We Are Not A Muse

 Muse on this, motherfucker.

We, down in the poetic trenches with our wet feet,

sniping critic-rats,

and The Angry Jealous with their ridiculous trebuchets lobbing 

plague corpses of crappy fauxku at our ducked heads

don't want to hear about it. 

Incoming!

intriguing

interesting

smiles.

__________

a quadrille for Dverse. 

Spraying For Aphids

A fondness for tomatoes is just more lies.

The leaves are ugly,

the stems weak, sagging like a tubercular outcast waiting for her next beating.

And "love apples"? 

Poets are dreamy defectives who should be drowned like cats at the earliest convenience. 

No.

I kill aphids because they are so smug.

They crawl around on their stupid stalks,

fat with sap,

experts on everything except what is that big brick thing with the patio,

what are seasons?

and what garden, what planet?

Aphids have never felt any ache and rush

at the sight of you, undressing.

They do not run into traffic like some inevitable idiot,

talking nonsense to the gorgeous grille that will kill them.

They do not bury their dogs or their children.

No aphid feels unable to contain the moment's misery,

and they don't--wise vermin--hope next time will be different.

And so, stupidly unwilling to bring myself to burn

these poems, 

these pretties, 

these pictures from a shoebox kept like guilty dope in a drawer,

I spray for aphids instead.

I watch them fall, from the noxious cloud,

never having felt or thought about anything at all.

The same heart-drop that wrecked me

at certain suitcases and closing doors overtakes me now as the aphids die.

I realize I haven't changed them,

just stopped their motion.

There will be so many mocking Beefsteaks and Early Girls to give away,

almost begging,

as if they held all my mistakes and desires in their dumb meaty red hearts.

I will clutch the arms of near strangers, piping

"Take one! Take them all!" 

A pathetic madwoman for whom "no" has become an expectation, a way of life, a savagery,

like the gardening so many of us take up.

_________

for Sunday Muse where Chrissa presides, faithful dog at her side.

The Becoming

If I become, in age, querulous,
hands worn to nubs from wringing them,
full of good advice no one wants,

please shoot me in the head, or

give me a gravy bath and leave me
in Wolf Country 

so that I may once again experience emotions beyond cheap fretting 
and vague upset.

Faced with a circling pack,
my concern over a sweater pilling
or
the neighbor's cat shitting in the azaleas 
will seem quaint and stupid.

I will rise up,
screaming come you motherfuckers, come
and I will be seen and considered
for the first time in years.
______

for Sunday Muse #96.

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.

JAMA to this, motherfuckers

I had a little ache in the heart,
and so sought the cure prescribed in pop songs
with you
and you
and you
and you
and you.
Results ranged from muttered obscenities Q 2 hours as needed
to inability or disinterest in getting out of bed, observed for up to 3 months.
In sum, none of it was worth
the elevated heart rate, 
the altered mood,
the little swimmy endorphins which followed my boat after you'd been aboard.
Darlings,
all of you may kindly fuck off.

Contrary data poured in in response:
"She is mercurial, alternately combative or child-like,
not as interesting as she seems at first,
too solitary, talks everything to death, 
writes those god damn poems afterward."
They allowed as to how I could kindly fuck off as well. 

Too bad
that we arrived exchanging charm and kindness,
only to follow the usual course of dis-ease
to a trading of vitriol and silence.
The good news is
that we are immune now,
free to walk again among men (or women) without fear or hope, either one.
Dig my dead smile
promising nothing,
desiring nothing,
done and cured after all,
patient X back at ground zero, sick of love but medically cleared--
a success story in journals that do not publish poetry.
______

for "Love Hurts" at Toads.

 

The Nun Who Escaped In A Fish Barrel

The vessel is weaker
than it used to be--
the page thinner,
the lover gone.

The light is lower
than in summer--
but the angle sweeter
for its brevity.

Cats care nothing
for pointless industry--
and yet they
meet every gaze.

In stillness, in silence,
in age this fire--
consumes me and shames
youth, that boastful pretender.
________

 
 

Space Heater

Well, it's April,
but not so long ago you needed me.
I came to you when you were a fucking moon, and I rented your chest
so that I could warm it like a real heart. 
I just wanted to get that close to your skin, your breasts, your every breath,
even though now I couldn't give a shit less, and sit on the shelf like an unread book.

