Mariana In The Morning

 Mariana in the morning

by Morning's light possessed

all afternoon she walks the cliff's edge

trying to forget.

Mariana by the window

in a yellow aster smock

She knows November brings the end

of all your foolish talk.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

they ask her for her anodyne

then ask for nothing more.

Mariana, bride of Sorrow

in Sorrow's cottage kept

She counts the coins the stars deliver

and medicates the debt.

Mariana, in her silence

braids the horses' tails

She knows November brings the ostler

with his shoes and nails.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

asking for her anodyne

then asking nothing more.

_______

Beauties

There is no reason for us to fight.
Here is a ticket,
exempting you from fighting.
A ticket
out of town, praise whatever gods there are.

We fight in the town.
We sell tickets beforehand.
We call each other bitches and all sorts of things.
Every woman is a god(dess.)
Don't forget to tick the box.

Whatever.
There is no reasoning with you.
God knows why God(dess) made a great honking bitch like you.
I exempt myself from all this.
Let us now praise famous men.

Men like us when we fight.
In the town, by the fountain, glittering with coins.
Fight, fight, that's the ticket
to a life filled with famous men swooning over our dumb butts.
Whatever god(desse)s there are
can't cope, they lie down in a bed made of doves
as we fight, under the imprimatur some bitch, in a box, atop a pole

That the famous men have put there, and we appease, to great applause.
_______

for Weekend Mini Challenge at Toads.

Maureen

Maureen tied summer to her wrist with a shoelace--
now the sun rises and sets in her sleeves.
Maureen left home at age 8, became a nun, quit, joined the army.
Now she wears her hair loose, 
knows the algebra of your every word before you sigh it.

Maureen talks to the Holsteins in the pasture,
contemplates the squares of the fields as seen from the air in planes
taken from high school geometry and woodworking class. 
"This was all a salt water sea," she tells the cows with a wide gesture,
sun spilling across the sloping green with the arc of her arms.

Maureen likes her milk frothy, her paintings surreal.
She likes you when you tell her she's a habitable planet in a colorform sky.
"We are rapidly approaching a tipping point," she opines dramatically
as you roll her over, then she rolls you, you haystack fool,
stood up on a stick with a silly grin because summer, because crows, 

because Maureen.
_______

for Wordy Thursday at Toads. I have used vintage jellies' word list for reasons explained in the comments there. Just as a nod to the original intent of Sherry's prompt, there is a Grover Lewis reference hidden away here. 2 points for finding it.

Back in the 80's I had about a dozen buttons pinned to my jean jacket. One of them was Nena, who I thought was just the coolest ever. I also had Chrissie Hynde. I still have the jacket, and it still has a couple of buttons but not those. The one everybody likes is a crayon face with a big smile that says CHEER THE FUCK UP. 

Creola the Kind

Hive-heads, you human honeycombs of disordered thought,
drip yourselves out of day rooms across the complex.
You have been made to feel like ants in a land of bustling giants,
each one of them wearing enormous, iron-soled clown shoes,
and I'm here to tell you--
things are about to change.

Come out to the green paradise of the asylum courtyard,
where morning glory and clematis vines climb the catatonics.
Which the cleric, which the classic presenter?
Come to where the learned diagnostician finally shuts his yap
and sits the fuck down 
on a pretty, donated bench depicting tiger swallowtails in flight.

Feel that? Inside your poor flood-damaged skull?
It isn't the medication.
This is real.

Even if you aren't Catholic--
though the mind reels at such easily remediable error--
Creola the Kind can help you.
See her enter by the main gate, with a cheetah on a chain.
The tethered cat is emblematic of the mind caught up in the Play-Doh sludge of encumbering madness.
Enter the healer.
Enter the liberator,
Creola the Kind.

As she joins you in the garden, 
she brings with her the sea breezes characteristic of the Creolan Mission,
though this institution exists landlocked,
blighted,
sandbagged into torpidity by a ballast of text books and dogma.
At the touch of her hand on your cheek,
you begin to feel something nearly forgotten,
as if she carries in her fingers a series of bees
who introduce peace, and a spreading sweetness.

Forget about your doctor.
Her nervous condition has become acute,
causing her to build elaborate nests out of prescription pads.
To burn sacred candles there would only result in disaster.
Instead, my dear florid crazies,
lean into Creola's offered remedy like infants at the breast.
Watch the clouds float by like milkships,
honeyships,
sending nets over the side and into your stormy constellation of symptoms,
plucking you new and gleaming from the tempest.

She is a fisher of men, and more particularly of women,
sent here with your own personal Bonus Round from God.
She is Our Lady of the Falling Piano,
Creola the Kind.
________

written with inspiration from a word list invented by mood wings!

image: the ridiculously cool Cristina Scabbia

 
 
 
 

The Cougar

A cougar ate a priest
who had been hiking away from God
because God
was too demanding.

As he was being consumed,
the priest said,
"You have teeth like votive candles,
and eyes like chalices.
You are the church I was looking for."

The hungry cougar was kind
and took in this wandering priest.
She tore each muscle from the bone
so that the priest would stay--
despite lack of faith,
and despite good sturdy boots still ready at the trail's edge.

They came for the cougar, of course.
They called her a killer,
and spat tobacco juice as they spoke badly of her
while loading their rifles.

When they found her and took aim,
the spirit of the hiker priest spoke from the cougar's mouth:
"Ecce Agnus Dei."
I'll be damned, said those keepers of good established order,
and then they opened fire.
_______

Ecce Agnus Dei = Behold the Lamb of God

written for Hannah's challenge at Real Toads.
 

The Evolution Of Genius

The genius who treated us like shit
Stood ringing the triangle he wore around his neck in order to call himself to dinner.

A lackey brought a wheelbarrow containing the genius's ego.
Here is a riddle:
Why is it that, the more he ate of it, the bigger it got?

He was then taken to the local hospital, where demon doctors surgically attached extra thumbs,
Leaving him even more exalted
And superior to us vacant, slouching apes.
Wearing leather collars, we performed tricks which were never good enough.
We were given no days off.
We limped, stupid and miserable, in his shadow.

The asshole genius sat crunching the bones of his lessers,
An eccentric habit the authorities ignored because, hello, he's a genius,
And we are apes,
If kind apes,
Capable of love, and labor, and suffering.

The fuckface genius is always correct, and we accept that in our dim way,
As we accept his right to go strutting among the gods themselves
While we fumble and fart and fail.

The genius who treated us like shit had the world by the short ones,
Endorsed and indulged because of his brilliance,
Celebrated and hip-deep in sweet entitlement until it all went tits up one Tuesday in September.

A bearded single dude, homeless, probably a fag,
Climbed down off a tree and poked the dipshit genius in the chest and said,
"What you do to the least of these, you do to me.
Titles and talent aren't a ticket to treat anybody badly."

Since he joined the monastery, nobody has talked to the genius,
But we hear he has a funny haircut and
Washes feet and
Lives in a little stone cell like a zoo monkey.
______

for Flipside's word list #6: leather, triangle, thumbs, monastery, genius, eccentric, demons, correct, vacant, crunching, strutting, hospital, slouch, surgically, limped.