Abra Cadabra Alakazam

 

Oh my darling,

my one and only love,

watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat.

There is nothing dirty

about love such as ours.

Get a load of my white gloves. 

When two people join

in matrimonial oneness

or as volunteers from the audience,

Magic takes on its special sheen.

People just want to be seen,

not sawn in half,

And so we make each other more than we were

like an endless knot of scarves

pulled from our sleeves or our hair.

If I should suddenly disappear,

my angel, my dear,

let me let you in on my schtick...

(Though it may make you feel sick)

it's one of love's magic quirks

that that trick

never works!

________

for What's Going On? "Magic"

Don't forget, the Word Garden Word List is still active through Sunday!

The Way It Looks

Oh your friends call you Lily Faloma

but that's not the way that you are

It's too much of a gentle misnomer

for a shooting star

                                                 --Al Stewart

It's not the way it looks

the moon in the sky

your face in the mirror

the thing that was done or not done. 

It's not the way it looks

the moon, lonesome rock out in space

ask the fascinated tide

about the gravity of lit soul

It's not the way it looks

your face in the mirror so lined

ask the devils, those angels that free you

from a birdcage of bones 

The mirror limits vison

the moon limits sense

and everything you are or are not

will, in time, incandesce. 

____________

This song has been on my mind for days now. The woman he's singing about reminds me of me.

Al Stewart Song On the Radio

 

Cinder Ella

 

Cinder Ella was this chick who was doing some minor dealing in the vestibule of her old boyfriend's building when a snitch turned her in and she got sent to juvie.

Freeeak. So bogus.

The 'rents lost it and so when she'd done her stupid community service, they said oh my, oh dear, you really need some discipline here, and gave her like ten thousand chores to do and she was grounded until she's 75 and everybody in the world is dead from a nuclear accident or something. Yippee skippee. 

So anyway, Cinder Ella had no further forks to give, so she opened her bedroom window and had a smoke in between cleaning all the bathrooms and mulching the stupid garden so the rutabagas would grow ten feet tall of whatever it is that rutabagas do. Kill me now, she thought, don't wait for the Marlboros to kick in.

It was at that moment that this leftover hippie woman flew in. I mean, actually flew and perched her grown-ass self in the window frame. "No wayyy," said Cinder Ella, taking a long drag. "Way" said the boomer in the window. "I am your fairy godmother!" Cinder Ella replied, "Well fork me and feed me fish heads." 

Long story short, Cinder Ella's fairy godmother had seen and heard more than enough of the way Cinder Ella was being treated, by both the 'rents and her social influencer sisters. "Easy solutions for combination skin!" So lame. So, this boomer turned a cat figurine into an Uber driver, and a lava lamp into a Lambo, all so that Cinder Ella could attend the Lady Gaga concert that night. "Fuckinay," said Cinder, stubbing out her smoke on the chore list her mother had left on the side table for her. It burst into flames and suddenly there she was, getting out of the Lambo at the venue!

So, the concert was lit, but she lost one of her Doc Martens when it got to be almost midnight and she had to make a run for the Lambo before it turned back into a lava lamp and the driver became a cat figurine again. I mean, she got that thing at Six Flags when she was like, nine, and she'd look like the majorette of the Loser's Day Parade if she didn't get out there in time. So she did, and came hobbling in the door just in time to sneak up to her room and do some cannabis to mellow out. 

Well, fat chance. Ding-dong, some hopeless dweeb desperately in need of a glow-up was standing in the front doorway when she came downstairs to snob, er, say hello to, whoever it was. Holding her lost Doc Marten in his hands, he smiled nervously and asked Cinder Ella and her sisters Madison and Courtney to try it on. Madison couldn't even begin to get her big boats into it, and Courtney's toenail fungus made everybody gag so she just sort of ran up to her room crying. "Oh boo hoo hoo, I'm stinky Courtney, my feet are soooooo gross wahhhh," scoffed Cinder Ella as her sister swept past. 

"Would you like to try it on?" the boy asked, shyly. "As if," said Cinder Ella, grabbing the Doc Marten out of his hands and giving him a shove out the door. "Try Proactiv!" she said to his back as he stumbled away in bewilderment. She shrugged. "I'm really more into girls lately anyway." Walking down the hall and into the garage, knocking over her dad's retardo golf bag as she passed, Cinder Ella grabbed a screwdriver off of his work bench and hotwired the Mazda. "Happy happy to all and to all a good buzz!" she called as she drove away, swerving to avoid some stupid squirrel that did that changing direction thing that squirrels do, and she just about totaled the Mazda and sustained crippling injuries like in a Lifetime movie, except she didn't, and that's the end. Follow me for more dumb fairy tales if you're, like, grounded until eternity and it's completely unfair and you're  so over it or whatever. 

