Song of a Tarnished Eidolon

 

I asked the locust leaves if they were lonely.

They replied,

We are restless.

An owl on a branch of the locust tree

wept silently.

I have looked in all directions.

At home, I found my future in a spoon's face,

and my melancholy in the strings of an oud.

I haunt myself.

Indigo is the night sky.

Indigo is the sleepless sea.

Nun-white bird,

I will meet you beneath the locust tree

wearing a veil of Point d'Esprit

and holding a torn carnation.

_____________

Laika

 

There is no one

more unkind than me.

In the evening hour I see

my sandpaper skin.

In every embrace,

a delving to the bone.

I have a peeled orange

beneath my ribs

that swells, overflowing, when it rains.

I cannot go back.

Blackberry vines have overtaken the track.

I cannot strike out.

Fog has dampened the maps. They curl and come back.

Still, I lift my head to every fresh breeze

and interesting face,

mistaking the world in a mural, the sky in a frieze. 

Every creeping weed believes

its home is just inches away.

So do I, and so I hope until each day dies done

and there is no one

more unkind than me.

_______

for The Sunday Muse #225.

Music: Lilliana de los Reyes & Max Quilici "Can't Find My Way Home"

For Su Griffin

 There was a woman in love with fog

and the harbor knew her name.

Su of the basket heart,

Su of the darning needle nights.

Su out of breath, or holding it, just the same.

When you're a woman at odds with time,

every second slows the heartbeat.

Woman of the breakwater bones.

Woman in the crowd, alone.

Woman who folds her heart, folds the dough, folds the sheet.

There was a woman in love with fog

and the harbor knew her name.

_______

for The Sunday Muse #198. 

Part of the following song says (In Spanish):

Because after this life 

There is no other opportunity

How much love arrives like this, it arrives like this

Thirteen Things

1. Snow, everywhere, heavy as old boots, bright as a policeman's flashlight.

2. Night. Then day. Then night again. Dizziness. The carpet's range of aspects.

3. Birds bringing messages. Their particular songs. The feeder swaying.

4. An ambulance. Someone on the floor, then not. 

5. Day, then night, then day again. A shifting array of shadows on the roof of an empty house. 

6. White, everywhere. Sheets laundered a thousand times. An intrusive light, concentrated to a pinpoint.

7. Birds on the sill. Their particular coloring. The feeder still, on its pole.

8. Snow, everywhere. A new ramp, smelling of sawn pine.

9. Lights in the windows of a house. Lights like the golden skin of french fries on a plate.

10. Birds on bare branches in the yard. Silver wheels. The feeder taken down and filled.

11. All day, television interview programs. Dr. Phil right back after this break.

12. Snow, disappearing like memories. Afternoon sun, bright and harsh as temps from the agency.

13. Birds in flight over a house. Someone's photograph in a frame. An orange cat sunning itself, then nothing.
_______

for Thursday 13 and Midweek Motif--"winter."

Desire, In Tones of Orange & Rust

Hi, pay attention, it's only me--
the steampunk librarian of Born-to-Lose Street
writing down alternate endings on the backs of envelopes,
the backs of surrogate lovers, the flip side of receipts...

Here's the door of my bedroom, six inches off the floor,
all my darlings trip out and fall like leaves.
Orange is the color that us Irish women love, it goes with green
and so we spend eternities dropping our flame-hair from the high branches of trees.

I never said I was stable,
or nice,
or worth the trouble,
all I said was you would get something rare.

Enough bullshit. I've trimmed my lips back with a peeler from a kitchen drawer,
until now I can only speak truth and all my old popularity is gone.
I'm the futuristic poet chick of By-Invitation-Only Twilight Bower,
and my dreams are in tones of wild and wood: berry-red, leaf-jade, rust and fawn.

I've been through men,
been through women,
been through solitude and I like that best;

But when I saw the way the light landed soft upon your cheek,
I fissured, I trembled in spite of myself, and thought, "Could there yet be
a fire so patient as to unwind itself at last, 
late-born (poor fool), late-kept and late-blessed?"
______

For Kerry's Dylan challenge at Real Toads. I was inspired by the song "I Want You."

