I buy fragrance
By the quart

And where I lay my head,
The wood warps.

Kiss me.
You'll live.
Kiss me.

I got
Hand-blown windows and
French doors;
And I
Come from a long proud line of
Seaside whores.


Kiss me.
You'll live.
Kiss me.


I'm an old-fashioned girl
And a
Nine-time bride;
And when I lock the door,
It rains inside.


Kiss me.
You'll live.
I ain't nothin' but a cloud fluff, cream puff,
Christian girl sure enough.


Kiss me.
You'll live.


_______

 
 

The Paths of Glory...

Neil Alexander's photograph, above, got me thinking about a subject I have always found fascinating, that being the now-departed days of the British Empire. I don't have a poem to share (though there is a poem in the first clip), but here are these two videos (I couldn't find them together) from the end of the Australian movie "Breaker Morant." It is about the sacrifice of two soldiers on trumped-up charges of war crimes. It was done in order to open the door to negotiations for an end to the Boer War. It sounds dry, but it isn't.  --FB




_______



for One Shoot Sunday

Lions

Lions are wash-outs at counted cross stitch,
Disasters at building model battleships,
And show no aptitude for playing the piano;

They have feet the size of pancake griddles,
Brooking no bullshit--
Where they stand,
The earth stays.

Lions make piss-poor babysitters,
And cannot become pope
Or president;

But, as the stumbling gazelle can attest,
At a single touch, lions can impart
Everything in the world that is worth understanding.

_______

Photo by Adam Romanowicz for One Shoot Poetry Challenge

Homecoming

It was one of those dreams of short brown grass,
Like cheap carpet in an entryway to the waiting room of the Ruined Dentist Of Fremont Street.

A tin foil sun shone
Like a child's sheriff badge,
Arresting all
As if we had molasses in our veins, and ill-got trinkets stuffed in our cheeks.


It went on like that for weeks,
Until who we had been,
And what had replaced us,
Diverged so profoundly that as we skittered by, like old traffic tickets wearing preposterous brown shoes,
I looked at you,
Nodded at the shadows,
And said,
"To them, we are the ghosts."

No use in mirrors, then.
No sense in trying to start any more fires,
Though we had become, ourselves, rags,
Melted outlets,
Tinder.


It was only when I found myself alone that grace came.
The path changed,
Became a sea shell road.
There were tree blossoms like cherub faces,
And the weather turned as easily as an old cat in a rocking chair,
From stifling to superb.


Just when I thought I belonged nowhere,
Just when I believed the lying dust I had been living my life upon,
I saw him--
Our uniformed chauffeur, washing the Stutz in the drive under the magnolias.
He tipped his cap,
Smiled,
Said, "Good morning, Miss Anna. It's been a long time."


Oh,
I'm telling you,
I felt my heart spread out like a rose bush in June--
As rooted,
As beautiful,
As loved, for all my blooms and thorns alike.

I fell down beneath my favorite old tree,
In the lush grass,
Not caring about my white dress.
I couldn't stop laughing, fountaining joy,
And I woke up like that,
In happy tears,
Remembering.


_____


photograph by Rob Hanson for One Shoot Sunday

Daddy's In His Shop

Daddy's in his shop
With the gadgets and the glop,
Toiling all the afternoon
To turn potatoes into shoes.

His coffee's laced with paint
All the better to enable
Him to fix his extra eye
Which had fallen on the table.

He doesn't eat his sandwich
Kindly placed at his right hand.
When you ask him what he's doing,
He says, "you wouldn't understand."

Electric charges bring the largest cat you've ever seen
Back from the brink to have a drink of flaming kerosene.
Then it eats some rotten meat and gaks up on the floor...
When daddy takes its heart for parts, it will not gak no more.

The missing neighbor
Is used for labor--
He claps on and claps off.
The answering machine
Eats aubergines
But has a nasty cough.


There are nails in a jar, petroleum and tar,
And little screws rolling loose;
Elbow joints and old toast points
Plus a railroad train caboose.


