Jacks

Noon is when I stopped being pretty--
no one cares and it doesn't matter, 
BUT
I was the spider bride of a textile tycoon and he
took one look and started laughing.

Out of my ears
crawled everything I'd heard and learned--
all Mom's good advice good for nothing, now.
I went straight to the mill
and worked everybody I could lay hands on;
they call me Saint Susan--
Bernard doesn't see those jacks in the palm of my hand.

When a woman loses her looks, anything goes.
Bernard recoils like I'm radioactive,
has a slut mistress tucked away in his office.
Meanwhile, I roam the factory floor like a suicide,
my fingertips solaced by
bolts of cat's claw crimson and
beautiful indigo.

There will be a revolution.
Bernard's gonna look good hanging from a roof girder,
his wrists knotted tight with my pretty scarf.
I'm an uggo but I kiss the blade that cuts the checks;
sugar and sorcery have made the shifts see me
not as I am, but as I could be and have become--
a red ball bouncing and a quick hand to catch it.
______

For "A Poem Of Our Own" with Magaly at Real Toads. I have incorporated the titles of four of my poems from our book "Three-Note Howl: The Wild Hunt" : "Noon", "The Spider Bride", "Advice", and "Beautiful Indigo."

Top image by cellmon, deviantart. Bottom image, creator unknown. 

After hearing it last night, I woke up with my head full of "The Minstrel In The Gallery" by Jethro Tull. I had it in my head all the while I was composing this. Lyrics HERE.

My Consultant

My Consultant says you suck and that I was right all along.
Oh gosh,
I really like My Consultant.

When you are talking, knotting together all of your opinions
into a rope ladder to nowhere,
My Consultant jabbers pleasantly in my ear, thank God.

At Area 51,
My Consultant was there.
In the Bonnie & Clyde death car,
My Consultant was there,
in the chamber of his heart, in the untouched beauty of her hair.

What? What?
Are you still talking? I'm sorry.
My Consultant is telling me about how to get rid of aphids.

You may think I'm nuts.
You may think a lot of things, and blab about each one until Jesus pukes.
Kiss my ass and watch it pass, I'm on my way to sweeter things.

If there's anything else,
go to the house where we first met, curl up as small as you can get,
and take it up with My Defender,
My Cat-Faced Commander from Outer Space. 

Accept her mercy.
Be humble, my froward shithead. 
Be silent and receive her grace.
________

Image at top is Cristina Scabbia.

Folly

J. Prudent Anderson Pennyfarthing was many things.
He was a business man, a board member, a church elder, a Jaycee and a notary public.
"What, for immortality?" wondered J. Prudent aloud.
"What for the Divine, what for beauty, what for posterity?" he fairly shouted.

His basset hound looked up, startled, then set its head back down on its paws, bored already.

J. Prudent Anderson Pennyfarthing was disturbed by many things,
and cited the breakdown of traditional methods and mores as the culprit.
Like Noah, like Moses, indeed, like an avenging angel
(if avenging angels wore suits and drove BMWs),
J. Prudent decided to honor God by creating His very visage carved in stone.

Behold! After ten long years of back-breaking labor
(performed by a certain Juan Martinez, paid under the table at an appallingly puny rate),
the Divine Visage was complete.
The Deity Himself scowled grandly down His nose at all and sundry,
from a marble base in the middle of the park.

However, there were unforeseen problems.

Some disrespectful wag had soon spray painted "Jenny C. puts out"
with a phone number, on the lower portion of God's right cheek.
Someone else glued a Q-tip to His ear.
Yet another miscreant used a permanent marker to black out one of His teeth.
Finally, a pair of robins built a nest under His mighty brow,
and their droppings marred the Visage with gooey white tears,
not to mention the ceaseless racket of the baby birds.

