Pardon My Doggerel

 

I never met Gregory Corso

but his words were Gasoline

to the engine of my mind.

I did meet Allen Ginsberg once.

He signed the books

whose Howl had assuaged my loneliness. 

Here is a picture of the two of them,

another random human,

and a dog.

The tv is silent, cowed by the presence

of such vagabond intensity.

Corso shares a sandwich as if it were a chapbook.

Whitman said that not one animal is respectable.

Neither are poets, but they understand appetite

for food, for love, for being here now.

Come closer. I will shed a poem on you and make a mess,

then smile as if I had done something fine

to the engine of your mind

to assuage your loneliness.

I will do for you as these others have done for me,

off the leash and across the page

down through all the days of my life. 

_______

for What's Going On? "It's Raining cats & Dogs."

Music: Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen Song of Bernadette

Hymn For Homeless Ghosts

 If I could lay hands on a visa 

issued by lost grandfathers--

some kind of ticket scented 

with summer dirt roads--

then I would wear a hat made of dandelions and leave.

The present moment

is just a rented room. 

Poor child, 

yesterday has vanished,

today was born already packing its case,

and tomorrow is asleep in a distant curtained chamber.

It was just a moment ago,

just a breath, when I was

new in the world and believed the world new as well.

Whose hand was on the door

that was closing even as it opened,

wearing the vanishing morning like fleeting fashion?

If I had a passport

made of more than shifting memory,

I would take a hired car

to shores where the waters say,

"Where have you been

delayed so long,

and why dear heart do you ask, through tears, 

                                                     to be told your own name?

_______________

for Six Sentence Stories, "visa". 

Music: Cesaria Evora Sodade

Proof For The Postulation Of An Old Poet

"There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.  Like, telling someone you love them. Or giving your money away, all of it."  - Mary Oliver - Moments

The generosity of madmen
--whether born or made so--
is like a pitcher overturned, 
sweetness wasted in the sharing.

I'm not about to mistake straitjackets for haute couture;
I am as hard and closed as a policeman's nightstick.

Still, you can lay naked in the spring grass,
holding a hymnal and a caramel.
Pretend yourself a parrot, all colors.
I will still be the crow from whom the night borrows its darkness.

When you have gone, I will play ancient games
with dying cicadas.
The years will fold themselves into pastries
the crumbs of which I horde and never drop.

Go, parrot. And this time
do not leave open my coat of poems
with sleeves like shaded roads, and wool like forgotten noons.
But if you do, I will have been right in my manic certainty

that you would make me cry in the end.
------------

22 lines for Real Toads.

Reincarnated Grandmothers

Reincarnated grandmothers
have had it with knitting--
fuck that shit.
Now it's our turn to not visit you.
Check us out.
Send us money on our birthdays
cos we wanna drink it up and to hell with thank-you's.
Watch us steal your bae,
troll your page,
lie, cuss, catfish.
You want cookies? 
Buy a bakery. 
______

A 55 for my BFF.
 

Doggerel In Dog Years

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to do some emotional eating
because her heart may be famous but it isn't the same as
one loved face, and besides, fame is fleeting.

When she got there, the cupboard was bare,
as was her hope chest, her basement and her attic
because translations are poems whose language is frayed
and the local station only plays jingles and static.

Swing low, sweet Fido,
and give a girl a kiss when she needs one
because the ghosts don't care when she puts it all out there,
still she knows a friend in need when she sees one.

Four and twenty Milk Bones baked into a pie
and a pint of mint chocolate chip by silver spoon
cannot assuage the way a girl feels sometimes
but we can dream of running beneath a sweeter faster moon

through the kind of night where our love is coming home
under expansive easy stars and southern skies.
______

because I was missing someone.

image at top by Edward Gorey.  

The Birder

I fell out of love with myself--
I was cruel, I admit it.
I said things, things I'm not proud of,
and had no mercy, no care for what I did.

All the birds I am made from--
my own distinct darlings and devils--
elude illustration,
cataloging,
and most particularly, shotguns.

This happens, from time to time--
this disenchantment, this anger, this flocking out on the ledge.
Loud noises ruin everything,
and when I am feeling this way,
I am a cacophony.

