Sparrows

 

Love bloomed

like the green buds of the wild weeds

under the overpass.

She lost the thread

when her ears filled with dialogue

written by devils and idiots.

Her love, in wool socks and field jacket,

lost his libido in the war

but phantom desire lives in his memory.

It isn't being coy

to hold back what you cannot save

from the black nest of loss.

Is it dusk or is she going blind?

The robot doctor holds no cures,

just needles with tiny mouths, enthroned.

Under the overpass

there is a constant buzz of insects

who live in old yogurt cups

Singing their serene song

like an engine before the crash

lifting lovers into each other's arms

somewhere beyond the wreck, beyond reason, 

at the edges of sodium lights and night frights--

two sparrows sold for a penny

where crows and cats spend all night calling.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

Music: The Doors Indian Summer

Black Sylvia

 

Black Sylvia, moon-pale reflector of ten years' light,

I went down in the mines of you with a mule and bible.

Down there in the bloodstone

with my rock hammer and a rose,

thinking your heart was above me on the widows' walk

or below me on the skewer of a devil,

when there was never anything at all except a stupid fairy tale I told myself in a dream.

Black Sylvia, rocking funereal ribbons and indigo jewels,

tatting dry bouquets from empty veins in the phantom quick-strike,

I panned for what I could get.

Down the shaft was no place for a woman like me,

with my gingham and candles,

but I Morse'd  you a ladder of stanzas while you nodded

at the station with a spike in one eye and a deadgift in your arms, petting it.

Black Sylvia, living somewhere bedecked with onyx spangles

carrying a lockbox under her tongue, bought a black parrot

and killed it with a song.

Now it flutters against the bus-station glass of our two hearts.

A red snake like a caduceus 

wraps itself around her anger, first doing harm, then regretting it--

a living wreath of neurotoxins

hung on the mine entrance where everyone died,

                                                though they whisper like lovers in these lines.

________

for Desperate Poets "Desperate Desires."

Music: Delta Cross Band She Moves Me 

Involuntary

"I was born here and I'll die here/against my will" --Bob Dylan

 

Borne by a yellow-black bitch and dark as a plum,

our cat tried to asphyxiate me,

but angels slipped me breaths 

disguised as fists.

I became the cellar fighter of the infant ward,

with a smile that peeled paint

and the ability to read minds.

I planted nightmares

with bone-breakers 

from the little perfect fingers of every thought.

Now, here I am on the street,

baking bricks on my tongue

and cursing up cathedrals where burger places sank.

Come to bed with me, woman,

here in the alley on my mattress barge.

I'm a woman too, under the bruises and fractures.

In the middle of the night,

my instincts will kick in and I'll thrash,

whipping and snapping like a downed wire--

I can't control it. 

I'll sorry you a dove from my prison cell. 

All I want

is to be arrested with my dogs under the Mann Act

while trying to die in the pansy garden

under the birch branches

in Michigan in the spring.

Custody can be mistaken for love. Can't it?

I'll straighten my fingers for the first time in my life,

crawl out from a crease in my target-face,

and pretend I'm some beauty

on the Mackinac Bridge

stepping over into the clean of the breeze.

_______

for both Poets Of April and An Antic Disposition at Toads.

 

 

In My Room, A Cricket

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Outside, his million brothers, star-drunk beneath a lemon tree.

Why these walls? Why his song? Why my clocks, taken apart?

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Why alleys? Why walkways? Why my brushes sick from art?

Why my open window and the summer drowsing carelessly?

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Outside, his million brothers, star-drunk beneath a lemon tree.

_________

A triolet for day 12.

 

Believe Me, Darling

The thing is,
You can believe in me
When I say
That there's bound to be
A place so lovely
That even we
Can't mar it.

And my love,
In all of your enchanting
Recently repaired
Almost perfection, can't we
Enjoy the evening air
That even we
Can't ruin?

Every time that the planets
Align
In this certain way,
I find myself wanting to say
With only the slightest irony,
"Will you be mine?"

My nodding love,
We don't really need
The crutches that we
Allowed to become more important 
than this feeling
That even we
Can't poison.

So, now that the planets
Have aligned
In our favor, this once darling,
I find myself wanting to say
In an only slightly disingenuous way,
"Will you be mine?"
______

for Magaly's "Out Of Your Own Words" challenge at Real Toads. As per instructions, my 2012 poem "Sustenance" shares an opening line with this one.

 

Grackles

"Why?" she asked,
holding a headless sparrow
that the grackles had killed.

The sun was out,
but could as easily not have been.
I could have been someplace else.
She could have never been born.

