Something Borrowed, Something Blue

 

Santorini Island

Don't talk to me about made-up things,

someday things,

not now. 

I am only half here.

Every time I close my eyes,

I am back in Texas,

twenty-three again,

and looking for a dump I can afford.

You are talking,

but I am thinking

about Santorini Island, a place I have never been,

where the domes and railings

are the same bright blue

as the sea.

Then I am back in Texas again,

the landlord waving his hand,

saying yes, yes,

that can be cleaned/fixed/hauled away

and do I have the deposit and

next month's rent?

I wake again and there you are,

still talking, holding a bible like an admonition

and rattling on about forgiveness.

I wish my dog were here,

He never spoke but was a kind of Jesus.

all love and no faking it. 

In Texas I was hoping he would be okay

in the new dump, 

Downstairs was a tired blonde with a young son

and upstairs a hypochondriacal Mexicana

and an older gay man in a linen suit--

my new family.

I will die soon,

you can have my cutlery and framed art

if you go away right now.

Made-up things, someday things 

bore me, cause me pain. Let me drift

into a grove of Mesquite trees

somewhere in the Texas hill country,

or down a stone walk to a table by the sea

on Santorini Island, where I have never been,

where the domes and doorframes are that marvelous bright blue.

My dog will be there again

after all of this time and searching

like a sentinel

or a Maître d, 

as dependable and fine as the arc of the sun in June. 

Texas bluebonnets under a mesquite tree

-----------------------------

For Dora's Something Borrowed Something Blue at Dverse. Poetics

Lady Poet

 

Writing poetry is a fine thing,

to laze in one's garden wearing a sun hat

as a lady may do of a June afternoon.

Poetry is the Boston Marriage of the arts--

termed by some a higher devotion

and by others a harmless quirk.

The lady poet must avoid unpleasantness

and lift her literary skirts

above the puddle in the road.

Upon discovery of my desire to be a lady poet,

my father entombed me with his own manuscripts

mummified by papier-mache and shellac.

My mother tried to can me with her tomatoes

to debut at some later date

in a more malleable and acceptable guise.

Writing poetry is a fine thing,

to jump in the blood and guts wearing suspenders

and getting arrested after midnight.

Drunk on gin, turns of phrase, and love of fire

to dwell in the house of the falling crossbeams

for seven years give or take

And then to sleep with men, sleep with women,

sleep with marvels and nightmares

such as no one ever speaks of, and then to scream it.

After all of this, it will be a fine thing

to laze in the garden wearing my scars and hip-hoorahs

as a lady may do of an October afternoon

My father dead in his grave, my mother careful in hers,

and my many selves rolling over in theirs,

all for this higher devotion, this quaint quirk, this thing that I live for.

______________

For Dverse Poetics: Reimagining the Familiar hosted by Dora

and What's Going On--"Morn of Restoration" hosted by Mary

Music: Chantel Chamberland Temptation (written by Tom Waits)

Word Garden Word List--Spill Simmer Falter Wither

 

Hello my little runaways! It's Monday again and time for this week's brand-new Word List.  This time our source is Sara Baume's superb novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither. It's about a solitary misfit and a one-eyed dog who run away from the unkind lives they've known and bond together on the road to... well, read it and find out. And the title? Think the four seasons. 

Sara Baume

"This book is like a flame in daylight, beautiful and unexpected." --Anne Enright, author of The Gathering. 

I have never read another book quite like this one. I suppose that The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams (also the author of the famous Watership Down) comes closest. It's unforgettable. I warn you, though, it will also break your heart. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and then embark on a quest to find out once and for all who's a good boy. This prompt stays active through Sunday. 

And now, your List:

amok

armchair

baton

busybodies

cherished

child

countryside

delivery

euphoric

flowerboxes

freezing

lick

Perspex

reverse

running

sheep

sludge

stuffed

valerian

wildflowers

A Season In Hell

Summer that year came with black wings

rising over green suburban trees

and found my blood-beat

like a smiling intruder delivering a shiv.

There is a horror of violation,

a new vocabulary of panic spoken

in chambers where

lions and phantoms trespass the flesh.

It gets dusky inside the mind,

The hiss of a projector spinning out a movie 

made of gin and dope,

actors who live in graves offering their gray stars.

The god-surgeon, numb expert bastard

taught his flunkies torture

and gave me a new face.

I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory.

When you always feel wrong, the world is a camera

and your crime is breathing.

There is an underworld with bootleg cures, so you go,

a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters

Who come out blinking, holding high 

the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--Jim Morrison. 

I had major surgery when I was 16.  That summer, "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm", both by the Doors, were getting heavy play on the radio I had at the hospital. Jim Morrison died right around that time. 

My title is, of course, taken from Rimbaud, a favorite of Morrison's and of mine.

Impossible Riddles

 " After last night's storm, the tulip petals are strewn across the patio where they mortally fluttered" --Church, Jim Harrison

I woke around 3am again this morning. 

Someone had been talking to me

pushing pebble words through cotton teeth, 

posing impossible riddles,

or,

I was in love with someone already vanishing,

or

something important was expected of me that I could not do.

At 7am I set out seed and peanuts

for the birds and whomever may appear,

maybe even myself, in a new body

not made of seed and feathers.

Everything hurts and I am always tired.

I am as soft and ridiculous as snow, 

holding winter's hand by instinct, leery of warmth, gray as January.

Here come the jays and starlings,

crows and cardinals,

like clockwork.

I watch them from the window and remember a day years ago.

I am both there and not,

here and not.

Dear eager raucous birds, 

will you be here again tomorrow?

Will I?

_______

for Dverse Poetics: "Songs of Unreason"

10 Lines About Lucy Medicine Crow

 The dog she got was black and white and wild

and loved the world as a fool, or God does.

For her part, she loved two things--dog and child.

No love for cold or calm or rest because,

starved with fever is what she is, and was.

The dog will dream, the child will change unseen,

calling from their secret side, "Come with us

and speak no more the name that we have been."

Her hair turned white in change from black that was,

a semaphore for fading feet and paws.

______

this form is called a decuain.