Wreath of Roses

I used stems to hold them in my hair,
the red of roses balanced there
to fire a fever in my head
a senseless sleeping, loved instead

Of you, a pool of glossy surface,
silent as some deathly circus
where all is mud and lily root--
cold lips to do what kiss can do

When offered with such artful lack
to turn my wreath of roses black.
______

For Karin's "artifice" challenge at Real Toads, which gave me the poem I needed to go with the image for Mag 301. Image by Ed Ross.

Note to my readers: comment moderation is now enabled. 

An American Girl In The IRA

If I had it to do over again,
I'd wear a stars and stripes bandana over my red hair
and a New York Yankees jacket
honeycomb stitched with dynamite sticks.

I don't really give a damn
about political ends, but I have an ax to grind
and would sharpen it on the queen's neck if I could.
Sean, or Jimmy, or whatever your name is,

show me the street or the face and I'll blast it good.

All I did was sit there and cry, like a Kleenex in a storm drain
last time I was in London.
I've never told anybody the full dig and degree
of your lesson in knifepoint humility.

So now here comes the limousine, 
or the Royals or whatever rat bastard shit the day serves up.
My hands are steady as the moment comes around,
then I'm a red white and blue runner, righteous high

on feet never touching the ground.
_______

for mag #300.

 
 

Artifice

Tell me I'm beautiful,
and that you could fall in love with me.
I'm a pretty billboard splashed with promises--
be the slant-boards holding me up.

She broke my heart--
I'm a big empty box full of shards.
Don't shake me, just let me be a star that doesn't move--
I do give some light, if you do all the work.

Sir Knight, I admire you truly--
broad shoulders do something to a girl, even me.
I like the careful knot of your tie, your cologne,
your starched shirt, your smile.

I'll make you laugh and feel good,
all without risking anything, because I won't feel more than fondness.
Then, just when you think we really have something,
I'll be gone, caught up by some woman

Like a kite in the wind, and as fragile.
______

For mag # 299. 

 

Venus de Milo

Venus de Milo couldn't get that gig as a railroad switchman--
I fucked the foreman for it, and oh,
the thundering crashes I cause when my mood starts to falter.

Vene, honey, hand me that lantern, won't you?
Diogenes left it here when he caught the Tulsa Queen last night.
He said he'd be back for it, but he lies like a rug.
I said, Vene--
oh, shit, sorry. Haha. 
"Take my arms; I never use them." Got to love Lady Day.

Every night, after the first responders have gone,
I review my work, and find
that I am unkind,
uncharitable,
homicidal and terrible.
Oh, Vene, let me lay my poor head on your breast.
(Try and stop me! Ha!)
I don't want to be this way for the rest of my life.

Here, you can have all the covers,
I want to be naked, as a sign of purity and renewal.
Pray with me, Vene.
Fold your hands and--oh fuck a duck, you're hopeless, girl.
Glorious God,
Hear me, though I am your most unworthy servant.
Make me nicer.

Vene, here comes Casey Jones.
Drivin' that train, high on cocaine.
Watch me bring him in soft as a mail sack full of feathers.
It's the new me. Hold my hand, Vene!
Oh, for the love of Mike.

Did you see that? My hand just reached out and switched the lights.
All by itself! It wasn't me!
Casey Jones you'd better watch your speed.
_______

For Mag 291. Image by Daniel Murtagh. Quoted lyrics from "All Of Me" by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons and the Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones" by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter.

Entre Nous, George....

George Tooker self portrait

Oh, don't look so stunned,
as if God had unfriended you.
Just keep tying your sweater arms around your shoulders like that,
and the right man will come through.

Now let's talk about your barber.
Either grow it out or shave, but not this.
You're more Paris than Parris Island, and that fivehead, oh my.
So wrong. So remiss.

Get that shell. It's for you!
It's Clara Bow calling, she wants her lips back.
Here's a drapery, wrap it around that tree trunk as an ascot.
You're welcome. 
My lips are sealed;
I'm the very soul of tact.
_______ 

For mag 289.

 

Bill's Railroad

Since taking up model railroading,
William receives a lot of parcels in the mail.
They contain little cars, little engines,
and a little plastic boy carrying a pole and pail.

To his face, the mail lady calls him Bill,
but behind his back she calls him "that old shithead."
She should be kinder; she doesn't know
that when his wife passed, he wished himself dead.

