Oriental Bittersweet

Oriental Bittersweet

her arms full of swans

never meant, no really never

meant you any harm.

Oriental Bittersweet

cuts her body with a blade

and never sees, no never really

sees the mess she's made.

Oriental Bittersweet

has horse blanket hair--

blacktop eyes and blackstrap tongue

and promises she cares.

Oriental Bittersweet

knows EMT's by name--

she'll take you with her, with her taken

here she comes again.

______

My Child

 

My child was born over the radio at noon

calling, crying, appearing--clearly mine.

She displayed an instant madness, an affinity for the moon

accepting only pomegranate and warm plum wine

as Nurse counted up the medications and the spoons.

We communicate by carvings, deep and raw

and love words mercurial and gritty as a dune,

that respect no wound, no custom, no law.

My elephant child, heavy, hunted, wise

eludes rubber-handed teachers of the exhausted strike

arriving in little rowboats in full courtly disguise

to mine my little darling as she rides her phantasmal bike

down to the grave of stars to kiss the thing that dies

in a tiny wooden cradle beneath a concrete sun

to bring it back, to make it rise

and then her work is done.

Come, child of animals, black earth and fire

to the shelter I have cobbled from discarded turtle shells

where poets burn on pages, porches, pyres

and all variety of heavens, limbos, hells

to arrange your dolls named Judgement and Desire

who sit on silken pillows or in coffins fit with bells

to call their mothers, those beauties, belles and hags

combined into an advocate for my child with tongue flat-felled

by a celebrated seamstress, dumbly mute and dressed in rags.

_____

for Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton

Music:

Sin City 

Travel Stories For Girls

 

Someone messed with my story when I was still young,

trying to bend it like a bonsai tree

and so I wrapped it in paper and hid it away

in the throat of a bird, clandestinely. 

I was obliged to call my assaulter "mother"

and expected to pretend devotion.

Her mask was on her face so long

that her true face had become the illusion.

Grown, I went where the robins gathered

and found the cardinal who carried my loss.

It was in a grave, wrapped with quilts, 

but had marked its place with two twigs crossed.

I put it back in my body and felt its ice,

then its beat and its fine red heat.

There is nothing I love more than the thing

I smuggled past the killer-- the best of me.

That is not to say that all survived--

those who say they love are heard as fakes,

assassins or fools; give this hungry woman jewels

and see what a pretty figure my turned back makes.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Sula 

Music: Damien Jurado Orphans in the Key of E

Scrapbook

 

Two parents, tidy as mints on a pillow,

produce three children who float into the world

like bewildered but bright confetti. 

The first lives inside a camera,

clothed in instructions and operating

the mechanism from within.

The second lives in the courtyard,

raised remotely from an upstairs window

by the detached shadow of the first.

The third grows inside a smoker

and can barely see. It is assumed she will be

a servant or a sparrow, but she is a fissure.

The second hates the first

and hides inside the family car,

finally using it to elope with an accident.

The first is made of mirrors,

the second of fists. The third grows

eyes on her palms and holds them up.

The first is successful and becomes a living myth.

The second is successful and has a skin of diamonds.

The third is on fire, shifting in the wind.

This is the story of the farmer's wife

she cut out their hearts with a carving knife

have you ever seen such a sight in your life

as this family, so proper and nice?  

________

for Word Garden Word List--The Silent Patient. 

Wings & Anvils

 

September was vivid as a kiss

or a hard push back then--

one scarce, one common.

The smell of a new eraser, the pungent insistence

of a just-opened jar of paste, the grind of a sharpener,

or the sound of snubbed scissors cutting through 

construction paper--I remember them all.

I loved the school library with the soft edges

of books read a thousand times, the dark wooden

window frames, the rows of tables like boats at a marina.

September also meant doctor's waiting rooms,

the assault of hospital smells and rooms full of

us guilty damaged goons, our mothers' faces

as brittle as dropped plates. We're defectives and know it.

I remember. Here is my hat being thrown ahead,

out of sight, down the hall. Here is the boy touching his face

while staring at mine, afraid he might catch the ugly.

Here are the mimics, a circus of relentless clowns.

I remember all of it, though to look at me, you'd never know. 

That child rides on my shoulders and inside my mouth--

the one that could not make herself understood.

I was educated and the lessons were both wings and anvils,

the thorn in my flesh that God gave His stunned child.

________________-

for What's Going On?--"Education."

Image: The Broken Witness by MistiStudios, redbubble. 

Music: Morrissey November Spawned A Monster

The Vivid Dead

 

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead

winding wire around every bud in the garden

fearing poison in every innocent bed.

Making olive of jade and maroon of red

mixing invitation with heirloom toxin

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

Staking a world with only frayed gray thread

hoarding every sweet fruit left to harden

fearing poison in every innocent bed.

Mixing sugar and rot into every word said

a borer warden of self without pardon

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

Silence the dust-tongue kept in your head

and lie with your twin the idiot watchman

fearing poison in every innocent bed

I am fascinated by you, the vivid dead.

