Book

 

Let me tell you about the book I've been reading.

I started it so long ago, I can't now recall the opening lines 

or even how I came to have this book.

I think it was a gift, but I'm not sure from whom,

and though it's at most about a hundred pages long.

it has a great many chapters and characters.

Sometimes I love it and wish I could stay on a favorite page forever,

but by turns I want to throw it against the wall or destroy it.

Every time I think I've figured out where it's going or what it means,

the narrative changes and goes off in some unexpected direction.

I'm often displeased with the author or the characters

and wonder why in the world the story goes the way it does.

For the first few chapters, I was eager to read it quickly,

but as I've gotten nearer the finish than the start I want to slow down.

I loved some characters so much that they became part of me,

and I genuinely suffered when they were written out of the tale.

Others I hated and yet they lingered for page after page.

I had hopes for what would come next, more when I started than now.

What began as a children's book, became YA, adult fiction,

and now it's almost a memoir. I'm not sure how many pages are left.

I wonder, what if I had found myself reading a different edition,

a sequel, another book by the same author, a different genre,

setting, plot, or style? Would i have liked those better, or less?

Ah well, even though I have thrilled to the love scenes, cried when

the characters failed, were terribly hurt, or died, believed every word

or scoffed at the absurdity of it, none of it is even actual in the end.

It's a tale, something made-up, though it has seemed very real.

Novels, plays, films, they move me, change me, sometimes bore me,

irritate me, or leave me in despair, but they are only shadows. 

One day, the book will fall from my hand, and I'll protest that I

wasn't finished! or perhaps I'll sigh and say I'm glad to be shut of it.

No one else will read my particular book again after me, though

sections and passages may be passed down and I'll be

a character in someone else's book, a product of imagination.

_______

for What's Going On? -- Books/Reading.

Don't forget that Word Garden Word List remains active through Sunday. 

Music: Crash Test Dummies Afternoons & Coffee Spoons

The Hawk

 By a fence line in the damp green of the morning

a hawk by gifted vision caught a wren.

There underneath his claws she learned the sense behind the laws

and she'll never by the fence line sing again.

In the evening by the fence line lay her feathers

which I gathered up to weave a tiny dress.

Stars said, "No, it cannot fit," but I whispered love to it

and by daylight I stood head to toe in yes. 

By the fence line in the damp green of the morning

I made from apple wood a mandolin

to play the hawk a tune, oh aren't you pretty as the moon

and at his touch I felt the answer sinking in. 

______

shared with Desperate Poets Open Link. 

Rán

 

I can't recall what this place was like

before the renovations.

There were difficulties--

bombings, whatnot,

and the removal to the madhouse of the construction foreman. 

Blueprints are lovely, don't you think?

Smooth and blue as calm seas. 

Birth, though, that's a bloody messy business

of screaming gobsmacked arrival

held up in the hands of the midwife who never cuts her nails.

It's not so much that I love this place as it is that I was presented with it.

I woke in these rooms

with the hammering already in progress. 

I long for waterfalls and love,

but have skin like bricks, and hair like shingles.

People say, make it beautiful, you can do it!

Be your own fetch, a siren of the flooded basement,

luring yourself with your own song.

Make it your home away from home as drowning sailors do,

find the bright side of blistering paint and warped floors like heavy seas.

All right then. I have tattooed the name Ran

on my arm, see it when I hold you.

We are limited only by burst plumbing, crumbling rebar,

and our own imaginations.

We are castaways keeping our heads above water

in our Rubik's Cube Winchester House 

of gorgeous possibility.

__________

for Sunday Muse and shared with desperatepoets open link. 

Movement In Four Parts

 

Shot-Through-The-Guts had been shot through the guts.

"Tsk tsk," said Portly Pantaloons, packing his pipe. 

"Serves him right!" growled Razormouth, having done it. 

"Might...die..." gasped Shot-Through-The-Guts.

"Tsk tsk," scolded Portly Pantaloons, with his habitual air of mild disapproval.

"He woulda stole my teeth with a monkey wrench!" complained Razormouth, who hated the dentist's smock that Shot-Through-The-Guts liked to wear. 

"It's worn ironically," groaned Shot-Through-The Guts, as a crimson stain spread across his dentist's smock.

"I think it's vulgar!" cried Mrs. Portly Pantaloons indignantly.

Razormouth said nothing, but clicked his teeth together menacingly.

"Where will you go," inquired Portly Pantaloons, gesturing with his pipe, "if you, eh, pass on, as it were?"

"Straight to hell!" interjected Razormouth, dancing from foot to foot.

At that moment, a host of beautiful angels wearing pure white dentist's smocks floated down and tenderly collected Shot-Through-The-Guts, then returned to the clouds.

