Mount Pinatubo

 There's a thing, some sort of

eruption

on my skin

and it

vibrates

 

every time the autobus bounces

and the chickens flutter

as if, dreaming, they are back in their shells

desiring

rebirth

 

as eagles or raptors or some undreamt-of symbol

rising

through the roof of the autobus.

 

There is a blemish,

some sort of eruption

on my skin and boiling beneath Mount Pinatubo.

 

The day is hot,

and I am dizzy,

as we go around the curve

on this mountainside which has no

guard rails

and never did.

Freezing Rain On A February Evening

inside, the pages, outside, the ice

outside, the night, here sweet delight

inside the tale, outside rages

a frozen fall of rattling white

playing out on facing stages

outside, the ice, inside, the pages.

_______

a sparrowlet

with a nod to William Blake's

Auguries of Innocence

for Dverse MTB

hosted by Laura Bloomsbury

Music: The Doors

End of the Night

 

The Mournful Crow

 

Waterfall, Sierra Madre, Philippines

If you want to find God, you can go by rail

or catch a jeepney, repaired a thousand times

and driven by a madman with a rosary on the mirror.

Tell him you seek the Divine and be certain

that he does not misconstrue your meaning.

You go down General Luna street to the place

where the Moon and Mars both must bow

to the great glittering of the Creator's face.

When you arrive, look for the Indian Laurel tree

where a crow has come down the backbone

of the Sierra Madre to wait here for you.

He knows you have lost much, your child, your home. 

The Sierra Madre crow can offer only baubles,

still-warm bits of pan desal bread, and his wise mein.

He is here, like the church of San Agustin,

as mournful as the Christ, as wounded, as kind.

Go inside, where adobe bricks contain time itself,

and the Spanish artifacts reconcile gold with rust.

There you will find Dibella, Alberoni, majesty and peace.

Outside, the kind crow, the Philippine sky, the laurel trees.

__________

Written for Word Garden Word List--Full Dark, No Stars. When I was 20 or 21, I visited San Agustin Church in Manila. If there is a place in the world that is truly God's House, then San Agustin must surely be it. 

Music: Kate Bush This Woman's Work 

Maury Wills

 

When I see the blackbirds and sparrows 

                                          speeding low in the sky

                                          ahead of a storm,

They remind me of a childhood summer

                                         and Maury Wills, the

                                         stolen base king.

I remember my father's barber crowing at the tv,

                                       "What a crackerjack!"

                                       as I waited in a chair, feet dangling.

When I see the red squirrel take over the feeder

                                      despite being smaller,

                                       I think of Maury Wills beating the odds

and the throw to second.

He disrupted the pitcher, catcher, and fielders

                                    like the neighbor cat in the ground ivy

                                    sure to pounce, just a matter of when.

His feet were his fortune, raising the dust sliding in

                                     on legs purple with dreadful bruises

                                      and red with rash, the Dodgers' captain

doing whatever it took.

When I see the grackle strutting with its gotten peanut

                                  I think of Maury Wills'  bright jewelry--

                                  the Hickock Belt, MVP and World Series rings.

The resourceful chipmunk makes me wonder, what is it like

                                to be smaller, quicker, cheeks stuffed

                                 while the circling hawk goes hungry?

Then I realize that I already know these things, even as

                                the years steal on me and I grow slower

                                sitting in my sanctuary, watching the action.

_________________

For Word Garden Word List--Mary Oliver. 

Process notes: Maury Wills is a lifelong favorite of mine, first for his baseball skills, and later for other things as well. He grew up in the projects in Washington DC and had no idea a black kid could hope to play in the majors until a Senators player named Jerry Priddy showed up at his local diamond to talk to the kids playing ball there. Wills never forgot it. Too small to be a slugger, he learned to switch hit and to use his speed, a forgotten weapon in baseball in an era of burly bashers.

   It was a long road to the big show for him, but when he finally got his chance, he ran with it (pun intended!). He went on to become captain of the Los Angeles Dodgers, break Ty Cobb's single season stolen base record, win an MVP award in 1962 and the Hickok Belt for sportsman of the year across all sports. He even made numerous appearances on television variety shows, playing the banjo--typical of him to choose such an instrument. 

   When his baseball career ended, and everything he had worked so hard to excel at was over, things changed. A girlfriend introduced him to cocaine, and Wills fell down, all the way down, into full-blown addiction. It took time, but once again the tenacity and drive that served him in baseball served him again in recovery and like me, he lived sober for the rest of his days. Maury Wills lived by his own lights, found great success his own way, and beat the devil to finish up on a high note. 

   I have tried here to combine Mary Oliver's eye for the everyday wonder of the natural world with the story of a childhood hero, Maury Wills. 