All of this began to affect J. Prudent Anderson Pennyfarthing's health. 
He developed a tumor under his left eye, which gave the impression of a permanent wink.
This same growth stretched the skin at one side of his mouth,
so that J. Prudent seemed also to be grinning suggestively.
The fury in his eyes!
The pain in his demeanor!
The poor man could no longer sit down without homosexuals mistaking his expression
and sending over drinks.
How he suffered!

Even the basset hound found it necessary to relieve himself on the monument.  

In time, the Divine Visage cracked and fell apart, leaving half a head staring dolefully,
and the other crumbling in the crabgrass.
J. Prudent Anderson Pennyfarthing died,
and no one remembered that the purpose of the Visage had been to elevate morals.
It was sad, and very tough shit, you know?
Oh well.
_______

For "History Is Twistery: Folly", a challenge by the fierce Viking chick we know as Hedgewitch, at Real Toads.   
_________________

          
         

Love Letter From Cassie

Your pound-of-flesh-an-hour Methodist lawyer
argued inevitable discovery
while you sat looking poleaxed and lopsided--
not at all the old Pooky Bear I used to know.

Even without the medium,
(he argued)
my tawdry lesbian affair with some chick on the next street
would have been found out.

I was hoping you wouldn't notice
when I signed the pre-nup "Eleanor Roosevelt,"
and you didn't.
Why start noticing shit now?

In the old days, I could have burned the house down;
could have run a marijuana farm in the barn,
under those lights, I forget what they call them.
Now, one little kiss and it's see you in court.

Look, if you want to fight dirty,
if you want to hurt each other, listen to this:
my girlfriend got me pregnant,
and it isn't yours.

I think this judge is rude,
having me removed like that.
At least I get to watch tv,
though it only seems to get this one retarded courtroom show.

On our wedding night,
when you texted your undying love,
you forgot to Mirandize me
before I said all that other stuff.

It's all fruit of the poison tree,
you and me.
Sorry if I ruined your life,
but we're done here,

and they're releasing me on my own recalcitrance.
Try to move on, Poopsie Pie,
though really,
after me, it's gonna be all downhill from here.
______ 

 

Walk

I wanted to walk with you, but
I can walk alone.
You ever walk alone?
Nah, dint think so.

For a long time, every time I looked at you,
I saw
water for the thirsty,
and I was always parched.

Dint matter
if you got skinny, got fat.
Dint matter
what you said, it made my ears cock like I was back in the pack.

Guess you didn't want a woman who thought you were all that.
Guess you didn't want a woman who wanted you
like that.
Guess you didn't want a woman,
and I'm a woman--
one who would have told you all the redfire in her heart,
and never have taken it back.

I wanted to walk with you, but
I can walk alone.
You ever walk alone?
Didn't think so.
________

for Susie's Taking it To The Streets challenge at Real Toads. I hope this fits the bill.  

Spring Forward

Take an hour from the morning,
pick a peach from the pile;
one kiss from the courtship,
one foot from the mile--

Eve took an apple, said it wasn't very much.
Eve took an apple, said thank you very much;
now I know how it goes
and see how it is--
He just don't like me taking anything of His.

Take an hour from the night,
won't get it back soon;
poison in the peach pit,
crazy in the moon.

Eve took an apple from a serpent in a tree.
Serpent had an angle, that's some geometry.
Eve ate the fruit,
tossed away the core--
if you want to see some skin, that'll cost a little more.

Take a peach from the pile
and the whole stack roll;
gonna make you pay forever for the hour that you stole.
One kiss more, one kiss less,
stay for the dance
then take back the dress.

Eve tried the cider that she got from the well.
If Adam gonna watch, then she make him wear a bell.
Snake bit the man,
bird caught the snake--
cat catch the bird and give a little shake.

Take a dime on the dollar
and a foot for the mile;
get a little somepin somepin
just for a while.

Eve take an hour from the hourglass round,
Eve leave Eden say I'll see you around.
Adam write the book
with a broad brush black--
write all you want, but it won't bring her back.
_______

for Real Toads.

clock art by Vandy Massey. 
 