"Not from this neighborhood I daresay," complained Portly Pantaloons, stamping his cane importantly. "Probably came in on the bus line."

"Dentist's smocks!" bellowed Razormouth, his little eyes widening. "I shoulda plugged 'em! I shoulda....I..."

"There there," cooed Mrs. Portly Pantaloons distractedly. Turning to her husband, she asked, "What bus line, dear? They seemed to appear out of the sky." 

Portly Pantaloons, grunted, mumbled something that seemed very definite in his sonorous baritone, and pretended great interest in a bird across the way. Mrs. Portly Pantaloons was still talking, and Razormouth was still blubbering, but by then, Portly Pantaloons' mind was far away, calculating ways to manufacture more monkey wrenches, more dentist's smocks, and more shooters-through-the-guts, at the least cost, with the widest distribution, and at the highest profit. 

The bird, whose name was Captain Poopybird, lifted its tail feathers, pooped, and sang.

___________

for Sunday Muse #156. 

The Bright Coin Of Forgiveness

At the north central bus station,

fashioned from the rib of a skyscraper,

sat an overcoated old man gasping in a mild breeze

of exhaust, apple blossoms, and cigarette smoke.

He tugged at the strap of my bag as if I were the signal to get off. 

"Take this," he said,

his eyes marbling up.

First, he drew a morning glory vine from his sleeve.

It made me queasy to imagine

where the root of it might be,

twining into the gray, dying husk of him.

"Don't encourage him," my mother's gone voice

jabbered in my ear,

correct, picked clean, horrible.

"No thank you," I said, borrowing a tongue.

Next, the palsied old fool produced a large, bright coin from a huge pocket.

Goddess only knows what lives in there,

minting rot and 78rpm records with knifey names

and purple labels.

"Take it!" he urged, holding it at me.

The bus station vendors will sell you anything--

tired sodas, foreign brides,

pills, candy, ID's, bird bones.

My sticky companion probably got his coin in change

when he bought a last breath

with wishes and turpentine.

"It's the Bright Coin of Forgiveness."

He looked like an open bible.

I wondered if I could take the coin,

file it down,

and split somebody's skull with it.

Someone who'd toyed with my heart,

or raised me 

in a pen with the starved cats

out back.

Just like that, the old nutjob died,

leaking oil,

dangling on the far end of instant erasure.

His coin fell.

I picked it up

quick as a juiced bus station sparrow,

and set it carefully over his good eye.

"I forgive you," I whispered,

though he had done nothing to me.

Everyone made a path for me to the 415

and in that moment I felt

celestial,

divine,

and so utterly alone.

_____

for Bjorn's goose at Real Toads.

"marbling"

I wrote thirty poems

celebratory haiku

counts as the last one

Moon Fable

Once upon a time, on the dusty plains of Africa, a lion chased a zebra.

"Come in to my mouth," urged the lion. "You can rest there. My teeth are like the rails of your childhood bed. Then, when you're ready, you can sleep in my stomach." The lion spoke gently, making all of this sound quite reasonable and appealing.

However, the zebra knew about lions and so she kept running as fast as she could. Even though the zebra was quick, and had marvelous hooves and strong legs, the lion kept gaining.

"I know what I will do," said the zebra. As dusk fell over them both, she used her black and white stripes to play a trick on the lion. She split herself, giving her black stripes to the night, and her white stripes to the stars. "Try to chase me now!" she cried.

The lion never missed a step, leaping up into the sky after the zebra, but, unable to see her in her split disguise, the lion leapt all the way to the moon, where he stood blinking and still hungry.

Now, lions are good climbers, but are better at getting up than getting down. "Won't someone help me!" the lion called, again and again. "I am just a poor kitty stuck in a tree." Close enough, thought the lion with a shrug.

Far below the lion, a Gypsy slept. The Gypsy dreamt that a lion was calling, calling for a song from his guitar. The light of a full moon woke the Gypsy, and he found that his dream was true; there really was a lion up there, calling for a song.

So the Gypsy began to play. 

Como canta la zumaya,...

(How the owl sings,
ay, how it sings in the tree!
The moon crosses the sky
with a child by the hand.

Inside the forge the Gypsies
scream and weep.
The air is keeping watch.
The air is watching over her.)*

The Gypsy became caught up in his song, playing and singing with such emotion, that without thinking, he raised the neck of his guitar so high that the lion stepped out onto the strings and slid back down to the African plain.

"Thank you," said the lion. "I am so sorry to have interrupted your sleep. Come, rest in my mouth. My teeth will be like the wicker shades the Gypsy ladies make. Then, when you're ready, you can sleep in my stomach."

