En Graved (A Love Poem)

 look close--

here is your engraved invitation

the Hubble at your disposal.

A long bone

and rose thorn comprise my stylus--

the blasted dust of the moon we thought so lovely

is wounded into an imago

a blighted imbecile twin, 

love lost and lunatic.

_________

for Quadrille Monday "Engrave Your Name Across My Heart"

Image:  from the excellent indie film Another Earth

Music: Til Tuesday The Other End (Of the Telescope)

Iris Indigo

 

Iris Indigo used to sing on shore and shipboard

with the voice given her by some broken, incandescent god

now and in the hour of her death, amen. 

Loved by the moneyed and shanghaied, 

tuxedoed and tommyrotters,

Iris Indigo

indiglorious

into everything,

indi gone. 

_______

for dverse quadrille monday "indigo"

Music: Melody Gardot La Llorona

Why So Pale & Wan, Fond Lover?

 I'm not a vampire, silly.

No more bewitching than your auntie's 

freestanding lamp,

all hat and flat feet.

Yes, I favor red

lace, a little lipstick

and I'm Irish pale

but I only bite muffins.

Just a harmless mouse,

shy of cats and mirrors.

________

for Dverse Quadrille #208

Music: The Motels Icy Red

Chorus

 Our Lady of the Golden Voice

who makes the shepherds howl

and leaves the clerics' eyes all moist

then gifts them salted towels

Oh Lady fair, oh Lady cruel

riding a treble clef

admit us to your Music School

to chisel loose each breath.

____

for quadrille Monday

hosted by Linda Lyberg

Crackerjack For Lancelot

 

I set out Crackerjack for Lancelot,

candy apples for his mount--

licorice for dancing devils

too numerous to count.

I bake pie for the Lorelei

and salt water taffy for the sailors--

honey for all my winning ways

and bitter ale for my failures.

_______

for Dverse quadrille "candy"

Music: Lindi Ortega Fall Down Or Fly

Seventeen

 The summer I was seventeen,

I read The Bell Jar

Howl

A Coney Island of the Mind

and Lost Weekend.

The neighbor's garden had

decorative bells

hung above the river stones.

Every tongued bell

is keen to find language

for (w)ringing out its pain.

_____

for dverse quadrille for whom the bell tolls

music: judy collins the bells of rhymney

Night Work

The earth is flat

there, where the lily of the valley grows

beneath my window.

Some wandering cat

or creature made sleepy by the dawn, chose

to rest there on the stems bent low.

It's crop circle night work

left by visitors

that were. 

________

For Dverse quadrille "work", hosted by JadeLi. 

Music; James Taylor "You Can Close Your Eyes"

Newton's Cradle

 In evening,

you spoke to me through the wall.

"I love you."

Don't.

It hurts when I laugh.

Tears, like sweat on a glass in summer.

Night, a smothering shadow.

In morning, diminished,

I love you as babies love,

desperate, red-faced, screaming.

_______

for Dverse Quadrille # 158 hosted by Linda Lyberg. Theme: "morning"

This is a Newton's Cradle: 

Music: George Michael "Tonight"

7 banal lines

 That spring the sky stayed gray, 

a grandfather dozing in a worn chair.

Our tongues turned to cotton,

our hearts ran out like tea from an upset cup.

It was the season of the broken brick,

the crushed bloom,

and the stunned child, gaping.

______

for Dverse quadrille: "season"

We Are Not A Muse

 Muse on this, motherfucker.

We, down in the poetic trenches with our wet feet,

sniping critic-rats,

and The Angry Jealous with their ridiculous trebuchets lobbing 

plague corpses of crappy fauxku at our ducked heads

don't want to hear about it. 

Incoming!

intriguing

interesting

smiles.

__________

a quadrille for Dverse. 

Nutshell

 In a nutshell, meat and wings

and infinite other disturbing things

that rise and rule with iron fist

the little nest that crowns your kiss

Curse the summer, curse the tree

that swelled such nutshells patiently

gardener saw, gardener knew

even as those nutshells grew.

______

written for quadrille monday at dverse "crown"

image: syd barrett, a founding member of pink floyd whose life was derailed by mental illness. However, this poem is about whatever you think it's about.

Oreithyia

 

I've caught this bird

with a thorn under its wing

and laid it by your beauty

the same as everything

I've ever brought you.

I've wrought this bell

from soapstone green

with its tongue struck mute

the same as anything

that's ever loved you.

____

for Quadrille #137 at dverse.

Swans & Roses

Eleven swans with one
voice brought a warning,
delivered in a dream.

"Your love is sick,
dying. Her bones are 
stems. Her hair, thorns."

Each swan carried a
bloom. I followed, eleven
miles. Behold, my love:

In the earth, stems.
On the earth, roses.
_______

A quadrille for Wednesday Muse.

Maison D'oiseau

Here is the house with rivers for walls.
Mine is the body with voices for skin.
In your eyes, setting suns and cycling stars.

Mine is the port with a shore made of wind.
Docks are easy, moorings leaden;
morning birds fill every tree. 
______

for quadrille #59--cycle

Alibi

I had a rock-solid alibi
and a gift for doubletalk and not losing the thread.
I don't do that stuff.
I'd rather not (again.)
I'd rather die.
I'm the talking dead.

Then, your eyes.
Your hand.
My carefully crafted alibi gone,
turned to sand.
______ 

for quadrille #45.

 

The Hope Here

The hope here is
that assholes in tin hats will stop being assholes,
and that careless or caustic or even well-meaning assholes
will stop breaking hearts, not to mention bones and buildings.

Don't spread violence, worthlessness,
smack-talk, gunfire or needless sadness.
Here. I'll start.
_____

A quadrille for De.

Upstairs, And The Fine Things Kept There

Don't dream.
Don't sleep.
Not yet.

Did you like dinner?
It was simple,
made from ordinary things.
A little pasta, sauce, and spice.

I brushed garlic on the bread.
I felt your eyes
and the warmth from the oven.

Relax. 
Lace our fingers.
Stay.
_______

for this.

someone once played this song, "Dreams", for me and told me I had a "totally amazing mind." But as another song by another singer has said, I'm just another silly girl.