Yarn Ball

 

The devout go to graveyards, too.

numbered from the day we are born;

winter-bearers disguised in gentian blue.

Every cat knows the yarn ball has its end.

stitched into a world of glorious patterns

comprised of flesh, genomes, accident, atoms.

I am the baby playing in the April clover

riding inside the disappearing bone-brittle

biddy, herself a rider who with Charon must settle.

In between I live my dream within a dream

within a buzzing hive of urgent ephemeral illusion,

a corporeal toy. an aspect of God, in a barrel on a waterfall stream.

___________________

for Word Garden Word List--A.E.Stallings

Rán

 

I can't recall what this place was like

before the renovations.

There were difficulties--

bombings, whatnot,

and the removal to the madhouse of the construction foreman. 

Blueprints are lovely, don't you think?

Smooth and blue as calm seas. 

Birth, though, that's a bloody messy business

of screaming gobsmacked arrival

held up in the hands of the midwife who never cuts her nails.

It's not so much that I love this place as it is that I was presented with it.

I woke in these rooms

with the hammering already in progress. 

I long for waterfalls and love,

but have skin like bricks, and hair like shingles.

People say, make it beautiful, you can do it!

Be your own fetch, a siren of the flooded basement,

luring yourself with your own song.

Make it your home away from home as drowning sailors do,

find the bright side of blistering paint and warped floors like heavy seas.

All right then. I have tattooed the name Ran

on my arm, see it when I hold you.

We are limited only by burst plumbing, crumbling rebar,

and our own imaginations.

We are castaways keeping our heads above water

in our Rubik's Cube Winchester House 

of gorgeous possibility.

__________

for Sunday Muse and shared with desperatepoets open link. 

Glass Acrobat

I stood on my head for years

and grew glass skin

to keep myself contained. 

I stood on the sky

and wept on the ground.

All my birds died of thirst.

 I let go and fell up,

became an ocean in all directions

carrying a second sky on my back.

"It's dangerous!" someone screamed

from the shore, but I could hardly hear them 

over the wild rush, and shattering roar.

______

for Sunday Muse #203.

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. 

________________

Helpmeet

Come on in, the water's fine.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

He who hesitates is lost.

Are you calling the plumber, or shall I?

Call 1-800-WET FLOR.

Call upon God in times of crisis.

Bring a positive attitude.

Bring it, come at me, bro.

Bring in the left-hander.

Bring that up again and see what happens.

How long can you hold your breath?

How far is it to Katmandu?

How deep is your love?

If you laid the Bee Gees end to end, what good would it do?

Stay on point.

Stay on topic.

Stay. Sit. Roll over.

The water do wave, the water do roll.

Do the water a pour into this little bowl.

Climb up, climb out, do a cartwheel and a bow,

and see what I've got planned for you now.

______

for Sunday Muse #136.

Book Worm In Seal Skin

I'm a book worm in seal skin,
Gladys on the half shell,
exiting the surf wearing a long wool skirt,
a smart jacket,
librarian glasses,
and an antiquarian hat.

(I meant to trip in my high button shoes.
I meant to do that.)

So, now, come out from the stacks, you.
Bring me a rose
and state your business.

Yes, yes. I'm the most beautiful woman
that you've ever spotted behind a reference desk.
Your heart is mine,
to catalog and shelve,
and so forth and so on. I've heard it all before.

Do something different.
Throw your electronic gadgets in the trash.
Do an interpretive dance around the safety cones
which mark the wet spot on the floor.
Then,
lie down with me there,
play with my hair and read to me your own poem
about having to be lashed to the microfiche reader,
so that you won't throw your life away
for love of my song.

Wrap me in a net and slide the chopsticks from my head.
Check me out, Padawan.
Get lost in me, as in a book, or Old Briney.
If you whisper the correct call number, I will sigh
--in that way you just knew all librarians can sigh--
and stay seven years with you,
getting on top,
making spot-on recommendations,
and organizing your special collections like nobody ever has before.

Or, you can stand there gaping,
and I'll slide back into the surf as if I had never existed at all,
here and gone,
leaving just my hat ribbon floating in the foam.
_______ 

House & River

On the left, the house--
on the right, the river;
along the path--the low, deadhand grass,
the jealous burrs,
the lateflower on watch for evening.

On the left, the house--
on the right, the river;
by the path--the restless sinktooth cur,
your bracelet lost,
and the moon reflecting herself in it.

Did my lips kiss curve and scar the same?
Did they speak each of your dozen names?
The thorn,
the berry,
the briar?

On the left, the house--
on the right, the river;
where the path bends--the gibbet-necked heron,
the cat bone stars,
pouring lives like silver into the borrowed body of a Nixie--you, in full song.
_______

Gator

In my alligator dream,
there was not enough Revlon to reverse
all the signs of aging
and fighting
and staying in the bath for far too long.

Nonetheless,
I found it easier to smile.
I went through dentists like tissue paper,
because I just couldn't resist the urge
to snap my jaws 
and send them shaking down my throat, whole.

In my alligator dream,
I was too large to flush down the toilet.
As a result, I was able to occupy
any apartment I wanted.
The heating bills, however, were enormous,
and the water kept shorting out the space heaters.