It was the Beverly Hills Express that saved him.

There are trees with lichen leaves,
and a mountain made from papier mache
with a tunnel going through it and
next to that a neatly painted little highway.

Muttering "more crap for this asshole,"
the mail lady arrives with an important addition.
She smiles, he thanks her, and he knows
it is his beautiful plastic lady, arriving in perfect condition.

Bill admires her kick pleat skirt
and her sunny smile which will never fade.
Carefully gluing her feet to the platform,
he offers her his devotion, and a tiny glass of lemonade.

Bless my hobby which has saved my life, he thinks, and bless consistency of scale.

Bill gives his '50s lady a cotton bubble
in which to say anything her heart desires.
What does she say? What do women ever say?
Anyway, they do seem happier talking, and now his town is entire.

She will always stay. Where would she go?
The tracks are circular and end where they began,
so even if she heeds the "all aboard!",
it will always be 1955, in Beverly Hills, and there she'll be again.
________

for mag 282.

Internet Date

Out in one of those western states where nobody lives,
she clawed her way out of the dirt where I had buried her
during a desperate fit,
under a vulture sun.

Everybody out there has got a gun, and so did the lonesome rancher
she first kissed after spending the night in his pick up truck.
She fed him his own bullets like candies
and charged him for them, too.

Sweet girl.

She has your barbed bones, but her heart is a rattle gourd.
Out there, she got fat on the stupid and the slow,
then starved herself down to a focused edge.

Today, at the bottom of a drawer, I found the kimono I bought 
in the hopes that you would like me in it.
I never wear it anymore, 
not after the anthill ceremony you call fun.

Returning home, I took love out to the yard and chopped its head off,
fed it to silence, to injury, and to hopelessness.
It refused to die, but became something else--
this girl-- so I poisoned her with your every word and 
left her in the desert.

Now she's awake,
headed east,
one lung full of stacksmoke and the other collapsed and dying,

but still able to articulate her wild hatred and intention
for both of us.
_____

for Mag 278.

 

MIDWEST-4-2313

The woman who wouldn't stop talking
caused the telephone to kill itself.
For weeks after that, the operator stalked the talking woman,
fantasizing about pushing her in front of a train or a bus,
and the disturbing glee she would feel--
the drug rush of wonderful silence.

Day after day, the operator imagined scenes of accident,
murder,
the stupid woman strangled with her own tongue.

However, a repairman began paying attention to the operator.
He brought her movie tickets and hard candies;
he admired her to no end, and rarely spoke.
After months of quiet dinners and good manners at the cinema,
he tried something. She let him.

In the intimacy of afterwards, she began to confide in him.
She told him that ivy was her favorite plant, crows her favorite bird.
Further, she confessed her hatred of the talking woman to him,
and how she had been following her and planning cold-blooded murder.
He said nothing, and she loved him for it.

Unfortunately, the repairman never came by for her again.
Her number disappeared from every directory in the city,
and moving men came to take her bed away to the lunatic asylum.
With no place to sleep, and no man to confide in, she began to pace,
muttering to herself all night. 

Desperate and cracking, she appeared late one evening at the talking woman's door.
"May I use the phone?"
The woman only gaped at her, finally saying simply, "It's dead,"
but that should have been obvious, given the repair truck at the curb,
parked there for so long that ivy had begun to wind itself possessively around the axles.
______

Dialed up for Magpie #274

Tell Me Everything

"Tell me everything," you said.
"Let's have no secrets between us."
Then you sent your ten sorceresses--
four around the hill, with one at the crest,
three together in the garden at rest,
and two down into the valley. Such beautiful dancers, these.

My name is Melusine,
a love letter written on wine-dark pages,
sealed in a jewelry box with a serpent in gold at the edges.
You were a spilled apple bushel,
not realizing that it is the seed, not the fruit that matters.
What was it in the one thing I asked you not to do,
not to know,
that made you so keen and cruel to know?

Not cruel to me, though I am angry; though I am gone.
You undid yourself, making me the instrument of it.
Don't you get it?
I asked only to be left alone at my bath,
that I might bobble the skulls of all my old loves
and wind around them in clumsy recompense.

The next time you come to a locked door, remember me.
Wind a grape vine around your hair,
wind the hemp and kick the chair,
do anything to give yourself a moment to think--
then, my used-to-be darling,
open that idiot mouth of yours
and swallow that forged metal apple, the key.
_______

For Magpie #258.