Daddy's in his shop
Of a Sunday afternoon,
He doesn't give a shit about the grandkids;
He pees in a can,
Sleeps in a sedan,
And lines his hat with old can lids.

_________

Fireblossom does not understand "puttering." 
No cats were harmed in the writing of this poem.
Photograph by Rob Hanson for One Shoot Sunday. 

Flag Man

Flag Man

He lives in the square

He's got cement hair

He can't find his shoes

He's got nothing to lose

He's the Flag Man...



He's holding his staff

He's good for a laugh

He thinks he's a hunk

With his 'roid-shrunken junk

He's the Flag Man...



He's set in his bones

Like those columns and stones

Come take a peek

He's been dead for a week

He's the Flag Man...



He's got nothing to say

His whole world is gray

Flag Man

He's frozen in place

Flag Man

He can't move his face

Flag Man

He's twenty feet tall

He can't move at all

Flag Man

Flag Man

He's more perfect than us

He just missed his bus

Maybe he can flag down the next one.

___________

apologies to Adrian Belew, whose song "Gun Man" may have been ever so slightly ripped off here!

for One Shoot Sunday. Photograph by Walter Parada.

Oh, and....Happy Birthday to me!

 ______

Dove Black Sky

Note: in my April 9th post, "Dust", the Queen Of The Vampires was gravely injured by a vampire hunter. Her story continues here.

To be a cat in a poppy field

Is not such a bad thing.

(No matter that it is a hallucination.

No matter that a vampire hunter's attack has put her there, teetering...)



Rasputin sits with the Queen Of The Vampires, who lies still amid the red blooms in her favorite illusionary black panther form.

His tunic is dirty and frayed.

A Russian cross sits on his chest, suspended from a leather thong,

Like God's emblem in a stirrup.



"немного один" he whispers, cradling her soft ear in his giant hand. "Little One."

His love is like a warm samovar--

Utilitarian.

Indispensable.



The vampire hunter is dead,

Flat as a pancake in a Target parking lot.

Some saw a large vehicle,

A woman,

A lightning strike from a blue sky.

Others report the miracle of black doves,

Carrying tiny bells in their feet,

Rising.



You might find it strange that a staretz--

A wandering holy man, and long-dead besides--

Should treat a Vampire Queen so tenderly.

Well,

They both know what it means to be lost.

They both know that church spires, whether onion-domed or not,

Rise up like smoke above the sinful world.



The Queen Of The Vampires opens her eyes.

Her head, her ebony-haired human head, is resting on the Dark Haired Chick's thigh

In a pristine, untorn booth

At Danny's Coffee Shop.



She is looking down at the Dark Haired Chick's boot.

There is grit on the heel,

As if from a newly-resurfaced chain store space.

The QOTV's lips curl in a smile,

Imagining her sitting, waiting, watching the rear view mirror and making up fabulously creative--

And shockingly obscene--

Pet names for the people honking at her, coveting her spot.



Now the QOTV will recover.

Now she will remember,

She is Queen and all her powers will return;

But she will carry Rasputin in her heart,

And the poppies,

As well as a new white streak in her hair

Like an opium dream

In a dove black sky.

_________

for One Shoot Sunday. 

top photograph by Fee Easton

A Mother's Day Poem

My face would never launch a thousand ships.

I will never win at Wimbledon,

Or own a chain of hotels.



But, my baby,

When I see that you are happy, my heart fills.

At those times when you are sad, I ache to make it better.

When life is kind to you, I think, "no one deserves it more." Always, I am so proud of you.

When life is cruel to you, I bleed. How dare anything harm you!



Yes, for you I would throw myself in front of the proverbial train,

Or wrassle a grizzly bear--

But trains generally keep to their tracks, and if there were a bear,

He would likely be your Mr. Fuzzy.



So, in every ordinary moment,

I try to show you how much I love you,

And how precious you are to me.

Sometimes I fail,

But I do know how to say,

"I love you"

And

"I'm sorry"

And even

"Yep, I'm the meanest mom in the whole wide world, but you still can't have/do that!"



