Trout Fishing In America

 

Left Michigan that June

with two teacher friends.

Saw Looking For Mr. Goodbar

in South Bend.

No wonder the country's going to hell.

All the teachers are cruising the bars!

In a Jackson Mississippi Mickey D's

there were elephants on the wall for art.

They're real, said Jim. No, said I.

Jim's grin. In my world, they are.

Crossing a bridge into Louisiana

we saw white cranes circling the marshlands.

The entire Richard Brautigan library across the back seat;

on the tape machine, Jackson Browne & friends.

It was just something to do that summer,

passing the bottle to pass the time.

But now, with all the black coffee blur behind me,

that year still goes down smooth, holds a shine.

~~~~~~~~~

for Sunday Muse #176.

Two Poems/ Two Forms

"Getaway"

Stop the crying jag

pack a Gladstone bag

book a lunar junket now.

Stay on the sun side

Moon Rabbit runs by

late for a date anyhow.

Rent you a moon car

with hot tub and bar

green cheese and crackers for free.

Dub yourself Moon Maid

retro your moon grade

stay on indefinitely.

-------

this is a form called an alouette.

for Sunday Muse #169.

________________________

and...

"Recipe For Satori En Flambe"

In the desert, find a mirage that suits,

that lives, that fruits despite the gritty eye,

the thing that dries and rides inside your boots,

the thing that shoots itself but does not die.

This is the thing you'll need the most,

a far outpost of the soul.

There is no whole thing here, just shards

and acrid tars to smoke.

This is not as bad as it scans,

not some madman's practical joke;

a softly spoken barcarolle,

a gondolier mid-stroke.

In the desert, find a skull that sings,

an awful thing sick with the wound you need.

Take it up, feed it well until it brings

(from horrors) wings of glass, and salt, and seed.

In a rib bowl, mix these with buried roots

and tongues of mutes in ash rain from a sky

too close and bright, the silver-sharp of flutes

some god imputes with holy song and sigh.

________

this is a LaJemme poem.

You can see where the connection failed. When I came back the type changed. 

Pilgrimage

On the freeway service drive, just outside of Detroit, we picked up His Holiness, who had his thumb out and a jewel-encrusted satchel over his shoulder.

"You should hide that thing," said Judy.

"Or swap it at Salvation Army for something, um, a little less conspicuous?" said Mel. "You know the Salvation Army has a store, right?"

"Very well," said His Holiness in his accented English. We couldn't tell exactly what he meant.

"You shouldn't be out here anyway," scolded Allie, who was scrunched between Mel and His Holiness in the back seat. His Holiness explained that he had come for us, not the other way around.

"I bless you tires, I bless you headlights, I bless you beautiful American noggins," he said, and did.

Much later, after we had let His Holiness off near Bad Axe, a light rain started to fall.

"I feel cleansed," chirped Judy, and we all laughed, but honestly, we were all glad to be close to Allie's house, her floor and couches, and some scrambled eggs scooped onto Dollar Store plates with birds on them.
_______

for Day 7 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was an intense guy.
We found him in some mom & pop Mexican place in San Antonio,
scribbling on a napkin, 
burning the place down wherever he parked his heart.

We paid for his breakfast.
Ginny let her shawl fall off one shoulder,
and the guy looked like he might slip right into her skin
and stay there, if he could have.

There is always something feminine about a man who can write;
something feminine, too, about a man who really adores women.
We sense it.
We're like birds who see our island and head for it without another thought.
I'm not saying he wasn't a man--
Ginny couldn't shut up about him, the rest of the trip,
like he had lit her, and she kept going off in spectacular colors.

The bluebonnets were out, in all the fields by the highway.
They only grow in Texas, and we stopped to stretch out in them,
drown in them
like a bunch of boho dolphins, sleek and weird,
gloriously out of our element.

When we got close to Dallas, we stopped in Waxahachie.
Ginny was asleep in the back, and Neruda stayed with her,
his arm around her like a mesquite branch across the early sun.
She was wearing red, and if you ask me,
he wanted to suck her like a strawberry, 
but was too protective of her Gypsy dreams to wake her.

At the washeteria, we scavenged empty soap jugs
and weaseled a last load out of them.
Federico Garcia Lorca was there, half sprawled across two plastic chairs,
high as a kite, his hair a mess, his mind a marvel of the age.
I kissed him as a sister would,
to get him to join us, and he did.
I kept close, whispering him my poems,
taking the wheel as we crossed north into Oklahoma.

You will find the right man, I told him,
even though he didn't speak English.
In Spanish, he told me I had already found the right woman,