See how clever you are.
See how my birds come to you, in winter
in summer, in distress and in droves,
saying "She is gone mad again, and we cannot reckon anymore."
See how you shush and shelter them,
my storm orphans.

Here is the curved sky,
the similar earth below;
here is the birdhouse with its precise holes for entry,
and its green shingled roof for keeping out.

You asked me for a bird, tonight, knowing I wouldn't refuse.
You brought no cage, no tether.
How quiet it got, so that all there was to hear was feathers
as I flew back into myself and became this poem,

the one you saved,
the one I wrote in birdsong for you.
______

for Every Day I Write The Book at Real Toads. 

 

The Wax Angel

In the widow year of the bootleg bible,
seven plagues were worn in the hatbands of devils.
In the fortune cookie of the palsied calendar,
these were read--
fear, death, murder, disease, hate, horror and waste.

In summer, I planted a window box;
in autumn, a stripe of leaves on the sill,
and in winter, the pretty almost-weightless tail of a sleeping beast.

In our bed that November, you left me your bones
and gave your body to the noisy starlings.
Each evening, I wait for them in the dusk--
they assemble and there you are, whole again;
watching me cry over impossible things.

In the widow year of the bootleg bible,
a man selling loosies was killed right there on the public sidewalk.
His killers couldn't see him, and so they felt for him with their hands.
He said he couldn't breathe, but they wouldn't spare him any air,
because he was not a bird, and they were not the wind.

My love, survivor of the funeral year,
I bought you an angel carved from wax,
a pretty thing from a funky little shop before they lost their lease.

I will place her carefully between your ribs
to help you re-make yourself when you return.
Until then, I have my crystals, a Magic 8 Ball, and my Catholic faith,
a mighty fortress against the vagaries of life in your absence.
________

Tersha

Tersha wears jeans and a blue shirt--
she is the land in shadow
and the starred sky.

Tersha has cats with flame tails--
she presses her cheek to them;
singing, they go up in smoke.

Tersha's hair is dreamside dark--
to touch it is to sleep on the center line,
smiling under a white moon.
________

for Flash 55 at Real Toads.

In The Graveyard

In the graveyard,
I found lots to do.
I did it, and did it fine, several times and
without you.

In the graveyard,
I made a totem, out of oak leaves and sticks.
I woke Kathryn, wife and mother,
and together, we hit the bricks.

"Kath, babe," I said, as we sprung the grounds crew's traps,
"Wear my jacket. Feel the leather. It's your size."
Then we danced on the roof of the grounds crew's shack,
and that was a lively enterprise.

Later, by the chain link fence,
I held Kath's head on my lap.
I leaned down and kissed her, Mister Kath, Son of Kath.
Now, what d'you think about that?

That evening, by the mausoleum,
she confided that she rarely sees 'em.
Fair enough, quoth Kath, while kicking her feet;
it's been years and years since they saw me.

Boo. It's us. The graveyard girls from plot forty-five.
Dirty as bird's nests, slipping out the gate,
devil-may-care, revived, alive,
with wive's tales to perpetuate.
_________

 

Terra Firma

I stopped the car,
got out of the car,
and started walking, barefoot, with my shoes in my hand.

It was early evening, in summer,
with a little breeze,
and the scent of lilacs.

The road felt warm and rough and solid beneath my feet,
but not far below it was just dirt and the roots of trees.
Above my head,
the branches of trees.

I thought, what if I were a woman going somewhere,
with my shoes in my hand, down this road?
What if I were a woman walking away,
putting space between myself and something else?

Over my head were the branches of trees.
In one of the trees was a red-winged blackbird and his mate, watching.
I stopped to look up at them; I turned in a circle,
beneath the leaves, and the birds nesting there.

What if I were a red-winged blackbird, or lilacs in a field?
Here I am, walking, but I don't know where.
Above my head, sky, beneath my feet, roots.
I didn't bring any shoes.
There never was a car.
_______

Marjorie

There were sounds,at night,
from down in the kitchen when no one could have been there.
It was just me, wishing.
It was just me, remembering.

There were moments when you could tell you were not alone;
you stopped half way up the stairs, frozen,
with me right behind you.
I'm sorry for that.

