Imprinted

 

A ten year old girl gave birth to a black swan,

a dead priest resurrected. 

The first living thing the swan saw

was a weasel, and it took up residence in a dusty burrow under the porch, 

    behind the broken latticework.

From there, it flew out at passersby

with a great explosion of feathers and hatred.

It liked to ride on the back of its father,

making declamations about the nature of love

     while depicting the hand of God in bird shit down its father's coat.

The swan was elevated to high position

and saw to it that the girl was punished in accordance

with Old Testament teaching. 

It was really a vulture, its father a demon,

     but it ate well, fathered a numberless flock, and was well-respected

by those who wore its symbol, carried its banner, and aped its empty fury.

__________________

for Sunday Muse # 226. 

Music: Jethro Tull "Song For Jeffrey"

Research Scientist Dr. Humboldt-Flynn Is Denied Fame Because Of A Buffoon Rotating Through Her Lab

(dedicated to Dolly)

Abraham Lincoln 
opens
his eyes,
surprised
to be 
alive
once again.

"How is your headache?"
asks Dr. Humboldt-Flynn.
"What do you remember?
Can you move your little finger?
What sort of mood
are you
in?"

Then Ashburn,
the intern,
fucks with the environment,
resulting in
a full arrest
in Lincoln's chest,
and his own employment.
_______

a 55 for MZ and the G Man, wherever he is.

 
 

Rain Light

Come in,
kick down the damage door where the skull-pitch bitchsmile sits,
have some nail and screwdriver stew,
burn down the kerosene cloud,
and rain light
little knee-capped fire goddess,
rain light.

Come in, 
crap out,
call the cops, cancel the Christ, 
sidewind down the ventilation shaft,
and eavesdrop on the vomit-talk of the municipal madman
who claps the tune to this whole gladhand genocide,
feed the lion crouched in the cushions of corporate homicide
and sink like a stone.
Down is the new up,
some like it rough
we need to know now, sister
whether you've got this.

Come in,
come on,
run down the hot tip of the century hidden in a 
pitchman's penny eyes. Let a lung loose,
scream it, scroll it, tweet it, fuck it,
be Bo Peep of the broken water main,
drown this demon-deck in the miles-wide plastic tide
and rain light,
little mercury-silvered mer-goddess,
for all the god damn good it will do
and fuck's sake and forevermore,
shine and shiver and

rain light. 

________

This poem was posted January 29th but then I deleted it cos....well, cos it is so angry. However, I have been urged by several readers to put it back up, so here it is.

For Young Poets

First, stop banging away at silence 
like you would with a snow shovel against the ice.
A poem is not a dancing dog,
summoned to perform on its tiptoes at parties.

Put away all spirituous beverages.
Those who write while pitching in a sea of booze
do so in spite of such idiocy, not because of it.
If you haven't the imagination to see things differently without such props,
then become a mail carrier or a bus driver.

Read.
Read Lorca and rip your hair out til you're bald.
Read Neruda and flail, little fledgling on the cliff-side!
Read Plath, tuck your children safely in their room and then
to the kitchen with you to contemplate why cowards can't be poets;
at least not for long.

All you wild spastics shouting at the coffee bar,
waving pages and thinking volume and auctioneer-speak make poetry?
Sit down. Have someone duct tape your cake hole shut.
Think about what you haven't done, until you're ready to join us.

Now, to purge.
Write several great long hunks of unreadable shit,
staggering along on broken syntax,
with words strung together willy-nilly like last year's holiday lights,
all the similar-colored ones in a row, and half of them burned out.
Write haiku about a yew tree or a cherry blossom.
Get your paper plate-eyed friends to declare it all "brilliant!"
Then throw it away and we can get started.

Light candles.
They won't help you to write, but I like them.
Lock the door and don't answer it;
your husband will find his favorite golf shirt on his own,
and your children are already ruined anyway.
Let's do this thing.

The hard part is already done!
The lonely rejections and upheavals of childhood,
the sexual confusions and self-destructive rebellions of youth,
they're over with.
The burials, the pointless treks, the lovers who laughed and left,
the beetle of doubt and otherness digging its burrow behind your heart--
all of this is long complete.

Now, just stare out of the window at the sorrowful blue of the sky,
and the silver beauty of the impossibly distant moon.
Bite your knuckle if you have to, but stillness is best,
even to the point of drooling and apparent catatonia.
"What are you doing?" you'll be asked.
Working. Slaving. Making art.
Understand this, give yourself permission for this,
even as the dishes fester in the sink and the baby cries;
The seeds of greatness will germinate inside the still soil of you, The Poet.