The Gypsy was feeling sleepy and the night still had hours to go, so he agreed, and climbed into the lion's mouth. After a while, the lion burped and spit out the guitar, which made a musical sound when it landed on the ground. 

The lion's appetite was satisfied, but he didn't get off Scot free. After eating the Gypsy, the lion could never stay still for very long, and spent the rest of his life wandering the African plain, as his children still do to this day, chasing zebras and roaring at the moon as if they had been there, and remembered.
______

*the Gypsy's song is actually a section of "Ballad of The Moon, Moon" by Federico Garcia Lorca.

The top painting is The Sleeping Gypsy by Henry Rousseau. The bottom painting is Repast of The Lion also by Rousseau.

Written for Mag #209.

 

The Spider Bride

I am Night.
I told you so from the start.
Half-asleep all the time, 
lit stars spill from my lips as I talk nonsense beside you, 
never with any notion of what I say,
not remembering,
but no less la magnifica noche for my failings.

When we make love, I hold a spider in one hand.
She is no bigger than a white lie,
and as light as a first doubt.
She is silent, something I can never be.
Perhaps you will choose her,
your spider-bride,
and leave me reading my empty palm by wick light.

A black cricket may linger in my hair to seduce you.
Duplicitous and sleek, she could show you
the way to loose silver moonlight from my red tangles.
Then, in the morning, 
dressed only in my blue silk robe,
I would find her set beneath the paving stones near my door,
as people appear and chatter until I can no longer recall my dreams.

There you'll be, low in the early sky, smug Sun,
ascendant and arrogant,
insisting that even my long shadow
is more your child than mine.
_______

Connie

Connie's dead
but her dream is still there,
in the air,
and cannot find its way home.

Connie's bed
is crowded with strangers,
and flashes red blue red
from the ambulance dome.

Connie's dead
but her dream is still there,
in the air,
and cannot find its way home.
_______

Kind

The snake curled around my arm is not jewelry.
Go ahead; touch it.

Oh dear. I should have warned you
that I sometimes give terrible advice.

Never mind. Let me suck out the venom,
even if never quite enough--

and if my lips taste bitter as I kiss you, darling,
I apologize.

Please, while there's still time,
be kind
by whispering me your forgiveness--
my love so saturnine.
_______

 

Family Politics

Little Red Riding Hood
chopped some wood
to build granny a house to die in.

She built it and said,
"Bring your own bed--
the one that you made and must lie in."

Red Riding Chick
went all sick,
past the point of reviving;
Granny asked
the admiring pack,
"Am I so wrong for surviving?"
_______

55 for the G Man

An Extremely Short Biography Of Aqua Bondage Boy

Aqua Bondage Boy forgets the "safe" word.

THE END.

________

a magpie tale. picture: alex stoddard

My Happy Place

The New Year arrives at My Happy Place late in the afternoon
By postal motorboat.
We pick it from the splinters and debris in the churning surf,
And carry it up to the house;
"Welcome to My Happy Place," we tell it,
But it only stares fixedly, as if dead.

We put The New Year to bed in one of the guest rooms,
After taking away its shoe laces and belt.
At My Happy Place, we are always at the ready for visitors--
We keep soft restraints in a drawer,
And kindly old Doctor Bubo looks in, though we are never sure that he really understands
Us,
Our guests,
Or My Happy Place at all.

At twelve, The New Year steps out into the night
Near the cupola.
It uses its torn bed sheets to communicate by semaphore
With various monsters and suicides
Out in the deep.
We want to release a flock of doves from the lawn of My Happy Place,
But all that we have is a dead pigeon;
We toss it up into the gale, and it seems to fly for a moment
--noble creature!--
Before thumping listlessly against the bricks and then the ground.

Welcome, New Year, to My Happy Place!
Be mindful of our pitched and slippery roof;
Hold that rose firmly between your teeth,
While stretching out your arms like an aeroplane.
They say that
Birth and Death are less different than the same,
And that all the doors at My Happy Place
Open as easily outward
As in.
____


Happy New Year's, my second least favorite holiday after Independence Day.

The Ballad Of The Black Swan

I called the swans,
but they were lazy from being loved by the Winter.
They lay everywhere,
wings spread and still across the dull world
like protective mothers doting over an indifferent, implacable child.

From that day, I hated the swans.

In my emptiness, I prayed that Goddess would send me a weapon;
stupid with cold, at first I thought it was the night that had turned my dreams black,
but it was your arriving kiss,
and I fell in love with Fire.

As a sign of my devotion to you,
I grew my red hair long, to my waist,
overnight.
The violence of your love sent my name into hiding,
but the delight of your rough endearments
made the sun rise,
crimson and punishing,
out of the screams I offered you like candy.

