My Back

 

"I got to boogie-woogie like a knife in the back"

My back

was the one I never worried about.

Always cheerful

ready to work with me

believing that a rising tide

lifts all boats.

Oh,

I used Proper Lifting Technique

like it was delivered from the pulpit.

I'd say, back

keep straight

knees

help your sister now.

They complained but pitched in.

Now,

Just the mention of the 

lightest job

sends you running like you stole something.

Part Bartleby

the rest Jive Bombers

you like things easy and over

like an egg

too lazy to get up off the griddle.

Can I

get some help here?

"No ma'am, the couch's got me

caught in its clutches."

Friends smirk.

"That one yours?

The one you always talking up?"

Anymore,

you don't lift nothing heavier'n

a slice of pie.

How

can I be proud?

You can't lug,

but you sure can shrug.

You're as close as my next breath, child

but you broke my heart

like a dropped crystal bowl.

___________

quote with image is from "Sea Cruise"

sung by Frankie Ford

Music: The Jive Bombers Bad Boy

Love Lock

I have kept you in jars of glass
blown from my own body.
I have kept you in photographs that swam 
and emerged from shallow night pools.

There is a blue cord connecting us,
an Arctic fissure calling with its constant lure.
I wake from dreams stunned, immobile,
a beat behind your false sunrise.

There is a bridge you don't believe in,
where I wait, lighting bonfires that burn the boards I stand on.
There is a lock and the looped chain future,
with only one key, in the palm of your hand.

As I turn to smoke, you turn to stone
where terns wheel and scream their Gypsy fortunes.
I become a bird as I fall, forgiving us both, 
in awkward semaphore I hope you'll understand.
______

for Sunday Muse # 95 where I am hosting.

Crimson Amperage

In my fingers, a knife with two blades and no handle.
On the blades, blood.
Enter my relative, with ten mouths
who wears the knife as jewelry.

In my mouth, a scream with two pitches and no end.
On the sound, a honed edge.
"Hush," say the ten mouths
but I sing back crimson amperage.
_______

some cold steel 55 for my BFF.

Voice of Martyrs

She had to do without a lot of things,
for your sake, to help you,
because God knows you needed it.

Go ahead, dive into those beer-battered iguana steaks
and RC Cola--
made by hunchbacks from old cancer drugs
and leaf-tea water from the bird bath.

Ungrateful, that's what you are.
She brings her sheepskin and her medical bag,
her sharp eye and her dull scalpel,
and all you ever do is buzz like a stupid toy as she removes the barbs
she put there over time, millions of them, placed just so.

Too bad one can't make a sampler out of a disappointed look--
you'd never need wallpaper.
Nature provides exactly what each creature needs,
though she has chosen to do without heart, stomach, ovaries,
in favor of giving everything to you, especially those betrayed, doleful eyes.

Now here you are, a donation box she has poured herself into,
sleeping it off,
hating yourself,
collecting methods of suicide like stickers,
last night's appalling Chinese take-out uneaten and wasted (!)
on the table and on the floor where it has spilled and mixed
with the pet hair on the carpet.

See the ants, as industrious as if they were going to Mass,
substituting congealed chicken kow for wafers and wine.
See the roaches, immortal and unstoppable as your jones,
demonstrating grace and sacrifice--
for you! again for you!--
by entertaining the cat
who plays with, and then kills them, but who sometimes

reverses the sequence.
_______

grace for Karin.