Sylvia

 

The doorbell rang.

My pet rooster

George Washington Crower 

objected loudly.

Who's that knocking at my door

who's that knocking at my door

who's that knocking at my door

cried the ...  well, me at any rate. 

There, standing on tippy toes

trying to get a grip 

to climb in through the transom

was some dude.

I said hey there aardvark face,

monkey fingers 

jumpin' Jack trash Houdini,

what gives?

He say, I am here on behalf

of the half serious jolly jokers club

and we are having 

a half off sale. 

With that he tore off one shoe,

a trouser leg,

and one sleeve,

then bowed to the ring camera.

Straightening, he recited,

Who is Sylivia, what is she

that all our swains commend her?

I said that's cute, she is me, and all your swains can't mend her.

I am an antique,

an ancient wreck

a Hesperus on the rocks of bad poetry

but he climbed through the milk chute

quite dashing in his half-suit.

and won my favor with his drollery. 

______

for Word Garden Word List--Enter the Aardvark.

Music: Lazy Larry Barnacle Bill the Sailor

Word Garden Word List--Shakespeare Bats Cleanup

 

Happy Monday, my little seamheads! It is almost the end of winter, and down in Florida and out in Arizona, the baseball teams have gathered once again. Can spring be far away? In honor of the return of my first and truest love, your word list this week is taken from a fun little book called Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge. 

The book is the poetic (?) musings of a young first baseman who finds himself felled by a case of mono, and with time on his hands, he starts writing. He may not have known a ballad from fruit salad when he began, but somehow a certain knack starts to appear. 

Says Koertge: One night my wife and I drove to Lake Elsinore to see a game. It was 10-zip in the fifth, so I started working on a poem. Not far away, while his father dunned him about batting stance and gumption, a boy of ten or eleven was writing something too. We exchanged a conspiratorial glance. On the way home, I told my wife I had an idea for a new book. 

Whether you've got chalk dust on the brain from baseball or blackboards, I hope you'll enjoy this List. 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 root, root, root, for the home team! This List is active through Sunday. 

Your List:

bamboo

baseball

beret

burgers

disguises

fable

fracas

gallery

garage

holiday

hospital

mutant

pinata

pine

radio

salute

scowls

sharks

Spanish

whiffy

I Have Eaten Stars

 “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

I have eaten stars
but they brought their own gravity with them--
their own geography with them--
and now they unbalance me, so that I lurch and roll as I fall.

On the surface of the sun, 
everyone is blind and everything is done gingerly--
every effort undertaken temporarily--
taking a million generations just to create a gesture that is gone in an instant.

Uncross your fingers and kiss me.
Meteors remember, but are too thick and stupid to talk--
language eludes them and they are as celibate as nuns.
I would forsake all liturgy if you would only be God's recollection and bless me.

I have eaten stars
but their light is checkerboarded inside my skin--
their light diffuses until I am dizzy and that is when
I lie and tell you I was home all day,

wrote nothing and

sold your name for a song.
_____ 

for Kerry at Real Toads.

  

This We Prescribe

"The doctor will see you now," says the doctor's
very unusual
goth/steampunk receptionist.

The Weather is shown in.

The Weather has been everywhere.
Physicians of every stripe have applied their treatments.
They have postured.
They have held forth.
They have convened in spacious venues.

Nothing.

The doctor waves his stethoscope around,
out of doors,
turning in circles and sometimes wandering off into the brambles
as if he were dousing for water, or
simply off his nut.

The doctor's assistant, the same woman as before,
hands him, by turns,
beakers,
Bunsen burners,
an astrolabe,
and several odd specimens in jars.
Lids discarded,  jars turned on their sides,
these creatures bound away into the surrounding area.

"A closer look seems in order," proclaims the doctor,
and presently, he and his wife,
the same woman as before,
are airborne in the gondola of a hot air balloon.
The doctor employs a magnifying glass
and spouts his findings as she takes it all down.

The Weather blows them hither and yon.
Yes, 
"hither and yon." 
These are medical terms best not used by laymen.
"What is your diagnosis, doctor?" asks his lover,
the same woman as before.
He gives her his diagnosis and she is delighted with it.

Eventually, they descend.
The doctor is pleased with results so far.
His receptionist/
assistant/
wife/
lover
sighs and wonders, is all medical inquiry so glorious?

Meanwhile, 
The Weather continues to exhibit a variety of symptoms.
They occur, presenting at intervals, and then repeat, 
unpredictably.

As yet, no effective remedy has been developed,
but work continues,
and research is at times uncommonly enthusiastic.
______

for Kerry's Shakespeare prompt at Real Toads. I added a dash of steampunk, in Kerry's honor, too. The quote I took my title from is as follows:

"This we prescribe, though no physician;
Deep malice makes too deep incision;
Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed;
Our doctors say this is no month to bleed."
_______