Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun Rides Again

 

Halloween is fun but it's over and the 

candy-scamming spooks

are back in class.

Turkeys wearing pilgrim hats are taped

on the windows and the President

pardons some tom

who has no idea what these talky apes are laughing about.

He'd rather be out in the woods,

eating fruits and nuts

and taking a run at your car on a dirt road when you blow by

for cider and a donut.

From what I read, pilgrims

were a pretty constipated bunch.

When I was outed, the family holiday invitations

dried right up. Poof!

After Halloween, the faux dead rest, but when real people die,

sometimes it takes some time.

Some make nice

some get high

some find a new family

some suicide.

Me, I survived, hanging out with the fruits and nuts,

and my blood and kin?  

Dead to me as if they'd fallen on some foreign shore.

_________

for Dverse Poetics: Epiphany In The Time of Holiday

The Feast of Saint Creola

We are the adherents,
the Sisters of Saint Creola,
Our Lady of the Falling Piano.

We are a strictly female enclave,
here at the edge of a continent,
at cliffside,
with the surge of the waves below us
and within us.

Today we honor our blessed Saint C.,
she of the fair face and the wise word.
Born in the year 1899, she remains beautiful
in appearance,
in utterance,
and in her endless inspiration of us, her Sisters.

"Soooo, what's chocolate?" she demands in her honey voice,
entering the room like light from a taper.
If the Pope could see us,
in our unconventional garb,
and our unconventional affections,
he would want to be one of us, I feel certain.

Blessed Saint Creola teaches us that God 
is a waitress
in a coffee shop;
an expert at creating chalk menu boards,
and at assuaging that indescribable homesickness
we all carry inside us like some melancholy luggage
we don't know how to set down.

Today there will be blends from Turkey and the Orient;
chocolate from Europe and from two old hippies
who have a store down the coast a little way.
There will be the cerulean sky
and the indigo waves.
There will be the white stucco of our convent,
and the toasted tan of the cliffs,
the high grasses of late summer,
and our warm skins.

Today we celebrate Creola,
living saint and mother hen to all of us.
We are off the grid,
off the radar,
off the chain.
Have a chocolate truffle,
have a Girl Scout cookie.
The sun is right at home in the sky, her hammock,
and the pianos have long ago flown over the cliff 
and into the sea,
like gulls.
_____

for Out of Standard at Real Toads.

Fireblossom's House of Voodoo

Quite some time ago, some of us bloggy poets were asked to show our writing space to the world, on our blogs. I didn't have a camera at the time, but now I do, and though I am woefully late to the party, I still thought that some of you might enjoy seeing Chez Shay. 

Once in the door, you would be in my living room, where, when  am not working, I spend most of my time slack-jawed, watching tv or dvds and communing with Bosco, who heartily approves of tv time, as it is usually food time, too.

His Majesty. Isn't he handsome?

Okay, last chance to head back out the door. Note my voodoo dolls hanging on the wall! Oh all right, they are really marionettes. 

Bosco cannot believe that you are still reading this.

Here is my desk, where I write all of my poems. It was my father's desk before me, and is older than I am. The green book on the left is my volume of Lorca, a gift from my BFF Hedgewitch. The little brown postcard is my lioness from Kerry, Queen of the Toad Pond. I like my writing space spare, as you can see. My screensaver image is a young Emmylou Harris.

Next to my chair is my music, always within reach. Right now it is loaded with three cd's: Joni Mitchell "Songs To  Seagull", Erin McKeown "Manifestra" and the self-titled "Bryndle", which was a group comprised of Karla Bonoff, Kenny Edwards, Andrew Gold and Wendy Waldman. 

I hope you enjoyed this belated tour. Now I must go serve my Master. Woof!