______

A villanelle. 

Music:  Michael Kiwanuka Cold Little Heart

The Goblin Girl (A Child's Fairy Story)

 

image by Gustaf Teggren

The Goblin Girl is cursed and wanders

over stubbled fields and passes under

the riven bridge that ice has split

and counts herself the cause of it.

Should the Goblin Girl admire the arc

of a lofty bird it misses its mark--

falters and falls like an iron omen

to fall at her feet in evening gloaming.

On thorny brambles she lays her head

with moon for pillow and stone for bed

to dream of peacocks and peahens crying

for the bride whose lily is cut and dying.

Who laid the wicked curse upon her?

Perhaps some coward behind a mask?

Or was it the smug and well-dressed hunter

who cradles his gun and ready flask?

Who burned her image and let the milk curdle

as done to them by an earlier other?

Why, the very one who rocked the cradle--

the Goblin Girl's Janus-faced mother.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Christina Rossetti. The poem is, in style, an homage.

For more about the two-faced god Janus, look HERE. 

Music: Sarah McLachlan "In The Arms Of An Angel"

In Bohemia

 

In Bohemia, where the Moldau

flows and hollyhocks rise beside the cottages,

I went, as a child, into the dark woods to escape 

the terrors of the monster behind the door of mine.

At night in Bohemia, where the wolves

go and the moon rises over the trees beyond the cottages,

I rose with it in the night to escape nightmares

as the wolves sang to me like imaginary mothers.

In Bohemia there are hands, and cookies shaped like hands

full of sugar and poison. In the mornings the monster

fed me hate because I was a mirror, but the wolves

told me I was a lake and a home for the wandering moon.

In Bohemia, there are little girls carrying wicker baskets

beside the shores of the Moldau, where the rooks rise.

The rooks are born from ice in the blood of monsters

and they say, "we are the rooks, we love you," as they peck.

In Bohemia, by the shores of the Moldau, many children

disappear, into forests, or ovens, where monsters sent them.

The wolves heard of this and began to follow ceaselessly,

so closely that I became them, and they became me.

In Bohemia, where the Moldau 

flows and hollyhocks rise beside the cottages,

a Gypsy girl and her wolves shrank a monster

who starved on its own poison cookies.

So I ask you now, Sir or Madame come down the lane,

to my fairy cottage by a lake beneath a golden moon,

looking for love and loaves and a soft situation,

do you really want to fuck with me and my wolves?

Better you should go, and take your monsters with you.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #189, where I am hosting. 

Mixed Marriage

"We are not like other families,"

remarked my father

impaled sideways through his head by a stick,

feet dancing in thin air.

My mother wore black crepe

though her husband lived yet, suspended,

and I, the fruit of her womb, refused her invitation

to stay still beneath her fingers at the bottom of the bath.

We had a dog with a nervous condition

and a ghost in the basement by the water softener.

My father covered the story and his un-impaled eye,

seeing old sweethearts in his dreams.

Mother tried to move me into the basement incinerator,

but was prevented by the ghost. 

Daddy liked swing music and Dixieland jazz,

insisting the stick was a clarinet and the dog Benny Goodman,

And though not observant, he did walk on Saturdays.

__________

for Sunday Muse #134, where I am hosting.

The Other Sister

Born in a house of wind,

I leaned hard, a little animated stalk.

In a house of rain and mud,

Mother Rot stuffed endings in every word.

The Other Sister, the One Denied,

set the fields on fire

as signal and salvation.

Catching her scent on the gale,

I ran hell-for-Sunday

into the burning wild.

_____

A 55 for my BFF.

Hi.

 "Magic Mirror, if we only could / see ourselves as others would." --Leon Russell


Hi.
I tried to call you last night.
I tried twice more but you never picked up.
Where were you?
Oh. Who did you go with? 
Yes, I know her parents. She smokes, doesn't she?
I'm just saying.
Nothing. Nothing at all. Don't get upset like you do, please.
Yes I know she's 21.
No, she can't be 37? 
Okay. I guess that's right, you kids are the same age. Time flies!
Well, you'll always be kids to me.
So...
Did you get the recipes I sent you?
Some coupons, too.
Did you go to that job fair I told you about?
I thought it would be good for--
Oh.
But you don't want to do that for the rest of your life, do you?
It's not really going to take you anywhere.
You could do--
Pardon? You did? That's wonderful. How much of a raise was it?
Well, excuse me. I'll never ask anything again.
So...
Any men in your life?
Hello?
Yes, but I thought that might have changed.
Oh yes, her.
Uh-huh.
But why were you so upset? It was only another woman. 
I just worry about you.
If you'd lose a little weight, and dress a little more--
What?
Well, I'm sorry you heard it like that.
You've always been too sensitive. 
Your brother isn't that way at all!
Always do what?
Don't be that way. I'm trying to help you.
Why take everything I say as criticism?
Don't raise your voice, please. 
I never said that.
I don't remember saying that.
I just want you to be happy.
Well I'm sorry if you misunderstood what I was saying.
You know how you confuse things sometimes, just like your father.
Well, your friends don't say these things to you because they don't love you like I do.
Have you thought any more about becoming a Lutheran?
I only thought--
Well, when we went to church with your brother and Debbie, you said--
Oh. 
I thought you did express an interest. 
He'd be glad to talk to you about--
All right! I just wish you had something solid in your life, that's all.
I worry.
So...
What have you been up to?
An award, how nice. Is there any payment for that, or...
Oh, I see. 
Well, that's a nice hobby I suppose. Nothing I would ever think to do, of course.
Yes. Yes, but...
I just think that if you spent that time in a more--
Well, because I'm your mother. I care about you. I worry.
At your door? Right now? It's rather late.
All right, I'll call you tomorrow then. 
You won't?
How about Wednesday? Any room in your schedule then? Ha ha.
Well, they'll wait, won't they?
You're just like your father, always running off someplace but never getting anywhere.
All right, yes, better go see who's at the door, my goodness.
Be careful.
Love you.
Bye.
_______

