In the House of Time and Mirrors

 

A woman I used to be got up out of her grave

trailing rose vines and the scent of men's cologne.

She swung the decades on a knotted ribbon

and said, "There you are, more wounded, more brave."

I replied that I am made of newspaper and moondust,

a castle composed of carnations and  wives' tales.

Meet my lover, incorporeal and not yet born--

she admires my home-baked bread and scent of must.

A woman I used to be gifted me a moue

useless and juvenile, then beat me with her 

limited beauty. "You are wise but ugly," she 

said, haughty and stupid, then looked away. 

A woman I used to be got up out of her grave

trailing rose vines and the scent of men's cologne.

I swung her head from an antique silver chain

and said, "Here you are, more wounded every day."

_________

Crackerjack For Lancelot

 

I set out Crackerjack for Lancelot,

candy apples for his mount--

licorice for dancing devils

too numerous to count.

I bake pie for the Lorelei

and salt water taffy for the sailors--

honey for all my winning ways

and bitter ale for my failures.

_______

for Dverse quadrille "candy"

Music: Lindi Ortega Fall Down Or Fly

PlasticHead

PlasticHead, Our Weeping Lady of Sorrows,

does not see herself in mirrors.

Like a tortoise, drug addict, or victim of a head injury,

her protective helmet lets in nonsense, 

but does not eliminate it.

PlasticHead therefore believes herself a kind of shithead,

her mind a terrarium made of one-way glass.

Her parents hand her texts substantiating this,

wrongheaded maxims, ill-timed remarks and iffy teachings.

Playmates bash her plastic head on the sidewalk.

Enter alcohol, religion, relationships.

Tossed up on the shore of adulthood, 

PlasticHead looks back and sees the smoking pile-up of her various endeavors.

It's all been a lie. 

PlasticHead, manufactured plaything of Heaven,

find angels in the pockets of your apron.

The molded face that took the place of your true visage

was nothing but assigned artifice, fiction, dressage.

PlasticHead reacts with cold anger, freezing herself solid,

thus further and finally shattering the hated doll head.

Her mosquito-pond blood reddens and warms,

evaporating her tears into a silver fog--she breathes herself in,

embraces the Divine like a gator wrestler, 

sleeps well for once,  lives another ten minutes victoriously,

then expires.

PlasticHead, inspirational story to finish the broadcast,

you have no weepy present, no golden future, no awful past.

Be absorbed into the One Mind, The Magnificent Place,

regard in a Mirror of Stars, your true, your perfect, absolutely front-page Face.

_________________

For The Sunday Muse #170, where I am hosting the masked ball.

The City Inside My Head

 

The city inside my head

keeps its Sweet Face down

like a Japanese fan in the hand 

of a dead woman whose ghost

dances in air, 

untethered.

I am an ocean on the edge of a nightmare,

a horse gone headlong,

an unseen hand hanging up the cruisers,

mid-air,

sirens sounding like Stratocasters,

wah-wah pedals at patrolmen's feet. 

In the after-time, when you had gone,

the tall grass afternoons went on and on.

There was a yellow butterfly and a glass of gin,

and a thorn in the soft place where you had been.

The nights were cool, the stars were cold,

and together we turned slowly old

on a blue and green revolving ball

until love was dust, then nothing at all.

The city inside my head

keeps its Sweet Face down

like a Japanese fan in the hand

of a busker's monkey whose chattering forms

these poems, this after-time,

this image of the sun behind closed eyes 

hidden and 

glittering.

________

for Sunday Muse #168. Thanks to Hedge for telling me how to ditch the double spacing. Apologies for the varying type size in this. I can't fix it. 

Emilie Sagee's Complaint

I was framed.
I don't care what fifty people said--
that I marched right up to the pulpit and kissed the priest;
then laid one on the nun as well.

I skipped Mass that day and took a nap.
Why do people lie?
Besides, no twin would bother 
aping one so very dull as I. 
_________

for flash 55. 

 

My Mask

My mask
cleans up nice.
Guys talk rot to it,
and it talks back.

My mask 
goes to work,
spouts input,
yaps at clients.

Punks
get in my mask,
tell it we're a bitch.
My mask changes parking lots.

Let's sit here, mute as dummies you and I.
We'll watch our masks
talk
smile
kiss
tongue
more real than we have been in years.
______ 

for Words Count with Mama Zen.
 

Buy Curious

Your heart is held in a rose's petals--
a ghost holds the past in an empty room;
You ask me to speak what the cards reveal--
your life laid out in pasteboard cartoons.

Go home.
Ask someone to smack you, hard.
Or stay, but it's gonna cost you, sister,
to move my hand from the back of the card.
_____

For Words Count with Mama Zen.