Mi Loca Amada

 

The full moon scares me,

and always has.

I become a dropped plate 

shattering along its reflected lines. 

Bless the rainy night,

the wet leaf drip of solace.

Thick clouds hide me

burrow-minded from the mad moon.

My fear of what it might do,

or cause me to do, leaves me w(e)ary.

For tonight I am safe,

there is no moon, but mi  loca amada, no stars either. 

______________

for What's Going On? "The Night Sky"

Music: Snow Get You To The Moon

 

Beautiful Is A Tired Word

 

Beautiful is a tired word but I found you so

with the intensity of your obsidian hardness, and silver starburst flaws.

A black-leaved water lily with 

blooms of conventional white, like a nun

if the nun were carnal, and clever, 

and forever drowning in her own roots.

How like the Host are your white blooms,

a transubstantiation from habit-black to bland bright,

a false face like a lady's fan

or a death's head

and I just had to touch, take into me, and be wounded by

the carmine-edged cuttings you took from yourself.

Weren't we beautiful, for an hour as the day turned crimson,

making poetry from nothing but dirt and gold?

We wore only our flimsy paper costumes 

printed with deadnames and roses

and a garland of sun-shy violets for a crown. 

Finally, we saw each other for what we were--

one a shadow inside a censer swung by the claw of a talking crow

and the other as dim as a dog and as keen to roll in the foul thing it finds.

Beautiful is a tired word but I hung it around your neck

like a prize won for knocking down milk bottles on the midway.

a feat remembered with both pride and shame for far too long.

___________

for desperatepoets LOVE SONGS ON A GHOST JUKEBOX. 

images created with Bing A.I.

Music: The Japanese House Dionne

Newton's Cradle

 In evening,

you spoke to me through the wall.

"I love you."

Don't.

It hurts when I laugh.

Tears, like sweat on a glass in summer.

Night, a smothering shadow.

In morning, diminished,

I love you as babies love,

desperate, red-faced, screaming.

_______

for Dverse Quadrille # 158 hosted by Linda Lyberg. Theme: "morning"

This is a Newton's Cradle: 

Music: George Michael "Tonight"

Greta and Ted, A Love Story

 

image by Corinne Geersten

Ghosts don't normally send fire through the mail, but they tend

to be a little bit muzzy-headed, the dead.

Water stamps temper these communications slightly

but flame is a Gypsy and wanders brightly,

making suggestions of passion on the carpets where they end.

Greta, not knowing she is dead, not knowing she's a shade,

sends these immolations postage-paid

and if such silly wooden houses go up, if roofs collapse,

then their occupants' lives, like hers, will lapse

and you can't fight infernos with a lemonade glass.

Poor Greta, sharing hell with the taciturn Unabomber,

who wishes all kinds of ill upon her,

who stinks and mumbles and never changes clothes or shaves

so that when one letter is returned to sender

she will blow and burn so that none can mend her.

Lonely Greta, sullen Ted

with a packed pipe and a black rose on their summer-dry graves.

_______

for Sunday Muse #214.

Faith Dentistry

Here at the Church of the Broken Tooth,
we are all feeling nervy.
We have been handed envelopes for tithing,
and our own personal Jesus Action Figures
perfect for use as candles or cudgels.

We do not suffer the loony veteran.
We cannot condone the homosexual.
This is God's will, not ours.
We have rent our garments and need needles
and smaller, oh much smaller camels,
though filthy and willful beasts they be.

We of the Broken Tooth faith community
take to the streets, with placards to protect the unborn,
except, of course, for our Allison
"away at bible camp"
until she returns, in time for Christmas,
her body once again an empty and lesser vessel. 
_________

You vs. Donut

Passion sears my senses and burns like fire as we--


Oh for fuck's sake. Start over.

I am in love with this fucking donut.
It can sit there and say nothing just as good as you,
but I can eat it--

Okay. Point taken. You 1, Donut 1. But wait, there's more.

I am in love with this donut, and this donut doesn't care
if I drool over its twin cos it has a million twins and so therefore I need never be lonely again in my lifetime.

This poem is for my beloved donut. Donut could give a shit less. 
Donut 2, You 1, one draw. Goddamit. 
_____

ridiculous nonsense for micro-poetry: fire and ice. 

Blood Bracelet

A blood bracelet is the best kind.
It is proof of life
and the ability to bear pain.

Before sleeping with you
in the big bed upstairs with the cuffs on the posts,
I spent six weeks living with religious lunatics
in the woods;
they had whips and crosses, 
thorns and theology.

Later, deep in the rabies dance of our mating,
I called upon the things they had taught me--
starvation without complaint,
dogma without tenderness,
and the acquired skill of animating bird carcasses with or without ceremony.

That was the key--the corpse cardinal, dead dove and rot starling,
all left on your pillow along with red script
from the blood bracelet your bite left
when you spoke to me
so ignited and
sure of redemption's need for absolute destruction as prelude.
_______ 

for bits of inspiration at real toads.