for Out Of Standard at Real Toads.

Image: The Broken Mirror Effect by croissance at deviant art.

Blogger won't let me add a video, so here is a link to Leon Russell's "Magic Mirror." 

Haunted House

It was haunted, the house I grew up in;
some old bastard from olden days,
mostly hanging out in the basement, by the water softener.

Many times I stopped my stuffed animal games mid-sentence and froze.
"Get the fuck out," he'd say by turning the air thick and heavy
like green sky late on an April afternoon.

I'd take the slime-colored linoleum stairs two at a time,
my tail on fire, a little spark in a hurry to hit the sky.
Oh god oh god oh god...but no god down there.

Upstairs, better wear a parka, better be a hidden rabbit
if my mother was in one of her silent rages.
She didn't like imperfections, and there I was, made of them.

Daddy's books were birds that flew off the shelves
into my hands. "What's this one?" I'd ask
a million times and always got an answer.

When they got divorced, the dead man came upstairs;
He'd crawl up my back sending every hair on end,
then clatter the cutlery in the kitchen when nobody else was home.

My father had taken his books and a second wife.
My mother's parents had just died, and she'd had to get a job at fifty-five.
After she tried to kill herself and failed, she switched to me.

I wouldn't die, though;
there were enough pissed-off ghosts there,
and so I made the world my basement stairs and ran.
_______

For "The House That Built You" at Real Toads.

 

monster

Verse

See the crone that comes
through the thorn-walk and the breaks,
with a ribbon for the coffin key
and a dead-scroll curled with snakes,

she will never die.
she will never die.
roll her bones through the catacombs--
she hasn't the grace to die.

Inverse

My eyes were tired, so I set them soft
in the cotton-bedded heart of a pale red box;
deep under the earth with the coldsong quick,
was nothing--and nothing--I reveled in it.

Verse

Hear the crone who lies
with a dead tongue, poison-sweet,
words chopped blind with a kitchen knife
tourniquet-wrapped and awfully neat.

her teeth in the flesh
her teeth in the flesh
slips gangrene dreams through the finest screens
making rot-milk sold as fresh.

Inverse

My soul was sick, so I intertwined
its feminine face with androgyne,
to speak itself twice in a language of thorns
to bleed--to bear--where vermilion's born.

Verse

Bury the crone who's filled
with a paste of hate in her hollow bones,
a candle kept in the bag of her gut
to wax the devil a hag-head stone.

she will never die.
she will never die.
resurrected, insane, infected,
she hasn't the grace to die.
________  

Wasted Words

You were hiding this from us. I think that means you're not very proud of it. 

You're the last to know. What does that tell you?

If Bethany hadn't told us, we still wouldn't know.

I asked her to keep my confidence. Clearly she didn't.

You should never have asked her to! She was crying. Jan made her tell us.

And you're all reacting just the way I thought you would.

Why do you spend so much time with those friends of yours? Did they talk you into this? Or was it someone on line?

No one "talks you into" this.

It all happened after you stopped going to church.

I stopped going to church because I no longer felt welcome.

Because it's wrong! No one in our family has ever been...like that.

Don't be so sure. Anyway, now someone is.

People will wonder what I did wrong as a mother.

Is that all you care about? What people will think?

Yes, partly! I care what people think!

You never had a clue, all the time I was growing up?

No. Never. I wish I had not lived long enough to see this day. 

I'm sorry you had to hear it through the grapevine. But you asked me to come talk to you today, and I'm here.

I didn't think you would have the courage to face me. I think you know what you're doing is wrong.

I have more courage than you think I do, and I'm not doing anything but trying to save my own life. 

I never want to see you again.

Oh mama... you never really have.

_______  

for Mary's Mixed Bag at Real Toads

I was well beyond my teens when this conversation took place. Nevertheless, I want to include this picture...

.