Here, it is like
stepping off of the unfurled tongue of a devil.
For hell, it's cold.
People work here, collect checks like anybody else.

Once, she was spinning.
I caught her in my arms.
It could have been someone else,
but that day, the sun was out.
That day, the sparrows were thick around the backyard feeder.

At a certain age, she started locking
her bedroom door. There I'd stand, blind in the hallway,
holding laundry warm from the dryer against my arms.
Here, they let you look, their faces a question.

His eye is on the sparrow, so they say.
I was someplace else, collecting a check like anybody would.
I came rushing through the front doors,
from a window to a hallway to an elevator, one level down.

Someone caught her in their arms.
Now she's here, oh Jesus.
Oh God oh sweet Jesus, yes that's her.
My knees buckled, the floor came up. It could as easily have been someone else.

"Give her some water," someone said.
"Is her husband on his way?" 
Oh oh oh oh no no no no.

Every day of her life has run through
every day of mine. Once, she was spinning,
dancing to some song in the living room. 
She was smiling. Her arms might have been wings.
_______

For the Real Toads mini-challenge. Write about a building. I wrote about a morgue.
 

Anything

Anything.

That is what I would do for you--
anything.

Write my name....here.
Put it on pastels, the little squares I keep just for these occasions.
My heart, and the ornate clock on the face of the observation level
are in harmony--

tick...oh.....tick....ohhh.

Anything.
That is what stirs me when I look at you
and your sweater rides up in a fold at your hip, soft as a cat.
How could I deny you
if you stand there and tease me, so deliberately, like that?

Here is the key.
The one I keep next to my heart, warm from the skin of my breast,
where the two freckles stay, inseparable, like us.
Here is the key.
The one for opening the carefully restricted,
faculty-only
strictly-by-appointment reading room with the soft lamps and the throws.

Anything.
Possessed by me, made accessible to you,
with fragrance of rosemary, pansies,
fennel, columbine, rue, daisies, and violets.
Find me, look for me
at the desk beneath the clock at two,
across from the locked doors,
I'll be waiting--wearing colors, not white, and my little slippers.

I have catalogued our love, collected our sweetest words.
Find me, curl your arms around my head, whisper to me and don't stop,
don't leave, just kiss my hair, trace the edge of my ear, and love me back
like Anything.
______

 for my own Fireblossom Friday challenge "Looking Beyond The Obvious."

Post Card

I wonder if this is normal?
If you were here, you would not care that the sheets were plain.
You would hold up your finger,
gently, testing me for concussion
and you would find me to be the same as I ever was--

unable to name the date, the address of this hotel,
or the President of the United States, but I never could anyway.
Oh, love of my heart,
he can't close such unhurried lips around that finger--
let alone each one in turn as the windows turn coral, then azure.

Where did you go?
I must have fallen asleep, and when I was awakened
by the hotel doctor and the day shift desk clerk,
you had gone. "Who?" they ask. "Who?'
Beautiful One, I can't remember your name--forgive me!
But I remember your bare hip, the rise and dip that God Herself envies.

I was made to leave the hotel, and the emergency room as well.
I bought a post card with a dollar I found nested in mud
beside a building in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
My hand, the one you held, the one you kissed and guided
between your legs as you spoke my name,

stopped, palsied, when I tried to address the card for you.
Where do you live? What is the name of the street
where you watch, every morning, the windows turning coral, then saffron?
How much postage will carry my heart to you, immediately?
Why can't I remember anything, darling, except that moment when I was happy,

as you stretched out, soft-skinned on top of me
and I knew everything, and nothing, and loved you so much?
_________

for "Kerry Says: Let's Send A Post Card" at Real Toads.  

Venus de Milo

Venus de Milo couldn't get that gig as a railroad switchman--
I fucked the foreman for it, and oh,
the thundering crashes I cause when my mood starts to falter.

Vene, honey, hand me that lantern, won't you?
Diogenes left it here when he caught the Tulsa Queen last night.
He said he'd be back for it, but he lies like a rug.
I said, Vene--
oh, shit, sorry. Haha. 
"Take my arms; I never use them." Got to love Lady Day.

Every night, after the first responders have gone,
I review my work, and find
that I am unkind,
uncharitable,
homicidal and terrible.
Oh, Vene, let me lay my poor head on your breast.
(Try and stop me! Ha!)
I don't want to be this way for the rest of my life.

Here, you can have all the covers,
I want to be naked, as a sign of purity and renewal.
Pray with me, Vene.
Fold your hands and--oh fuck a duck, you're hopeless, girl.
Glorious God,
Hear me, though I am your most unworthy servant.
Make me nicer.

