Handsome

 Nobody thought he was handsome except for me,

the sharp-elbowed stick girl with the camera around her neck.

Always, he would show up on the street early,

a midnight cat sliding in on private grooves, to sit and wait

on the curb for the other workmen and the Jonah bus 

that swallowed them away.

If I could've, I'd have built him a church,

with Host of egg sandwich and coffee black or white.

I'd swear I saw him take out a rosary one diesel-rattle dawn

and it was strung with candy skulls and baseballs.

I imagined his prayers were colorful foreigners wandering 

in warehouse downriver drab Detroit, hated by strangers, loved by God.

After an absence, getting off gin and bad poetry,

I returned to find him gone, the bus stop shifted, the lone tree down.

The starlings had lost their home, me my jones,

and my camera stayed empty for a year after that, like an unfed stray.

I asked a girlfriend once, "Remember that guy, the different one

we used to see waiting?" Ugh, she said, that one. 

Like I said, only I thought he was handsome, like rain, 

like new work boots pawned.

_______

 for Word Garden Word List--Dave Kelly.

Lessons Learned In Childhood

 

My mother called mahjong pieces "Chinese tiles." 

They were a pretty mystery to me.

A symbol can be like a mute with something to say;

its tongue tied by one's own ignorance.

Gingerbread men have commonalities with real ones.

They can be sweet, or fragile,

and (some of them) smell good and draw me in.

Sometimes there is another one after this one; sometimes not.

At thirteen I was prescribed eyeglasses.

Astigmatism made everything unclear but luminous,

sending blurs of light out from their centers.

You are still unclear to me. You still send out light from your center.

A finger's width is the difference between the next stair

and a broken leg. Catch your heel

and life takes on a whole new itinerary.

There are springes everywhere, so my mother said as she laid more for me.

I couldn't trust my mother, and she taught me

not to trust myself either.

I was in love with the neighbor's purple peonies, so brief and lovely.

I am both fox and hen, and don't know how to love you.

You are Chinese tiles. I am mute. I'm sorry, and can't explain why.

________

for Word Garden Word List: Amy Lowell. 

springes = traps

Music: Steve Nicks "Talk To Me"

Night Work

The earth is flat

there, where the lily of the valley grows

beneath my window.

Some wandering cat

or creature made sleepy by the dawn, chose

to rest there on the stems bent low.

It's crop circle night work

left by visitors

that were. 

________

For Dverse quadrille "work", hosted by JadeLi. 

Music; James Taylor "You Can Close Your Eyes"

The Willow & The Swans

 

I talk

about swans

in the obscuring haze of dawn.

My fear overhangs like a willow

thin-leafed,

stock-still

and trembling.

White swan,

black swan,

I mock you from a distance,

light myself afire to scare you

but I

betray myself

in brilliance.

I  bring

you bread,

my poems, my hair, my jewelry

despite myself, I reach for you

and feel

you flying

through me.

A trinet poem for Sunday Muse #186 "illusion"

The Pines

I made my skin call itself snow,

and wrapped that body around my heart.

There was no sound except the groaning of the pines.

The world has died, I said.

I have died, there is no sound except the pines.

There was still the sun, 91 million miles away,

dribbling through the branches of the groaning pines. 

There was still my skin of snow.

There was still my heart, a stunned bird fallen from the pines.

Hear the song of the snow falling from the pines,

falling on itself, increasing itself

in thrall to its remote Master,

saying, we are small white suns without heat,

bright, blinding.

I made my skin call itself cold,

and wrapped myself around my heart. 

I said, idiot pines, here is peace, here is stillness.

The pines stood groaning, green day and night,

oblivious to the Master's moods, saying glory glory.

All the while, my heart stirred, brown and puny,

whispering itself out as friable desire

for light, for voice, for the pines that sway

in the unseen, unending movement

of the empty, restless sky.

_______

for Sunday Muse #145.

The Aztecs Have Abandoned Downtown

The Aztecs have abandoned downtown.

They used to row their canoes down the San Antonio river,

and sacrifice hearts to Huitzilipochtli down by the Cenotaph,

a stone's throw from the Alamo.

The police ran them off.

A few of them sold tee shirts and key chains in little shops in latter years, though,

and now they live in McMansions with sprawling lawns and gates,

though they're discouraged from displaying their enemies' heads on the points of their wrought-iron fences.

Things change. It's sad.

Now the Aztecs keep their feathers and paint in attics or long-term storage units,

too sentimental to throw them away.

They wear L.L. Bean and J. Jill. 

I'll open a crummy theater for third-run movies and call it the Aztec.

It'll be Pachuco heaven where truants can make out.

I'll know the cops by name and offer them coffee

while actresses younger than my kids tear out their hearts on screen for cokey actors in dumb costumes.

I will stay open as long as I can. Ars gratia artis.

________

for Sunday Muse #108, where I am hosting this week. I can't figure out the new dashboard to make this a link. Things always change. Pffft.

"Ars gratia artis", the slogan MGM used to use with the roaring lion, means "art for art's sake."

Coffee Girl

I'm Coffee Girl from a pottery wheel
warm and curved and hanging from a hook
I know one trick,
to distract the honest eye
but every shell is empty.

Choose me
and you'll be sorry, though I'm
sweet on my feet,
I'm Coffee Girl when I fall
I run out right before your honest eyes.
_____

for Friday Flash 55 at VerseEscape, hosted by my fab BFF Hedgewitch.

Evening

I am brushing butter and garlic across slices of bakery bread,
but also resting my cheek in the crook of your arm
a thousand miles from here.

There is steam from a green ceramic pot
in my kitchen with sunflower fields in ruffles at the windows,
but there is also your skin as warm as a sunned quilt.

I am leaning for your lips like a willow over water,
but also standing on Italian tile
with a plate forgotten in my hand like a dove from a distant dream.
_____

for Sunday Muse # 90.

I'm Not Waiting For You

I'm not waiting for you--
I'm just a still spot in a moving world.
I'm a headlight on a night road--
a moving object in a large stillness.

I'm not the same as I was
this morning, last week, or last year,
but my name is the same, and I still get my mail
general delivery, from the old clerk or the new.

See the sky? It doesn't care
if we kiss or turn our separate ways.
I'm not waiting for you,
but I'm here just the same,

seeming still but always in motion
like stars, like wheels, like a heart beating softly to itself.
______

for Sunday Muse #56.