You were lonely,
and I was lonely,
always separate in the same space.
Does it matter
if I say that I had been alone for far longer?

There were cold spots.
That was my fault.
You wrapped your sweatered arms around yourself, and oh,
how I longed for those arms.

Bless the day you got bored
and went up into the attic!
Bless the trunk with my old photographs and letters.
Bless your curiosity.
Bless the curve of your shoulders 
and the shape of your small hands as you knelt there reading.

Dearest Esther,
How endless the days seem without you.
November has brought light snow already, and early nights.
Eddie and I went out for a long walk today, out across the fields--
he found a fat mouse to chase and he was so proud of himself, and so confused
when he came back to find me crouched over, sobbing.
I miss you so much.

What was it in my old bent-cornered portrait
that made you look, your dark eyes so concentrated,
and your lips parting without you knowing it?
What made you decide to carry my letters downstairs?
Why did you stay up until the moon was high outside the little window
as you read my heart?

Some girls say, "your daddy probably works for my daddy!"
Some women say, "A few of us play canasta Thursday afternoons. 
Won't you come?"
I say, "I have been dead since 1915,
and am buried behind the old wrought iron fence under the sycamore."
Please forgive me if I have lost the art of light conversation.

After the day you went to the attic,
and after the night you spent reading my poured-out words,
I could feel your fascination for me.
I wanted to feel more than that,
more badly than you can ever imagine.

Did the sight of my high lace collar
and my feathered, wide-brimmed hat from Chicago
make you think I was different?
After the faithless, casual women with their short hair
and their short hearts,
did you think you saw something different,
something richer and truer and warmer
in me?

I can't deny, mine was a different time,
but we had horse manure in the road--
life was still life.
People loved, and left,
and died,
just as they do now.

Tonight, I have come to your bed.
I am a lot of things, but I am not shy.
Against the flow of my time and place, I loved Esther,
and against the flow of time and death,
I want to love you, now.
I want to show you how longing expresses itself
when given a chance to become joy.

I am just a woman--
that is the thing I want you to see.
Tonight, I will undress,
leaving my long white dress across the arm of your reading chair,
and my Chicago hat on the dresser as if it were a landed bird.
Give me your hand, beautiful one.
Let me press it to my hip, my thigh, my breast.
You see?
In spite of everything,
my skin is warm and vulnerable and made for touch,
just as yours is.
________

photo: Evelyn Nesbit 

' Blossom

Couldn't work at the saloon
cos I always kept a derringer in my garter
and anyways I wasn't that kind of girl.

Went and bought me a fine horse,
then built a bonfire and burnt up all my hoops and corsets
cos,
you guessed it,
I wasn't that kind of girl.

Stuck around town a while,
whilst I got provisioned.
When the corner boys laughed, I invited 'em to dance
to the music of my new friend Mr. Colt .45.

Coulda stuck around town,
raising chickens and fillin' a pew every Sunday,
but I wasn't that  kind of girl, neither.

So I lit out.
Made the moon my friend and bathed in the stream,
just adding a little scent that lasted until the current took it.

Days I didn't bother getting gussied up
for the prairie dogs and critters, cos they don't care.
Whistled a tune and nobody told me "Woman, hush!"

I'd-a plugged 'em if they did.

Pulled my hat down low over my eyes,
and listened to the eagle cry the same song that lived in my soul.
Nights, a good fire and a dime novel was all I need.

Got lonely, though.
Started to pine for that blacksmith's daughter,
the one that used to half smile as I went by,
makin' my heart ring like a hammer on an iron shoe.

Finally went back into town for biscuits and rose water,
payin' no mind to the weaker sex, with their scruffy beards,
until one of 'em shouted, "Hey mister!" and slap his knee laughin'.

I started to ride by--
didn't come for no trouble,
and I was dusty from the trail and not feelin' my very best,

but then I straightened my back
and brought my horse around as the afternoon sun went behind a cloud.
"Better step out in the street," I told that man.

I hadn't used the Colt in a month of Sundays,
but as my fingers flexed just touching the handle,
it all came back to me just like makin' a pie crust.