I am here to keep you safe.

But, do you know what?

When I have been heartbroken--

When I have felt that I wasn't worth very much, and like giving up--

When life has been too hard for too long--

I see your face, and again, I know

That it is you who have saved me

Time and time again.

  ~ ~ ~

dedicated to my one human kid and the several furry ones: Joe, Sundance, Alex, Daisy, Molly and Bosco. I hope you will forgive me my mistakes and know how dearly I love you.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers who visit the Word Garden! You rock the cradle, and the whole world.

for One Shoot Sunday

In The Hospital Cafeteria, All Unbidden

In the hospital cafeteria, all unbidden,

Miss Aqua Net Extra Hold at the next table tells me,



"You're using way too much salt."



I turn to a pillar, shaker in hand.



I smile.

"Why, thank you Pinocchio."

A practiced flourish of the wrist brings a white rain.

I look back.



She has gone back to attacking her salad.



Longevity runs in my family, but,

I would rather go down,

Back into the earth;

Give me all the seasons now,

Cos, dearie, for what it's worth--

I have no wish to linger on,

To go quietly,

To fail slowly,

To grow old.

___________

for One Shoot Sunday

Homecoming

When robots are born, their mothers are machines.



This is not to say that they are lacking in any way.



Floating in the aquasphere in the mid-levels,

New robots are happy--

They revolve like eggs in a pool,

They hear Mozart in the humming workings beyond the walls.



Then, goopy and stunned, they are carried head-first into production.

Some become domestics.

Some, soldiers.

Others, traffic signals, or automatic nannies.



Always, they dream of escalators.

Sometimes, when switched to stand-by, they imagine they are being carried up, returning.

For some, this brings terror and electrical malfunction, purposeless flailing and an alarming grinding within.

In others, the notion is sweet and sought-after,

Becoming stronger,

Like the siren addiction of lubricants.



These latter begin to falter--

They park the children in the underground reserved space,

And put the Chrysler into bed and sing it Irish lullabies.



Finally, they are taken out of service and sent back to base section.

They rise without effort, like buns,

Where it is warm from constant rotation.

They touch the passing steel with their alloy fingertips, going by--



They think,

"How like me,

Smooth and silver,"

And are accepted back,

Perfect match.

______

for One Shoot Sunday

Photograph by James Rainsford

Nun

Raise a child up in the way it should go,

And even the bad apple will fall damn near the tree.

Mama took every pill in the house--

She was country but tried to be posh--

Either way, Mama, they bury you in the dirt.



I'm the sale rack girl...

I ate an entire tray of cookies instead...

And I'm higher than a mailman on pay day.



I need to tell--

I need to tell you and Dead Mama something--

I'm out by the pool in my pepto-dismal pink dress and Payless boots,

Seeking Aqua-Jesus.



Aqua-Jesus lives out of reach of the squalor and stupidity of this world,

Down there in His perfect kingdom at the bottom of the in-ground.

Down there, far below the oil-tainted dead leafy scum at the surface,

He lives with Mary Magdamermaid

And several trident-bearing Neptunes from the Home Depot.



Aqua-Jesus, you're my last chance gas, my last call at Corinne's, my tampon machine in the restroom of my extremity.

Lovemelovemeloveme,

Snorkel up,

Enfold me.



Aqua-Jesus, here comes the apple that Eve should not have ever tried.

Imma fall,

Call it a dive,

Hoping that, face down in the crappy filthy pool, I can see you better.



Aqua-Jesus,

Make me your goldfish--

Overfeed me til I die,

Keep me in your cool coral reef shower curtain world

Where no one hurts,

Forever.



Let me be your beloved barnacle.

Let me quit this fucking world and float like a cute seaweed,

Down where even Your sacred blood looks like strawberry jam from a squeezie;

Down where every scream is muted in a gentle rising of bubbles,

As if the whole thing were just a giant champagne flute,

And we were just happy half-smashed lovers

Getting over,

Getting married,

Oh baby, getting it right at last.

