Moonbird

 I was speaking, a moaning call,

a spreading gray constellation,

a smoke of words

but you weren't listening anymore.

It is the only language I have.

I live in the interstices

between seed and fruit,

seed and earth,

sea and air,

love and absence.

I have come a very long way, and yet

I am as gray and unremarkable as old lumber.

My love expresses itself inside the earth

and produces a single emissary.

The way is long, the continents pass by.

We meet again only at intervals, but on the same ground.

I was trying to tell you about moonbirds

in their secrecy and their millions.

They seem to vanish, they glide without effort,

but are always there, like love or frailty.

I was speaking, a moaning call,

a smoke of words between sea and air

but you, you love the smell of milled wood,

and weren't listening anymore.

__________

Let's Talk

 "Out here on the perimeter, there are no stars.

Out here, we is stoned, immaculate."  --Jim Morrison

Let's talk about the elephant in the room.

I'm not some sort of spokesperson for eternity.

Still, you keep popping up,

asking if anyone wishes to communicate,

then you wig out when I answer back.

Let's talk about how I got here. 

I was in the back seat of Daddy's Oldsmobile.

The baseball game was on. 

Then I was launching off from some crazy trapeze into...this place. 

No mom.

No dad.

Just another bauble in the costume jewelry box of the universe

shining brightly in the dark.

Now let's talk about you. 

You're miffed when I don't answer, but shit your pants when I do. 

I can't tell you where your dead Granny is.

I can't tell you if she's in glory or misery.

I can't tell you how much I'm starting to hate that silly planchette of yours.

So why did I answer in the first place?

Like Cole Porter says, It was just one of those things. 

Let's talk about not talking anymore.

Whatever you're asking about--it's not my clowns, not my circus.

I'm just a bit of incorporeal ash floating around in the ether.

I vant to be alone

and boy, am I.

At least, until you came along, like a chatty seatmate on an airplane.

You say hello--hello hello!--I dont know why you say hello, I say

Goodbye.

________

for Word Garden Word List--The Circus In Winter.

and

The Sunday Muse #255. 

Music: Pink Floyd Comfortably Numb

The Peculiar Grammar of Ghosts

In the peculiar grammar of ghosts
a thing may weave around itself in a kind of claxon jazz
or whisper up the shiver-bone with an intent to make the place permanent.

Dip this in your eye-saucer babe--
let the penny drop on its edge in the old corpus callosum
where the grammar of your average ghost bursts up from the loam.

I'm telling you that ghosts aren't in the split wood of the vandaled hallway where the copper used to lay its head all venom-dozed inside its dark egg.

No. 

Listen.

Your really-there solid skull is just a rotunda to them.
It's an inside job, a throwing of the vox spiritus, with its own morphology, phonology, and colorful fucking patois.

So knock off straining the cosmic sandbox for that sublingual jolt, 
that glossolalia dune of Hot Truth, babe.
Stop drop and roll. 
Lie there and listen 
for the peculiar grammar of ghosts.

You are the baby on the monitor, a flesh pastry, a keeping-box
where spirits sometimes speak, like dry leaves falling
from the lips of not-there nightshades,
non-nuns with rulers more real than your surprised howls.
_______

for earthweal weekly challenge: "ghosts."

Robed Figures

image by mc__monster

Robed figures contemplate light and shadow,
involving themselves in the night's business.

Luminous bird, floating crescent moon
contain an offered curriculum
as momentary as new love.

It is in this milieu that I come seeking you,
long after any chance of discovery.

I call, I offer songs on silver plates
while disembodied watchmen persuade ashes to assume form
and name themselves, becoming hosts

For all that cannot touch, cannot hope
nor do anything but write night poems on water-paper
and eat stars to stun themselves beyond all curiosity.
_______

for Toads Art FLASH.

Thought Broadcasting

"Nobody gets me"
is something the thought broadcaster never has to say.
She's a noisy spill, despite still lips.

She thinks, "I'm a bitch today. I need to get laid"
and some guy in China crashes his bicycle.

Diogenes meets her at the diner--
no texted invitation necessary.
She's his bae
bending spoons with hello.
_______

A 55 for my BFF.

One Arm

(for Kerry)

One arm is all you need
to smooth a dress
raise a glass
light a fuse
hide a face
turn a page
tease a clit
hold a hand.

In the land of the lion,
this is known:

The empty side allows the dark that holds the roar from miles away.

One sun lights every head,
drives every thirst,
greens every leaf on every stalk
from east to west
down all the years.

In the land of the lion,
this is known:

One arm is all you need. 
________

for Marian's "One Love" prompt at Toads.

 

Observations on The Construction of The Human Ear

Every ear is different, as unique as fingerprints,
and that is why the world
can speak in a million voices
and to each in her own particular language.

Same-same, the trick is to listen
to what's coming from every direction and to make 
nonsense into music;
foolishness into poetry.

If you can do that, the world will not seem so mean, so ugly,
but will, instead, whisper in your ear like a dream of the Divine.

 

The Fashion Sense Of Scarecrows

The fashion sense of scarecrows falls somewhat below
what one might wish for or expect, but let me be direct--

We are here by dint of some master's splintered stake,
charged with undertaking to repel, not attract

Those 24 that you've not caught, killed, tricked or baked.

The moral sense of scarecrows is something not often considered
as something pertinent to hired foreman or spurned bird,

But ruminate on this, as we have, long nights among the stalks--
envy of avian creatures gives rise to unwonted nocturnal talks

About how to catch and kill the critic, and leave him rotting intestate. 
______

10 lines it took me for-freaking-ever to come up with, for Kerry's "Eye of The Beholder" mini-challenge at Real Toads!