Pony For Dray Horse

 If milkmaids dance,

I haven't seen it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't happen

when I'm asleep

or dying.

If apples can be poisoned

I haven't tasted one.

That doesn't mean to trust your grocer,

lover,

or restauranteur.

Oh you, decked in white blossoms like some ironic saint,

evangelizing my arms, my tongue, my will

like the loving dead.

I know now that I was kissing a corpse--

one heart beating for two,

pony for dray horse, dragging along.

I can't swear that I'll be smarter next time,

but I mean to be.

I'll remember your face, your ways, your smile,

turn my head like a lady

and spit.

_______

Note: I will be participating less in poetry blogdom, though I will still post my poems here, and continue the Word List. I am mostly HERE now. 

Cinder Ella

 

Cinder Ella was this chick who was doing some minor dealing in the vestibule of her old boyfriend's building when a snitch turned her in and she got sent to juvie.

Freeeak. So bogus.

The 'rents lost it and so when she'd done her stupid community service, they said oh my, oh dear, you really need some discipline here, and gave her like ten thousand chores to do and she was grounded until she's 75 and everybody in the world is dead from a nuclear accident or something. Yippee skippee. 

So anyway, Cinder Ella had no further forks to give, so she opened her bedroom window and had a smoke in between cleaning all the bathrooms and mulching the stupid garden so the rutabagas would grow ten feet tall of whatever it is that rutabagas do. Kill me now, she thought, don't wait for the Marlboros to kick in.

It was at that moment that this leftover hippie woman flew in. I mean, actually flew and perched her grown-ass self in the window frame. "No wayyy," said Cinder Ella, taking a long drag. "Way" said the boomer in the window. "I am your fairy godmother!" Cinder Ella replied, "Well fork me and feed me fish heads." 

Long story short, Cinder Ella's fairy godmother had seen and heard more than enough of the way Cinder Ella was being treated, by both the 'rents and her social influencer sisters. "Easy solutions for combination skin!" So lame. So, this boomer turned a cat figurine into an Uber driver, and a lava lamp into a Lambo, all so that Cinder Ella could attend the Lady Gaga concert that night. "Fuckinay," said Cinder, stubbing out her smoke on the chore list her mother had left on the side table for her. It burst into flames and suddenly there she was, getting out of the Lambo at the venue!

So, the concert was lit, but she lost one of her Doc Martens when it got to be almost midnight and she had to make a run for the Lambo before it turned back into a lava lamp and the driver became a cat figurine again. I mean, she got that thing at Six Flags when she was like, nine, and she'd look like the majorette of the Loser's Day Parade if she didn't get out there in time. So she did, and came hobbling in the door just in time to sneak up to her room and do some cannabis to mellow out. 

Well, fat chance. Ding-dong, some hopeless dweeb desperately in need of a glow-up was standing in the front doorway when she came downstairs to snob, er, say hello to, whoever it was. Holding her lost Doc Marten in his hands, he smiled nervously and asked Cinder Ella and her sisters Madison and Courtney to try it on. Madison couldn't even begin to get her big boats into it, and Courtney's toenail fungus made everybody gag so she just sort of ran up to her room crying. "Oh boo hoo hoo, I'm stinky Courtney, my feet are soooooo gross wahhhh," scoffed Cinder Ella as her sister swept past. 

"Would you like to try it on?" the boy asked, shyly. "As if," said Cinder Ella, grabbing the Doc Marten out of his hands and giving him a shove out the door. "Try Proactiv!" she said to his back as he stumbled away in bewilderment. She shrugged. "I'm really more into girls lately anyway." Walking down the hall and into the garage, knocking over her dad's retardo golf bag as she passed, Cinder Ella grabbed a screwdriver off of his work bench and hotwired the Mazda. "Happy happy to all and to all a good buzz!" she called as she drove away, swerving to avoid some stupid squirrel that did that changing direction thing that squirrels do, and she just about totaled the Mazda and sustained crippling injuries like in a Lifetime movie, except she didn't, and that's the end. Follow me for more dumb fairy tales if you're, like, grounded until eternity and it's completely unfair and you're  so over it or whatever. 

____________________

For What's Going On? -- Unfairy Tales. 