Every volume contains what it contains, whether eyes share it or not.
Never mind. I'll pretend I never cared when you framed me with your perfect hands
and charged me red and utilitarian as hell. I'll lie lie upon lie,
and deny the cat rumble my throat devised on its own.
Or, I could admit everything, that I loved you, that it thrilled me,

That I would have done anything you asked just to hear the 
satisfaction in your slightest sigh.
It's April, though, and old biddies who bored everybody with their reminiscences 
have kindly died and shut up at last.
I'll do the same, just don't expect me to be
here on the shelf next time your fingers get itchy and something seems missing

under your ribs, in that immortal Novocaine blizzard.
_______

some of my usual bullshit for Sunny's prompt at Real Toads. "Write about love using a common everyday image."

Sisyphean Haiku

The last pages of this book are full of sand--
enough to bloody my fingers.
My pockets are filled with sugar I pretend is stars. 
When I touch my fingers to them, they stick to the blood and turn pink
like cherry blossoms in haiku.

I put the tip of my tongue to the sand and stars
to taste earth and heaven together, but it's no good--
grit in my mouth makes me grind my teeth until I spit red.
Having combined dirt and deity, I carry the experience
but produce no pearl. 

_______

I am not sure if this is pastiche, Kerry, but it is my attempt at it.

My Haiku

because you all seem to want me to write one. heartless heartless mob.

If a haiku came to me,
the safe lady wearing waves of soft sweaters
and funky book-lady glasses,

I would place it tenderly in traffic
in front of a steamroller.
My hateful heart would expand like an old furnace
and I would say, "Die, you horrid little thing.
Become one with everything, the pavement in particular."

Having murdered the haiku, I would sleep better,
though the cherry blossoms around my bed would turn brown,
then black, with bitterness.
I would dream there in the soot, beneath the stacks my own inferno.
Eat your hearts out, monks.

Here is the woman I secretly burn for, packing her things
chipper as a bluebird,
hugging me one-handed, a book of haiku in the other.
So long, she says, ticket in hand.
Minneapolis might as well be the moon; I hope it snows all summer.

moonlight on water
blackbird on cherry blossoms
soft fruit in stone bowl

If a haiku came to me,
I would tan its little hide, give its dinner to the dog,
and then later, turn the key in the lock to its solitary cell,
bringing the best of all that I have managed to save,
saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I know just how you feel.
_________

  

I Was Old When I Fell In Love

I was old when I fell in love.
You should have seen the local teenagers--
so respectful as they removed my heavy groceries,
my shoulder bag
and my house keys.

My blood had gone sluggish in my veins,
like the biddy who holds up the drug store line,
blindly picking ancient coins from a tiny purse.
Is that a penny or a dime?
Systolic or diastolic?
How much was it, again?

Oh go ahead, laugh.
I was old when I fell in love,
like the bird that goes bright after blundering into a window--
red as a June rose, 
sliding slowly down the pane,
as elegant as a silent-era diva expiring in the fourth reel.

And my beloved?
She bakes, and goes up in the trees 
searching the branches all morning long.
In late afternoon when I begin to nod,
she tells me there is a future for everyone.
Then she offers me cake,
fluff filled with holes,
made to rise with crossed fingers, oil, and eggs.
_______

Aztecs

"If there are Aztecs in the hall,
lock the door
and hide your heart."

Such were the final writings of Anne-April Prilly
in 1967.

From that point on,
she did not write.
From that point on,
she seemed to have taken her own advice--
gazing blankly at the babies her friends continually had,
and failing to make the required noises.
"What about it?" she would say,
turning away and folding her arms
when offered an infant to exclaim over.

In 1967,
Aztecs could have been mistaken for hippies.
A search of Anne-April's hallway revealed nothing,
save for a newspaper, 
rolled up like a stethoscope on the parquet floor.

Through the unfortunate 70s and on into the 80s,
Anne-April remained unmoved.
Between her lungs, she tried keeping a sugar bowl,
but it was no use--
she was only hounded by collectors
who wanted complete sets, and not just the incidentals.

She also tried a plastic bear containing real clover honey,
but, nestled within Anne-April's warmthless bosom,
the honey spoiled
despite all assurances.

Finally, in 2006, Anne-April returned home,
using a skeleton key to get in.
She opened windows, bought art prints,
and even resumed writing. 
She tried to find her old friends, 
so that she could exclaim, if belatedly, over their children,
but the children were grown and scattered,
the friends wary, with medical alert devices around their necks
as if at any moment they might drop dead.

Naturally, Aztecs appeared once again in Anne-April's hallway.
Such dogged creatures!
She cracked the door and crooked a finger at one shirtless savage.
"In here, sailor," she said,
letting her robe slip off her shoulders.