but that she was hidden,
riding in the night-pocket of God's long sweater,
howling at the stars.

That was when I knew I liked Federico better,
though I was careful never to let Neruda see it.
Anyway, he had Ginny,
and we all had the white stripes going by beneath our wheels,
the warm southern air,
and our four heartbeats which came together for a while
in the unlikely, gorgeous perfection
of our uncommon common language.
__________
  
for Kerry's Pablo Neruda challenge at Real Toads. I don't like writing sonnets, so I hope that this will please, instead.

Near-Sighted MacFiggin & The Coquette

Professor MacFiggin,
whose vision was blurred,
was dining on pheasant
or some kind of bird

when he heard a voice
belonging to Fran--
a wasp-waisted lady
in search of a man.

"Enjoy some wine!"
(He hoped it would tweak her)
so he held a carafe
which was really a beaker

he'd brought from his lab,
filled with--well--something
that could not have been wine
but it set his heart thumping.

"I've got giant white caterpillars
here on my cheeks,"
he said with a smile,
"and they've been there for weeks!"

"I've got a crustacean
perched on my head,"
said Fran, quite boldly
suggesting they wed.
_______

Cafe In Paris by Joaquin Sorolla

for Hedgewitch's mini-challenge at Real Toads to write something in "approximately 100 words or less." This is 106. Goddess love approximation!

 

 
 

Wreath Around The Moon

I'm the ballerina in the open air,
the broken neck at the bottom of the stair;
I want to kiss your breast,
be your baby and
Best In Show,

I want to know what it means to
be the coffee on your lips
and the color of the tile beneath your toes.

I want to step out on the stage
like a rose wreath around the moon,

I want us to slide on down to Austin
by train, in a storm,

where you'll call me Cat Mama Honey,
check us in, and lock the door.
_______

A Fable Of The Western Plains

Even in the beginning,
When Goddess laid Her fingers across the land and brought forth the prairie grass,
The West has had two-lane highways
And little diners by the road side.

In those times,
Horses had the power of speech,
And they said,
"The Man Who Knows Everything doesn't need a menu
Or a map.
He is usually divorced;
When he opens his mouth, it makes a muffled, dusty foomp,
Like blackboard erasers being knocked together."

"There is also the Woman Who Knows Everything;
Her children's feet are on fire for the sunset,
And they leave her alone, like a cricket inside a geode."

Still, there are things that even horses don't know.
For these, one must find a waitress, and ask her for the Secret Meaning Of Eggs.
Don't be shy--
She is the Queen of Honey & Jam,
The Voice of the Goddess in the everyday world.

"Eggs," (she will tell you,)
"Contain the dreams you had last night, but can't remember;
The obstacles you fought with.
The woman you've longed to kiss, and did, until your lips were deliciously sore."

"There is a way," (she will further reveal,)
"To retrieve these dreams,
But there is a special method for it."
Watch, as she yanks the checkered table cloth out in one quick motion,
Leaving your coffee cup and plate of pancakes
Undisturbed and serene
As a Western morning.

"So it is with dreams.
You can charm them out, like barn cats,
But you must do so without breaking the shell of the egg."
If you can do this,
You can find the Horizon,
Keep the knowing of the Dream Time,
And cross the border into
The Anasazi village
Of your own absent Joy.

______

for dverse poetics--borders.

Live Poets

You said,
"We'll be famous when we're dead"
And the tarot told me that it's true.

Do you suppose we'll care, baby?
Or by then will we have
Better things to do?

Here's what I think--
An open page
Is like an open road,
Just point that thing and go.

No speed limit,
No cops--
At least none with power to stop us,
That much I know.

So if you'll just put your arms around me
Or let me put mine around you,
I promise there is nothing we can think of
That we couldn't do.

No one needs to know where we went
Or what we did--
Just keep that open mind...
"We'll be famous when we're dead"
But til then,
Sweetheart, what a ride.

_________

linked to dverse OLN

Smooth

It was so hot there were lions by the roadside--
Floating like dust clouds into town,
Tongues lolling.

Your hair was smooth and Indian dark--
Goddess love a flat iron,
And the highway heading north.

In the fierce heat of afternoon we stopped for coffee ice--
Yours pressed cold against my neck,
Sweating wet, nice.

John Law stopped us just past the interchange,
And the lions gave him their golden-eyed look
As he flipped open his book...

You had your sunglasses on your hair in case Heaven should appear,
And charmed that man like a gypsy thief
With God's love stashed beneath our seats.

Smooth, lover,
Like the August sun going down,
Like your summer-browned thighs, lionesses side by side,
Like the day behind us nearly gone and the
Road into the headlight night, toward home.

(for STWIASD, who loves a road trip)
_______