Music: The Sounds Running Out of Turbo

Pheasant Therapist Is Cray Cray

Here I am, the answer to all your dreams.
But please, 
stay out in the waiting room;
when the light is on, I am in session.

Preen
preen preen
preen.
Okay, I'm not in session, I'm preening.
The last client left vermin in my feathers,
diminished their shine,
and brought that scary gun.

Pheasants are known for healing, and luck in love.
I'm a pheasant shore nuff. 
Okay, come in.
I'm right here
hiding behind the waste basket. 
Look into my goofy birdy eyes--
yep, you're pretty screwed up.

Let's see what we can do.
Yap yap yap
yap. 
I think what you really want is to eat me;
that could be fatal or fine.
You're a mess but cute. 
I think we made a lot of progress today, even with me creeping around the desk and along the walls. 

Ready?
FOOM flap flap flap FOOM!
Noisy right?
A girl's got to make an entrance. 
You gonna make a move now, or what?
Here I stand, trying again, feathered and fantastic
if not terrifically bright. 
_______ 

for Unfairy Tales at Real Toads. 

According to folklore, pheasants are harbingers of love and good luck, as well as being healers. The only time I ever encountered a pheasant, it absolutely exploded out of a bush, making a tremendous racket that scared me half to death. Perhaps it went on to establish a thriving practice offering talk therapy, tarot astrology, and interpretive dance. It could've.

Alice

Alice stepped through the looking glass,
but was stopped by security and searched;
detained and taken before a magistrate
for the contraband found in her purse.

They asked her her name, and she said it was Alice,
this morning to the best of her knowledge;
The gavel came down: "Guilty! Read the charge!"
Now enrolled in penitentiary, not college.

A champion appeared, a man with a queer
predilection for romancing minors;
wrote her story for the press, claiming duress
by the bumbling fools who'd tried her.

He got her released, and Alice was pleased
to be gone from the matron, a sadist;
now Kate Beckinsale plays her, and the studio pays her--
that's what the moral to that is!
_____

for Warning the Stars Saturday #23...Alice with a twist.

 
 

Snow White & the 55 Dwarves

Snow White and the 55 dwarves lived in a sub-let in NYC. An evil fashion model had slipped SW a poisoned apple and she fell asleep because it also had Ambien in it. The dwarves hired an actor to do the prince thing and kiss her, but wrong, because, hello, lesbian. That made it weird.
______

An ironic post-modern fairy tale in 55 words for Mama Zen. Come join us!

The Woman With The Cat Face

The woman with the cat face made a wish
And all the sparrows turned to fish.

The sky produced them at her command
Stacked like kippers upon her hand.

The woman with the cat tail switched it once
And paving stones turned to hot cross buns.

The woman with the cat tail switched it twice
And made Catholic bishops out of five field mice.

The woman with the cat heart had a beau
Set him on a gibbet and swung him low.

The woman with the cat heart clapped her hands
And made his coffin out of watering cans.
______

composed in the journal Hedgewitch gave me, for Gay Cannon's form for all.

Nihilists, Naturalism, & The Use Of Negative Space

The inside of an egg shell is bland,
Blank,
And nearly always done in beige's dull cousin
"Eggshell white."

Neo-cubist art breaks the monotony and makes a statement--
Hip coolness with a leaven of irony.

The occupant of the egg floats in thick suspension,
Dreaming of the day when she will have
Fangs,
Wings,
Terrible claws,
And a Louis Vuitton bag.

Then comes the sharp crack,
The fall,
The griddle,
And a return to white.
Remember all of this the next time you sop up yolk with an edge of toast...

You slayer of dreams,
Destroyer of art,
Murderer.

_____

Cathleen of The Peat Bog

Cathleen of the Peat Bog gets up,

Heaving herself out of the muck and onto the shoulder of the highway.

300 years she has lain there--

300 years she has slept, not wanting to deal.

Now she's on the move.

Now she faces the SUVs and hybrids and sticks out her thumb,

Praying that it doesn't fall off.



A woman hitching a ride will always get one,

From some married guy named Rick,

Still listening to Boston

And knowing all the words.

Oh well,

It's all new to Cathleen of the Peat Bog.

She asks to be dropped at a chain pharmacy.

The woman at cosmetics recommends Aveeno,

Olay,

Tresemme,

And Colgate whitening.