_____

for One Shoot Sunday

photograph by Lauren Randolph

Moonlight

If she were a seaside whore,

She would be the best who ever worked the coast.

Men would dock their toothpick fishing boats between her splayed fingers, set gently into the bay to receive them.

Unknown to their wives,

She would close her hand and lift them up,

Their minds melting from the altitude,

Like hanged men.

Now her fingers become a sieve, and the marks leave their pearls and gold coins before being flung,

Dizzy,

To the tides or the tranquil sand.



If she were a seaside whore,

She would never work Sundays.

These would be spent with her tiger-striped cat and her blind flunkee Jim,

One in her arms and

The other wearing white linen and dark glasses, floating by like a puffy cloud, serving tea.

On the third sabbath of each month,

It would rain,

The black umbrellas pouring from the church steps like raisins from a scoop.

Monday comes soon enough,

So she arranges her perfumes in rows like kept birds lined on a perch,

And says to the sea air outside her window,

"I, too, am a fisher of men;

I, too, offer solace and comforting nonsense."



Flunkee Jim lowers his glasses when she says these things and laughs,

Deep, like fermented well water.

His blank eyes are white--

They are moons,

Refracting like confetti

Across the surface of the easy waves.

________

photograph: Penelope Cruz

One Shoot Sunday

An Edifying Fable

When Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer wakes,

The sun itself reaches in through the yellow, tobacco-choked blinds

Trying to touch the hem of his garment.



Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer knows

That he is a larger man than his circumstances have allowed him to express--

He is a colossus on a postage stamp stage!

A universe seen by sliver through a keyhole at midnight by a blind beggar!



Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer is already exhausted.

He turns off the tiny, ridiculous black-and-white portable television on the floor,

Which has spent the night stunting Benifacio's dreams with offers of:

Stackable storage containers,

Extendable grabbers for high shelves,

And

Zebra-striped snuggies.

"Today," he promises himself, using his fingernails to scratch a shoulder on which several wild black hairs have taken root,

"Today I bloom."



Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer places last night's (entire) mushroom pizza on his head,

The air filter from his 1979 Renault around his throat,

(He once sang Verdi at the Met!

Yes, it was closed, he had slumped to the rainy sidewalk outside, obliterated on tequila,

But art may appear at any hour! Beauty may claim any venue as her own, just like that!)

His filthy gray bed sheets around his body as if he were a mighty Roman senator,

And goes out the door,

Down the seven flights of stairs,

And into the streets, his canvas, like a three hundred pound, bearded tube of paint.



Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer is in love with loveliness!

He is a poet,

A magician,

A Minstrel,

And a mystic!

Why is his name not on every pair of lips?

Why is he not celebrated, feted, festooned with gifts and gew gaws from donut waitresses and heads of state?

Why do his feet itch?

Why has he no girlfriend, no boyfriend, no pet?



Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer stops at a news kiosk.

Everything is about some minor sitcom celebrity who claims to be a warlock, but looks like some sort of self-important but very ill buzzard who lives at a landfill and mates with old discarded automobile tires.

"This?" he squeaks.

"This is what people want?"

Benifacio De La Cruz Felix Von Straubhauer immediately turns to stone.

The world should weep,

But the vendor says, simply, "Hey, not in front of my stand, man!" He throws up his hands. "Fucking shithead!"

A policeman arrives and, after debating whether to call for a tow truck or a crane, arranges for Sanitation to come and remove this new unauthorized statuary.

Before they can appear, though, a white bird floats down, seemingly from Heaven itself.

Could it be,

The very Messenger of God, a divinely entrusted living symbol of everlasting care and mercy?

It craps on Ben's head,

So probably not, Hopeful Cherubs,

Probably not.

_________

for One Shoot Sunday

photograph by James Rainsford

_________

Angel Sweet

ANOTHER MIDDLE-AGED PERV GOES MISSING
Suddenly subtracted
Name redacted

One, then two, then three go missing
But before it hits four
It's rained ten more

Nobody thinks to blame Angel Sweet
The mumbling schizo
Of Sycamore Street.

