santeria sixpence

One Fury,
One Fate,
One Muse smoking by the garden gate.

Black bird,
love bird,
one on a perch--
other in the sweet ground, buried in the earth.

Do you ever get the urge to boil up a root?
Brown on the surface--
inside, blue.

Do you ever take a mind to shake a purple gourd?
A kiss for the curious,
lies for the Lord.

One card, two cards, three cards, four--
Aunt Annie likes diamonds,
hearts turn whores.

Five cards, six cards, seven cards, eight--
gone bird and baby
by the garden gate.
_________

for grapeling's word list at Real Toads

Thoughts From A Walk In The Blue Dawn

I received a letter from my own near future,
and it said
oh,
girl,
oh.

I made a poem upon a window pane,
but I drew it
slow
so
slow.

Hurry Autumn, hurry love--
I so seldom feel beautiful at all;
I've no idea what I've been thinking of,
or who that is that
calls
and 
calls.
_____

Inconsolable

i  brought the blue up from where it sleeps--
i wrapped the deep bleed around my hands and swung it.

this is my heart,
a little flag in the wind.

this is what i do when i turn loose the words--
out of my way, motherfuckers.

i know how to make love to the words,
the words i drew out of the sharp edge.

that room?
they loved me. 
for twenty minutes,
i lured them inside my oanga bag.

after, they say
damn, girl, damn.
some of them say
do you do a lot of good drugs?

i'm cleaner than a bible salesman's virgin daughter,
but i feel everything seventy times seven.
every woman who ever ran her teeth across my heart
helped me write this shit you see before you now.

baby, i'm not crazy,
nor stoned nor privy to the whispers of the next world--
just
inconsolable.
_______

Isadora Gruye challenged us to share our old standby break-up song, the one we curl up on the floor in the dark with when things go bad. Mine is "Inconsolable" by Jonatha Brooke, here sung by a woman named Lena whose version I like even better than Jonatha Brooke's own. I have riffed on the line "baby I'm not crazy, just inconsolable." Izy wanted us to take it in a new direction. I've tried. If this ain't good enough, girl, kiss my happy ass.

Break The Sugar Stick

Break the sugar stick,
Spice the thorn;
Split the night bloom
Two, then four.

Your kiss is the cat with the blood-bird held--
Your promise is the Gypsy with the well-oiled wheel;
Press me, honey, to the walls of the well,
Where the brick-water sweats and the rot-fruits peel.

Sewer flowers vased
On the table by the bed;
Six red hens
On the white sheets, dead.

Break the sugar stick,
Spice the thorn;
Love me for a little,
Then never any more.
______

this one is your fault, Brendan. you got me thinking about the undead.

Chamber Duet

See how I love you, darling,
Risking my favorite gray ankle boots to go skittering down the rotten-leaf path to the marsh,
Wearing my delicate little gloves and an old-lady cardigan against the chill damp?

Don't try to hand me any shit about how you love sailors now,
And how they float their bones up from salt water to this place,
To sing shanteys to you--
Here, where you percolate in the shallows like a Quadroon turned to wax.

My frail sweetheart,
Look at you, what's become of you.
There was a time when you could char the moon's pale edges simply by looking up;
Don't I know it better than anyone?
There was an age--was it sixteen?--
When a lack of you was a dearth I couldn't endure.
Now, if I move you at all,
It is with the edge of a cypress branch,
To roll you like a dismal log in a fire of rot.

We really cared once, you know it's true;
But these days we are sophisticated--
Everything must be de rigueur and scripted to within an inch of its life.
Go ahead, I release you for all time--
Be the anima for your little sailors as they dance out from sharks' mouths and surround you,
As stultifying as ease.

I will use tiny silver clippers to trim the soulful timbre from the cello,
Rendering it a balsa fiddle;
A repository of false notes and refined choking,
A waterside abomination,
Our love song evermore.
_____

for Monday Melting Week 2. I had to use the following words: timbre, derigueur, percolate, marsh, char, damp, frail, dearth, wax and anima. 

The Sarah Winchester Mystery House

I want to meet my love at the Sarah Winchester Mystery House
Deep in the ripe plum fruit
Of a dark purple evening.

I want her to french me into another world,
Half way up a stairway to nowhere.
I want her hands in my hair;
I want her to ride my thigh like a bareback Indian.

I want to fall through a wall onto prairie grass.
I want my love in soft leather and buckskin,
And handy with a rifle.

If I could have these things,
I would open a door onto thin air--
I would turn around, half out of the Sarah Winchester Mystery House,
And smile at her

With one leg dangling behind me in the darkness,
And the other called, as if by seance,
To wrap itself around the slender small of her back
Like a summoned spirit.
_____


for She To Whom I Am Slavishly Devoted.

Love Poem

Somebody say--
How old are you anyway?
I'm thinkin' I'm
A hunnert and five, my last birthday.

Well well, they say--
With they fingers together, steepled up;
You ain't exactly young.
You ain't no fresh pup.

Some things are ridiculous on their face--
Old women in love,
Poodle dogs who dance in place.

Listen mister, I said--
Have you ever kissed a bullet?
Or left yourself for dead?
Because I have.

And when you kiss what kills you,
It's some kind of
Deep blue voodoo--
I dare you to tell me that I lie.

Tucked under a crow's wing,
I left that place.
It was ridiculous on its face,
And now the branch burns under me when I sing.


I kiss another woman if I want to,
And I stand where I need to be.
I wear a gris-gris made from wolf's hearts--
They don't live long,
But fearlessly.

_______


Thank you to Hedgewitch for letting me use her gris-gris. Thank you to Coal Black for spiritual assistance.

Photograph: Sharon Stone in The Quick And The Dead