Cathleen of the Peat Bog leaves with her purchases,

And goes down by the creek behind the strip mall

To clean herself up.

She feels better,

Then realizes she has been wearing the same dress for 300 years,

Not to mention the same panties and bra.

Horrified,

She pitches them into the chain pharmacy's dipsy dumpster

And crosses the highway boldly naked.



Into Lane Bryant she goes,

Pale skin glistening,

Red hair

Trailing lustrous down her back and shining unabashedly elsewhere,

Stunning the outclassed saleswomen into worshipful silence.

"I want this," says Cathleen of the Peat Bog,

Holding up a green dress with lace all along its plunging neckline.

"Take it," say the saleswomen,

As if speaking to the Queen of Killarney.



Down the street she goes,

Around a bend

And up some steps to a door.

She rings the bell.

She looks so good, so lushly curved and dangerously wise,

That doves land on her shoulders as she waits;

Doves,

And a falcon on each arm.

A man answers the door and she fixes him with her fabulous green eyes.

He is the son of the son of the son of the--

Well, he is a direct descendant of the son of a gun who broke her heart and left her in the peat bog,

300 long years ago.

His name is Pat.

(isn't it always?)

He is married.

He still listens to Foghat,

And knows all the words to "Slow Ride."

She slaps him a good smart smack,

Though whether for his musical taste

Or for his lineage, is not clear.



Cathleen of the Peat Bog is not finished.

She goes past him,

Birds fluttering as she strides inside;

Half an hour later,

She has stolen his wife.

"May the wind forever be at your back," she says to him on the way out,

Then mutters something else,

And both women laugh.



This has been the story of the cruel and beautiful Cathleen of the Peat Bog,

Who,

300 years ago,

Told a man, "It's all right, honey. I understand",

And he believed her.

The Resentful Chicken

The Resentful Chicken feels resentful, and so joins the Tea Party.

"Things are not as they were, in the golden days when I was young, with bits of egg shell still wet upon my feathers.

Then, the sun shone brightly across the barnyard,

And there were no Rhode Islands or Leghorns crowding me off my nest."

Following a resentful pause, the Resentful Chicken continues:

"The Farmer interferes with my life and takes my eggs away to sell to Bob Evans and McDonalds. My children end up in McMuffins."

The Resentful Chicken's eyes flash like fire.

Oh all right, like little pen lights, then.

"I did not lay them so that they could end up on a value menu in Topeka.

I'm not 'loving it'. I'm mad as hell!"

The Resentful Chicken flaps around on the ground a bit, then goes on.

"I don't like the Farmer.

His overalls are not Oshkosh. He has hair in his ears.

He treats us all like machines, lined up in a row, as if we had no interior lives!"

In fact, the Resentful Chicken does have an interior life.

It is filled with seething resentment.

The Resentful Chicken wants to see the barnyard return to conservative values.

No hens with hens. No roosters with roosters.

Back to the days when the Farmer looked like Walter Brennan and Timmy and Lassie played in the shade of the elm over by the farm house,

Rescuing dumb city folk from commies when the need arose.

The Resentful Chicken grows pensive.

"The Big Rooster will put a stop to all of this. 'Thou shalt not spilleth thy seed upon the ground', so sayeth the First Fowl!"

But, alas, the Big Rooster is no place to be seen when Col. Sanders buys the Resentful Chicken.

Cut up, rolled in flour and fried, the Resentful Chicken ends up both kicking the bucket and riding inside of one.

"Give me some chicken," says Enrique.

"Madre Dios," says Guadalupe. "It tastes funny."

Enrique tries some, and agrees, it tastes really weird.

They take it back to KFC.

"What's wrong with it?" asks the manager.

"It tastes.....

Well, it tastes....."

Enrique and Guadalupe look at each other.

"...resentful. That's it. It tastes resentful."

They get their money back for the fucked-up chicken and go home.