Thank you to Hedgewitch, for making me think of Melusine. 

Wandering Eye

How could I have a wandering eye,
when mine are always demure,
downcast,
almost falling into my tea like sugar cubes?

I claim nothing;
no opinion, no item, no gesture
as my own--
I borrowed this hat,
these gloves,
this face with its serenely docile expression.

However, underneath 
like a forgotten marker,
is my skull, twinned with socket-blanks
and the moths that emerge and expand by wing and instinct.

Relax, dear Master.
Everyone admires your wool suits,
your silk cravats,
and your cashmere sense of entitlement.

On the other hand,
no one sees or suspects the devouring flutter I unleash from concealment
without a word,
without fanfare,
without blinking.
_______

for Magpie #255 

Travel Story For Girls

One had a boyfriend,
but never found Howland Island.
The other was an odd duck
looking for mermaids after every rainstorm.

One was Catholic,
the other Lutheran.
Both believed in female clergy
wearing Roman collars, and red hair long.

One lived at home,
the other in a flat where the gulls glide.
When they kissed the first time,
whole flocks moved in circles, like stars.

One liked Anna Ternheim,
the other, Eva Dahlgren.
When they made love the first time,
it was like piloting through easy clouds.

That May it rained every day for a week.
Water landings are dicey things;
Selkies find their buried skins and go back home,
forgetting they were ever human at all.

One moved away,
but the other stayed and wrote swells of storm-blue poems
about transformed women 
wearing Roman collars, and their red hair long.
_______

for Magpie Tales #238, and for Bjorn Rudberg's mini-challenge at Real Toads.

I've featured the this song once before on my blog, but it is so hard to find, and so cool, that I'm featuring it again. Plus, it fits the poem perfectly. Anna Ternheim is a Swedish singer who performs in English. 

Quiet On Set

A career in opera doesn't always work out for a girl,
and so then she has to fall back on Plan B.

The land around here looks like it's been through God's own laundry press,
and it only rains every Fourth of July,
leaving the year-rounders feeling itchy and bad-tempered.

This is no place for Bo Peep, with a pink bow in her hair.
Nobody wants to hear Puccini,
but there's a snake handler under every tent.

Into this maelstrom of dust and cowshit comes Our Heroine,
by means of Plymouth automobile,
ready for a different kind of star turn.

Sick of marrying the same guy over and over,
she sets her happy ass down in front of the big yellow ball of the setting sun,
and memorizes her lines,
which are, basically,
the sort of stuff some screenwriter in L.A. thinks a girl like her might say.

Well, who cares?
Her leading man is gay anyway,
and she's doing the job for a flat fee, 
so she doesn't give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut whether it tanks or is a smash.

Tomorrow she'll rope the young actor from Indiana,
and by the time the stars come out,
he'll be rattling off nonsense about the future, and men on the moon.
She'll have shown him,
first hand and--though softly--right in his ear
how well she can yodel,
among other wondrous things.
_______

Mixing fact with bullshit for Magpie #231.

 

A Spiny Demon

A spiny demon fell out of the chandelier and into my decolletage,
just as the aperitifs were being served.
There is only one thing for a lady to do when this happens,
and so I went to the kitchen and boiled him in a pot
like an artichoke.

The chef in his toque
and his staff in their amazement
gaped at me for crossing an unspoken boundary line,
but I was raised by wolves
and educated at Smith--
I can snarl with accent or without.

By this time I could see the spiny demon's breath,
though it may have been steam,
or just hot air.
Concerned for my manicure,
I plucked him from his impromptu bath with tongs,
and demanded to know if he had come
to try to collect my soul.

He clammed up, so I went next door,
holding him gingerly by the tail,
into the neighbor's house,
the Land That Time Forgot,
and played stoopball with him against the inside stairs.
I used a Babolat racket
and a wicked serve to make him talk.

Borrowing the jack from someone's Audi,
I opened his gob and got the truth out of him.
He had been spitting night into my stellar disposition,
while I slept,
innocent as a kitten.
I stashed his loathsome spiny self in the dishwasher
and, departing the neighbor's house,
I kicked off my Jimmy Choos, letting my bare feet sink into the wet grass.