Another perv emerges from night
Hung by his junk
From the traffic light

SAVE OUR PERVS! is heard the call
But their nieces and neighbors
Say nothing at all

Nobody snitches on Angel Sweet
The mumbling schizo
Of Sycamore Street.

_______

for One Shoot Sunday

Inconstancy

The kitten Giuseppe Verdi is smaller than nearly everything

Except mice.

Woe betide the cheeser who does not understand this.



Dreams are smaller than the night they are born to,

And yet,

As the Succubus can tell you, they contain the soul.

Doom awaits the sleeper who denies this.



It is not the light which makes the morning,

But the presence or absence of this or that face,

Felt the more keenly

The fresher the change.



The kitten Giuseppe Verdi worries about none of this.

He has no mother,

But he has a waitress

And a panther to play with.



Mrs. Langtry's talent was smaller than Bernhardt's or Terry's,

But her loveliness brought roses and proposals from the fine gentlemen in the front row.

Theater is illusion,

And the Jersey Lily knew how to work it.



The play ran for one hundred and eleven weeks--

No one now living was there to see it.

The theater has disappeared, replaced by a coffee shop.

The kitten pounces.

The Succubus waits.

A waitress laughs.

The Dark-Haired Chick sits in one of the booths, dressed entirely in black,

With a panther stretched out at her boots

Like a thrown rose.

_______

for One Shoot Sunday

photograph: Lily Langtry

________

The Hospital For Carnies

At the hospital for carnies,

The aerialist expresses that she only feels at ease when riding her unicycle across a tightrope

Fifty feet above the crowd.

In social situations,

Sitting on a cushioned wrought-iron chair on the cement patio of an outdoor cafe,

The world shifts with every incomprehensible word.

Yawning chasms open with every change of expression around her

Until she wonders why the passing traffic doesn't just slide to either end of the street,

Crazily piled and on fire.

She prefers faces from a distance,

Upturned,

Amazed and munching popcorn.



Injured clowns lie in beds lined up like file drawers,

Their temperatures and symptoms noted fastidiously in orderly notes written by efficient nurses.

At precise three-foot intervals on the walls of the ward, there are edifying posters--

Brush!

(with your useless limbs)

Exercise!

(with your wasted bodies)

Improve yourselves!

(so that you can leave uncommonly large shoes to fill)

The clowns weep, which disrupts their electrolytes--

They flicker like faulty bulbs.

To cheer them,

Children are brought in;

Most of the clowns improve, though the youngsters are of no provable value.

However, a few of the clowns exhibit pedophobia--

Their terror only weakens them further.



In the basement of the hospital for carnies is the morgue.

The sword swallower is lying on his back on a stainless steel table.

"I died out there tonight," he reports. His melancholy must be removed and make-up applied before the public can be allowed to see him again.



Carnies, like anyone else, are subject to microbe and mishap--

Someone must tend to them.

The horses with their beautiful plumes cannot do it,

Nor can the tigers, long since cowed by whip and chair.

The elephants would, but are distracted by peanuts and water buckets,

While chimpanzees care only for themselves and certain edibles, such as mango and papaya.

Enter the staff of the hospital for carnies--

"Primum non nocere," they recite in unison as an ambulance delivers a stilt walker on a long gurney.

He is propelled by paramedics through hoops of fire at the bay doors,

Followed by Tom Thumb, riding in an upside down top hat balanced on a seal's nose.

Complaining of a small headache,

Tom is rescued by the largesse of the doctors,

Who hang from rings like subway riders,

All of them double-jointed

And ever at the ready to treat and heal.

________

For One Shoot Sunday. Photo by jackAZ

________

Questions, Answers, And Kitsch

Do lions dream?

Of course they do.

They dream of zebra--

Enormous, endless herds of zebra,

Nearly all of them young,

Or lame,

Or so stupefied by the afternoon sun

That they simply blink and lie down

Like mail on the little table

By the front door.



