Giselle

 

In Paris, at that time

we knew of Giselle, the world's most

talented and also hideous torch singer.

Muddy complected,

with white eyes like egg shells,

and skin chock-a-block with blue veins,

the woman was hard on the vision, sweet to the ears.

Have you ever heard

a buzzard that could break your heart?

Giselle could wring your soul with Gloomy Sunday,

make you miss someone

you never met with Lover Man

(Oh Where Can You Be?) She was serious!

Willow Weep For Me used to make 'em bawl like babies.

So one night this strange cat

showed up and started bringing her

trifles -- sugar candies, baubles, pretty shells and whatnot.

Oh, she sang, Just in time,

you found me just in time and she smiled

like a split shoe and ran her broken branch fingers through his hair.

We wondered, is he crazy? Blind? What?

Well, he weren't blind.

Cat could read a menu from five miles off

and he was no bug either, he was some kind of poet.

What we found out, after a long time,

was that this cat was stone deaf from bombs in the war.

He just loved Giselle like a bird loves the sky at dawn when it's

Beginning To See The Light. 

_________

for Word Garden Word List--My Dear I Wanted To Tell You. 

Music: Della Reese I'm Beginning To See the Light

Ballad of the Lost Shark

 A song for the lost shark

at the bottom of the sea

A song for the notions

that line up perfectly

A song for the children

who once were you and me

A song for the west wind

and the nest high in a tree

Sing, sing, sing, for no reason

just because you can

A song for the lost car

rusting in a field

A song for the card sharp

who says shut up and deal

A song for the baby

who was born and then grew old

A song for the kind ones

who give their hand to hold

Sing, sing, sing for no reason

just because you can

for the shark down in the deep sea

and you there on the sand.

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

Here

Here

is the place where starlings gather thick as macchiato,

singing expressivo in the morning, bedlam fortissimo at sunset.

Here

is where the old gather silent, still as a reverie,

rallentando until dawn, then second-souled,

blue-eyed, demanding life again, vivace.

Here

discard heavy indigo, the ultramarine of too many days,

dissolve into a new chromatic scale, alive with starlings,

expressing without thinking, dolce, 

glissando,

Here.

______

for The Sunday Muse #150.

Mixed Marriage

"We are not like other families,"

remarked my father

impaled sideways through his head by a stick,

feet dancing in thin air.

My mother wore black crepe

though her husband lived yet, suspended,

and I, the fruit of her womb, refused her invitation

to stay still beneath her fingers at the bottom of the bath.

We had a dog with a nervous condition

and a ghost in the basement by the water softener.

My father covered the story and his un-impaled eye,

seeing old sweethearts in his dreams.

Mother tried to move me into the basement incinerator,

but was prevented by the ghost. 

Daddy liked swing music and Dixieland jazz,

insisting the stick was a clarinet and the dog Benny Goodman,

And though not observant, he did walk on Saturdays.

__________

for Sunday Muse #134, where I am hosting.

Songbird

Out of a jewelry box--
in summer--
came a soul.

Creating a body from candle wax,
and fashioning feathers from locust leaves,

it said itself a songbird.

From the hand of the Boho Goddess--
in plenitude--
came night, bouzouki stars, pendant suns.

Little songbird, no bigger than a breath--
how empty the world--

and the wooden box
of my heart suspended--

when you're gone.
_____

Mister Good Advice

And so here's to you, Mister Good Advice.
The least you could do is listen
the least you could do is listen
That's what you said, Mister Cat to us
to us
to us
the little deaf mice
in our hidey hole where we cook up our plans.

There's nothing worse than the ungrateful
spiteful,
up-all-nightfull
little ratty rodents who don't get it
all the Good Advice you have to give,
on how to be
and how to live,
all we do all day is go la la la la la la

We can't hear you,
Mister Good Advice man
La la la la la and oh how you hate it when we're happy
it can't be
it can't be
it can't be right, can it?
Mister Good Advice
Mister Good Advice man.
________

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads: write a lyric.