Jacks

Noon is when I stopped being pretty--
no one cares and it doesn't matter, 
BUT
I was the spider bride of a textile tycoon and he
took one look and started laughing.

Out of my ears
crawled everything I'd heard and learned--
all Mom's good advice good for nothing, now.
I went straight to the mill
and worked everybody I could lay hands on;
they call me Saint Susan--
Bernard doesn't see those jacks in the palm of my hand.

When a woman loses her looks, anything goes.
Bernard recoils like I'm radioactive,
has a slut mistress tucked away in his office.
Meanwhile, I roam the factory floor like a suicide,
my fingertips solaced by
bolts of cat's claw crimson and
beautiful indigo.

There will be a revolution.
Bernard's gonna look good hanging from a roof girder,
his wrists knotted tight with my pretty scarf.
I'm an uggo but I kiss the blade that cuts the checks;
sugar and sorcery have made the shifts see me
not as I am, but as I could be and have become--
a red ball bouncing and a quick hand to catch it.
______

For "A Poem Of Our Own" with Magaly at Real Toads. I have incorporated the titles of four of my poems from our book "Three-Note Howl: The Wild Hunt" : "Noon", "The Spider Bride", "Advice", and "Beautiful Indigo."

Top image by cellmon, deviantart. Bottom image, creator unknown. 

After hearing it last night, I woke up with my head full of "The Minstrel In The Gallery" by Jethro Tull. I had it in my head all the while I was composing this. Lyrics HERE.

Ward 7

A little bit of needle and thread will put that limb right back where it belongs;
There's no need for panic,
No cause for foolish rivalries with the other patients.
Do you know,
With that stick clenched between your teeth like a rose stem,
You look almost angelic
In a shocky, poleaxed sort of way.

See the pretty nurses,
Wringing out cool cloths to place upon your face?
If you ask them, between moans,
They may even dance for you as they did at the Spanish Theater;
They may lean to kiss you while checking your intracranial pressure and your vital signs.

Once, you sat upon a futon in her silly studio apartment,
Sipping Tab,
And feeling at once aroused and idiotic.
No cataclysmic events disturbed the two of you that night--
No bleeders,
Just sweet warm capillaries expanding like tiny flowers;
Blushing her,
And making it awkward for you to stand up,
Back when you could, sir. Back when it was easy.

This is a place of healing and of peace--
If the doctors have threatened you, waving their pen lights like signal lamps,
Tell me. I'll shoo them away.
Most of them are dedicated and well-meaning, but if you'd like it to be just you and me,
I can pull the curtain and keep them away,
As if we were honeymooning at a fine hotel and needing our privacy.

Catastrophic things happen--
Flesh tears away, one is made hideous in an instant;
Even loved ones rush, queasy, from the room.
Drugs can be dizzying,
Despair even more so...
But does this have to mean that no beautiful woman, no handsome man, will ever smile across the room at you again?

Quite the opposite is true, in fact.
Let go,
Trust us,
Be something you could never have been before--
A spirit among the corporeal,
A broken toy still beloved
If useless.
________

for Flipside's word list #13

Sans Gateau

Birthday!
Behold--
meat loaf.
a pomegranate!
peas.
missionary stew.

Why does it have to be cake?
Am I cold, 
horrid,
heartless, if there isn't cake?

Look!
South Dakota.
interesting bugs.
Hope Solo's underthings.
a cow catcher!

Break out of it.
Frosting isn't everything.
trust me trust me trust me trust me.

A magic 8 ball.
an elephant in full eastern regalia.
The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.
dog dreams.

Take 'em.
I gitcha more.
does it have to be cake?
why always cake?

Be reasonable.
Do it my way.

Joy
happiness
inner light.

My love
my devotion
my body
my slavish and rapt attention to every word you say.

But no cake.
If you want cake, then fuck ya.

Happy birthday,
baby.
signed, Mistress Marjorie, the budget dominant
who does not
bake.
______

a bit of playful foolishness in honor of The Imaginary Garden's birthday!

corset gloves by autumnlaughter on deviantart. 

This We Prescribe

"The doctor will see you now," says the doctor's
very unusual
goth/steampunk receptionist.

The Weather is shown in.

The Weather has been everywhere.
Physicians of every stripe have applied their treatments.
They have postured.
They have held forth.
They have convened in spacious venues.

Nothing.