Do zebra dream?

Of course they do.

They dream of wings--

Enormous, glorious wings, so that they barely need hooves at all;

They dream of taking to the sky and making it appear as a black and white checkered tile floor

In a little diner

By the freeway.



These are things not spoken of;

Not generally known--

Like the way your eyes remain calm but the corner of your mouth turns up

When you have already pounced

In your mind.



Do Romans dream?

No, not ever.

Their mouths have filled with mud and they have rotted along with their laurel leaves.

Tourists fill their coliseum, fearing nothing.

Their gods and goddesses have been pitifully reduced,

Barely hanging on as the names of automobiles

Or household pets.

Rome is dead,

Like a blue bottle fly

Dried up on a window sill.



The Romans are gone,

And with them, their hubris and gory entertainments--

But there are still lions,

And there are still zebra,

And there is still my love for you,

Sitting lightly atop your head and in your hair

Like a pair of ginormous and kitschy

Sunglasses.

_______


for One Shoot Sunday. Photograph by jackAZ.

The Circuit Rider

The land was dry that summer,

Dotted with papery stalks like widows alone in the big house fields

Under a merciless sky that sent no visitors.



I was the first to see him, you know.

We were thief and crucifier,

One standing, the other leaning from his horse.

He smiled.

"Good afternoon, Miss," he said, and serpents wound around me as if I were a caduceus driven into the sick earth,

And he the surgeon.



"Sir," I replied and dipped in what might have been a lazy curtsy

Or my usual faint disrespect.

He wore black,

With that Roman spot of white at his throat, as if doves might fly out when he spoke,

And in his hand a bible.

I stared at its closed pages thinking how like a sleeping lion it seemed,

And I,

So unholy,

Would stand no chance once he opened it--

So I wept,

There on the dusty flat,

My tears the only moisture given it in weeks.



I have never touched My Love;

Not as the hawk or the barn owl touch--

Not the way I want to.

Her eyes are the same dark blue as the coat our Daddies stripped off that Yankee officer

Just before they let him sway,

Strung like an empty seed pod over the dirt five feet beneath his boot soles.



The church does with lay preachers most Sundays,

But for when the circuit rider comes.

This was a new one, and we all went silent when he raised his hand with the scripture above his head.

I wanted to hold My Love's fingers in mine, beneath our skirts on the hard pew,

So that I would not drown when he began to speak,

But my cowardice doomed me.

He cleared his throat.

Once.

Again, louder.

Then the thunder came, from a clear night sky,

The lightning turning the walls blue, then red as the tinderbox prairie caught.



Last summer the cattle came down with a pox.

At first, only one or two died, and that's how it was when the first fat drops fell on the church roof.

 I couldn't catch my breath.

The preacher began with his text and his message.

I recalled the cattle, how more and more of them suffered and failed. Daddy had to use the horse team to drag all the carcasses far enough away to burn them.

I remember the big dark poisonous cloud across Heaven.

I looked over and saw My Love's eyes on fire--

The preacher's voice got louder and the storm raged.

Everybody shouted, spoke in tongues, rolled on the floor.

In a night become flood and fire, I turned to stone,

Heart first.



In the days after,

What didn't burn, grew;

Some did both and smolder yet.

The circuit rider set his gotten treasure on his horse

And I watched two sets of eyes look back at me as they rode away,

One blank, one deep blue.



Maybe I will follow the circuit,

Become a whiskey whore

Or go stupid with laudanum, passing out on the horsehair sofa all afternoon.

Maybe I will find him and cut his throat like cleaning a dove,

But it wouldn't undo the storm,

Would it?



Sometimes I wonder

If that Yankee officer got any closer to Heaven,

By rope,

By hatred.

I wonder if his spirit could teach a snakebit southern girl

Whether life goes on

After the heart beat stops?

________

for One Shoot Sunday

top photograph by Sean McCormick

bottom photograph by Metin Demiralay