She was old by then, but with angry gods to satisfy,
the Aztec wasn't sweating the details.
At least she had done her nails, fixed her hair.
Still, it was a dirty trick what she did next, snatching back her heart
with her last bit of strength.

Cradling it like a baby,
with bright red blood running down her forearms,
Anne-April was just glad to have found the thing she'd lost;
So glad, in fact, that she kissed the astounded illiterate brute
and meant it.
______

 

The Bone Cage

Do not mistake the bone cage for the free wing.
One is just a draped cloth,
and the other, oh honey,
is everything.


I love you for talon and soft breast, both.
Whether we're gray or black,
with wings we're born,
and so formed, can go.

Do not mistake the bone cage for the sky entire.
One is filled and forgotten,
while the other finds its own
with endless unbordered desire.
________

I think the image, which I found at weheartit.com, looks like my love.

I am greatly saddened to hear of the passing of one of my lifelong favorites, Joe Cocker. So here he is.

 

 

Contemplating the Divine

The locust trees have turned yellow,
and the sunset comes early in the evening.

Living across the street from Saint T's,
and feeling my own seasons shift,
I take to contemplating the Divine.

All that I am and am not
swirls in my imagination like leaves down the sidewalk.

How I love these poems,
and all the days and years distilled within them;

If you should see me looking half-lidded and sleepy in the wicker chair,
it is just this poet contemplating the Divine--

all the miraculous things
that I am
and am not.
_________

Eclipse

These are the things that are called my hands--
so wearisome they are.
Their only desire is to touch you,
but how can they?
You are vapor in a sieve held by a ghost.

These are the things that are called my lips--
such a tiresome pair.
Their only desire is to speak your name,
but how can they?
Curs cannot sing nor do starlings say the Mass.

This is the thing that is called my heart--
singular in certain light, seen through a particular lens.
Its only desire is to mean something to someone,
but how can it?
It is a poem spoken at an impossible frequency,
.........in a dead language
.........to a sleeping lover
.........whose face is obscured by the moon.
_______   

Freaks

Behold the human tragedy of the discarded runway model--
This is not the cheap bathos of crying clowns, painted on velvet and sold to women named Madge at tawdry flea markets.
This is true waste, genuine suffering.

Do you think that high cheek bones are a guarantee of
Joy?
Adoration?
High-paying shoots in glamorous locales?

Listen--
They are a predictor of sorrow.
Consider this...
Being exceptionally beautiful places one outside of the norm just as surely as exceptional ugliness does.
Removed from one's fellows, one becomes
A perpetual foreigner,
A beautiful mote floating within one's own smooth skin,
Another panicked dot--albeit a gorgeous one--lost on the streets of an inner Tokyo,
And everyone around you
Is, in some manner, a hungry Godzilla.

Welcome to Beauty.
But wait. There's more.

No one cares about your soul, honey.
No one cares about your wa, your essence--
Stow that shit.

You are the blank screen upon which the visions and perversions of others are projected.
In London, Rome and Paris, you are nothing but virtual reality, a mecha dream girl,
A dumb donkey to haul the loads of otaku motherfuckers who can design this season's rage,
But cannot tie their own shoes or order a sandwich without desperately consulting their tablet--
That severe and tiny god.

The runway model is a brand ambassador for the Divine.
She is what we would be,
If we were not so twisted, so marred, so comically fucked up.
Why, then,
Is she reduced to shilling for overpriced underwear?
Why does she not destroy us all, an angry Athena not to be trifled with, confiding in her owl,
Leveling fools,
Bringing fire and flood?

Perhaps I overestimate the power of beauty
As I prowl the soup kitchens and freeway ramps for discarded angels,
Loading them into my dented van,
Adding them to my holy army.

I am the hideous crone at the head of a sexy shock wave--
Here we come, the Different Ones you never understood.
Kiss our asses and hand over the cameras;
It's our world now, and you shrunken Godzillas
only 
live in it.
_______

My sincere thanks to Flipside, who provided me a word list to work from, and to my co-worker Tanya H., who shared with me some of her impressions from having worked as a runway model.

Ode For A Young Beauty

An ode for you, my swan-necked sylph
grown tall and fine by afternoon--
a gamin grown where asters bloom;
precocious, prideful, pretty elf--

Expediency is your diadem;
your flower's face an asterisk--
the reaper's scythe exposes quick
your thin, deceiving, hollow stem.
_______