Pawn

 

I want to pawn my grave

but they tell me it is worthless

and want my skin instead. 

the sky meets a pickpocket

who lifts the sun and sells it on eBay.

roosters' GoFundMe falls short.

the world spins but produces no cloth.

naked world, let me know you, and love you.

it responds with acid ink on sandpaper.

I buy the sun and slaughter the roosters.

I set the world on fire but die alone.

I miss my skin but have lost the ticket.

________

Shared with Word Garden Word List--Shy Creatures

Mongrel Angel

 

A mongrel angel in the dark

who wakes the dogs who start to bark

beneath the yellow windows in the rain

she knows the words and hums the tune

for lonely rabbits on the moon

who wear their pestles on a silver chain

A mongrel angel high at noon

comes uninvited to the room

where holy flunkies serve the business crowd

she knows where all the blossoms bloom

in graveyards where they dust their broom

and common kind is simply not allowed

And the mongrel angel lives halfway from Heaven on her own

like a fish out of the water or a turtle on a stone

A mongrel angel's setting sun

is just like any other one

but dialect of night's a special rhyme

that only dogs and she can hear

a melody of atmosphere

that leaves her breathless every single time

And the mongrel angel lives halfway from Heaven on her own

like a fish out of the water or a turtle on a stone

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Cat's Cradle

To Those Dead On Public Transport

 

To those dead on public transport,

we do not judge.

Perhaps you do not know, and not knowing

is just a vacant compartment that the Clerk

Of All Knowledge fills with folded messages.

The various vacuum attachments,

marrow spoons,

foreign capitols,

all may confound and confuse.

Majestic death takes its place with these.

To those dead on public transport,

you needn't concern yourselves further

with stops,

schedules,

responsibilities,

or other petty matters.

Your destination has come to you instead.

Have no worries about your husk of flesh.

If muscles relax and give way,

water is the same whether in glass or lake;

soil the same whether in pot or prairie.

If others snicker, 

they have forgotten their own beginnings.

To those dead on public transport,

this bulb, this skin, 

this womb in which you gestated

now opens.

You emerge. 

It is not the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

You need do nothing but exist vividly,

God's bauble,

taken up,

cut and polished,

worn with pride,

shining brightly.

_________

for Sunday Muse #188

Debutantes

It's like a telephone call from the bones,

a song that sings you, whether you love it or hate it,

persistent as a blow to the head.

While all this is going on, you must smile,

set the table properly, oyster fork to the far right.

Lay a linen napkin across the mocking lie.

Walk through the funhouse to your job, 

your marriage, the gibbet of your identifying papers.

Become an object of hilarity if you finally birth yourself.

In short, do anything but this, and then

cut a rug, or your wrists, when all other options expire.

We are the girls half gone by the time we start,

Brave, gorgeous, cursed, strangers even to ourselves.

Mulier Loquitur Mortuis

Winter is coming,
like ice jammed into an envelope, 
mailed sharp to the heart of your flabby complacency.

Oh, I'm sorry, dear.
I know how you hate talk of the slaughter
which necessarily precedes your roast of beef on its platter.

Still,
something just hit the window
hard enough to dent the lead and crack the old glass.

Rev'rend on his black horse rode,
passage marked with one red rose;
He found Esther, Esther cried,
one red rose by the waterside.

Get out of bed.
It's time we talked.
Don't you find me appealing anymore, with red in my hair?

The ostler had a fine shovel,
and my last thought was of nothing in particular.
Now learn, at my insistence, the value of doing a job yourself.

You look gray,
as if all your blood had turned to smoke.
Listen to you sputtering, ridiculous, invoking your cotton-eared god.

Rev'rend on your errand rode.
Esther cried and Esther chose.
Gospel came surprisingly
in bloom and thorn blood-picked by me.
_______

for grapeling's word list at Real Toads. I used "smoke", "winter" and "slaughter".

 

Surf Blue

Do you remember
my brother's little cars with the real rubber tires?
We would load our dollie in the back of his ambulance
and leave it on the tracks.
Ding ding ding, dollie--
you think you feel bad now, just wait til old number 7 comes through.

Later, we took out your grandfather's Plymouth
with the push button automatic.
The radio played Golden Earring
and the back seat was bigger than our first apartment.
We fishtailed through those years,
and though you said you knew where we were going,
you lied just as sweet as ever.

How I loved your fingers.
There aren't enough rings in all the second hand shops of the world
to do them justice.
I remember them, and how they found their way,
slick little devils that did the trick every time.
I told you not to take that job in radiology.
I hated to see you lose those tapered beauties one by one.

Sometimes I think the only clear view comes through a cracked glass.
If I could find that Plymouth, I would sit in it
and recall how you told me I was a better kisser than any movie star.
Now, my teeth have gone soft in my head,
I live on pancakes and don't give a damn if the mail or tomorrow comes.

I want to sit on the tracks in a long white bed,
and dream of how we used to be.
The train system is run by computers now,
nobody to feel guilty if I get spun like a carousel,
an old doll in a gas tank bomb of a car,
crashing headlong to feel you restored and handsy

touching my face so tenderly
as if I were made of blown glass and what they used to call
surf blue with eggshell white.
________

for the mini-challenge at Real Toads.

 

Ms. S.'s Love Song

There are gifts and then there are gifts.
Daddy gave me mine when he let me have you,
though, honestly,
he gives me most anything I want on a silver platter.

Like the runaway train said,
it's all downhill from here, baby.
Shhh, don't speak--
you'll break the mood, like men always do.
I have plans for you.

Come with me, down to the river.
Are you feeling a little light-headed?
Having trouble keeping your feet?
Just stick with me, babe.
I'm gonna roll ya,
roll ya like your back ain't got no bones.

Here we are.
Let me run my fingers through your hair.
A little touch on the top of your head
and you know what I want--
down you go, sailor.

I love the way your eyes seem to look up at me
as your head dips,
bobs,
sinks,
sated and seaworthy,
never to be thirsty again.
_______

for Get Listed at Real Toads, with Ed Pilolla. I used "river', "break", and "downhill".

picture: Cristina Scabia of Lacuna Coil