the nurses deferred

 

the nurses deferred

to masquerade doctors in balloon pants

who told them 

go to the underwater pharmacy

--a nickel a snorkel--

and dispense tobacco to the terminals

because

rules are restrictive

useless

barbaric

and they gave these instructions via telegram stop

from the big band ballroom stop

where the rhumba and the mambo

never stop

stop

and they used the bandmaster's baton

to perform minor surgery

on this poem.

In that town, at that time, the women never cut their hair

because of sorrow,

and the river's edge, and the need to weep

while covering their faces with their hair like bent willows.

In the heavy hour, in the day of the pueblo mission,

a mockingbird perched in the bell tower was singing,

"Come to the river's edge, to the place of no explanation.

Let down your hair as the boatmen do their sails in the silent evening."

the security guards delayed,

unfurling silk kimonos to wear in the confusion of night

and they had dragons

and chrysanthemums

draped over their arms and holsters

and their coffee was rich with a stupendous dizzying energy

which spoke to them

saying,

"you must leave this place and go

to help

and heal

where the real

suffering

is."

_____

for Word Garden Word List--Susie Clevenger. 

image at top: Socorro Mission, El Paso, Texas

I have used a technique I got from reading Grover Lewis, of alternating style and feeling between stanzas. 

music:  Jennifer Warnes "Song of Bernadette" 

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

 
 
 
 

Healers of the Creolan Mission

Saint Creola keeps cats.
treats them as her children,
even though, upon interview,
--and perhaps strangely--
they have not learned any catechism
and have no idea who the Pope is.

What the cats do know, is the moon
and how it lives in the windows of the Creolan Mission.
They hear how it pulls the waves themselves toward the cliffs
as a mother would; without words,
or, at least,
without words being the important thing.

During daylight,
the cats are allowed to wander in and out of the sanctuary.
I have never known them to act any differently
on one side of the arched doors
than on the other,
and while it is true that the toms go off to scrap at night,
they cause no refugees to appear in the morning;
everyone still has their beds,
their bibles,
and their babies in their arms.

The cats do not care
who may be Russian Blue, or tiger striped.
They do not fear the power of females;
they have sex, and kittens, and catnip,
and sleep on the sill without a qualm.

At night, if I am afraid,
Saint Creola gathers me to her breasts and the peace there;
when I am feeling bold,
I offer her mine and let my hair trail down over us
like a blessing from God.

Saint Creola keeps cats,
and a single shepherd dog who belongs mostly to me,
though he attends Mass at best sporadically,
and, like the cats, can't name the Pope.
He is what is called a Blue Heeler,
though I misspelled it for the longest time
in light of his gifts, Saint Creola's kindness, and my need.
______

Inspired by the cat art of Guido Vedovato, and linked to Fireblossom Friday.

 

Nurse Gina

Nurse Gina is a Sister of the Creolan Mission.
She has not attended any recognized school of nursing.
She does not submit to any formal schedule,
and she does not date your doctor, fumbling in the break room like a teenager.

The Creolan Sisters have a mission on Earth,
and their mission does not include such tawdry stuff.
Here, have a hit of holiness
from the fingertips of Nurse Gina--
don't bogart it.
Don't think that this is anything but transformative.

The Sisters have seen
how you fail;
how you have fallen open like a dropped cardboard box in the rain.
They have seen how the very bones within you have drifted,
leaving your tired spirit to gasp on the sidewalk of sickness;
They come as you expire,
bedeviled,
so weary that rain stops half way to your face, as you look to the skies.

Now,
Nurse Gina appears.
She will not clip tedious notations and reports to the foot of your bed,
nor crank it to an upright position like some angelic elevator operator.
No.
She will climb in with you,
her skin miraculous and dark from the sunny cliffs at San Creola;
you will believe that a compact and very feminine sun has covered you,
and she has.

Here is a new narcotic,
one of healing,
one that sharpens perception
even as it soothes the overburdened lonely chambers of your heart.
Kiss her, and know that you are loved--
not only by Nurse Gina and the whole of the Creolan Order,
but by the Goddess herself.

She has reserved for you a holy bounty
which She created even before the seas themselves--
the seas Our Lady presides over at her sacred birthplace,
where the waves undulate and smooth themselves over every trouble
just as Nurse Gina does
in the restorative hour before dawn,
when she reminds you of who you are
and why you are worthy
of her tender attentions in the first place.
_________