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

English Walnut

 every day

the black squirrels raid Heaven.

I find leaf clusters

like fallen angels

everywhere.

they want

the hard nuts growing high

in the tree I tend

with loving care

these twenty odd years.

each time

they find their desire,

the Icarus clusters fall.

my tree expands, produces,

then incrementally loses 

all summer long.

I learn

from watching all this

a new behavior

a new ache.

will you bury me as well one day, squirrels

or float me old green feathers

in kind aerial gesture?

_____

for Sherry's prompt at desperatepoets. 

image of leaf cluster and walnut my own

Bird

 There is a blue and yellow bird.

He can say "pretty bird."

He can take off your finger before you know it.

There is a room with a large cage,

or that is a large cage,

with a sentinel window where only light passes.

Say that this bird is yours.

Say that he lights on your shoulder.

Your skin will envy the window glass, and long for distance.

You can sit quietly in the evening.

The bird can strut and scream on its perch in the afternoon.

When you die, tomorrow or ten years from now,

The bird will tilt its head, fluff its feathers, tap its mirror

tap tap tap

in boredom or in victory, a line of sun across its rope trapeze.

_______

Moon Rabbit

Moon Rabbit came back,
long after NASA had been sold for scrap.

"Bunny," I said, finding him there,
"you must be hungry,
coming from such a barren garden
so sparse of leaf and short of air."

I have a dusty hope chest
down a dusty stair
as dusty gray as the moonlit coat
of my silver-silent friend, the hare.

Moon Rabbit seemed
to like my hair
and made a red-spun warren there
where moon can light and moon can find
his loneliness and mine--entwined.
_______

for Sunday Muse #103 

Air Strip

They are building an air strip in my back yard. 

An older guy who used to do bit parts in the movies showed up while I was reading a pulp novel in my Adirondack chair.

He said he needed a place to land his plane so could he build an air strip on the back part of the double lot?

Sure. Why the hell not?

He pays me six dollars a day in rent, cash money.
My dogs watch the work unfold,
or play with the guy's Boxer.
There is just him, his wife, his adult son, the Boxer (whose name is"Buddy"),  and an old truck.

Work progresses slowly. 
I collect my six bucks at 5 o'clock.

One afternoon about a week in, the guy stops by my chair, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.
"I'm up in the air in my prop job, and I'm almost out of fuel," he tells me.
"But...you're here," I point out as gently as I can.
"Yes," he agrees, "I'm here, but I'm also up in the air in my prop job and really need a place to land."

The dogs play.
His wife and son lean on their shovels.
Inside, I have a refrigerator, a table and chairs, a tv.
I think I've seen the guy in something.

Right now, though, he's up in the air in his prop job,
looking down at himself building an air strip in my back yard.
"Good luck," I say, the way one does.
He nods, sweating and looking beat, then goes back to building his air strip.

I watch the dogs chase each other and try to think what can I buy with six bucks?
_________

for day 9 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

Armageddon Lullaby

Birds flew high above a world on fire.
Around my neck a river worn as below my body burned.
In my hair a water-garland where water birds turned.
All around, the black-robed dead, on legion ashen pyres.

I called to the birds above a world on fire.
Called and sang to the birds from my disintegrating throat.
The birds spun from glass and the heavens entire
were turned by my song first to whispers, then to smoke.

Around my neck I wore a childhood stream.
In my hair a feather garland made of swans and steam.
The world turned red, then orange, then white
and the birds to choristers of anthracite.
________

for Sunday Muse #89. And for the world in flood and fire.

Space

Never mind how I got here;
I'm here, that's enough.

Dear Joiner,
take your bell cow and your suit case and your squee face
and go back. 

This is my Carnival Library--
Shhhh, quiet in the funhouse.

"Aintcha lonely?"
No. 
At least, not for you.

I'm the zero-grav cartwheel solo warp pilot.
Rogue star
shining.
__________

A 55 for my BFF.