____________________

For What's Going On? -- Unfairy Tales. 

Music: The Sounds Running Out of Turbo

Fetch

 And now comes my fetch in the mist by the slough

unnoticed by the sheep who eat the bursting sloes.

An unwelcome messenger, my double pale and blue,

to snap the stem that holds my soul and reap what doesn't rot.

I'm an altered, repetitious hag, with just the grave for new,

my breakfast made of river stones and set on plates of ice.

The horse may shed its harness, the ship may shed its crew.

I likewise shed this life entire, and no more question pose,

then--like the laurel root--decay, dissolving where it grew.

_______

for Word Garden Word List #19 (at The Sunday Muse.) 

this poem is a "Magic 9" poem, with rhyme scheme aba cad aba, or "abracadabra" minus the two r's. 

when laurel grows in a swampy area, or "slough", the roots will rot. 

Black Jaye

He said, "Black Jaye, when you strike a match

you so quickly shake it out

as if each time you find you're with,

you long to be without."

I can't spare love for the Promenade

where searchlights cut the sky.

I paint my dreams in a bed of wheat

growing golden four feet high.

"Black Jaye," he said, "so small and slight

with your scarves of indigo,

why do you sing in Quebecois

telling no one where you go?"

Down by the shore, down by the sea

I loose my hair and call

to bones of birds all crossed and cursed

to stop me if I fall. 

________________

Intention

 

Back then, I hung lanterns on my heart,

kept my own counsel

and spoke Romany in front of the marks.

I appeared 18 or 80

depending on the phase of the moon, 

or the shape  of my dreams.

I kept The Fool and The Tower up my black lace sleeve

and slept with other girls

thinking to cure my fever and my thirst.

Now a young man comes,

his mute-bird girlfriend behind a pace

with her patience and frybread face. 

I long ago burnt my heart down to nothing,

fueled with equal measures bravery and turpentine.

So, why does he make a visible ghost of me?

Do I wail for wanting to touch him,

or because my unringed fingers die behind my folded arms,

cursed by years?

Once, I hung lanterns on my heart,

and spun spells that only worked when I didn't care.

I mixed brown sugar with oleander

and wrapped my sorrow in a million words.

Young man, these are not crows, they are flying ash.

I want you and cannot say it,

but you came here with intention of unraveling old spells

and have done that

fiercely well.

__________

for The Sunday Muse #126, where I am hosting.

image at top by Brooke Shaden.

The Nun Who Escaped In A Fish Barrel

The vessel is weaker
than it used to be--
the page thinner,
the lover gone.

The light is lower
than in summer--
but the angle sweeter
for its brevity.

Cats care nothing
for pointless industry--
and yet they
meet every gaze.

In stillness, in silence,
in age this fire--
consumes me and shames
youth, that boastful pretender.
________

 
 

Soft, The Dove

Butch, the top hat,
the collar and tails.
Soft, the dove,
in your hand for all of that. 

Rusted, the band,
the wheels in their wells.
Gone, the dove,
and the cocksure sleight of hand.

Empty, the trunk,
the wine glass by the bed.
Dove, a failed trick,
when the blackbird lands instead. 

Many, the props,
the act in its details.
Several, the doves,
their eyes, their cooing calls.

Returned, or so it seems,
conjured in my sleep.
Soft, the dove
I capture, then release.
_______

for Magaly's Heart-Bits. Writing IS magic. But, to quote the poem/song, we decide which is right and which is illusion.

The included video unfortunately does not include the poem, but was such a good version otherwise that I have chosen it anyway.

 

Reconsidering Liars

"Let there be light."
Did you think
He had it just lying around?
The sun, the stars....all made up.

Billy Robinson was an upstate New Yorker of Scottish ancestry,
a magician who reinvented himself
as Chung Ling Soo, Chinese conjurer,
ripping off most of his act from another vaudevillian.

His wife Suee Seen was really named "Dot." 
They weren't really married.
She was as American as he was.

Consider this:
"America" is a construct. 
You start with trees, bears and native tribes,
kill most of them, plant a flag and
Voila! America. Something that wasn't there before,
like a rabbit out of a hat.

You'll argue that it was there, just different,
like "your" card, now at the top of the deck every time,
fanned in the illusionist's hands.