Music: Tracey Chapman Fast Car

Baseball Game In The Prison Yard

 There is a ballgame in the prison yard.

A silver dollar stands on its edge on the gallows

and shivers with every hammer stroke.

Hit it and walk free.

An eagle perches on the crossbeam,

worrying at the rope. All the batters are blind

and in terrible slumps. 

In the morning if the rope snaps, you'll see the afternoon.

John Baal, the Babe Ruth of the Big House

swings hard and misses; the earth wobbles

and Krakatoa blows. 

Cigarette, prisoner? Blindfold? 

For my last meal, I request all my past mistakes

and they are served on a cracked plate. 

The eagle is fascinated with its shine and my Morse.

I yell "Pull!" and sling the plate through the bars. 

A home run,

the first in years,

hits it and it blows.

See the eagle and the white shattered stars.

See the runner circling like a constellation.

One way or the other, I will leave this prison tomorrow

like a three-run shot.

________

For Desperate Poets "Desperate Oracles." 

I drew one card from my Medicine Cards-- #1, the Eagle. 

I drew another from my Baseball Tarot--major arcana XII the Slump, analogous to the Hanged Man in a normal Tarot deck.

These fit, as I have been experiencing both spiritual power--my sobriety anniversary was Friday--and weakness in the form of a preceding depression. 

Process note: I swiped "John Baal, the Babe Ruth of the Big House" from Philip Roth's "The Great American Novel."

Me, Looking At You, Looking Back

 

Here we are -- me,

looking at you

looking back.

You dip your head, do a little shuffle dance.

I get the question but you know the answer 

before my lips so much as flutter.

You are an odd blue-black, luminous by moonlight

but a cipher at noon, or so you pretend--

our story begun at the bitter end.

You lit and left, lit and left the hollow place in me,

inspecting, appraising, always returning.

You gave me baubles and trifles as rent.

I gave you blood where your sharp parts went.

Here is my dead-womb where you rode

and taught me to mark faces that hold no light.

Screaming helps too. I thought it might.

I am the house of glass, you the burnt wick.

You are the mother of every line I write,

your call the ink I use, fragrant and thick.

We are yin and yang at each other's back.

Me, looking at you

looking back.

______

for Desperate Poets "In The Footsteps Of Our Feathers"

Music: Beth Hart "Your Heart Is As Black As Night"

A Man

 

A man of some note,

wearing the planets on a chain

said,

'I can't swing a cat without hitting

a faggot or a 

whore

or a

sinner of some variety."

The birds inside my throat stayed silent

but I could feel

their wings

flutter.

I turned my shoulders to July noon

as a favor

to such small, light riders. 

A man of great learning,

with entire

alphabets lined up on the 

tip of his tongue,

kept them all like pets

and taught

each one

to balance prettily on a circus ball

while he went at them hammer and tongs

to no purpose.

Three times that season,

my eyes

became eggs

and fell to my 

throat/

nest.

Finally, flocks flew filigree patterns

all around 

my head

and a man said, "Harlot! Sapphist!"

and a man said, "Anarchist! Libertine!"

but I was an 

aviary/

melody

beyond such puny mewlings.

The Blind Doves

 

We are the blind doves

as bright as bells in our tree made of moonlight.

In the morning,

children find silver apples which redden with the rise of the sun.

The old priest comes out with his broom,

and the church steps stay still like ponies for the currycomb.

A young woman comes in the evening.

She holds an apple in her hand and cries because she has no child.

There is a pie cooling in a window.

We can feel stars appearing and hear the howl of the lonely dogs.

We are the blind doves in our tree made of moonlight,

silent as spirits, and bright as brides.

________

for Sunday Muse #206. Birds are the theme.

I was keen to use the painting "Moon Over Harvest Village" by Amy Scholten, but it is copyright protected. You can see it HERE.

Oriole

 

Lizzie Borden was alive in you,

in a dreary wooden way,

holding her breath for the next thing,

turning blue then gray.

You considered the wooden cradle

and me, of imperfect flesh

deciding you'd hate me not so much

were I made of ash.

Lay the axe at fireside,

move the cradle closer, too.

Your suicidal substitute

me in place of you.

The handle of the axe is made

from that which it destroys

in little bits and other shit

like broken burned-up toys.

But I, so like you in some ways

had asbestos in my soul

and rose away in sparks and smoke

like an orange oriole.

_______

for Sunday Muse #197. 

Sevenling (On an afternoon dark as Egyptians)

 On an afternoon dark as Egyptians,

I buy a used copy of Rimbaud

and cannot hold my bones in place.