I lost interest in reading,
opera,
gardening,
and all the other stupid shit I used to love.
All the wasted time!
I could have been squabbling with other alligators
over the bloated, stinking carcass of some unlucky waterside creature,
and making off with my share, triumphant.

That is what I did in my dream.
I used no fork and spoon.
I declined to chew my food.
I relieved myself in the water and made no bones about it.
Ever the lady, I laid eggs like some batshit brood hen,
and when they hatched,
I allowed them to express themselves
and raise themselves
because alligator mothers do not helicopter.

I woke up grinning.
I grabbed the inattentive lover at my side and shook the shit out of her,
then rolled.
"What the fuck?!?" she screamed, stumbling to her feet.
She grabbed her clothes--and on impulse, some Aspercreme--
and was out of there, rubbing her arm and cursing.

I liked being an alligator.
It gave me a lot of permission,
and I didn't care if people liked me or even tasted good.
I miss my powerful tail
and my short ridiculous legs that never needed shaving.

So when you disturb my bath,
coming in without knocking and asking some retarded question,
realize that I am not the same anymore.
Channel the small mammal you are built around,
and read the reply in my eyes
as they look back at you
from just above the surface.
______

Author's note: In reality, I have no desire to be an alligator; I would have to be an Aveeno-gator, and I don't go near the water unless there is foaming bath soap in it. I would get kicked right out of Alligator Finishing School.

Neptune's Daughter

In the time
of the end
of the world,
I walked--

with a lily in one hand 
and a double blade in the other,

searching
to the ends
of the earth
I walked.

in the surface
of the stones
on the drown side
of the river,

I saw
you waiting

with a tethered bird in one hand
and a rose ring in the other

in the time
of the end
of the world
you came.

I have the blade to set the bird free.
You have the rose to blood the lily.

there is no time
to save the world
but with the drown side of a kiss,

in the time
of the end 
of the world

there is the ever-rising river.
there is us.
there is this.
__________

Ms. S.'s Love Song

There are gifts and then there are gifts.
Daddy gave me mine when he let me have you,
though, honestly,
he gives me most anything I want on a silver platter.

Like the runaway train said,
it's all downhill from here, baby.
Shhh, don't speak--
you'll break the mood, like men always do.
I have plans for you.

Come with me, down to the river.
Are you feeling a little light-headed?
Having trouble keeping your feet?
Just stick with me, babe.
I'm gonna roll ya,
roll ya like your back ain't got no bones.

Here we are.
Let me run my fingers through your hair.
A little touch on the top of your head
and you know what I want--
down you go, sailor.

I love the way your eyes seem to look up at me
as your head dips,
bobs,
sinks,
sated and seaworthy,
never to be thirsty again.
_______

for Get Listed at Real Toads, with Ed Pilolla. I used "river', "break", and "downhill".

picture: Cristina Scabia of Lacuna Coil

 

in water

I was soaking
~in water~
I must have fallen asleep
to my slowed breathing;
my slowed heartbeat;
I must have started to dream.

There was a field, a clutch of trees.
There was a retrograde moon, pale white in the morning sky.
There were stately grackles,
noisy starlings,
and a single cardinal on a mulberry branch that bobbed slightly 
under his tiny weight.

I was dreaming that I was
~in water~
I must have submerged into the pool of myself,
because then there were your slender fingers,
your hand
wet to the wrist,
stirring me and holding my heart as I spread and rippled.
__________

 

 

Nurse Gina

Nurse Gina is a Sister of the Creolan Mission.
She has not attended any recognized school of nursing.
She does not submit to any formal schedule,
and she does not date your doctor, fumbling in the break room like a teenager.

The Creolan Sisters have a mission on Earth,
and their mission does not include such tawdry stuff.
Here, have a hit of holiness
from the fingertips of Nurse Gina--
don't bogart it.
Don't think that this is anything but transformative.

The Sisters have seen
how you fail;
how you have fallen open like a dropped cardboard box in the rain.
They have seen how the very bones within you have drifted,
leaving your tired spirit to gasp on the sidewalk of sickness;
They come as you expire,
bedeviled,
so weary that rain stops half way to your face, as you look to the skies.

Now,
Nurse Gina appears.
She will not clip tedious notations and reports to the foot of your bed,
nor crank it to an upright position like some angelic elevator operator.
No.
She will climb in with you,
her skin miraculous and dark from the sunny cliffs at San Creola;
you will believe that a compact and very feminine sun has covered you,
and she has.

Here is a new narcotic,
one of healing,
one that sharpens perception
even as it soothes the overburdened lonely chambers of your heart.
Kiss her, and know that you are loved--
not only by Nurse Gina and the whole of the Creolan Order,
but by the Goddess herself.

She has reserved for you a holy bounty
which She created even before the seas themselves--
the seas Our Lady presides over at her sacred birthplace,
where the waves undulate and smooth themselves over every trouble
just as Nurse Gina does
in the restorative hour before dawn,
when she reminds you of who you are
and why you are worthy
of her tender attentions in the first place.
_________