It's not an easy road,
but there is soul and pride to it.
Your poems will be your own particular inverse garments to wear,
heart and guts to the world.
You have joined the cabal of those who possess a true talent:
unicycle riders have their uncanny balance,
lesbians their tongues,
demons their blackness;
now you have your poetry and people to admire you and say,
"It's nice",
"This is what you were doing?"
and "Huh."

Or,
you could still apply to Beauty College.
It's up to you.
________

for Get Listed at Real Toads, this time with Brendan.
 

The Illuminati, 20 Years On

Here I am,
arriving like a hailstone from the storm,
a little woozy from the impact
but still present enough to flash you my after-midnight smile.

We were a fantastic gabbling litter of girls,
crammed together in a Longaberger basket--
you were bound to love one of us, need another, fuck a third...

Have some of this pale lifeless shit I baked--
some kind of cornbread up to its eyeballs in ergot mold.
Spread out on the minor island of my rote embrace;
hold still and one of us will slather you in something resembling a genuine emotion,
purchased for a price on the trip in.

I love a reunion,
love to haunt the living and make them watch slides of long excruciating trips we took together,
the whole pod of us,
betraying each other, ourselves,
and making loud drunken scenes to remember.

Not like now, when remote-control Jesus
comes walking across the pool to scatter us into the hell we reserved for ourselves
without a thought,
when we were young and you believed you could illuminate us
with your stupid poetry
that cowered, pissing itself,
calling the mess it made, art.
_______

for the Sunday Whirl #143. The words were: illuminates (I dropped the "s"), scenes, haunt, impact, price, pool, litter, need, one, remote, storm, and lifeless.

Kitchen Girl

There are stairs,
scarce been used--

the smell of wood,
straight cut and new--

all of it built
quite recently, for you.

Didn't I tell you, baby,
I'd get you before a preacher one day?

Didn't I tell you, Lonesome,
that I'd find the words to make you stay?

I saw it all,
can't prove I lied--

in the case of those
who've lately died.

A ring means an unbroken circle,
a rope means a broken neck--

I knew one day I'd make you fall,
and dance, and turn--
first east, then west.
________

Izy at Real Toads says take her to an exotic location where you'd never want to go. All right. I think a gallows is fairly exotic and I certainly never want to end up there.

The title is taken from a traditional song of the same name. It goes, in part:

I never will believe what one man says
though his eyes be blue or brown--
unless he's swingin' from a scaffold high,
sayin', darlin' I can't come down. 

 

forgive like god

I love.
God loves.
Though God does not have a body,
which could get frustrating.

I loved you.
God did, too.
Then again, God loves everybody--
She spreads it around, that's what I've heard.

I knelt right here
to win Her ear,
and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed
my little heart out for you

that the most awful painful things
would smack you where it stings
and if
these wishes failed, why then,
I might have to consider
to forgive.

So I forgive
like God forgives,
though we both hold back flood and plague
just in case--

which could get messy,
Missy.
Just you wait.
_________

In The Spring

Wolves came.
They did not come to see the flower garden.
Winter's last squall blew at their heels.
They had black faces,
and eyes as yellow as an elk bone.

I was writing a poem--
this poem,
for you,
but wolves came
and I curled myself around the April moon.

I'm sorry if you've come
and not found me here.
I'm sorry there is nothing left but a little blood-
my blood--
on the page,

but if the moon rises,
we'll talk, just as if summer was our favorite season after all;
and should the wolves come for you,
we can still be together, though it won't be the same,
in the fall.
________

Angelina Aztec

Angelina Aztec, pretty as a poisoned pie--
her snowstorm hair melting at a touch;
she loves the spring
and birds that sing--
just not very urgently;
not very much.

Take the high steep steps to Angelina's place--
bring her tiny sweet cakes, and jelly in a spoon;
put your flowers in a vase,
set them in the fireplace--
lean always toward her lips
as enticing as the moon.

Angelina Aztec is an old-fashioned girl--
she picks apart the artichoke, leaf by leaf;
paper birds, silk blooms,
placed all around the room--
turning seed-sown love
into ribbon-wrapped sheaf.
_______

for Real Toads mini-challenge

artwork by Kim Nelson 

2012 Doomsday Theory

I carefully constructed a doomsday theory
with bible quotes, Mayans and graphs;

I told a cockroach my doomsday theory
and the cockroach

laughed.
_______

 

Double Toad Post!

