A Taste of Honey

 

I'd like to say I understand

and forgive as in the carpenter's command.

The once-lovely loaf has gone green in my hand;

the crows will have it now.

It's such a feeling to be living at the dawn

with new love in some contented Avalon,

but these things cannot go on and on.

They shy and die away. 

Around your arm, a snake arrives

and I see your face reflected in its eyes.

It speaks one word--the word is "compromise."

It turns your heart to smoke.

I'd like to say it's all all right

and I can't remember anything I dream at night

but my bedside vase holds blooms gone dead and white.

They wave like conquered kings.

And so I'll say--no word at all.

Both the dawning and the dimming hold a sudden fall.

The gods we placed our faith in don't return our call.

"A taste of honey" is their lazy joke. 

____________________

for Desperate Poets "Lonelytown"

 

Snowblind Jane

 

I have thought of the gray cat for years now,

though the gray cat thinks of me

no more than a gray cloud would,

or a window pane,

or a key chain.

I leave my life in a dish for the gray cat to find,

but the gray cat is gone

like yesterday's breath.

Who knew I could hurt like this?

If I drop the dish, it doesn't even shatter.

The gray cat's main concern is the moon

and garbage and gray cats and food.

I was sick once,

and became more beautiful.

The fever fell in love with me, poor thing.

Outside myself at last, I hover,

asking what's wrong.

"Bring me my gray cat," I whisper, crying like a child.

Other Me laughs,

says you'll never come back

and were never gray,

                           never gray,

                                      never gray,

but black, dear, black.

______

shared with Sunday Muse #243. 

image at top by Jocelin Carmes

music: Once Blue Now That I've Disappeared

Nurse to the Water

photo by Jeanloup Seiff

 I am nurse to the Water,

Moon in a bowl at its bedside.

It looks back at me as if to say, "I am here,

deep and permanent; I will always stay,"

but its language is Leaving and every movement

is a perpetual going-away. 

I am bride to the Lake Grass

expending itself in a season's rising.

silent and thin, the Water its artist's garret.

It finds me neither interesting nor surprising

as I see to its unbordered house,

my face a familiar detail that passes. 

Are you dying, Water, a Gypsy in love with sand--

the sand in love with and holding the Cattails?

I make my rounds on the wooden walkway,

Child of trees the Lake Grass envies.

Death beneath my feet, mercy at my hand

I am the Double-Spirit who must be her own comfort

and work by Night, the sister-ghost of Day.

________

for The Sunday Muse #237. 

Music: Roseanne Cash Seven Year Ache 

Love Lock

I have kept you in jars of glass
blown from my own body.
I have kept you in photographs that swam 
and emerged from shallow night pools.

There is a blue cord connecting us,
an Arctic fissure calling with its constant lure.
I wake from dreams stunned, immobile,
a beat behind your false sunrise.

There is a bridge you don't believe in,
where I wait, lighting bonfires that burn the boards I stand on.
There is a lock and the looped chain future,
with only one key, in the palm of your hand.

As I turn to smoke, you turn to stone
where terns wheel and scream their Gypsy fortunes.
I become a bird as I fall, forgiving us both, 
in awkward semaphore I hope you'll understand.
______

for Sunday Muse # 95 where I am hosting.

Blue Swans, Blue Stars

He said I was blue swans, blue stars,

a painted cup on a sill, reflected  lights in the rain.

I said I am a burning book, cinders, char. 

He said I was blue swans, blue stars.

I said I am a loosened stone, gravel, tar.

He whispered, honey and  hemlock sing the same.

He said I was blue swans, blue stars,

a painted cup on a sill, reflected lights in the rain. 

_________

day 17

 

213B

In this wing, on this floor, in this room ("my" room)
I assume she must be a woman,
though I'm not sure and
don't care.

She is wound and stitched like a baseball.
She has soared, and fallen,
rolled and stopped.
She is Icarus, that precious dumb-ass, with hawk-heart and glider balsa.

Put this on her (his?) chart:
I love her. All of my poems, scratched out left-handed through a
fog of medications, are fragments of the cosmos,
stanzas of burst confetti stars,
and oh,
oh,
how I do go on.