The sun was coming up,
as yellow as a taxi cab,
so I started all over, despite my age, and despite convention.
What the hell, Bo Peep, I said to myself,
live a little, bring down a moose,
win a Pulitzer,
get a girlfriend.
Why not?
________

for mag 228

Sock Monkey Consults the Ouija

The past is one thing--
it's always the same old quicksand,
but hold still, and enough suns will dry you loose.

On the other hand,
Sock Monkey has been moving up for years.
He never gave a big green shit who he had to screw in order to rise.
But now?
He's just hanging on.
The thing about the future is, that it's so uncertain.
Try the dart board.
Check out the Ouija.
Ex-Mrs. Sock Monkey cleaned him out,
took the kids,
the cash,
the floor beneath his soft round feet.

A lot of things can be overcome,
but some suck the soul right out of anybody.
Wood veneer crushes initiative.
Bad wallpaper encourages self-harm.
Ugly armchairs send anybody to the madhouse.

Behold, Sock Monkey,
suspended like a cartoon character, cliffside, with branch.
If he lets go, he lands on the desk of Edwin Albert Peach, CPA,
his future forfeit, himself, a debit never to be recouped.
So, Mister Monkey,
go wild,
ask the Ouija a question.
You'll have to let go, to touch the planchette,
but c'mon, make a leap of faith.
You are a monkey, after all.

See the future revealed.
YES
we have no
bananas.
NO
you'll never get her back--
Mrs. Monkey.
Day-oh
Day-ay-ay-oh.
Day, de light, and you'll never go home.
_____

for Mag 221. This whole scene, with its dreary browns and defeated decor, screamed 1970s divorced dad pad.

 


 

ringmistress

Nobody told me it was Cirque de Soleil in here.
When I was five,
every time I closed my eyes,
colors, creatures, patterns, movement.

Mama, you saw the vacuum cleaner,
or me staring out the window.
I saw my head exploding behind my eyelids.

All any adult ever told me was
pay attention
apply yourself
stop daydreaming and listen.

To what?
To the ghost-man nobody else seems to know about?
He followed me halfway up the stairs.
He chased me out of the basement.
He lived next to the water softener,
but could also come upstairs.

To the voices I hear when I'm tired?
Men, women, chattering away in snatches about nothing.
Or, to you?
To my brother?
I soak up your anger, your confusion, your frustration,
till I can't tell what is mine and what isn't.
"Why are sitting in here by yourself?"
Jesus Christ.

There is a difference between a trained tiger and one that's loose.
Nobody told me it was Ringling Brothers in here,
or that it isn't the same for everyone.
I grew up a little stunned, overwhelmed, spinning in the storm.
Now I call down the thunder,
and people say, "I want to spend an hour inside your head."

No you don't. 
The circus is permanently in town,
the gate is open,
and while they are used to me, and willing to perform,
my tigers don't know you,
and I can't be responsible for what they might do to a noob.

_______

for mag #219

Moon Fable

Once upon a time, on the dusty plains of Africa, a lion chased a zebra.

"Come in to my mouth," urged the lion. "You can rest there. My teeth are like the rails of your childhood bed. Then, when you're ready, you can sleep in my stomach." The lion spoke gently, making all of this sound quite reasonable and appealing.

However, the zebra knew about lions and so she kept running as fast as she could. Even though the zebra was quick, and had marvelous hooves and strong legs, the lion kept gaining.

"I know what I will do," said the zebra. As dusk fell over them both, she used her black and white stripes to play a trick on the lion. She split herself, giving her black stripes to the night, and her white stripes to the stars. "Try to chase me now!" she cried.

The lion never missed a step, leaping up into the sky after the zebra, but, unable to see her in her split disguise, the lion leapt all the way to the moon, where he stood blinking and still hungry.

Now, lions are good climbers, but are better at getting up than getting down. "Won't someone help me!" the lion called, again and again. "I am just a poor kitty stuck in a tree." Close enough, thought the lion with a shrug.

Far below the lion, a Gypsy slept. The Gypsy dreamt that a lion was calling, calling for a song from his guitar. The light of a full moon woke the Gypsy, and he found that his dream was true; there really was a lion up there, calling for a song.

So the Gypsy began to play. 

Como canta la zumaya,...

(How the owl sings,
ay, how it sings in the tree!
The moon crosses the sky
with a child by the hand.

Inside the forge the Gypsies
scream and weep.
The air is keeping watch.
The air is watching over her.)*

The Gypsy became caught up in his song, playing and singing with such emotion, that without thinking, he raised the neck of his guitar so high that the lion stepped out onto the strings and slid back down to the African plain.