Sit on the sand, the ocean will reach and draw back

like tempted nuns

at the proscribed birthday of boho ghosts.

Acrobats pull stitches from the binding for nets.

for Word Garden Word List #5 (Gregory Corso)

Steampunk Starling

 

Steampunk starling is noisy at dawn

at the base of the window, not the tops of the trees.

The steampunk sun and the regular one

animate her heart that is wound with keys.

Steampunk bird, lonely trifle

wheels and sits in interpretive fits

her gears all meshing with teeth all threshing

the odious this from the marvelous that.

Steampunk starling, nobody's darling

but God's if mechanical God may be

she sits in the gloaming prevented from roaming

an ornament for Master's library.

_________

for Dverse Poetics: "Passions Stamped On Lifeless Things"

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.

Mi Amada

 

The Moon is sleeping

in a pool of rain water

dreaming of tides, solar winds,

and the last words you said last night, mi amada.

The crow wears his feathers

like an old man's overcoat

at a train station

in early December.

He wraps used alphabets

around the Moon in payment 

for memories,

some false, some bittersweet.

The crow will stay

as long as the Moon does.

The Moon will stay

forever, but often hidden.

The rain water

comes alive at a touch, 

receding even as it returns

in spite of itself or anything said last night, mi amada.

_______

For Sunday Muse #162

This Morning At Danny's Coffee Shop

A well-dressed bird talks on a cell phone. We only hear one side of the convo.

"Take the long view," advises the bird.

"Okay...just give me the nut of the problem." 

"They'll need seed money..."

"Piggy bank, nest egg...whatever..."

"Take a flyer? No...they'll take a bath."

"Yep, same old song. Bye, Robin."
________

A Friday 55 for my BFF at Verse Escape blog.

Today's birbs:

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.

Triolet On Parting

This is an African wild dog, not a blackbird, obviously. But he inspired me.

The earth in motion, turns sun high, turns sun west.

We love, we leave, the blackbird and the marshland reed.

What is stone, what is wind? What is burned, what is blessed?

The earth in motion, turns sun high, turns sun west.

The bed and window, street and station, all our palimpsest.

Each in skin, each in summer; each in plenty, each in need.

The earth in motion, turns sun high, turns sun west.

We love, we leave, the blackbird and the marshland reed. 

______

for "Substitutes" at Real Toads.

Friends, I lack the words except when I write poetry.

And so, this poem is for all of you.

digital art by Andrea Hill

 

 

 

About Athena

She's a headache, father. 
You know it better than any.
And what about that bird she insists upon having?
It swoops down from the top of the chiffarobe
whenever I walk in carrying laundry. 

Oh, I talk to her.
She just gets out those everlasting scales and stands there
without saying a word.
The owl twists its neck and gapes too.
It's unnerving.

I went through her closet
--looking for drugs!--
and there, at the bottom of a tube of tennis balls,
I found a lightning bolt.
What do you suppose she's doing with that? 

Finally, I went through her dresser.
The owl started pacing on the chiff like a constable.
Athena walked in just as I found them--
"Will you be snooping...er, staying for lunch, Mother?"
--six dead rats laid all in a row
like a diamond necklace.
_________

for Poets United Midweek Motif--Owls

Red-Winged Blackbird

Red-winged blackbird,

wearing your mantilla,

the low branches of the young mulberry trees

are your church steps

and the breeze is bells for your wedding.

Dear blackbird,

how I long to watch you braid your hair 

into feathers for this glorious day.

Demure blackbird,

give your mantilla to a sister or an aunt.

Tonight they all will envy you

as your dainty shoes as small as rosary beads are shed--

 you'll go barefoot on the mulberry trees

swaying sweet for a warm moon

like a rung chime.

 

The City Of Concrete Birds

In the city of concrete birds,

shoulders lately blessed by a lover's face

--an egg on her tongue, feathers in corona around her eyes--

bear risk as heavy as Sisyphus' tears.

In Paris, the paradise of concrete birds,

tablets are struck from the hands of poets in cafes.

Hats must be sturdy,

utility workers must brim in stadiums,

never resting.

Every morning, I leave you without leaving.

I wear a dress of twigs and string,

perpetuating the world;

my bones double helixed

 from Billie Holiday records and plaster,

I am a nest for concrete birds.

We must be careful, as we promenade.

The Luftwaffe are old leaves blowing,

but when we think of each other,

what to say,

how much to lie,

which tender sensibilities to spare,

Waiters in doorways open their lips to birth air raid sirens.

The concrete birds select our skulls,

without pity or malice

 landing in our destruction like swans in summer,

at home there,

symbols of love lifted by our obliteration.

_______

for Kerry's "Camera FLASH!"