All night, she alternates between coma and suffocation,
drawing moth-nurses at 3 a.m. to the light that is her.
They coo, stick, shock and revive her,
and though stumbling residents up to their eyeballs in vending machine coffee hold the paddles,
it is the nurses who coax her back like sirens on some rocky shore.

She is Ulysses. She is Gina Lollobrigida, Madonna and Sylvia Plath.
How can I sleep in such a crowded room, which expands like a heart
with her every dream, her every sigh?

Dawn comes, and the murder of dark birds that is her family arrives.
They cock their heads and strut along the top of the divider.
"Are you going to finish that?
The jello?
The July issue of Redbook?
Life itself?" 

If I could handle weaponry right now I would scatter them,
but a pen is all I have--
that, and the raw, almost painful devotion I have come to have for her.
Doctors and friends shake their heads.
"You have to want to get well." 

Oh mercy, look at me. 
If she lay her beautiful bandaged head on my breast,
I would grit my teeth and not scream;
I would pet her and whisper to her like a velvet bell in the House of the Holy Concubines
and then I would pass out, from joy and pain.

They want to transfer me to another floor, to a place
--they say--
where I can get the type of care a woman like me needs.
They talk to me as if I were crouched on a ledge, twenty floors above the parking lot and threatening to jump,
but I am simply in love. Is that so hard to understand?

(End note, written during a break by Cheryl Durban, R.N.)
Patient transferred to psych this morning, but left behind these notebooks full of uncommonly beautiful poems. The roommate's name was on the first page, but roommate is PVS and family says the books aren't hers and to throw them away. Alert janitorial; I can't be the one to do it.)

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. 

 

My Cat Child

My cat child
brings order where there was none.
Let's not talk about the walnut shell of my womb,
empty birthplace of dust.
Let's talk about my cat child, proud with powers, handy with struts.

Now, listen--
I have forgotten all about you.
I've heard that I was in love once, but who knows?
Show me the evidence; I'll yawn elaborately, and my cat child will agree
that such stuff is dull in the extreme.
Dead fish, on the other hand, become more riveting every minute.

You would not have understood my cat child.
At least, that's my foggy instinct about it.
You would have objected to the damage, the piss and the fleas.
The rumor is, cats were royal once,
and I need the reflected glory and the chance to sleep during the day.

Right now, my cat child is away.
She is hungry for mice, songbirds, or someone's leg.
Me, I don't eat anymore, can't recall why I ever did--
I remember nothing, value nothing, aspire to nothing. 

But once,
The feel of my mouth closing gently over the curve of your soft lower lip
seemed such an urgent thing,
like warm waves for mermaids,
a place I would do anything to get to.
Yes once,
the sight of your dark hair sent warm honey over my heart,
my belly,
my sex, 
and everywhere, my love, from my skin to the stars.

Now, though,
I have forgotten all that.
What were we talking about? I have no idea.
Now there is only the glare of afternoon
and the magnificence of my cat child who has given me nine lives--
none of them worth a damn,
all as dead in the mouth as a finch with a broken neck.
_______         
     

Love Poem w/ Wolves

wolves
understand how your body
can sustain their body,
but wolves
have no restraint.

wolves
--these wolves, my wolves--
are as lonely as a motherless girl.
wolves can sing,
and by singing,
become smoke around the moon.

wolves
take my heart and leave moonbeat:
you, you, you.
i never trespass,
and i am a fool.
______

for flash 55 at Toads.

In Autumn

In Autumn, when my love, my unparticular love
with a dozen faces was leaving--as she is always leaving--
in Autumn, when my heart is forever about to fall--but never falls--
I bought the scent of the season of endings, like an acolyte believing.

Blue, blue, songs are like tattoos, as the lady said.
In Autumn I coccoon myself wrapped in pages where I hope to find
the Neruda or the Dickinson that will assuage this feeling
that seeps like leaf-smoke through my dreams, my grief, my mothy mind.

Now, it is rain-green June, and the vines climb outside my window
as if they saw God above them, or hungry devils below.
My heart is easier when the light is longer, though solitude is still solitude;
darkness waits as it always waits, though I love to fool myself just now, just so.