Vene, here comes Casey Jones.
Drivin' that train, high on cocaine.
Watch me bring him in soft as a mail sack full of feathers.
It's the new me. Hold my hand, Vene!
Oh, for the love of Mike.

Did you see that? My hand just reached out and switched the lights.
All by itself! It wasn't me!
Casey Jones you'd better watch your speed.
_______

For Mag 291. Image by Daniel Murtagh. Quoted lyrics from "All Of Me" by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons and the Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones" by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter.

The Kraken

"It pulled me back, it is a monster" --from "A Bright World, Darkened" by Charne Williams

The Kraken in your coffee
doesn't wait for the end of your cool story,
bro.

The Hydra in your headphones
sends nine notes across the three bones
of your ear,
dear.

Please fill out this questionnaire:

1. Do ordinary objects seem to rear up? Posture? Speak?

2. How long has this been happening? Just today? All week?

3. Do you get the feeling you're in a movie? Playing a part?

4. Does the role involve broken dialogue/ bones/ heart?

Sit down.
Please.
Quit making that noise,
Stop hugging your knees.

Tell me about your earliest memory.
Does it have anything to do with me?
Do you see things that aren't there? Any idea why?
It's all right to make something up. It's all right to lie.

Good luck with the Kraken.
Who knows where it might be hiding!
Good luck, you poor loonbat.
Good luck with your writing.
_______

Find Charne Williams complete poem HERE. This poem written for Kerry's challenge at Real Toads.

 

The Hospital For Dreams

I had dreams.
This is what had always differentiated me from the usual types
that fall from the moon and the dark blue sky
like sugarbirds.

I was not one of them,
though I wanted fiercely to be, when I was younger.
The snake of tough shit, babe
squeezed that notion right out of me
and told me I had other purposes to attend to.

But, about my dreams...

This latest one, this humdinger that I had,
turned out to be so much bullshit.
So what? you'll say.
So, dreams have been the guard rails on the killer curve of my life.
Intuition has been my merciful angel,
pulling me out of the soup again and again.

Now I feel like nothing but the bone.

I thought I was going home.
I thought it was gonna be warm cornbread and sweet butter from now on.
What it was, was
sorry, not you.
What it was, was
heft that bale, you dumb crazy bitch.

So I took my dreams--the new ones--
to the Hospital where they sieve out the serpents at the door,
and hand all the girls a gorgeous red apple.
I turned my open haversack upside down at the nurses' station
and said, "Save these.
Save this one in particular."
They said to me, girl, you are some wild kind of boho trash
to think anybody here cares.

Out by the bus stop,
waiting to go home,
I took a big lungful of magical Detroit exhaust,
like the last Pontiac giving up the final air filter.
I held my dreams tight in my arms,
and told them never mind, babies, just never mind.
_________

April

We are playing softball
--orderlies vs. residents--
out on the lawn.

The sun is out at last.
A robin is playing short fielder.

Tyrone belts one
way out to the divots where 
Rita dug in her heels
screaming, fighting Tyrone,
who knew to leave the shiv in or she'd bleed out.

She did it to herself.
Today was fun, but
we missed Rita, who couldn't come.
________

"the flowers bloom like madness in the spring" --Jenny Anderson

"No matter how hard the winter, regardless how bumbling they were the year before, come April we always thought our team would be in the thick of it. With the ice melted and everybody 0-0, just the crack of the bat was enough to make the hardest of us believe that our hearts would not be broken this time, and that a benevolent God surely loved the Cubs, just as we did." --Jeanette Prolsky

66 words exactly, for Words Count with Mama Zen.

 

Fever

In the day of the fever,
at the end of the war,
you'll take up my hand and I'll give up my place--
my customary place--
in the hall, on the floor,

to go riding with you.
Remember the days when willows leaned low
over the canal, where we girls used to go?
And oh, the things we liked to do.
But you, dear, my Only One, you already know.

In those days when the voices were sweet in my head,
the willows leaned low, as if putting babies to bed;
there were no air raids,
no rubble, cracked and sharp-edged--
just mama's little angels passed out in the hedge.

So now...what, My Pet?
Kisses to catch up on?
Rooms to let?
Do you want to fuck me slow and easy?
I'll take all I can get, I'm not so far gone
that I would say no to that.

In the fields at the far end
of the old road to town,
you can see the hulk of the Junker
that the home guard shot down.
I just like to think that it fell 
from its bedding of clouds
like a baby...My Baby...
where the willows lean down.
______