Self-Portrait

 I carry black cherries and woodsmoke

in the upturned crescent where the memory of your face is kept.

Winter pales the world and I am prayer flags flying,

sherpas hauling,

I am peaks where the air becomes dear.

Under wicker fans, G&T's sweat on the mahogany bar.

An aesthete in a sedan chair snaps his fingers and starlings rise and wheel

carrying your voice 

feathered and black

above sea level, above all heads, beyond calling back.

I carry black cherries and woodsmoke

on a glass tray draped with night stars and the music of ouds.

A vendor in a Panama hat offers me your scent

in exchange for 

the season of his choice.

I turn my back and start ascending, to freeze and fall, 

guided by your indifferent ghost and my maps milled from ice and ache.

__________

for Dverse Open Link, hosted by Sanaa Rizvi

image: the Dyatlov Pass hikers

Music: "Qalanderi" by Cheb i Sabbah. 

Gatwick

 

Gatwick's in league with the devil

'flight delayed", she'll see you grovel.

Things left in small rooms upstairs

she lets reanimate there

to suck your soul, sour your nerves

turn your heart as cold as hers.

Gatwick's in league with the devil

"flight delayed", she'll see you grovel.

_________

for Dverse Poetry Form: Octelle. 

artwork by Jacqueline Deleon

music: Nick Drake "Three Hours"

I am

I am a gravel road of a girl,
a glass jar filled with sharp-edged sea shells;
a spiky tail of a girl, swishing,
not the sort of girl you could take to dinner and impress anybody.

I have tried, at times, to be as smooth as a table top,
smooth as the slice-side of a wheel of cheese,
but the flock fills the arms of my sweater,
the body boils with them--

I am not going be able to stand still for long like that.

Did you hear me singing?
Did you say, please, please honey, shut up?--
that was the flock, filling my throat, stealing my breath,
rushing out of me with ribbons of red in their beaks.

Did you wonder why my kiss was so hungry,
my hands so restless?
I was afraid you would feel the flock and leave.
I was afraid I would have to give back your kisses before I even tasted them.

As for my hands, I was holding on.
The flock wants to take me like an updraft,
they want me to see what they see
until my illusions freeze one by one and the sky storms me back out.

I am a devil dancer of a girl,
a heart beating in a talon cage;
I am a blemished stone of a girl, swung on a leather string,
not the sort of girl you could leave at home and expect good things to happen.

I am a million wings with a soul inside.
I am gone like a broke-backed rat.
From the nest I came and to the nest I return,
and if I am torn apart and devoured, then at least I will be home--

in death I will be done,
silent, sky-shocked,
and still at last.
_______

 

A Breviary For The Eager

If one is to burnish A Calling,
One must learn one's tenets and sacraments--
One must find one's rabbi, if you will,
(for was not the Savior Himself called by this title?)
And finally, a suitable catechism must be dispensed.
Consider, neophyte,
Your betters:
Saint Mark The Evangelist, dragged through the streets and beheaded.
Saint Bartholomew, flayed alive and crucified.
Saint Sebastian, lashed to a post and shot through with arrows.
Saint Barbara, tortured and beheaded.
Saint Peter, The Rock, crucified upside down.
Faith is not for the sissified, or the weekend enthusiast.
It demands...
Everything.

Behold the lecturer, at whose feet you may learn
To mold the preposterous Play-doh of your gift
Into something truly fine.
Place no stock in his appearance--
He may look untrimmed, overlooked by the campus landscaping service,
Rumpled, ridiculous;
But his work has appeared in countless quarterlies.
He has thrown in with the ravening cream of his generation,
Tearing and ripping his way into the few available publications,
Subscribed to by 117,
Actually read by 44,
9 of whom read beyond their own contributions.
Let him guide you.
A hundred hours spent kneeling may yield a flashing moment in mid-air,
And it is only the very particular pigeon who may wheel,
High above the mob.
This can be you.
You can become one of His little favorites
If you keep your ears open, your mouth shut,
And avoid the unthinking spontaneous outburst,
Or any embarrassing, sick-making tiresome end rhyme.

______

for dverse Meeting The Bar

illustration: The Martyred Saint Sebastian by Gustave Moreau

French Form

Have you considered using the French form for this?

It's good, but
Audio media could take it to the next level.

Digital video might kick it up even more.
I could show you how.

Here on the beach where we pair off and roll in the shallows like shipwrecked rabbits,
Here where the bonfire is heaped with shit we liberated from the Monet exhibit at the Whitty,
Her head looks good on a stick
Good on a stick
Good on a stick.

It's a weird stoned kind of semaphore when we wave her around like so...
North,
South,
East,
West,
Fly the head, feed strays the rest.

Oh, little corndog, this is our French form,
Learnt in Nawlins,
And brought up the river in gris-gris bags
By us no-accounts,
Us hags.

Look down, sweet honey with the wooden neck...
We could show you how.

_______ 

Station Seven

There is no ballet on the moon.

There is the LUN-ORE base,

The appalling bolted orange chairs in the lunch room,

And the corporate mission.



The employees bicker, complain of minor ailments, and sometimes sleep together,

But their hearts have become like empty plastic bottles,

On their sides,

Gaping.

They contain no ships, but their dreams do,

Sinking in the ether.



Some of the craters make natural theaters,

But they lie white and vacant,

Like dead faces,

Beneath the blue-in-black of earth rise.



One of the floor workers wanders outside,

Past the caution signs and air locks.

She is like a split seed,

Sending a yellow-green shoot out through the blind dark.