__________

for magpie 39

Coal Black

Coal Black and the thirteen dwarves move to Middleville. Coal Black plays electric guitar and sings in a band called Poison Apple. The thirteen dwarves are boyfriends/roadies, as interchangeable as Legos. She doesn't really need roadies, since the furthest the band ever travels is to Sludge Lake to play Bob's Grocery and Fairgrounds. The "fairgrounds" are a scrubby field with a broken tilt-a-whirl sitting in it. The cars have had an accident, they all sag to one side in a tangle, because the tilt-a-whirl isn't level. However, it inspired Coal Black to write "Smoking Pile-Up Of Love." It goes like this:

yeah baby, I'm fucked up behind your wheel
one hand over my eye
we're all gonna die
pretty soon we'll be together in the twisted steel
yeah baby
dig it

It does not chart. At any given time, there are two or three of the elves strewn about Coal Black's place. One crashed on her couch, with an exposed spring leaving a dent in his cheek, one playing Mutant Rage 12 on the Playstation, and eating Taco Bell for breakfast, and another standing in the pastel green kitchen, saying, "Wow baby, you don't look as fat lately. Can I borrow some money?"

This inspires Coal Black to write "(Men Are The) Toxic Sludge Of Love", which goes like this:

yeah baby, we're fucked up in love's glow
our love will soon be dead
I'm growin' another head
pretty soon we'll be together and I'll be your ho
yeah baby
dig it

This one does not chart, either, but gains a cult following among rad-core kids. They wear civil defense sign tee shirts and use make up to turn their faces green and melted. When they go in Bob's Grocery, the normals stare. The rad-core kids object to this, and say "What are you looking at?", but because of all the junk on their faces, it comes out as gibberish and they have an unfortunate tendency to drool. They complain in a amateur video interview that no one takes them seriously.

Meanwhile, Coal Black has used the proceeds from "Toxic Sludge Of Love" to buy a new ankh. She kicks out the elves and takes up with a waitress from The Egg Explodes, a diner run by old hippies from California. Everything they serve includes avocados. They are a meatless, dairyless, cruelty-free enterprise. They do a surprisingly good business, and use the profits to support eco-candidates, but their only electee so far is Myrus Bump, who is supposed to catch dogs and drives a little truck with wire mesh cages in the back. Once, he put a Republican opponent inside one of them, the only time it had ever been used. He doesn't know it, but now the opponent suffers from a debilitating restraint fetish. However, when he asks his wife to lash him to the pew at First Baptist, there is a scandal and his career is ruined.

While all of this excitement is going on, the waitress has had a salutary effect on Coal Black. She has given up heroin and contents herself with Hershey's Special Dark syrup, straight from the container. She pronounces it "primo stuff" before sinking back on the springs of the sofa with an elaborate and truly sensuous sigh. The waitress strokes her hair and idly watches tv. When she recovers her senses, Coal Black writes one more song. it goes:

yeah baby, I'm messed up on your kisses and stuff
you're so incredibly semi-sweet
all I wanna do is rinse and repeat
and if I couldn't eatcha, I'd find a way to huff
yeah baby
dig it

The song rockets to #1. Coal Black gets out of bed and poses in front of the mirror, which has been on the floor for at least six months. She asks the waitress, whose name is Cindi, "is my ass not spectacular?" Cindi says, around a mouthful of apple, "You are a true Goddess, baby."

They live happily ever after.
_____________

for magpie 37

Justice

The rhino is renowned for his horn, and is often a target of poachers.

They haunt the jazz clubs, acting all normal, when in fact,

Their minds crawl with evil.



The rhino wears a pork pie hat and a thin black tie.

He plays "Poor Butterfly" and everybody cries.

He plays standards and experimental pieces;

The work of the masters and his own compositions.

His eyes are like cotton balls behind his dark glasses,

And he never met anything fried that he didn't like.



To save him from poachers, the city council has him placed behind a moat in the zoo, expecting that he will eat hay, swat flies with his absurd little tail,

And crap great mountains of rhino shit on the hard-packed bare dirt of his enclosure.

His friend the lesbian sneaks in at night and lies on her back on top of a big fake boulder, smoking a cigarette.

"You're an artist." She gestures with a sweep of her arm, as if she were Cleopatra idly sending a million sailors off to some stupid foreign war.

"What's all this supposed to be? Where is your horn?"

He has it,

But he cannot play it.

He is too sad even for "Lush Life" or "Am I Blue."



Days go by.

The month ends.

She smuggles him a file inside of a lopsided birthday cake.

It is a useless gesture, but a pretty one, and kind.

Finally, there is a full moon.

She describes it to him.

He takes up his horn and plays "That Old Black Magic."