And my Knight in his armor, plucked from a rank of defenders
off the shelf at Target? He is still here, stoic and ready, aromatic and constant.
It is always Autumn inside him, a high wind residing unseen behind his pose.
Together we make two seasons, skeletal, but telling each other we are verdant,

Each filling the indifferent air with our manufactured ode;
me ever the lady and pregnant, hefting that bale, hauling that load.
______

Karin Gustafson over at Real Toads, urges us to write an ode to the quotidian. I can't imagine many things more quotidian than a can of air freshener. She suggested looking around at one's desk, and my eyes landed on my dear and treasured Woodside Library can of Glade scent. Leather & oak, it says on the side. So, I put my hair up in a bun so tight it makes my eyes cross, donned my glasses, and began shushing people so that i could write this poem.

The line about songs being like tattoos is from the Joni Mitchell song "Blue", written by her.

Fun fact to know and tell: women have a keener sense of smell than men. It's science!

 
 
 

The Ghost Who Made Love To You

The ghost who made love to you
did it on the sly.

How many times did he see me reach for you?
How many times did your body turn to crows and scatter,
each black dot turning back to look me in the eyes?

The ghost who made love to you knew it wasn't instinct that drove you.
He lived, then died, biding his time.

I was candy in a ribbed paper cup,
dark and bitter, but not dark and bitter enough.

The ghost who finally won you knew it wasn't sweetness you wanted--
not fineness,
not pleasure,
not even love.

I am a summer aster,
someone else's favorite bloom;
bone china on the teak wood in a citrus-scented room.

And you, my last, my favorite love?
You have a man, the ghost, the one you chose;
the dust, the light, the moon.
________

the watercolor of asters is by Olga Sternyk, found on her weheartit.com page.

 

Famous

Stevens becomes famous.
This fact leaves me a little bit cross-eyed with wonder,
as I have known him all of my life and he has always just been Stevens.

Stevens did not enter this mortal coil riding a golden chariot.
He did not emerge from the sea, fully-formed.
He did not used to say things like "mortal coil",
but now he does,
and he's got me saying them, too.

Listen, he used to bury his army men in the sandbox,
using a yellow plastic bulldozer.
He used a space alien figure for the preacher.
Waggling the alien in his hand, he would make it say,
"Private Pumpkin is dead. Blah-dee-la, church stuff, amen."
He would mash down the grave with a flat stone,
giving it a few whacks for good measure.

Then he would dig up Pvt. Pumpkin, toss him in the air,
and hit him into the neighbor's yard with a baseball bat.
"I'm Kirk Gibson!" he would crow,
but he was just Stevens.
Now he is famous.

In those days, my favorite thing was my horse ranch set.
If I ignored Stevens in favor of feeding my ponies grass from the lawn,
he would grab one of them and make loud noises,
so that the pony sounded horribly flatulent.
This could go on for some time,
until we were both laughing.

Today, Stevens sends a car to pick me up.
I was hoping the chauffeur would be female, 
wearing a snappy uniform and cap, but nooOOooo.
It is some silent Asian guy.
There is a wet bar in the back.
I don't drink.
I make one of Stevens's old fart noises, long and drawn out.
The driver's eyes flick back, just for a moment,
and I give him my best what-are-YOU-looking at? stare.
We non-famous must do what we can,
in order to avoid total invisibility.

I have worn heels, hose, a faux fur and a pillbox hat.
Yes, I am propping myself up.
It's a nice retro look; the more like his mother I am,
the more he'll hate it.
He'll give me some cut-offs and a tee shirt of his wife's to put on,
and we'll play Jenga for half the afternoon,
until the CNN interviewer rings
and Stevens has to take the call.

Maybe I should have married some corporate hotshot
and cranked out some kids.
I'd have a club membership,
and a fucking race horse.
Instead, I'm an available boho lesbian poet chick
with two books that never sell, 
and an extensive collection of stuffed toy raccoons.

Fear me, World.
I am a little cursor blinking hopefully on the screen of life.
Sitting there in Stevens's wife's weekend clothes,
I wonder what it would be like to matter,
to be famous,
to burn brightly, if briefly, upon this mortal coil.

Right then, Stevens comes back,
and he sits on the ottoman in front of me.
He takes my hands in his,
and his look says that he has read my mind,
seen my melancholy,
heard the lowdown blues of my dinky little heart.
He makes a long, operatic farting noise,
and then I am laughing
and telling him
that he was born for fame, 
as surely as Kirk Gibson, or the Transformers,
and he kisses the top of my head with his famous lips.
_______