Marry the Moon

I'm keen to marry the moon--
she has my heart--
I have my dress--
all the crows in captivity stacked up in the west.

What am I supposed to do
with that golden bitch the sun?
She preen--
she pose--
she think she better than everyone.

I made a deal with the dark.
I said, "bring my baby here,
when she a sliver before she grows.
I'll bootleg you the stars
and nobody needs to know."

I'm keen to marry the moon
with her down-low ways and hyena laugh--
she has my heart--
I have my dress--
now all I need--
her ask, my yes.
__________
 

Keeping Tigers

My tigers become restless, locked up in the house all day.
I have a service, which comes by and feeds them,
leaving carcasses 
and the long bones of domestic cattle.

These meals are cold from the refrigerated truck,
and they do not struggle,
and so are not satisfying to my tigers.

I can feel their rage vibrating against the chambers of my heart as I work,
like a murmur,
or an embolism.

My tigers dream of high grasses,
dizzy with unending heat.
The sun teases them from the high windows,
until they are crazy with frustration.

The houses on my street are new, and identical.
Differentiation only arrives with occupancy--
the houses are like virgin lungs, and the buyers, air.

There is a woman inside the walls of the house across from me and over one.
The sun-hot bricks contain her, and her soft skin.
Whatever bounty she possesses
is closed off from me, as by a hard cupboard door.

I long to deliver myself into her life.
She sometimes comes out, Queen of the Green Lawn,
and when she does,
my tigers and I tear each other bloody for a place at the window.

Not everyone can keep tigers.
The daughter of the couple next door kept a bird,
a beautiful tropical specimen, which flitted from sill to ceiling fixture
to the trees outside, in summer.

When the bird disappeared, the girl reached her china-fine hand into the empty cage,
and slammed the metal door on herself
until she was bleeding so badly that paramedics had to be called.

"Were you trying to hurt yourself?" inquired the doctor.
"What made you do this?"
The girl replied, "Lack of music."

I know this because I transcribe the doctor's session recordings.
I know this because it was my tigers who murdered her bird.
I know that my silence is vile,
and that Beauty should never lower its guard around Appetite.

I grow restless in my cubicle, doing my work.
I dream of my across-the-street neighbor, and in these dreams
I run my fingertips down the backs of her thighs--
I kiss her hip, and turn her over
like a page of religious text, and I the ecstatic ecclesiastic.

In the evenings, I go home alone.
My tigers are waiting, ravenous and angry.
At my front door, I kiss the key,
and make the sign of the cross over the lock.

All night,
my tigers scratch to get into the room where I sleep.
The door quivers and splits, but holds, barely.

My neighbor is inside her house, mixing calm with catkins,
like batter with a finger.
I start across the street, though it is past midnight.

I wear only my black kimono.
My tigers trail after me, lit like candles with excitement at being out of doors.
I knock, haloed in the porch light.
She answers, and I stand there like a little innocent bird,
offering her my heart like an Aztec.

_______

for Real Toads OLM

tiger swallowtail

"You should be published," you said,
and kissed my ear, my jaw line, my face,
convincing me utterly
of your roadhouse infallibility,
and of my own divinity--
a spray of spirit caught inside a potter's jar of flesh.

Of course,
you could convince me that cats speak Cantonese
or that Rock island Reds can rhumba
when you lower your breasts softly
onto mine.

Nonetheless,
I published my love on the rain-side
of silver maple leaves,
and should the caterpillar of the tiger swallowtail find it
and be pleased,
I would respect her view, whether her wings one day
be yellow, or a deep feminine blue.

The sound of your voice,
the prairie flower edge I love so much;
or the aphasia your bare skin engenders in me,
brings afternoon rain every time.

I am the rippled, vintage glass pane
in a window made love to by the weather;
Call me "Mine" when you fuck me,
let me know you can see right through me,
and that what you see
is blessed.

Pretty

I used to want to be pretty, like a Mucha girl--
Got the Lancome landfill to prove it.
But now,
I just don't care--
I'm as nasty as a shut-off notice;
I don't even try.
I don't care if you look, and go blind.

I used to want to be somebody's Star, their Number One--
But now that shit is done.
I'm as lonesome as a broken step--
Don't even try,
Because I definitely bite, hard and deep,
And for little cause.
I'm the un-Mucha girl--
Part rage, part grief, all claws.
______



for Fireblossom Friday "Much(a) The Artistic" at Real Toads.

Romans

All roads lead to Rome, they say--
But the legions,
In their breast plates,
With their red plumes, and brilliant strategies,

Are screwed VII ways to Sunday,
Dead beneath the gravel,
Knocked flat by fat babies
And little black crickets.

Dandelion-seed emperors,
Ladies whose looks went centuries ago,
Dust-mouthed senators;
Their domes are as empty as old flower pots.

Beyond this gate,
There is a horse in a paddock
And laundry on a line.
What fool put them so close together?
I don't know...

All I'm sure of,
Is that the grass here smells sweet,
The sunset is pretty,
And that I want more than anything

To feel my back against the post,
Your lips against mine,
And your fingertips at my cheek.

Do what the sleeping legions can't do--
Open the gate, sweet honey,
And pass through.

______

for Kenia's photo challenge at Real Toads. The bottom photo is hers.

Written while drinking Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai tea, which I am convinced helps me to be creative. It's irrelevant whether this is true. It only matters that I *believe* that it is true!