The doctor waves his stethoscope around,
out of doors,
turning in circles and sometimes wandering off into the brambles
as if he were dousing for water, or
simply off his nut.

The doctor's assistant, the same woman as before,
hands him, by turns,
beakers,
Bunsen burners,
an astrolabe,
and several odd specimens in jars.
Lids discarded,  jars turned on their sides,
these creatures bound away into the surrounding area.

"A closer look seems in order," proclaims the doctor,
and presently, he and his wife,
the same woman as before,
are airborne in the gondola of a hot air balloon.
The doctor employs a magnifying glass
and spouts his findings as she takes it all down.

The Weather blows them hither and yon.
Yes, 
"hither and yon." 
These are medical terms best not used by laymen.
"What is your diagnosis, doctor?" asks his lover,
the same woman as before.
He gives her his diagnosis and she is delighted with it.

Eventually, they descend.
The doctor is pleased with results so far.
His receptionist/
assistant/
wife/
lover
sighs and wonders, is all medical inquiry so glorious?

Meanwhile, 
The Weather continues to exhibit a variety of symptoms.
They occur, presenting at intervals, and then repeat, 
unpredictably.

As yet, no effective remedy has been developed,
but work continues,
and research is at times uncommonly enthusiastic.
______

for Kerry's Shakespeare prompt at Real Toads. I added a dash of steampunk, in Kerry's honor, too. The quote I took my title from is as follows:

"This we prescribe, though no physician;
Deep malice makes too deep incision;
Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed;
Our doctors say this is no month to bleed."
_______ 

On Leaving Pennyfarthing-Sevier's

At Pennyfarthing-Sevier's I learned
To wear the corset and say "yes Ma'am"--
To stay my tongue and bank the fire,
Which, strangely, heightened bound desire.

Will you take my ticket, sir,
And hand me up the stair--
To find my red crushed velvet seat
On the noontime train to her, dear sir,
The westbound train to her.

I've my hat by hat pins held
And my traveling suit cinched nice--
Beneath these layers, two roses rise
As if caressed with ice.

My boots have heels to make me tall,
My sleeves are freshly starched--
My Mistress will accept me wet,
But will not have me parched.

Won't you take my traveling bag
And help me down the stair--
I'm ever the faint and feminine thing
Til I catch sight of her, dear sir,
I break and run for her.

_________

a second installment for Kerry's steampunk challenge.

 

Horrors Beyond Naming, and the Forbidden Door Thrown Wide

The learned and august Professor Linwood Dinwiddie-MacCuthbert III
showed his horrible,
unspeakable,
unnatural handiwork
to me.

The first one, released,
was some sort of semi-human beast;
when the cage door opened, it scrabbled to my feet--
smiling horribly,
quivering disturbingly,
it recited these words:

"My penis
dwarfs all creation!
Every person, idea, and nation!
Such a splendid sword is mine,
that--"

Stop this, I cried.
You're a monster, MacCuthbert, I accused,
to compel another human being
for your purposes used
so cruelly
and awfully abused.
Um....are ALL of his poems like this?
I inquired, about the loathsome creature in our midst.

Yes! Each and every one! cried Linwood Dinwiddie MacCuthbert III.
All sixteen thousand two hundred and three
which I have so far heard
contain some variation
of the P word.

I was revived with salts.

Next, the fiend showed me a woman so altered,
she could write of nothing but bunnies and flowers.
I'm shocked at you, Linwood,
to think that you ever could
create such wretches here in your study
spouting preposterous poetry so cruddy
that I scarce can believe
such things exist at all.

He had saved the most terrifying abomination for last.
MacCuthbert moved to a door and threw aside the latch,
revealing a wraith dressed in bustle and corset
claiming to have arrived on the most recent train from Dorset!
It speaks! I gasped.
It seems deranged!
Has it got a soul? A brain?
I hardly dared ask...a name???

Linwood Dinwiddie MacCuthbert III ceased at that hour
to be my old friend at all, but a lion to devour
all that is good
and right,
and orderly in the world.
Its name is "Fireblossom" he drooled.
MacCuthbert the blasphemer!
The madman!
The unhinged, unreasoning ghoul!

Leave her to me, I said sternly,
and he relinquished the hellish girl to my keeping
at Miss Pennyfarthing-Sevier's
Correctional
Finishing School.

We have become uncommonly close.
_______ 


for Kerry's spifftastic steampunk challenge at Real Toads