Lady Poet

 

Who changed you, water lily, who betrayed

and left your leaves to sway half-drownëd here?

Your moon-dazed face is pale, night-sick, afraid.

Water lily so wounded, so austere.

You of many stems but a single face--

no voice at all except poems water-writ.

Who muddied the stars of your secret place,

and forced such a sorrowful alphabet?

________

A rispetto poem for What's Going On?--"The Dark" 

Music: the late Marianne Faithful Sad Lisa

Poem About a Dream, With Shifting Tense

 

I dreamed you were there again

like a delayed letter in the mailbox

twined with thorns, slick with lipstick.

There you were, at my doorway

on my farm where I have never laid eyes

or set foot, nor sat cross-legged in the wild-grown meadow.

You were with someone new.

I was with someone new.

They were both starting to see how things are. 

Your hair, you know, it's like a pillow on a bed

where I long to be. And me, I have the key that you can't find,

as clunky as a cow's bell, as broken as an old washer. 

The guy you were with had begun to see the 

sunset behind your October eyes; I've known your full dark.

I'm here but obscured from the wildflower partner beside me.

I'm getting a vibe, like pixelated messages from space,

that your man would like to be mine instead, and drop his

heavy bags on my rag rug. I think my partner has checked out silently.

So there we stand, in a now that never was,

in a place we never were, playing out a scene like breezy clouds.

I see blackbirds on the split-rail fence, dipping, calling,

and feel my heart break apart inside my chest like a broken door handle.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--The Jesus Cow

Music: Coldplay The Scientist

The Mournful Crow

 

Waterfall, Sierra Madre, Philippines

If you want to find God, you can go by rail

or catch a jeepney, repaired a thousand times

and driven by a madman with a rosary on the mirror.

Tell him you seek the Divine and be certain

that he does not misconstrue your meaning.

You go down General Luna street to the place

where the Moon and Mars both must bow

to the great glittering of the Creator's face.

When you arrive, look for the Indian Laurel tree

where a crow has come down the backbone

of the Sierra Madre to wait here for you.

He knows you have lost much, your child, your home. 

The Sierra Madre crow can offer only baubles,

still-warm bits of pan desal bread, and his wise mein.

He is here, like the church of San Agustin,

as mournful as the Christ, as wounded, as kind.

Go inside, where adobe bricks contain time itself,

and the Spanish artifacts reconcile gold with rust.

There you will find Dibella, Alberoni, majesty and peace.

Outside, the kind crow, the Philippine sky, the laurel trees.

__________

Written for Word Garden Word List--Full Dark, No Stars. When I was 20 or 21, I visited San Agustin Church in Manila. If there is a place in the world that is truly God's House, then San Agustin must surely be it. 

Music: Kate Bush This Woman's Work 

Black Roses

September in the city

and nobody knows you're here.

It's okay to walk down the boulevard

it doesn't care if you're sad or broke or queer

All the familiar faces

washed away in an angry rain

now you're here in September in the city

and you have to start all over again

The sun just over the pigeon roofs

is yours as much as anyone else's here

and black roses in a sidewalk garden

bless you as much as anyone, dear

September in the city

and god is in the windows and the leaves

you will be all right, for one more night

if you just remember to breathe

The sun just over the pigeon roofs

is yours as much as anyone else's here

and black roses in a sidewalk garden

bless you as much as anyone, dear.

Flight of the Arctic Tern

 

Come on this polar expedition

they said.

It'll be fun.

You might meet someone

bring a gun

they said.

Where are they now, those golden friends

with their golden 

spilt ends

and their friendship that never ends

written on a napkin

in pencil?

Oh, wire cage towel mother,

how about a hug?

How about a rug to take a nap on?

All of this pretty blue ice

seems to be getting the best of me

lo these

many years on the floe. 

Oh, furious angry white bear with your

cotton-ball cubs

somebody loves you, don't they?

