The Silent Bird

The bird does not sing, yet you suppose your melody

swings inside her throat just waiting to burst free.

The bird does not fly, but you suppose it loves your shoulder

as if it were her Ararat, some wonder that you showed her.

Perhaps she's ill and dying, hiding everything she can.

Perhaps she curls within herself like a feathered ampersand.

Perhaps she's silent just to vex you, cruel withholding thing.

Perhaps she sings when you're not there and makes the courtyard ring.

She may have sung before you knew her, then not sung again.

Perhaps she makes of poise and pride a royal diadem.

Does she not love, or does her heart go by another name?

And if she sings, is her voice true or just legerdemain?

_________________

for Dverse Meeting the Bar--positivity through negation 

Printer's Devil

 

A printer's devil told me

(gesturing with his blackened fingers)

that the sound of your voice had been published

by moonlight on a dead crow's face.

Little starfish, I said, touching his beardless cheek,

return now to your watery home, that shell

full of mermaid-song out by the reef.

Poor Inky, no jagged cure can ever get him clean.

I returned to my clay and kiln, thinking that I might bake

some sort of Vodou plaything to give your tongue a palsy.

The waves down by the dunes offered their salt

and told me that the whole sea could be my circle. 

Of course you spoke anyway, like glue-sap in a broken bucket

from a storm-split tree tapped with a sharpened crucifix..

I'm leaving this damp-match town bursting with illiterate poets,

your half-dead friends, parroting smoke from the foundry of your good intentions.

_________

for Word Garden Word List--B Is For Bad Poetry. 

Safe House

 

Welcome to the safe house.

No one will find you here.

The ambulance is like a big rolling cotton ball, isn't it?

The siren has been modified to sound like a waterfall.

Please do not share this location with spouses or children--yours or not.   

Their tread on the white front steps would jar the keyboard of your recovery.

Meet helpers Jenny and George in their clean gray smocks. 

Yes, it's hard to tell which is which!

Many guests forget them even as they stand there smiling. 

In the parlor we have an electric fireplace

and framed Kincades on the eggshell walls.

We ask that you leave your red hats and rainbows with Susie at the door.

A few teensy tiny rules:

no weapons

no newspapers

no Facebook

no over-exertion

no stimulants

no sex

no drama

no poetry.

In a week or two, the nightmares should stop,

along with any disquieting longings or regrets. 

Non-attachment is our way.

You may even levitate, like a balloon.

If you get confused, just follow the white tape on the beige tile.

It can be difficult--even for staff! --to tell the bedrooms from the morgue.

_________

for What's Going On? "Safe". 

Music: the Pretenders Every Day Is Like Sunday

The Word Garden Word List is still HERE through Sunday! 

 

Lessons Learned In Childhood

 

My mother called mahjong pieces "Chinese tiles." 

They were a pretty mystery to me.

A symbol can be like a mute with something to say;

its tongue tied by one's own ignorance.

Gingerbread men have commonalities with real ones.

They can be sweet, or fragile,

and (some of them) smell good and draw me in.

Sometimes there is another one after this one; sometimes not.

At thirteen I was prescribed eyeglasses.

Astigmatism made everything unclear but luminous,

sending blurs of light out from their centers.

You are still unclear to me. You still send out light from your center.

A finger's width is the difference between the next stair

and a broken leg. Catch your heel

and life takes on a whole new itinerary.

There are springes everywhere, so my mother said as she laid more for me.

I couldn't trust my mother, and she taught me

not to trust myself either.

I was in love with the neighbor's purple peonies, so brief and lovely.

I am both fox and hen, and don't know how to love you.

You are Chinese tiles. I am mute. I'm sorry, and can't explain why.

________

for Word Garden Word List: Amy Lowell. 

springes = traps

Music: Steve Nicks "Talk To Me"

Waiting For April

 When I was seventeen, I set out oranges 

for turkey vultures on the glass top of a table 

with pastel yellow legs, in summer.

I said I did it because death is sweet.