 

 

Seeds

At the top of marble stairs,
those hard smooth stairs pressed from prayers that could not be granted,
I will leave twin birds each with half a song.

You will know them by their scent,
and by the midnight-storm sea-water blue of their melancholy.
My kiss will come back to you, folded inside their feathers.

Follow the marble to where it breaks,
take the root-bone broken dirt road that splits the upstairs floor.
I will strew lilies to guide you, as sweetly as an easy death.

Oh, did I mention how restless, how diffuse
is the road I have lured you down? It webs out, becomes thousands,
becomes legion, and down just one of them is my bed and my heart?

I wish you luck.
Place these non-seeds in your hand and let your breath begin them.
Follow them. Splinter as you do, and I'll kindly bury each letter of your lies.

You should have loved me right, when I flowed hard for it.
Now, well now, this is the only way, and I have avalanched everything behind you
with black gems that turn to rot if you touch them.

Just do the best you can, my second chance baby.
Just pretend your feet are magnets and that I am true north.
Just follow the strange-birthed backwards sun that comes up in the west,

so that you, too, can know what it means to be scorched by a blank face.
______

Milkweed orb by Deborah Glessner. Used with permission for Artistic Interpretations With Margaret at Real Toads.

Check out the song. I dare ya to sit still. 

Hush

"Hush,"
she said,
with her finger to my lips.

"Shhh,"
she said,
her hands finding skin.

Didn't she understand
that I am not,
never was,
never will be,
any kind of beautiful?

"Not a word,"
she said,
as lips followed hands.

"You don't have to--"
"Maybe I want to."
and finally, I realized that she meant it,
there in the
quiet,
together in the
hush.
_____

for Words Count with the gorgeous Mama Zen, at Real Toads. She asks for the stuff that is difficult to write, in 75 words or less. This poem has 65.
 

The Wind

The wind lifts me--
cold mother of smooth white skin...
in her arms and at her breast, I become once again
her darkling child with feathers of rhyme.

I scream,
but my scream
is one of joy--

and my talons
flex...
flex and
shine.

_____

The Difference Between A Stampede And A Short Story Can Be Slight

I didn't come up here for any kind of nature shit.
I just wanted to be in a place where a girl can go about her business--
fluff her hair,
fix her face,
without half the magistrates in Canada wanting to know her particulars.

I thought that if I left Calgary and headed north,
that that dumb RCMP fuck would not follow me,
shoving his desk through the snow like a sled dog.

Why can't a girl listen to Tchaikovsky of an evening?
And if scarves get tied to the four poster,
is that anyone else's concern?
If money changed hands and then I had to change the locks,
does the world have to know?
May I no longer wear white? Will my nanny jobs dry up?

Listen--
a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do.
If a cabinet minister expires on the premises, 
and I don't wrap him neatly in a maple leaf flag,
tell me,
is it fair to drag me before the courts?
He couldn't handle some five star pussy, that's all.
It's not as if I assassinated Gretzky.

Anyway,
I thought that if I came up here, my pursuers might give up.
I hoped they might tire of pine boughs snapping back in their faces,
though some of them have paid me well enough for similar.
I thought they might get sick of stepping in moose shit,
and going without Timbits for days on end.

I am Bo Peep of the Far North.
I keep moving as best as I can, though my boots are not really made for this,
and I never got a chance to change.
Jack London, listen to me honey--
Save my happy ass, and I'll make it worth your while.
No Esquimo squaw can make it good for you like I can,
and very few of them possess
a whip,
and a pretty, painted
Japanese fan.
________

for Hannah's Transforming Friday at Real Toads

confused by Canadiana? Find the Calgary Stampede HERE and Timbits HERE.

RCMP = Royal Canadian Mounted Police



 

To Those Learned And Level, Proclaiming From Shore

photos by Zena Holloway

Just
because
you cannot
imagine me,
you deny me, I who have always been.
_____
a tetractys, for Real Toads mini challenge.