"Thank you," said the lion. "I am so sorry to have interrupted your sleep. Come, rest in my mouth. My teeth will be like the wicker shades the Gypsy ladies make. Then, when you're ready, you can sleep in my stomach."

The Gypsy was feeling sleepy and the night still had hours to go, so he agreed, and climbed into the lion's mouth. After a while, the lion burped and spit out the guitar, which made a musical sound when it landed on the ground. 

The lion's appetite was satisfied, but he didn't get off Scot free. After eating the Gypsy, the lion could never stay still for very long, and spent the rest of his life wandering the African plain, as his children still do to this day, chasing zebras and roaring at the moon as if they had been there, and remembered.
______

*the Gypsy's song is actually a section of "Ballad of The Moon, Moon" by Federico Garcia Lorca.

The top painting is The Sleeping Gypsy by Henry Rousseau. The bottom painting is Repast of The Lion also by Rousseau.

Written for Mag #209.

 

The Farm For Critics

At the farm for critics,

the soil is rich,

and the poet sleeps well.

______

for Mag 208. 

"Poet's Sleep" image by Chang Houg Ahn.

Please click on "older post" for the poem I wrote late last night. It wasn't up top for very long. Bless you.

Plath at 350

At the top of some stairs,
at The Bus Stop of the Eternal Downpour,
I met a man.

He wore a beret,
and an old-fashioned high collar,
giving the impression that he was forever being jauntily hanged.

He told me that he had recently broken up with a life sized doll named D'zeray,
and then taken up with a cello.
Either one of them--but not both--
could fit easily beneath his bed.

He went on to explain that although the doll had been a fine listener,
she was a disaster as a dancer,
and Farran (for this was my new acquaintance's name)
could not live without music in his world.

I whistled a little of the Trumpet Voluntary,
and swayed on my boot heels like a Sikh snake charmer.
Nearby, a depressive fought a losing battle with a watercolor,
but I could tell my cello man had better possibilities.

"Where did you get your...companion?" I asked.
"I slipped her out from under Sylvia Plath's tear-stained cheek," he told me,
but the temperature in her final dream had dried out the wood,
and ruined its tone.

"I'm taking her down to the boat docks
to use as an oar,
and I will tell her the fable of the Selkie and the fisherman."

"Oh my sweet and idiotic owl," I said softly,
"she can never be the listener your old love was."
Then I slipped my arm through his and asked if he wanted to get out of there.

He did.
I feel certain that he never saw my tail switch beneath my raincoat,
but when he saw my cottage on the sand 
and plenitude of tuna fish cans,

he only told me how much he liked the soothing green of my bedding,
and, kissing the bell on the collar around my neck,
assured me that I was all the music anyone could ever need.
_________

for The Mag #203

image" "Musician In The Rain" by Robert Doisneau

angel for brick birds

i'm an angel for brick birds,
and a healer for the crack-toothed cats who catch them.
i'm a tall-shelf girl with the boardinghouse reach,
fetching orphans each a blanket and an anthem.

i stitch long blue feathers for my brick birds' backs,
and dog star tails when they fan them.
my oven bakes the bricks til they're light as morning mist,
then the ashes circle sun and moon in tandem.

i'm a weekday angel
whistling for the wrong,
the bruised, the broken,
the disowned in the dawn;

i mix a sweet healing balm,
turn the jar into a song,
roll it out into the street
and then i'm gone.
________

written for Magpie Tales #196, and dedicated to Kelli and Joy, who both like it when I rhyme.
 

Sleep Walk

one day, he'll be shot through with cancer,
empty as an old oxygen tank.
she'll forget him before the year is out,
and marry somebody else;
when she's three months along with a baby conceived from make-up sex,
she'll take thalidomide to help her sleep.

bill and larry have dates,
but would really rather be with each other.
larry will solve it with a noose;
bill will become a cop and bust fags with a baton.
ellen is already bipolar, but doesn't realize it yet.
millie will marry a dentist who will beat her brains in,
then he'll sit in front of that same fireplace sucking gas from the clinic.

tonight it's still early, and they're waiting for larry's cool aunt
who will tell their fortunes from the tarot.
on his deathbed, cancer boy will remember how his date's boobs felt in his hands,
but he'll have forgotten his own sons' names--
the ones whose hair will be longer than hers is now.
_______

for magpie 174