Watch and learn, padewon.
Billy Robinson whipped lather in a mug and shaved off his moustache,
used greasepaint to darken his complexion,
threw on some bright Oriental robes,
and started banking the cash from the suckers who came for his act.

God would tell you,
ya gotta have a gimmick,
whether you call it Manifest Destiny or The Ten Commandments.
Billy's was a stunt he called "Condemned to Death by the Boxers."

Marked bullets were loaded into rifles wielded by stooges in costume;
the weapons were rigged not to fire,
but Chung Ling Soo would appear to catch the deadly missiles with a china plate.
However,
the sun and stars are slowly burning themselves out,
and the rifles became worn with cleaning.

Bam! Bam! And down went Billy, right there on stage.
"I've been shot," he said, in astonished perfect English.
You can look on Wikipedia today and find Chung Ling Soo's whole story.
Do you think that if he had stayed Billy,
kept his moustache,
and sold tam o' shanters in a shop all his life,
that anyone would remember him now?

Let there be light,
how ever it is made, and how ever far it has to travel
to get here.
________

Nice

I tried to be nice,
but when I opened my mouth, ghosts on fire flew out.

People started calling me the Dragon Lady,
but the dragon was its own creature,
sitting inside my bones switching its tail.

I crawled inside of myself to see, and what I saw was this:
The dragon had no arms,
no legs,
no wings,
no spines,
but it had a heart and the heart was full of broken glass.

I tried to go back, but the dragon whispered in my ear,
offering a deal.
"Take my heart, make your womb a shell."
Nine months later I gave birth to a little bad tempered sun.

Everywhere I go, people call me Mother Light,
but they are shadows, and I can't find a real soul among them.
Kiss me;
me and my dragon.
We're lonely.

I tried to be nice, but my heart was a dragon's child,
and my mouth made ghosts on fire that no one could love,
though I wanted them to, so badly,
all the more for having no body, 
no face, 
no ash or angel that I could call my own.
_______

 
 

Certainty

Certainty is the Santa Claus of the simple--
an Easter Bunny hiding eggs in the lives and lawns of the lazy--
a bunch of bullshit the nearest Bo Peep could disabuse you of.

The only certainty is that, if you have a heart beat, 
some orange-vested fuck will take aim at it.
The only certainty is that, if you're dream-deep in a delicious mystery,
some jackass will hook his thumbs in his suspenders and start mansplaining.

That is how I ended up out here,
up to my ankles in last year's leaves,
red-haired and savage under a beggar's moon,
giving it up to wolves and wolverines and cranking out cubs in my fragrant den.

I never dreamed of this when I showed up,
teeth brushed and blunted,
at Bryn Mawr orientation.
I smiled and backbit like all the rest,
chucking out manners and affectations like candies from a float.

I never imagined it even after I broke a nail,
totaled the Saab, experimented with heterosexuality,
and ended up in a therapist's office for three weeks.
Here is the problem with her: 

From her mouth came all this junk about healing;
never a word about ouanga bags or magic spells,
no menstrual blood in the herbal tea,
no haint blue spirit possessing her at odd moments.

But I was talking about certainty.
I tried to establish it. I did.
I dragged her ribby husk out into the barrens and waited for the crows.
I wore every talisman bought from every trade show in nine counties,
and kept her head in a jar of Four Thieves Vinegar all winter,

but still, it snowed when it would,
and my own body ached or hungered when it would,
while nothing was ever certain--nor was it meant to be.

So here is what I did.
I hung a mojo hand from an oak branch
and put my trust in br'er badger, the ultimate archetypal hoodoo doctor. 
He doesn't give a shit about certainty, he only wants to eat and fuck and fight.
I was his girl friday,
and the she-skunk's go-to gal as she went quietly through the nights,
taking each exactly as it was given.

Then I went along the creek path,
through the blackberry vines
and down to the Old Road.

I took the back way and slipped silently around the water well.
Just as the sun came up,
I jimmied your door, the one painted blue 
on the back of the white clapboard house where you sleep beneath quilt and care.

I bribed your dogs,
and crossed myself as I passed the candles and icons in the narrow hall.
Were you surprised to see me?
I'm not the girl I used to be, and thank Goddess for that.

I kissed you in the barest gray dawn light,
flinting the flame and praying for the prairie breeze you keep in your sigh.
We turned, like the skies changing dark to light to dark again
until you were on top and I was an aspen shaking with the old magic.

That  is certainty.
The only kind there is.
_______  
    
 written to include words from a list kindly provided by a cloaked figure.