Bimbo Season

 

Summer and I cannot really be friends--

she is tiresomely popular

with her garish daylight that extends

heedlessly into my delicious darkness.

She's the hot girl, skin-deep,

boring me to death with her obviousness

too loud, too cheap,

queen of the surfer boy entourage. 

If only there were some ceremony

that I could perform

to summon chilly winter here for me,

my old bestie returned.

I would live in a bus with bed and blankets

and a storm outside,

all the windows hung with trinkets

and--weirdly--streaming tv.

Yes, an all-comforts bare-bones hideaway

out in the distant sticks

up on four wheels on a winter's day

with soup and chocolate!

Sadly, here I am with this bimbo season summer,

my imagined paradise

far away and impossible--bummer!

White it out winter,

Come back with your cool quiet and I'll write you a killer poem 

to knock your woolly socks off. 

_________

for Word Garden Word List--Night Road

Music: Fleetwood Mac Bare Trees

AP Stray Cat Yawp

 

Think of a time when you embarrassed yourself

and the cold wet sand of your heart 

dropped in clumps down 

through your stomach.

Start there.

Fetch up a memory of raw-throated sobbing,

when you beat the sofa arm or the floor

as if it were responsible for the

wasp's nest in your heart. 

Open up, little glass, fill with it.

Leave pretty sunsets for painters or postcard publishers.

What we're after here is waking inside a coffin,

falling from height, the whole empty belly

lonesome lack of it all.

Don't shake your head like you don't know. 

The thing you cannot even think is the thing you have to tell.

Will they consider you crazy, the only one

who ever did/felt/wanted/made love to

that?

Behold the mute tongueless many saying you spoke for them.

The poet is the person who threads out their own veins,

stews their every experience, fears nothing,

stands on one leg on a high wire,

all because they can't not.

Otherwise, they would just be cross-eyed babies

waving bright toy telephones to nobody,

and calling it art.

_______

for Desperate Voicings

Music: DJ Dero The Horn 

The Boffin

 Of course, we all fumble at first,

doofing up out of our childhood like baby turtles.

There it is, all at once, 

the Sea of Love,

and we scramble for it, driven by

instinct

movies

pop songs

and our own bodies bolting away with us.

But that's kid stuff.

At some point we think we've got it,

that we've become some sort of love boffin

smug in the sugar bowl of partnered mid-life.

Look! No hands! 

Up on the two-wheeler and thinking NASA needs us.

Oh, little turtle, little turtle rules the waves. 

Hang your heart on the sawtooth coat hook a few times

and all that changes. 

You find out you married a Matryoshka,

a total stranger.

Big and slow, you're back out there among the hatchlings,

drinking too much

doing stupid things to your hair,

fumbling again, tangled in the seaweed,

wishing you were dead.

Oh little boffin, doofing up out of Love's trash can,

now you know how much you never knew.

What was it all for?

You'll find the answer to that when your own grown child

sits crying at the kitchen table, saying mom it hurts so much.

You'll reach out, try to wick away their pain, and helplessly say,

I know,

honey,

I know.

_______

for Sunday Muse #241. 

Music: Tom Waits Sea of Love

Wild Tuxedo

Wild tuxedo

giving me that give-a-shit look

careful as a politician

cold as a chain link fence in November

eyes gorgeous as turquoise earrings.

Wild Tuxedo

mother to the one that lived

Is he lazing in someone's home?

Is he by the road and nothing but bones?

There is hunger and then there is hunger.

The set-out bowl is always empty

in the morning 

when the traffic hums.

Wild Tuxedo

distrustful as a third wife

hardy as a weed

I wake up worrying about you sometimes

because

There is hunger and there is hunger.

There is the moon,

the refrigerator kicking on

the clock ticking

and offered love you spurn without a thought.

_______

Pottery Of Ancient Cultures

In your eyes,

the pottery of ancient cultures.

From your smile,

sunspots

that leave vervet monkeys sitting, perplexed

At the breath-thinness of a peasant blouse

reclining between August stars 

and the skin of your shoulder. 

They find, in every stitch and design,

a catalog of figs, and vertigo.

They are drunk

on the ferment of your lazy accent.

At the Museum of Utilitarian Wonders,

I find

the pottery of ancient cultures.

A brochure contains the beginnings of nests

for birds who do not exist--

vervets who do not exist--

drunk under a sun hidden by clouds.

I clasp ancient ornaments onto your wrists,

your throat,

your ankle,

but your body is clouds.

You cannot accept these gifts, or anything else--

Just rain,

love,

colors,
reversed images,

that do not exist except in the singular attentions

of these useless lines.

_____

A Pose Of Monkeybones

This isn't just a pose of monkeybones--
no one made of flesh ever willed a fever down,
or talked sense when fingers curled just so to make the nightstorms roll.

You might think I'm made of straw and stone,
a long-skull girl with marrow-eyes in every broken bone
so close to heart and beat and breath--
Mercy tangled in my hair, out of reach except
for the loud-strike, rain-shriek
inside these abandoned bones--
woman, monkey, open sky that shakes and moans
until there's nothing left.
_______

for Camera FLASH.

Mbira Duet

I am in your kitchen,
bigger than a bread box,
formerly sponsored by Gaddafi. 
Come on, 
get up, get up, you lazy sl--iver of early morning moonlight, you.

Look for me.
(I had a key.)
In plain sight, where everyone's eyes go sleepy.
I'm as unstable as rising dough,
follow your lips;
theirs is liturgy in language any fool can understand.

We are the two, the last two
that the local Lothario hasn't fucked. 
You, because you're out of his league--
me, because I am made from African wood that splinters in the dark
and that no sandpaper can smooth. 
The Bantu left their mark on me, as a talisman and ornamental warning.

Have you found me yet?
It's your kitchen, get it together, Princess.
In this bottle over here, the anti-msg
for rendering the over-seasoned tasteless.
Let's start over, just you and me.
Moon Dog and Moon-ette, just two girls who went wrong so many times
we became a brand, with an anthem,

rolling figure 8's together in a math our bodies translate into mbira music.
_______

for Literary Excursions With Kerry at Real Toads. 

 

 

C'mere, Sugah

C'mere, sugah.
Oh come
_
_
_
HERE,
woudja, sweetheart?

Aw, don't be like that.
Aintcha glad t'see me?

All right.
I'll just bide my time.
Sooo,
is that a good book?
Well,
ya didn't have to close it,
but I guess there's a fire or something outside that window.
Yep, something wonderful in-ter-esting.

~whistle~
~sigh~
...
...
...
Well hello there, baby.
kiss~
and
~kiss.
I sure love you a bunch too.
Feels like I ain't seen ya in donkey's years.
I said "years", not "ears."
No, I ain't saying nothing about your mama.
I like ole Jenny just fine,
you know I do!
She made you, didn't she?
(yeah, I know that's pretty cornball,
but true.)

C'mon, then.
Let's go paint the town!
_
_
_
Um, you ain't gonna get there very fast
sitting down.
Now what?
I seen tree stumps less firmly planted.
Take it easy,
I was just yanking your rope,
but how come if I say A,
you just GOT to say Z?

All the same,
I love ya so.
You'll always be my hinny honey,
and yes,
I love your singing.
You shoulda been in some sort of horse opera--
you woulda done your daddy proud.
Now can we go?
Kick up a little dust?

I love it when you walk right close.
Aw sugah.
Aw shucks.
______

for Marian's Time (the Revelator) challenge at Real Toads. I used a different Gillian Welch song, "Hard Times."

Fun facts to know and tell: a female donkey is a "jenny". When bred with a male horse, you get a "hinny".