I'm healed, and can type again, so I thought I would catch up by posting two poems for two Real Toads challenges. The first, "Haven", is for A Word With Laurie, the word being "dementia." The second, "Forget Me Nots", is for Hannah Gosselin's weekend photo challenge. I hope that you will enjoy them!

"Haven"

At sunset,
the starlings
establish raucous bedlam in the trees,

branches reaching
with wooden certainty
to the heaven of their angels whispering unseen.

I practice a similar lunacy.

My idee fixe
is your face--
my objects charged with significance
are the sounds that, together, create your name.

My flawless premise
is that the sun sets because you charmed the old shiner right out of the sky--
my back ward logic
is that I am starling, chattering, saying;
and that you are haven, holding me, swaying.

___

"Forget Me Nots"

They have the orderly roll me to the fence line,
Then he heaves me over it--
Woman overboard--
Into the forget-me-nots.

Here is the hard rock,
The puffy dandies,
And the tilting trees.

Once, I wore a navy dress with white accents
And a wide-brimmed hat;
I carried a clutch purse,
And my shoes, in my hand.

It will likely rain this afternoon,
And, after that, a bright mad moon.

God is a woman, I can sense it--
Near as my next breath,
And if there isn't one, She is there anyway

As relaxed as a blade of grass,
Her limitless majesty carried easy, like a posey,
Filled with old-fashioned grace,
Comforting and
Companionable.

second photo by Hannah Gosselin.

   

E Z Off

Sylvia Plath's spirit spoke to me
as if she were the
god damn Oracle Of The Oven.

Sylvia say,
"Oh, girl,
give it up.
You think this world gonna change?
You think the rain gonna stop half way down the sky
to save your fuckin' 'do?"

She say,
"Do what I do.
Pretend it's a workout show.
Crawl in like this,
and breathe in deep and slow."

So I say,
"Who is Sylvia,
what is she,
that all our swains commend her?
What kind of half-assed soul was she
that a kitchen appliance should end her?"

I say,
my Love, she leave me last on her list.
Not feelin' loved,
it sucks dead donkey lips,
but
still...

Damned if I'm gonna snuff it here
with chicken grease in my hair.
Damned if Pete the repairman say,
"It don't work because
there's a damn dead girl in there."

Anyways,
something good might happen any time.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh look, that made me laugh.
_______

An Extremely Short Biography Of Aqua Bondage Boy

Aqua Bondage Boy forgets the "safe" word.

THE END.

________

a magpie tale. picture: alex stoddard

Cowbirds

Be reasonable.
Don't die here, not yet.
Besides,
A good French manicure should never be wasted;
So keep fluttering your hands,
Asking for water (good!),
And variously demonstrating that the heart within you still beats.

You think me unkind.
Why?
I stomp on anybody's hands
When I find them hanging from the high wall by their fingertips like that.
If Goddess meant for us to be vines,
She would create us as slender,
Graceful,
Rising things;
Not great crashing beasts
Caught in nets,
Idiotically bellowing.

Hold still.
Be a lady for once.
Pretend that you forgive me,
And I will build a nest from assorted debris,
As birds do,
A little round emblem of natural perfection
That we can call home
Just long enough
To fall out of.
______ 
for Real Toads Open Link Monday

How To Make A Poet (Though Making A Milk Jug Lantern Would Be Better)

I was delivering the mail.
No, the actual mail.
There were steps,
It was icy,
and bullshit bullshit bullshit...

Anyway,
I slipped.
Something deep inside my ears whispered to me:
Whee, whirlybird,
Going down.

I might still have been all right, except--
I landed in the spokes of some kid's bike
Left on the walk;
Then I was dead
Cos I broke my neck just like Mama always said.

Lady come out, lady say,
Omg, call the lawyer.

Then I was floating above my body,
And I thought,
No.
No no no no.
I had almost finished reading a novel, and
I had thawed some hamburger for tonight and
I had a movie that came in the mail,
Set aside,
Like a a potentially distracting
Arranged bride.
So I can't die.

But I died.
I saw souls whipping into the light
Like their hair was on fire.
The love!
(they said.)
The well-being!
(they cried.)

Well, that's not how my experience went...

God looked at my life and then at me and said,
WTF?
And I looked at my life and then at God, and said back,
wtF????
I came back as a cat.

I peed the little potted tree,
I bit the hand that fed me,
I shed and shit and scratched and that was me.
I was angry.

Then I died again, and still,
No love for Shay.
I stood before God in her Radiance,
And was sent back as a geranium this time,
That I might learn patience
And the art of being still.