If it were up to her, the poachers would be hung by their heels over a teeming colony of porcupines.

If it were up to her, the rhino could shed his skin as if he were just a ginormous old baked potato,

And his steaming white fluffy soul would fly straight up into Heaven.

If it were up to her, she would meet her Princess Charming tomorrow,

And the rhino,

In resplendent angel robes,

Would play at their wedding, held in some hip club in the quarter.



Instead, she beats out a rhythm on the outside bars with the useless file,

And pretends it is church bells;

Dreams it is Lady Justice, kicking off her shoes, picking up her skirts,

And setting the floor on fire

With moves like she

Never had before.

_________

The Hungry Pussycat

The cat who ate Minnesota
Made a sandwich from both the Dakotas,
Then started in on Wisconsin
From room service at the Algonquin.

This naughty cat
Proceeded to bat
Iowa into Wyoming;
Then ate Missouri
In quite a hurry
After a careful de-boning.

Milwaukee was next to go down the hatch
But she kindly avoided Chicago;
Hats off to a kitty who understands
What to eat and what not to.

Her thirst she did slake
With several Great Lakes
And for afters, a bit of Ohio;
Come back later this week
When she's liable to sneak
A large chunk of Athens and Cairo.

__________

for One Shot Wednesday

Cocoanut Farm

The bitchy hen lays black eggs--

Even the fox won't touch them.

The bitchy hen has it in for both the farmer and the rooster--

And when one of her nasty black eggs cracks open,

An impenetrable night is born.

The rooster begins to lose purpose, as the lightless hours go on and on;

The farmer sleeps for a week.



The bitchy hen's mood improves, and when the sun finally bursts, all at once, into the sky

(as if it had been being held back by colossal, fire-retardant rubber bands),

She lays a black-and-white egg.

It turns out not to be an egg at all, but rather, an unusually spherical calf,

Whose legs and head have not yet arrived in the mail.



So it goes at Cocoanut Farm, which is actually a ginormous boat,

Or, perhaps, some sort of unmoored island with a barn on it.



Stay for breakfast.

We're having eggs.

Stay for dinner.

We're having chicken.

Stay, stay and meet our Queen,

The chattiest cow

You've ever seen.

(painted green).

Don't worry,

You'll see.

_________

Clearly, my once-considerable talent has hit rock bottom with this, lol.

_________

Cinderella

Cinderella gets a job with the police department.

At work she wears sturdy black shoes, and at home she goes barefoot because her cat does.

She owns no slippers, expects no princes.



She once beat a suspect with a frozen lean cuisine.

She does not drink.

She reads trash novels.



Every day, she sees the worst in people.

It is like a Lifetime movie,

But without stars.



Every time she sees a woman with that look she likes, she thinks:

Kiss me.

Spring me.

Compromise me.

Take my stupid badge, toss it on the floor, come get me.



Cinderella has a job with the police department.

Today, her hands shook so badly, she couldn't cuff a suspect.

She tells her partner some bullshit about stress.

After dark, she lies on her bed staring up at the skylight.

She is naked.

Every night, she tracks the moon, but it hardly seems like enough.

There are no stars.

_______

(This is my 500th post at Word Garden!)

Snuggle Bear

Snuggle Bear goes sour.

Belligerent and profane, he starts getting in fights outside popular clubs at two a.m.

Unflattering photographs appear;

So do lawsuits and a nasty, protracted divorce.

Snuggle Bear's mother goes on record vouching for his sweetness

And his inability to do wrong of any kind.

Ratcheting up the madness,

"Snug-dawg" joins a street gang.

Heavily tattooed and strung out,

Snuggle Bear waves a firearm around in broad daylight, cursing in Spanish.

Too bad for Tommy Tooth--

Right place, wrong time,

He dies of acute-onset lead poisoning.

At Snuggle Bear's sensational trial,

Snug's attorney complains to the court,

Revealing that the prison laundry does not use fabric softener.

"This amounts to nothing less than torture for my client!" he booms, in theatrical outrage.

Snuggle Bear titters in his ridiculous high voice, which makes his homeys sitting in the gallery squirm and look away.

Snuggle Bear is convicted and given 99 years.

In jail, he finds The Lord.

