Dreams of Shiva

 

There is a thing I wanted so much--

a thing always denied.

The evil and the angelic made a pact

and placed this desire in my heart

like a ticket hidden in a boot

worn by someone desperate in a station.

I tell people this desire is over--

that I visit its grave on holy days

to leave woven weeds,

but there is no grave because it is not dead--

only paralyzed like an aster when there is no wind,

no sun, no moon, no garden.

There is someone coming up the stairs

to hurt my heart, and they are so lit with beauty,

such an ordinary marvel.

The hallway floor is wood, the light there yellow in autumn.

It is morning, but the birds are mute.

My heart stops, the visitor walks past, the world ends,

but no one notices. There is no fool like an old fool,

no desire that cannot exalt or destroy,

over and over, in silence, like Shiva in a recurring dream. 

______

Third Marriage, Seaside.

 

Go down to the greenhouse and gather the blooms,

then scatter them all in separate rooms--

the rose on the grate of the fireplace cold

to lie there and die there as we grow old.

The arrangements are odd and enigmatic,

the occupants frail and most asthmatic

afflicted with allergies, fear and despair

made worse by the stale and fetid air.

Though we gasp our devotion like fish in a boat

and confess our passion by rite and rote,

we're as blinkered as babes, as clear as bells

as we rise from the drink on our half-assed shells.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--First Love

Love Song For Donny

 He calls himself a cheerer upper

that drooling simp,

that cretinous, sludge-blooded

syphilitic pimp.

"Come on get happy

and make it snappy

or just shovel shit

if your hair is nappy."

We've had enough

of fatty with the golf cart

with the cabinet he got

on sale at Walmart.

The baby in chief

is just illusion super sized

whose stupid cryto coin

has 'em all hypnotized.

He's filling his diaper

at his ghost town parade

afraid that we're hip to

his strongman charade.

He's a crying, crapping, superannuated fake

with his spineless, goggle-eyed, parroting rummies

who will blow themselves up like fingerless rubes--

his red-hatted cosplay crash test dummies.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--The Catcher In the Rye

Oasis

 

Well ducks, it was the place to gather in those days.

There were ceiling fans that made one think 

that Baron Von Richtofen might fly in at any moment. 

I wondered whether a man wearing coveralls had to climb

 up on a ladder each morning

to heave the blades into motion.

They served a concoction of fruit, gin, crushed ice,

the low notes from Hernando's Hideaway, and who knew

what else. It tasted like children's party punch

but made our high perches start to  pitch

on the rough seas beneath our jelly legs.

Down some white stone stairs, there was a blue pond

someone had stocked with mallards, as green and gold

as my jewelry. They were free to fly

but could never leave--the desert

would have turned them to cardboard.

We slept with scorpion nets. One night I dreamt

that a handsome man in a uniform of water lay with me,

told me my hair was good rope from India, and

that I had been a snake charmer

in a previous life. He kissed me and it stung.

Ah, love, there you are looking at me through your new

telescope, your young face behind the lens like an egg.

I gave up gin, and traveling, and most other things long ago.

Now I'm talking to you with my bird beak,

free to choose but forbidden to leave

except via packing box, to be sent by air mail over the dunes

to the oasis bar, c/o my younger self, cash on delivery, payable

in florins, code phrase "wing walker." The Baron will be there waiting.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Across the River and into the Trees

Music: Hernando's Hideaway

While The Devil Sleeps

 

Even the devil has to sleep some time,

dozing by the inferno, daring a red-lipped smile.

Let's dance, though the downstairs neighbors bang the broomstick.

Let's wear sequins and furs, hats as big as platters,

and take the train with our big brown bags.

Put an air on, try an accent, we're beautiful don't you see?

We will land like birds on a fountain in a square

to sing ourselves as Whitman would, while the devil sleeps. 

--------------

for Sunday Muse #143, where I am hosting. Join us!

Intention

 

Back then, I hung lanterns on my heart,

kept my own counsel

and spoke Romany in front of the marks.

I appeared 18 or 80

depending on the phase of the moon, 

or the shape  of my dreams.

I kept The Fool and The Tower up my black lace sleeve

and slept with other girls

thinking to cure my fever and my thirst.

Now a young man comes,

his mute-bird girlfriend behind a pace

with her patience and frybread face. 

I long ago burnt my heart down to nothing,

fueled with equal measures bravery and turpentine.

So, why does he make a visible ghost of me?

Do I wail for wanting to touch him,

or because my unringed fingers die behind my folded arms,

cursed by years?

Once, I hung lanterns on my heart,

and spun spells that only worked when I didn't care.