 


 

Doggerel In Dog Years

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to do some emotional eating
because her heart may be famous but it isn't the same as
one loved face, and besides, fame is fleeting.

When she got there, the cupboard was bare,
as was her hope chest, her basement and her attic
because translations are poems whose language is frayed
and the local station only plays jingles and static.

Swing low, sweet Fido,
and give a girl a kiss when she needs one
because the ghosts don't care when she puts it all out there,
still she knows a friend in need when she sees one.

Four and twenty Milk Bones baked into a pie
and a pint of mint chocolate chip by silver spoon
cannot assuage the way a girl feels sometimes
but we can dream of running beneath a sweeter faster moon

through the kind of night where our love is coming home
under expansive easy stars and southern skies.
______

because I was missing someone.

image at top by Edward Gorey.  

Hollyhocks

The tank crew put their gear back on.
Before the treaded wheels splintered down the last of the fence posts,
the one with the grease in the creases of his hands smiled at me as he pulled up his pants.

"Raise my kid right," he said in his heavy accent before hauling himself up,
graceful as an acrobat,
onto the turret where he sat like a sultan as the thing began to move.

Where the hollyhocks had been, there were now trenches of churned-up earth.
It will be easier to bury my dog, the herder,
who they shot as casually as waving across the field to a neighbor.
I think my wrist is broken.
I can't see out of my left eye, but perhaps it is only the blood drying over it.

Years from now, in another country,
a graceful child will swing himself up the bars of a playground castle,
waving to me from the top before his proud smile fades.
He will ask me why I'm crying, and it will only be half a lie
when I answer that it is because of him and my gratitude
that God has blessed me with such a son.

Then he will smile again and cross his arms,
looking out across the schoolyard like a sultan,
the very image of his father
and the great things that men create from their most casual of actions.

 
Please. Please. Can't we stop killing each other?

Left Unsaid

The time change, this forward jerk
offends God--
look it up, Poindexter. 

It will be dark again in the morning--
a half star from the night will fall like an acrobat,
and the deaf ear will snow itself silent.

All I wanted was a particular voice of yours;
the soft one, lavender-scented, rare.
I tried to let you know,

but the order of things was already skewed.
Maybe in the fall I'll get you back for one sweet reclaimed hour,
but until then, 

stay out of the chronology of my poems,
Stranger.
______

Promise Me

Promise you'll always love me
as we sit with pastries and a cup of coffee before us;
say it after the bar holding up the awning of the cafe has fallen,
dazing you.

Say it now, when the sun is as bright over your shoulder
as a hijacked 747.
Say it now, when we can have the moment as lovers,
not as litigants;
soothe me with the words I long to hear.

When we were young, we believed
in every fantastic happy fiction we found in the sticky pages
of our heavily illustrated story books.
Then--
tornado.
Then--
regime change.
Then--
attractive others, smiling, as kind as undertakers.

Promise you'll always love me,
say it now, before the Narcan kicks in.
Say it now, while my heart is full for you--
don't wait until the mail comes,
full of better deals, and introductory rates.
Don't wait until the gurney begins to roll, 
and some sensible doctor gets a hold of you, making you sign things,
agree to things, and do things, on Wednesdays, when his office is closed.

Listen, life never turns out the way we pictured it.
Quick, before we crumple with age,
before our fingers curl back at us like strangers,
dropping things,
lost and pissing our pants a block away from home.
Promise me
that you'll always love me.

Then we'll finish our pastries,
and walk hand in hand until neither of us can tell anymore
why we came this way,
or how we managed to stay on our feet without each other.
That will be enough for me--
I give you my word.
_______

For Karin's mini-challenge at Real Toads: Promises

 

Apropos Of Nothing

Apropos of nothing,
these thoughts,
this poem;
this moment and this room.

I've been pondering oddities:
sundogs,
Marfa lights,
rings around the moon.

Unbidden,
unchanged--
love...love itself,
and my crave called love for you.

I'll not always be here;
behind this door, ajar--
my heart, this house, vased iris,
as far fragile these things are.

I've been pondering sanctities;
my dogs,
cool nights,
things said kept entre nous--

Unbidden,
unchanged--
love...love itself,
and my crave called love for you. 
_______
 
for Kerry's non-challenge at Real Toads.