I could tell

as you were shredding me all to hell

that you were the white carpet type

with the correct wine

a smart address

and annual membership at the wishing well.

I'd like to be an Inuit with a movie library

here on the hard-pack.

Given six months of sunlight,

I could repair the damage from the constant calving

and get right. 

I'd go home, with my raging PTSD carefully cradled

in a nest of newspapers 

inside my luggage. 

The airline would charge me extra to carry it

and make me jump out

after calculating

altitude and windage.

Hello dear friends, I'm back

I would say

landing hard at Cuckooville Subdivision

in a spray of

wing ice and duty-free fragrances

direct from nowhere

where your children are doing well,

your husbands are golf course gods

and you,

oh you,

pretend not to notice that I'm sliced to smithereens

hanging unfashionably upside-down

like the tongue 

who once brought music

to your bell.

______

for Word Garden Word List--Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

Music: Donna Lewis Agenais

Tulips In Headscarves

 

Rain comes at night

wandering between buildings,

wearing a long black coat

and the silent hours.

Pink tulips beside the walk

dip their heads,

delicate and disappointed

as fallen birds.

Slate roofs facing the moon

shine for the rain

but feel nothing, admit nothing

aloof and blank.

Rain is the sky's child

but dies earthbound.

Tulips in their headscarves

mourn in

performative

pantomime.

_________

For What's Going On? "Rain".

Santa Anita

 

When I think of you 

                                     Daddy,

still to this day I see you in

                                               overcoat and fedora,

newspaper under your arm,

                                                  breath visible in the cold,

coming down the sidewalk from the

                                                                 train station--

I would run to meet you, overjoyed.

Years later,

                    post-divorce, me a

21-year-old 

                     home from overseas.

I stayed with you

                              and your new wife

that stranger, and you Daddy, 

                                                    you a stranger too

in the unfamiliar sprawl of L.A.

You took me with you to

                                           Santa Anita racetrack

with the beautiful thoroughbreds

                                                            ambling

in their easy gait, the jockeys

                                                    leaning forward

as if already running the next race.

                                                              I was looking

at the odds board and then you were gone.

I waited as the horses with their

                                                         strange wonderful names

finished race after race,

                                           feeling lost, and sad, then angry.

I still regret how I spoke to you

                                                       when you finally appeared

but you took it all with a funny smile. 

                                                                  Years later I realized

that you had gone to call the new wife.

                                                                      You just

couldn't be away from her, for me. 

Daddy, I don't know who you turned into.

My adored father

                               became someone who lived

with plastic over the furniture

                                                     and the Lakers on tv.

Oh for a ballgame with you

                                                 at Tiger Stadium

or another trip to the DIA

                                             to see Diego Rivera's mural.

I would run to you, overjoyed,

                                                     but you are gone,

just a sad California memory.

__________________________

for Dverse Poetics "Left In The Lurch" hosted by my friend Dora. 

Music: The Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang

Only Every Bloody Thing

 

Only every bloody thing

volunteered for offering

against their will, against the grain

against their soul and flesh and name.

Our Mother of the Not Enough

whose kiss is made of chaff and stuff

to starve the cow whose bell is broke

and tell the flame it's only smoke.

Only every bloody thing

whose throat was cut but still could sing

will curse your words and curse your hand

in every tongue and every land.

Our Mother of the Frozen Pond

the awful ice where darkness spawned

a lonely child who had one too

whose scorn is mixed with pity, too.

________

For those, like me, for whom Mother's Day is hard. We are sisters, we are fierce, and we are worthy.

Two roads diverged in a wood...

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Music: Sly & the Family Stone Stand

A Divorce, 2001

 

I don't miss the arguments

or the madness,

the steady harsh hum of discord.

I don't miss hearing the dogs' toenails 

digging against the wood floor

as their sheltered world turned ugly.

I don't miss the eerie sound of

empty accusations

demanding confession of phantom sins.