He does all that he can to bring the peace of forgiveness to his fellows,

But his violently insane cellmate is unreceptive, and knocks the stuffing out of Snuggle Bear.

After fifty years fly by,

Snuggle Bear is released for good behavior.

Old, tattered, and missing an eye,

Snuggle Bear is no longer telegenic.

He shambles into a coin laundry to get out of the snow,

And sits down in a broken molded plastic chair.

The woman who empties the lint filters and picks up the discarded detergent jugs stops and scrutinizes him.

"Hey! I know you!" she cries. "You were the Pillsbury Doughboy!"

She grins and pokes his middle.

Despite his struggle, ruin, and years of desperate searching,

The gesture touches a part of Snuggle Bear that is still as innocent and pure as Ivory Flakes.

His high-pitched laugh returns, like a wedding ring rescued from a drain,

Proving that,

Like bad poetry,

A thing can be obnoxious and kitschy all at the same time--

Leaving hearts noticeably softer

And filling the air

With the fresh, clean scent

Of redemption.

_______

A Tale Of Two Splendid Girls

Mary Ellen MacMillan Pemberton Mimms

Knew plenty of hers and a helping of hims,

While her friend SueEllen MacFarquhar-Jones

Burgled her breakfast from well-to-do homes.

"We are really such fine girls," the two agreed,

"Splendid girls,

Fine girls indeed!"

Mary Ellen MacMillan Pemberton Mimms

Was extremely skilled in the kicking of shins,

While SueEllen MacFarquhar-Jones was known

For her cunning in running away from home.

"We are really such fine girls," quoth they, as one,

"Splendid girls!

Second to none!"

Mary Ellen MacMillan Pemberton Mimms

Said, "Is it wrong, behaving like this?"

While her friend SueEllen MacFarquhar-Jones

Said, "It can't be wrong, if nobody knows."

"We really are such fine girls," said she, to her,

"Such splendid girls!"

And it's true, they were.

__________

art by Renoir

The Puppet Theater

Gingerbread-Man Puppet and Pretty-Horse Puppet get married in the puppet theater.

Pretty-Horse Puppet has a mane like you wouldn't believe--

Don't think she doesn't know it, too,

Always tossing her head like that.

Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet joins the puppet show.

Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet and Pretty-Horse Puppet sleep together one afternoon.

In the evening, Gingerbread-Man Puppet spreads his soft, fingerless hands and wants to know,

"How could you sleep with Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet? She's a girl!"

"She's a fox," points out Pretty-Horse Puppet.

They look at each other across the puppet theater, bouncing slightly as puppets will.

"I'm sorry, Gingerbread-Man Puppet, but our marriage is crumbling," says Pretty-Horse Puppet with a toss of her head.

"Bite me!" says Gingerbread-Man Puppet, which is a mistake.

In the next act, Pretty-Horse Puppet and Fluffy-Tail Fox Puppet are married and living in the puppet theater.

God doesn't mind.

They're puppets.

__________

When I was a child, I had a pair of puppets that my maternal grandmother had made. They were horses, Pretty-Horse Puppet and Barn-Boy Puppet. I also had a little puppet theater. I think that all of them were hand-me-downs...I know the theater was. Anyway, I was extremely partial to Pretty-Horse Puppet. I liked getting to be the girl. This is a surprise?

Local History

One summer,

People began filling their bird feeders with french fries and rich desserts.

Pretty soon,

The birds grew enormous,

And just the weight of two or three would bring down the entire feeder,

Leaving overfed chickadees rolling dizzily on their backs in the grass.

Soon,

Corpulent sparrows could be seen bouncing along the lawns,

Unable to take to the air.

For cats,

Every day became Thanksgiving!

Kind-hearted Mabel Matuszyk

Tried to help.

She built little treadmills, and stayed up nights sewing birdy track suits.

And in fact,

It worked.

The waddling, flabby feathered friends began to slim down,

And PETA volunteers convinced people to stop jamming pastrami sandwiches into their feeders.

So, after an appearance on "Oprah" to share their story,

The birds returned to leading ordinary birdy lives.

But,

I don't know why I tell you these things.

I can see it in your eyes, that you disbelieve me.

Fine.

I won't tell you what happened the next summer,

When bible-quoting raccoons set up their ministry in my trash barrels.

I won't waste my breath

Talking to unbelievers.

____________