I mixed brown sugar with oleander

and wrapped my sorrow in a million words.

Young man, these are not crows, they are flying ash.

I want you and cannot say it,

but you came here with intention of unraveling old spells

and have done that

fiercely well.

__________

for The Sunday Muse #126, where I am hosting.

image at top by Brooke Shaden.

Merciless

Listen, she is merciless as a Saracen.

My poor heart jumps for its den at the sight of her,
leaving me a little breathless,
wobbly, tongue-tied, what a mess.

'Scuse me Miss, what lovely teeth you have,
pretty maids all in a row,
the better to slay me with.
Her voice is cream to the cat, I'll fall off the fence.
dazzled and stupid, upside down on the ground.

She wears tortoiseshell glasses,
she's a rocket scientist distant as Mars
because I am shy, uncertain, starstruck, clumsy,
knocked over by the fragrance she wears,
gone from austere bookworm 
to clueless spaz
with no escape except into the stacks to recover.

Like a ninny I return to the shrine,
her reference desk lair
where I hope to inherit a word or a smile
to check out and take home and keep
like an overdue volume.
That's when I'll go back
and say to my librarian crush,
"Hi, I'm your fool, can you help me?" 
And hope, like an idiot, that she can.
________

for Skylover's word list.

Rotten Fruit

Here is your rotten fruit
taken from a gorgeous vine--
the lush one, the lovely one
in its season--mine.

Roll the dough, crimp the crust,
spoon the rotten fruit inside--
bake it well, then go to hell
where with these sweets you may abide.
______

for Poetry Pantry #358.

 

Desire, In Tones of Orange & Rust

Hi, pay attention, it's only me--
the steampunk librarian of Born-to-Lose Street
writing down alternate endings on the backs of envelopes,
the backs of surrogate lovers, the flip side of receipts...

Here's the door of my bedroom, six inches off the floor,
all my darlings trip out and fall like leaves.
Orange is the color that us Irish women love, it goes with green
and so we spend eternities dropping our flame-hair from the high branches of trees.

I never said I was stable,
or nice,
or worth the trouble,
all I said was you would get something rare.

Enough bullshit. I've trimmed my lips back with a peeler from a kitchen drawer,
until now I can only speak truth and all my old popularity is gone.
I'm the futuristic poet chick of By-Invitation-Only Twilight Bower,
and my dreams are in tones of wild and wood: berry-red, leaf-jade, rust and fawn.

I've been through men,
been through women,
been through solitude and I like that best;

But when I saw the way the light landed soft upon your cheek,
I fissured, I trembled in spite of myself, and thought, "Could there yet be
a fire so patient as to unwind itself at last, 
late-born (poor fool), late-kept and late-blessed?"
______

For Kerry's Dylan challenge at Real Toads. I was inspired by the song "I Want You."

 


 

Letter To An Old Love

I have arrived here, no wiser.
I'm sorry, a million times over,
but for what? All and nothing.

I meant well.
I was hopeful.
Weren't you?

Every beginning is a poison tree.
I know this and still I
tend each one as a favored child
and wear the blooms in my hair like an ingenue.
________

For Kerry's 55 Plus at Real Toads. The "plus" is to write with your favorite tearjerker song in mind. Here's mine:

 

CBU

Maude Millicent Rosevear, generally considered pleasant and quite the beauty,
sent her hopes off, by mail, in 1955.
Consider her surprise when they return to her in 2015. 

Maude, now aged seventy five,
nearly trips over the parcel while walking out of her door
on her way to the pharmacy for her numerous prescriptions.

"Non-standard surcharge," states one of the rubber stampings.
(That business with Alice, at college, in 1959?)
The postal system cares about her package. The plastic wrapping says so.
Nonetheless, they have returned it.

"Postage due", "Addressee Unknown", "Unclaimed" all on the side.
Bent, frail, living in a mother-in-law apartment attached to her son's house,
Maude supposes the return of her hopes was inevitable, 
but it didn't feel that way when she sent them. 

Maude goes back inside and sits down to compose a letter--
--an old fashioned paper letter--
to the Unabomber in prison. 

"Dear Teddy," she writes, "I finally understand."
Perhaps this one will get through, she thinks.
Perhaps he will even answer, and if he does, 
she must be sure to be the first one to the mailbox, and to not lose her key.
_______ 

for Get Listed at Real Toads. I used "prison", "mail", "inevitable", and "system".

CBU--Cluster Box Unit, a freestanding outdoor multiple delivery receptacle for mail.

CBU-55--cluster bomb fuel air explosive.