Sam Colt got a way of sobering up a loud man,
and he just looked down at his boots and mumbled,
"Sorry Ma'am."

I still had half a mind to put one between his eyes, just for the practice,
but then that blacksmith's daughter was at my side, saying,
"C'mon honey. Let's fetch some sweet tea."

She give me that half smile,
and said she knew a place where I could shake out my hair
and get fresh.

That's when I remembered what kind of girl I am,
and it put the dip back in my hip
and the glide back in my stride.

'Blossom's back in town,
and y'all had better 
show a lady a little respect.
________ 

Georgia

She first noticed Antonio when he stepped out of a mob,
holding roses for her;
a bloom for every head in the rabble.

She took him on--
her personal little rooster.
He made love to her as if in timelapse--
an ardent insect skittering adoringly along her body.
She could have kept him in a jar, or a desk drawer.

The war came, then.
The sun went off-kilter, tilting drunkenly into the further reaches of the canals.
What use, anymore, for filmmakers
or their gaudy chattering treasures wearing ridiculous gowns,
smiling automatically at the invading armies?

Her last film was a dark comedy
released with subtitles and smuggled to the West
only to languish in a storage locker,
unwatched,
as round and unheeded as the lessons of history
in its circular tin container.

Her rooster was never meant for difficult times,
and he became tubercular--
within a month, he drifted through the bedroom curtains like a ghost,
and took to living with a flock of crows
as their underling,
but yet, he was flying, wasn't he?

She missed Antonio
and the competition of auditions and readings.
Feeling bitchy and out of sorts, she joined the underground.
Wearing berets and trench coats, they taught her to handle a rifle
and to shoot fat-faced officials through the heart.
It was her ingenue days all over again.

Antonio and the now-faded diva met again after the war,
on a single occasion,
at a hotel in Suwanee, Georgia.
She ordered gin through a heavy accent,
and he flipped his good wing, tiredly.
After a silence, they both spoke at once--
"Do you remember..." they began, and then laughed.

It was, by then, the only thing to say,
and it was enough.
_______

7 Things

My friend Buddah Moskowitz tagged me to tell 7 things. I lub me some Mosky, so this is them.

You asked.
You opened your mouth,
opened the door,
opened the cage, and I leapt out--
whatever I do from here is on you.

7 things about me.
Here's one--
I unfold from sky, from clouds.
I sit, I nod, I'm still,
but all the time, the dark could-be spreads across me from the inside;
lightning shocks my heart,
thunder rolls,
wind knocks me open like a wooden gate that's wild to run.

Here's two--
when I raise my head,
I raise it twice;
one is wicked, one is nice
and neither one listens to any damned old men.
I am the double bloom
on a double stem.
Cut me if you like; I'll grow again.

Here's three-
mother, mother's daughter, and me.
The other is the one she thinks I am,
and we all stare at each other
unblinking, unforgiving,
and as unrelated as bird, ghost, and stone.

Here's four--
four legs to take me all directions at once,
and the screaming you'll hear
from the trees at night
is frustration shaking my human form,
breaking its neck
and carrying it back through hell towards surcease.

Here's five--
root, base, stem, leaf, bloom.
I told you that I would grow again.
Reapers, did you forget?
You, lost on the overgrown path of me?

Here's six--
the six women I have loved.
One of them I love still, and without caution.
All dark,
all damaged,
all with an extra ear that the gods sing into.
This is why they are driven mad by the moon,
and why I have needed to be near them,
like stars.

Here's seven--
There is a storm from which I find no shelter.
There is a will within me that nothing can kill.
There is a name that I've given myself--call me by it or expect no answer.
There is a fire I walk through, not because I love the burning, but because I love the promise that it will end.
I am vines. There is really only a way through for one.
There are pieces of God in every woman. This is why we embody so much beauty, and how we endure so much pain.

There are your seven things.
Destroy the cage.
Close the door again, softly.
Shut your mouth, at last, at last.
Whatever I do from here is on me, like rain on a cat's coat.
She can't find home,
and yet, always, she hurries on.
_____

Amtrak

"And when she got back, she was nobody's wife" --Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat

Cunning mad-bird,
You will always find someone
To gaze with you through the broken window of your life.
You will stretch out your pitiful injured wing in that practiced way,
And they will leave their fingertips
Severed against your skin
Removing the shards you flew into
With intention.