I was pink, and pretty,
And people said, how nice.
All the time inside I was screaming
GAHHHHH! GAHHHHHHH!
Cos I was angry.
Then some kid, maybe the child of the one with the bike,
Said off with your head, 
And I said
Nothing after that.

I screeched at God, WTF?
And God said back, well, wtf?
I went back as a tropical fish
And an ant
And a dung beetle
And a labrador retriever,
The only one in history that bit.

I died and died and died and died.
And stood before God,
And got the trapdoor in the floor,
And a bon voyage.

It stopped being funny pretty fast.

So, after I was a monkey and a microbe and a
Frozen test tube baby in a basket,
God finally sighed.
One more time, She said, and 
Off I went.

My mama tried to kill me cos
She knew she bore a poet.
But I wouldn't die, not again.
No no no no no,
Not having it.

So I grew,
And scribbled, 
And went GAHHHHHHHHHH!, but
I did it pretty, so pretty.
I didn't love no men, and they didn't love me neither.
I loved some women til it made me cross-eyed,
But they said, we can be friends, such friends.

Then some dweeb at the mall told me God loves me,
And I smack him hard upside the head
With my latest volume.
I beat him
And beat him
And beat him
And beat him,
And that's the most use poetry ever was. 
I beat him, but I did it pretty, so pretty.

I went to jail and they said,
What's your name?
What's your gender?
What's your credit score?
What's your sign?

Then they gave me ten to fifteen years
To contemplate the Divine.
______

picture found on weheartit.com

Kids

We were just kids.

We liked Patti Smith, Pat Benatar and Quarterflash.

We drank a lot of wine and bowling alley gin.

The law was 18.

We were going no place, in thrift store leather jackets.

We read French poets, and didn't understand a word.

We had no plans,

But we had each other.

It was grand and glorious and stupid and temporary.

We were as random as a sack of cats.

We thought we were smart;

We were not always wrong.

We were nobody, but we were us.

We were just kids.
________
for Marian's music prompt at Real Toads.

this poem is for J.

Mission Of Mercy

Arctic explorers come to my door.
Their eyes are desperate medicine vials filled with bitter latitudinal madness,
And their breath freezes in the air and falls
Like shattered tea cups
From the hand of a once-genteel madwoman.


I invite them in,
But they only stand there.
I may as well offer my hospitality to weird lights from out of the sky,
Or something stupid and made-up,
Like the perfect lover.


I would offer them a map,
Showing the way right to their doors next to the fruit stand or the public house,
But all I have is old napkins with your promises scribbled on them in spit.


I would offer them a drink, poor freezing miserable souls,
But I can't seem to locate anything in my broken-crate cupboards except
3-in-1 oil and kerosene.


I think the arctic explorers may be spirits, ghosts,
From the way they are blurring and wavering in front of me.
I go to light a match, but I have grown great useless paws--
What would you think, if I touched you now?
I think you would laugh.
I think you would slam your hope chest closed on my fingers,
And roll out your new husband on a trolley, to introduce us.


I try to tell the arctic explorers about how you once sought my kiss, my breasts, and the warm skin sanctuary of my body;
I try to tell them that I cannot rescue them,
And I see some human glimmer deep in the airless ice of their eyes.
They look even sadder, more lost, and then they say,
"But, madame, you don't understand.
It is us who cannot rescue you.
_______

linked to Real Toads Open Link Monday

60 Second Theology

The executioner with the short attention span
Sometimes fails to finish his work.

The feathers on a lady's hat
Send him off into the crowd, and then into the fields,
Looking for a warbler
Or a milliner.

A certain condemned aristocrat, thus semi-reprieved,
Was left stumbling in circles, a broken clock,
Holding one hand to the bloody side of his neck,
The other still unblemished as a girl's.

The distracted executioner is called on the carpet.
He is censured by the king himself,
Though it comes down from corporate.
Still,
Five minutes later,
He has forgotten it all and is riding a tiny tricycle through the stone-cobbled streets,
Trailed by a snotty, wailing child.

Say hello to the distracted executioner.
Lay your head here, please,
Just so.
If it helps, pretend you are at the salon for a shampoo;
Many have pleaded for mercy,
While others have spat and cursed as you do.

Will you be saved by a passing minstrel's tune,
Pardoned by a colorful butterfly?
Or will your head roll like a bowling ball,
Blinking in sudden surprise?

Your fate rests, it seems to me,
With the shifting vagaries,
The chance inanity,
Of a buffoon elevated to deity.
_______