She unscrews her helmet,

Shakes out her hair.

The environment here is too thin to live in--

Her skin tingles.

Her heart constricts.

It is like a first kiss.



There is no ballet on the moon,

But there is someone,

Someone out there,

Dancing in the dust.

In this place, there is no real joy, no satisfying connection, just shifts beginning and ending,

Skin going pale,

Vending machines being brought in on transports.



For a moment,

Work is abandoned--

Everyone is looking out through the double windows.

"Look at her," they whisper to each other, fingers splayed at perfect intervals in front of them.



Outside, the woman knows she is beyond the gray border of good sense,

That she is doomed,

But she has her audience at last.

She is beautiful,

She is art,

And rips through them instantly and irreparably

Like a harpoon

Or a gunshot.

___________

Dolphins

The dolphins came out of the sea,

And from the corners of the eyes of giants who lay weeping and unconscious across the lazy heavens.



It rained dolphins, their bodies as smooth as dogwood blooms.

They smiled as they fell, they were fog, they were everywhere.



In those times, you could put the sun where you pleased--

It could rise in the south,

At midnight.

Who cared?



I live in a paper house which is always on fire,

I keep dying until it bores me;

I lie down on the smoke like a cat in a streetside window,

And the disused milk chute with the rusty catch holds the stupidities I cherish most.



Now they say,

Dolphins are really birds--

The sun is nailed up like a tin sign on an empty barn,

And no one is coming to save you,

To kiss you,

Or even to bury you.



The dogwoods are dead and the sea floor has fallen in,

Revealing God in the magma,

Chinamen in the paddies,

And you,

Falling,

Like a feather into the flames.

_____

Famous Poets

There are famous poets
In hallways,
Stacked on trolleys
Like cases of beer.

What to do with famous poets?
You can't just throw them out--
They might be worth something
Someday.

Famous poets are nearly always men--
Even the women.
They say,
"See here,"
And then wander off.

I stacked famous poets in my fireplace--
Feet to foreheads,
Then lit them;
But they were damp and peevish,
Making more smoke than fire.

Christina Rossetti told me,
"Bury them deep,
So the dogs won't dig them up."

Emily Dickinson told me,
"Use them for compost,
Then bring your longing to my room."

I am as unknown as a laundress in the Famous Poets' House;
Even my pulse is a secret, known only to my cat,
And to each fresh-struck hour of the night.
I'm telling you,
I'm going to bring them all down.

No one will see me
Wheel the trolleys out to the fen--
Only one will hear me
Coming up the back stairs empty-handed
Again.
_________

For One Shot Wednesday week 19

For the record, I adore Christina and Emily. The "famous poets" of my poem are the ones who, though terribly well-known, basically made me want to shoot myself in the head rather than study them.

__________

The Bells

Listen to the bells.

When they ring

In the early darkness,

They bring the snow.



I curl my bare toes around the top of the cold wrought iron railing

That circles the balcony

High above the headlights in the street

And the lovers on the sidewalk.



I am not young

And I never was beautiful,

But in my heart I carry the divine spark

And damned foolishness.



Spreading my arms as if I had wings,

I teeter in the shifting, chilly breeze.

I am losing the feeling in my feet.

I breathe in,

Breathe out.

I wave one arm, as if hailing one of the little taxis down below;

The sleeve of my red kimono makes me into a blooming rose...

I smell sweet,

I am temporary,

Barely here at all.



In my heart I carry the divine spark

And such damned foolishness--

The snow is pretty, all of it falling, earth-bound.

Hear the sound of the beautiful hollow shells and the strikers they need;

That's love, or something like it...

Listen to the bells.

_______

for One Stop Poetry

The Rapture

With the sound of trumpets, The Rapture arrives.

Unexpectedly, though, the trumpets sound disappointingly like muzak.

The Rapture arrives, on a Tuesday morning, to the sound of a Herb Alpert knock-off band.

Righteous people are vacuumed up into the sky from wherever they stand, but

Unfortunately, some are not vacuumed powerfully enough, and come back down,

Leaving messes for the wicked,

Who didn't like them anyway,

To clean up.

The Rapture comes, right in the middle of Maury Povich.

Unhappily, some of the righteous are not vacuumed up in their entirety,

Leaving behind an arm or a leg or someone's head.

Someone's head says that it feels certain this must be God's plan for it.

Unavoidably, whatever else it said is indistinguishable when some of the wicked begin using it for a soccer ball.

On the whole, say reviewers later,

--and one must remember that these reviewers are wicked--

The Rapture does not live up to its hype.

Everybody goes back to work, or school, or to doing nothing,

And waits for Armageddon.

(Teaser clips available

at Armageddon

Official

Website.)

Ballet For Dry Grass

When lightning ripped down out of Heaven like an endless diamond,

It split the stones,

And cast us out.

As we fell,

You said, "This is all of your doing, and none of mine."

I said, "Still, you should have left your bags behind."

When lightning ripped down out of Heaven like an endless diamond,

It split the stones,

And cast us out.

As we fell,

You said, "This is all of your doing, and none of mine."

I said, "Not even Boudica Jolie commands the sky."

I suppose there are more foolish things

Than purely ornamental wings,

But if I'm apt to die

Give me ugly ones that fly.

When lightning ripped down out of Heaven like an endless diamond,

It split the stones,

And cast us out.

And as we fell, we were

Two screeching cats

With ready feet,

Two baying bitches

Served up neat.

_____________

The tarot art quilt pictured is by Candis.