That year,
Our last,
I had to get away
From the hospital smell and the bad blood.
Saving you is a fool's errand,
And I was numb with it.

If Jesus were alive today,
He would take Amtrak.
When I was young, I traveled St. Louis, Jackson, Galveston, OKC, Tulsa, Falstaff, L.A., Portland, Seattle and Vancouver,
Then across Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and back home.
Winds circle,
And can circle again;
Sometimes between the spinning Earth and the changing sky,
There is even a point of balance to be found.

Grieving,
Listening to "Desolation Row" and falling south from Chicago down to Springfield,
I saw the capitol building lit gold in the night
As I shared a meal in the dining car
With a nice man who demanded nothing of me.
In Arkansas, an ice storm had ruined the trees,
And in Texarkana, I felt as weary as I have ever been;
But somehow, and 23 hours behind schedule, we rolled into San Antonio,
Where I had lived those years before I knew you.

In the stillness of pre-dawn,
I shared a cab with a soldier bound for Fort Sam.
Paying my share outside the Menger, I stood alone with my bag and savored the Texas city I love.

When I came back to Michigan,
You didn't bother to meet my train;
But I had been home,
I had been sane,
And I knew to a certainty as I walked my way to the house we would soon sell,
That you would not destroy me
And that I had been redeemed.

______

for Kerry's challenge at Real Toads. She asked for poems about the road.

Bottom photo: the Illinois capitol (capital? I can never remember) in Springfield, at night. I remember so vividly how it looked from the train.

The Menger Hotel is my favorite hotel, a historic landmark in downtown San Antonio. it is reputed to be haunted.

I debated what music to put with this poem, and thought about Emmylou's "Tulsa Queen", but in the end decided to go with this, because it reminds me of the early part of the trip, through Chicago, and also the double entendre of LSD, which suits the trip I took.

 

The Moon At Sunrise

Let her, if you have any heart--
Let her stay by the window;
Such a small sky, and her time so short.

Do you love her?
Still? Like this?
And, do you love me,
Your round glass girl, dying for the coffee, dying for the dark?

Nothing is more constant,
or more inconstant
than the Sky.
"Come," it says.
Then, when the Earth turns, it is like wine in a tipped glass;
It spills, spreads, forgets.

Go chase down the dawn, Sir Knight.
She and I will fade here, demurely, like spinsters;
But come back tonight,
Find us together in a way you can never understand--
Resurgent,
Savage,
and once again
Bright.
_____

And, one more from Mexican Moon...

National Summary Execution Month

Bernard begins to find NaSumExMo burdensome.
Oh, it was fun at first--
the camaraderie, 
the challenge,
the attention!
from reporters and police.

But now,
NaSumExMo seems like a mistake.

His girlfriend, Ashley, does not understand.
"I was talking," she complains.
"I was trying to tell you about something,
and you just keep fucking with that guillotine
and those god damn melons!"

She leaves him.
Her fragrance fades, replaced by the smell of gun oil.

Bernard finds that he has a blemish
on his cheek.
He frowns at it in the mirror, while shaving,
and would turn it if he had not made
this stupid commitment.

"Show me the thing that cannot become a commonplace,"
whines Bernard.
There are days when there really is no deserving miscreant,
and he goes about his business out of duty
rather than joy.

Blam!
So what?
Why did he think this would be worthwhile,
or fun?

"Kill me," he begs another participant.
Ennui has left him unhinged.

Ashley finds him, rocking like a defective in an alley,
twirling his hair,
mumbling.

"Come on, Bernie," she coaxes, softly.
She leads him home,
to the old couch with the floral sheet spread over it,
and the cats.
She heats some chicken noodle for him,
as if he were seven years old and 
home with a cold.

Later, in bed,
She kisses his chapped, razor-nicked face,
and asks,
"Sooo...what are we going to say, if they ask you again,
next month?"

"No..." he replies, eventually, in a vacant monotone.
She kisses him again,
happy to take him back.

"That's right, baby."
And it is.

_______