Lebanese Dove Lost in A Mexican Market

 

I awake on a sidewalk as a bird

and in a moment of comic idiocy

I fly into a store

                         where a woman swings a broom at me,

shouting, "Un pájaro!"

She misses me by inches

as I have missed so many things

by inches or miles

                             and if she breaks my wings

her dustpan will be my grave.

Once, I knew--or dreamed

your skin by Tiffany lamp.

In those days,

                      the mornings were quiet and damp

like a woods at first light

where we could go walking

and not worry where we'd been.

I careen into packages of pasta

which fall like pilgrims to the floor.

The woman spits, 

                              "Ay! Diablo!" and has no more

pity for me than a loaded gun.

How did I become a bird

in this ridiculous situation?

I remember the day when you left

with your bags like a brood of chicks

gathered at your feet

                                   in their nest of sticks

like burning incense.

Now, I am a mourning dove without a sky

with a new woman now, who shouts, "Diablo! Ay!"

_______________

For Word Garden Word List--Light, Coming Back

Music: Gary BB Coleman The Sky Is Crying

Letter To My Indifferent Love

 I loved you. Forgive the triteness of my tongue,

I'm not the husky-voiced Delilah that I was when I was young.

Poor gentlemen, when we harpies hand 'em

our hearts like letters stuck in tandem

by a bit of glue from horses rotten

sidesaddle ridden and wrongly gotten

Like you, dear sir,

when life was kind 

leaving apple blossom 

scent behind

When red curls fell,

escaped their pins,

while apple cores

curled brown in bins

I loved you. Please pardon my hand laid on your sleeve

as delicate as a caught disease.

Poor object of my heart's desire,

though altered, I'm yet yours entire,

no stepping back and calling for Jesus

I don't think one so holy can see us.

I loved you. As red-handkerchieved consumptives do

the dry air of their coffins, too.

________

for The Sunday Muse #182, where I am hosting.

Brenda Lee

Why is Brenda Lee so sad
crouching inside the juke box in her bullet bra? 
Does time fit together like black and white checkered flooring,
and is Brenda Lee blue over a past life she cannot alter?

I would kiss Brenda Lee if she were not imprisoned 
by the black edges
of phonograph records. 

I would kiss her, though I am not the boy she longs for,  
or a boy at all,
and I would give her the Coca-Cola clock
right off the wall as a cure for longing.

Why is Brenda Lee so sad?
If I could, I would gather photographs of fine days gone by,
arrange them in a photo mailer,
and address them to Brenda Lee,
inside the Wurlitzer,
Future, USA.
_______

for Camera FLASH! at Real Toads.

 
 

In My Room, A Cricket

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Outside, his million brothers, star-drunk beneath a lemon tree.

Why these walls? Why his song? Why my clocks, taken apart?

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Why alleys? Why walkways? Why my brushes sick from art?

Why my open window and the summer drowsing carelessly?

In my room, a cricket sings his heavy heart.

Outside, his million brothers, star-drunk beneath a lemon tree.

_________

A triolet for day 12.

 

Falling For Katya

Here, in the ideal post-revolutionary state,
one does not simply fall in love with Katya.

Starry-eyed fool,
stumbling across the cobblestone streets carrying disintegrating roses,
straighten up and lose that stupid smile
before the gendarmes make their hourly pass.

Katya is the perfect and ultimate expression 
of our national ambition.
Tell me, which would you--would anyone!--
rather watch pass by....
a thousand rumbling tanks with their idiot erections,
or Katya, with her smooth, slender outstretched arms?

Night and day, noble workers tend the fields
where they grow the million blooms which shall adorn her in a single week.
As a people, we have dispensed with severe, bearded gods
hovering somewhere in the sky,
and replaced them with Katya, late of Odessa, now our symbol, our pride!

Oh go, ahead.
Float, giddy and love-retarded, to the stone steps of the appropriate bureau.
Fill out the lengthy forms,
sit through the interminable classes,
and then wait in your disgusting hovel for six to eight weeks.
Imagine the moment
when, in your unsteady hands you hold the response,
the long-awaited summary denial of your application to love Katya.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
And what next?

Listen, Pooky.
Let's go to the glorious state-controlled theater
and while they put on some skull-crackingly dull film or opera,
I will trace my tongue along your salt-stained lips,
as easy as a gull gliding along the wharves.
Odessa,
jewel and treasured port city,
is as empty now as you are.
Kiss me back.
What the hell!

Everyone loves Katya--men, women, babies, cats and rose bushes,
they're all silly over her.
Be different!
Pretend you are a Czarist-era poet of some high degree,
and scribble something right now, for yourself, for me!
I involve no tedious mandated process,
no cooling of your heels by the mailbox for months.
Here, in our nook of creaking seats,
we can make our own opera,
Katya-less
and if not perfect, then, at least, immediate,
and as combustible as the Balkans.
________

The line "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" is, of course, from the poem of the same name written by Sir John Suckling, and can be found HERE.