I don't miss the sound of our son

begging you to stop smashing dishes

when I tried to escape to the bath.

I don't miss the slick drone of lawyers

or the jangle of keys to

homes changing hands. 

But when I sat down to eat

at the same table in a different kitchen

with the windows December-dark,

the silence wool-thick

and the opposite chair mute and empty,

I almost couldn't bear it--

almost couldn't face

the long wait for spring.

______

for What's Going On? -- "Silence"

Note: my divorce set me free, but at the time it was awful. I don't think I've ever written about it quite so baldly before. 

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

Music: Gordon Lightfoot if There's a Reason

Five Reasons Why We Divorced

 

1. The phase of the moon. 

      Full in perpetuity inside your head,

     disturbing your vision from behind,

     creating avid ghosts. 

     Me, caught in tides, no handhold,

     every current riding over my tongue,

    a deep-water language for one.

2. The snowdrops in the front garden.

     You, the monarch of sweet beginnings,

     pale with presentiments, failing

     and dying in the first strong light.

    Me, the Queen of January, lover

    of the silent empty street, made 

    nervous by crowds and heat. 

3. The thespian masks on our wall.

     You were the thousand-in-one,

     going for a glass of water and

     returning a complete stranger.

    Me, forgetting what was real or scripted,

    playing a part, blundering in borrowed limbs,

    smiling, crying, ad-libbing, hating it.

4. The crow feathers on my desk.

     You liked doves, wanted everything white,

     like living in a child's storybook, letting

    someone else absorb all the splinters.

    Me, a dark star happiest at height, 

    but having foresworn the breeze

    except the one in my dreams. I called

   all night, lips never moving at all.

5. The child between us and of us.

     The Viking funeral you loaded

     your guilt upon, disguised as

     kindness, consuming itself brightly.

    Me, trying to be sober, trying 

   to be better than the mother

   I had myself, and failing, failing,

   until our child needed me most

and I swam out to him, with my real face, and a ticket out of there. 

________

for What's Going On? Fifteen Reasons 

Don't forget that the Word Garden Word List is still open through Sunday. 

Music: Roberta Flack Just Like A Woman

   

     

1/31/24

 Some say this the two-hundredth of January,

and are as weary of it as if it were 

cold leftover meatloaf again

or their boss's face.

I shall miss it, though.

When I was 25, I saw Jim off at the train station,

his rucksack slung over a bony shoulder,

and I cried on the empty platform

not realizing until he was gone

that I loved him. 

January brought heavy wet snow that made me sore with shoveling,

then it turned to ice for a while, and now slush.

My heart is forever surprised and jumps when touched,

then sags as it dies like the snow, a stuttering death that repeats itself. 

I was wrecked as the melt set in,

the old familiar malaise in its favorite straight back chair.

Some say this is the two-hundredth of January,

and feel numb with it as if medicated. 

I hate to see it go, as I always do, my favorite season except for Fall.

Its sharp, unsentimental freeze breaks my ease,

and I know, even as it goes,

that I love it for how it hurts me

letting me know I still can care. 

_______

for What's Going On? "It's Wednesday" 

Music: Mazzy Star Fade Into You

Dear November

 

Dear November,

It's mad easy to become lost.

You are so cold and distant, part of me is begging,

the rest of me a raised fist, cocked.

 

Everything inside me is in rivulets down a window

and it's moving,

dear November,

like a scared hare in the stalky brown fields. 

Dear November,

I think I married you once, had your child,

or came to your funeral every year wearing heartbroken black.

I was your dove, dear November,

and your crow.

Dear November,

I need to know that you remember me beautiful,

even if I turned dry as a page,

stale as a bowl of potpourri in a haunted house.

I am crying now, dear November

and December's smile mocks us both,

Cher Novembre,

mon triste bien-aime.*

________

*Dear November, my sad beloved

for Dverse Poetics for the love of letters. 