That day, I went to murder the swans' darling.

There are glass children, and there are wooden children.
The glass children I recognize as our own, My Love.
You made me pour out
the grating, useless sand of my desert past--
it was your bright, sudden kiss
that made our babies beautiful,
reflecting the white and silver
like they were born to it.

The swans' child was wooden,
a more clever and wicked devil than I had counted on.
My Love, My Love,
what could I do?
When I stood over her, her many mothers melted away,
--the cowards!--
leaving her alone and at my mercy.
She stirred.
She met my hand, the hand that has loved you,
with a bouquet of burning flowers.
She placed them on her mothers' graves.
She placed them in my hair.
She placed them everywhere, all the way up to our secret aerie.

My hard sweetheart,
do not hate me, your Black Swan. I am the creature who will be devoted to you forever.
And, my adored one,
do not hate this child;
she bears my true name, and I have brought her home to stay.
_____

linked to Kenia's Wednesday Challenge

Vântului

There is a music unheard
at the edge of sensing--
I have danced to it until I was out of breath,
and my own beating heart surprised me.

There are stars unburned
in a blank black sky--
I have seen them in the interstices of dreams
until my eyes, gone full, awakened me.

Now,
there is only dark Russian loaf
fresh butter
and blackberry jam,
all of them sweeter to me than they have ever been before.

Outside,
the branches are bare,
they can't hold the wind;
my dog, gone blind, can't find the stick,
but he looks back at me with love
as he has always done and always will.

Still,
I have begun to hear a tune that I can't shut out,
though I try.
There is a burning that wasn't there before,
and so if you find me here in tears and ask me why,

I can only say how I'll miss it all,
how I wasn't ready,
but nonetheless
I can feel it coming...
without affect
and relentlessly.

A Delicate Thing Considers Her Swain

I am a delicate thing in a delicate hour--
Twelve is the time
And I assure you that I'm
Mulling on your answer, Sir;
I'll meet you in the bower,
Where my crickets most delicately chirr.

Before that, I have so much to do!
Like wiping out the traces
Like the hanging shrunken faces
Of my suitors before you;
I'll be slaving like a servant
Hide the potion
Stash the serpent
And put on a bashful face, a smiling face,
A suitable face to turn so delicately toward you.

I am a delicate thing in a delicate way
And if you knew what was on the way,
I assure you, Sir,
You'd faster stir
Than any of my suitors who came before you;
They linger in the bower
Right under your feet,
With root and rot and eternity sweet
To yearn for a delicate girl,
A wonderful girl,
A girl too good to be true.
________

for Real Toads excellent fairy tale prompt!

Hard Hand

by Fireblossom and Coal Black

It was a hard hand that reached from the snow
Three fingers pale white
The others only bone.

It was a hard hand til it rotted in the spring
Crows took the flesh
Thieves took the ring.

He died in his sleep
He died without a sound
She tilted back her head and screamed
Quite surpassin' loud.
_______ 

The Marrying Kind

She just isn't the marrying kind,
But such a tough one to resist;
She lives at the end of a dark narrow hall--
Won't answer his devotion or return his call--
But there she is,
A crow perched on his heart.

Follow smoky desire
Through shadows and a door,
Once into her arms
Then never anymore...

She just isn't the marrying kind,
But such a tough thought to part;
Such a shame for an earnest boy to get hurt--
His heart in a boot, enfolded in dirt--
Never to leave her sheltering rooms,
Under her spell, and the undying blooms.

for d'verse poetics.

Leda

Old white-haired Zeus, you don't fool me.
I see the dent Athena left in your dome,
And the way you've taken to wearing
Your pants
Almost up to your
Armpits;
The way you're prone to wandering
The pharmacy lanes
For something for
Your hemorrhoids and chilblains
Isn't godlike.
It isn't even manly.

...and now you come as a frothy swan,
a styrofoam cup in a bird bath...
Well, you're too late.

Night came across the water as I was bathing--
I couldn't see,
And she was just as ill-tempered as they say.

What could I do except to wrap myself around her, smooth and wet,
And that neck,
So long,
I had to kiss its every feather in order to believe in it.

Tired Zeus, a dark storm has settled over my world,
And I live inside,
Bitch and bride,
Marked by her and owned.
It's really no place
For an old man to be,
Disguised, decrepit, alone.

_______

for Form Monday at One Stop Poetry

Nesting The Burn Barrel

Nesting the burn barrel,

The Dark Bird turns spark to stone--

Song to silence--

And at last...

Her children to charnel,

Hard bone to soft ash.

__________