Don't ever lie. Mutism is one way

to stay honest, but turning one's tongue

to a violin is another. Many early saints

were buskers, though they died stoic, silent.

What I'm trying to say is, it might snow in Falstaff

while it's 90 in Phoenix.  You might look for robins

and find peacocks, with their weird piercing call

that makes you feel suddenly faint and homesick.

I've grown slow and stiff, my hair is white

from a blizzard of mistakes and sorrows.

Surviving from March to May seems as sweet

to me as your kiss once did, but I'm cautious now,

Not like I was when you knew me, not such a fool.

I keep a .45 laid on the leather of my bible 

to test for truth, so think before you speak

because my ears are dull and dead, but I read lips.

_________

for Word Garden Word List #18 (Leonard Cohen).

Internal Injuries

I hear dead people.
1965 continues endlessly,
elms rustling in summer breeze,
baseball and Beatles cards spread on the sidewalk still,
screen doors and monarch butterflies fragile but immortal.
You can stop now
(don't stop)
you can stop
(don't)
you
(don't)
stop.

Don't listen. 
Drop the sound out.
Roll with it if you can.
This house has been on fire for decades, why panic now? 
I hear dead people,
jumped up from eternal rest or damnation
telling me what they always told me:
child, you're fucked, and it's your own damn fault.
Can I stop hearing it now?
Can I stop living
(don't stop)
or start?
(don't start with me)
or
(you)
me
(us)
stop.
STOP.

1965 continues endlessly,
elms rustling in the summer breeze. 
________

for Poem As One-Sided Conversation at Toads.

 

 

Deaf Angels

"He's an angel, not a saint." --Michael

Deaf angels aren't much for music.
No matter the beauty of the harp, 
they're oblivious
and bored.

Deaf angels aren't much for prayer.
Unaware of kneeling priests in robes,
lofty Ladies, 
loquacious Lords.

But when you find you cannot speak--
the break too ragged, raw and deep--
Deaf angels come with silent arms
and balm not found in notes nor words.
_______

For Rommy's challenge at Real Toads.

Chatterbox

I chatter constantly
inside my head,
but to you I must seem silent, as remote
as a wild animal, distant by instinct.

All day it never stops,
continuing for half the night.
How I deluge you, and myself,
though my lips stay as still as a rock in a stream.

Leave, then, shaking your head, 
thinking "why doesn't she even try?"
I do nothing but talk, confide, confess,
but even as you go, I stay feral

and shy.
_______

for Magaly's "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" prompt at Real Toads.

Still

"What matters most is how well we walk through the fire." --Charles Bukowski

The maple keys are falling, as they do every year.
I have taken to reading out in the yard,
while my new dog wanders.

My walnut tree, the one the winter nearly killed two years ago,
is green again, a home and pantry for squirrels.
It is Michigan cool, late May, but warming.

I don't dream of your body as much as I used to,
but my dreams are full of you all the same.
I line up these poems like dolls, a puppet show to please you.

Books end, dogs die, summer runs its course.
Stay, won't you, sweetheart? Call me when you can--
I will be here, spinning like a maple key, still your breezy northern girl.
______

For Play it Again, Toads. I chose Kenia's challenge to start with a line from a poet you don't like. I dislike Charles Bukowski, the idol of many. Too much booze, too much ugliness. I got the idea to write a very gentle poem about a very bold thing--making it through this life with some sort of grace.

Wandering Eye

How could I have a wandering eye,
when mine are always demure,
downcast,
almost falling into my tea like sugar cubes?

I claim nothing;
no opinion, no item, no gesture
as my own--
I borrowed this hat,
these gloves,
this face with its serenely docile expression.

However, underneath 
like a forgotten marker,
is my skull, twinned with socket-blanks
and the moths that emerge and expand by wing and instinct.

Relax, dear Master.
Everyone admires your wool suits,
your silk cravats,
and your cashmere sense of entitlement.

On the other hand,
no one sees or suspects the devouring flutter I unleash from concealment
without a word,
without fanfare,
without blinking.
_______

for Magpie #255