You

"Maybe tomorrow honey

Some place down the line, I'll wake up older

So much older mama,

I'll wake up older and I'll just stop all my trying." --Jackson C. Frank

You, wearing your father's coat

and a ribbon in your hair,

you're the one I spoke to in a blackbird dream.

You, like a pocket sun,

burning down and rising up in continual blaze

all while reading a book, riding the bus, counting raindrops on the pane.

At home you wear a long shirt

made from calendar pages and paste.

Both are white as summer light, or a fallen blue jay's breast.

You, in love with Michigan in the fall, Morrocco in hazel eyes.

In your boot, a trove of travel tickets,

bad paper, and the echo of smoke-gone nights.

You lay your heart in the curve of the sickle moon

and claim to have no desires,

but they leave your skin and howl in the hills all night. 

You, with a sense of home in your chest like a tumor,

wounding and soothing you like the gin you used to love

until you can hardly stand it anymore.

There is a house from 1925, with a Packard in the drive.

Someone is washing it as if it were a memory

there on the tarmac arc beneath the pear tree.

You held your dolls up against the leaded windows

before you were born, after you died, 

before any of this thorned tapestry you're stitched into now.

The leaves are turning red, the nights are cool.

There is no kiss that holds a hospital for souls,

no soft-bound convent that knows the right prayer.

You can just listen to the yarn-ball clock and when you're ready

let it fall, think of nothing, and find yourself home

where we're waiting for you, those whose names you knew, and now recall.

______

shared with Desperate Poets open link. 

Music: Janis Joplin Little Girl Blue

First Love

 Hey, old girl,

I can't bear it, you know,

to go back.

You're gone anyway.

How can that be?

How could you hold my whole heart for years

and then be gone from the world?

I remember the green! 

The bright lawn in the sun, and the dark green

you wore, the color of forests, and later, Great Lakes blue.

I remember the cloud of rising cigarette smoke

in the warm evenings. 

There were fights sometimes,

even the odd drunk falling down.

It didn't matter.

What I remember best is the heartbeat excitement

of seeing you there.

I recall a rainy Sunday in autumn,

you wearing red, white and blue as if it were July.

Everyone we both knew was always there,

dressed in white like heroes. 

I loved you madly from the moment I met you.

No matter where I traveled,

I always came back to you, my comfort, my heart,

the one beloved constant 

in the uncertain confusion of my childhood, my youth, my middle age. 

Sometimes, still, I dream we are together.

Hey, old girl. 

The one word I can never say to you is "goodbye."

You were my sanctuary and so I ring the bells for you,

shout once more for the home team,

recall the steep aisles, the vendors, the big scoreboard

of Tiger Stadium, the love of my young life,

________

for Dverse poetry of place and space, hosted by Ingrid. 

Music: Frank Sinatra There Used To Be A Ballpark 

Waiting For April

 When I was seventeen, I set out oranges 

for turkey vultures on the glass top of a table 

with pastel yellow legs, in summer.

I said I did it because death is sweet.

Don't ever lie. Mutism is one way

to stay honest, but turning one's tongue

to a violin is another. Many early saints

were buskers, though they died stoic, silent.

What I'm trying to say is, it might snow in Falstaff

while it's 90 in Phoenix.  You might look for robins

and find peacocks, with their weird piercing call

that makes you feel suddenly faint and homesick.

I've grown slow and stiff, my hair is white

from a blizzard of mistakes and sorrows.

Surviving from March to May seems as sweet

to me as your kiss once did, but I'm cautious now,

Not like I was when you knew me, not such a fool.

I keep a .45 laid on the leather of my bible 

to test for truth, so think before you speak

because my ears are dull and dead, but I read lips.

_________

for Word Garden Word List #18 (Leonard Cohen).

For S.

you

my heart

my teacher

fool and angel

whose mighty heart beat itself out too soon

if there are words for how much i miss you

they elude me

but longing

and love

stay. 

_______

for Dverse "numbering ten"

hosted by Laura Bloomsbury