Mister Barbenstock

 

Mr. Barbenstock had eaten one of his students--

a little girl who sat in the third desk, 

far right row, a tiny ladybug in a hand-me-down jar.

There was a flurry of shrill criticisms from yappy parents,

the kind who weep at every brown leaf

and drive their sissy-ass cars to carnivals on Sunday.

Mr. B (as he was known at Grimoire Elementary)

stood out like bloody steak atop a birthday cake--

this bearded, uber-correct male among the ewes.

How many had he done this to? demand school paper reporters,

caps askew in the rough and tumble of a performative press conference.

What evil lies unsuspected beneath blah blah yadda yadda.

Mr. B. hears hummingbirds in his head; they alone can understand

his infinite lovesickness, lugubrious as an engine leak

in his smoking, whirring, damaged heart, hurting him.

His life has become a kind of constant translation--

bathtub to oceanside, mini-Cooper to Graf Zeppelin,

vacant, fidgety students to roaring throng of weird cryptids!

Mr. Barbenstock blinks. The prosecutor is asking for a cardinal number

denoting his victims. Everyone has grown up in a matter of moments.

It's a math problem! He begins to instruct, his forte where he hides.

________________

for Word Garden Word List--Richard Blanco. 

Music: The Temptations I Can't Get Next To You

Mongrel Angel

 

A mongrel angel in the dark

who wakes the dogs who start to bark

beneath the yellow windows in the rain

she knows the words and hums the tune

for lonely rabbits on the moon

who wear their pestles on a silver chain

A mongrel angel high at noon

comes uninvited to the room

where holy flunkies serve the business crowd

she knows where all the blossoms bloom

in graveyards where they dust their broom

and common kind is simply not allowed

And the mongrel angel lives halfway from Heaven on her own

like a fish out of the water or a turtle on a stone

A mongrel angel's setting sun

is just like any other one

but dialect of night's a special rhyme

that only dogs and she can hear

a melody of atmosphere

that leaves her breathless every single time

And the mongrel angel lives halfway from Heaven on her own

like a fish out of the water or a turtle on a stone

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--Cat's Cradle

Crow & Astrolabe

 

Crow, obscured by wing and leaf,

there we were

under the stars.

Who knew then that we would bond

over common language

and common loneliness. 

You came when you would, and not that often,

like others of your kind

I had known before.

I thought, if I can crack the seed your heart will open

starved as you were

starved as I was. 

Crow so black against indigo sky, I lacked

Rosetta Stone

or Tarot deck.

So, I wrote you poems upon an astrolabe

looking for heaven

Deus ex machina.

Crow with your song in ghost-ship semaphore,

you sang to me

beautifully

Yet crows are crows, and stars are reclusive.

Astrolabe and downdraft

broke both our hearts.

I have learned wariness of crows, and they the same

both poorer but safer

for such sad education.

Still, I have my astrolabe, an antique affectation

like the love I once had

for an obscure bird.

_________

Jennifer over at Poet Laundry--no doubt prodded to do so by a thousand devils--challenged me to write a poem about or including an astrolabe. This is that poem. I encourage you to go visit her there; she is a genuine peach of a poet. 

Music: Alana Davis Can't Find My Way Home

Snowblind Jane

 

I have thought of the gray cat for years now,

though the gray cat thinks of me

no more than a gray cloud would,

or a window pane,

or a key chain.

I leave my life in a dish for the gray cat to find,

but the gray cat is gone

like yesterday's breath.

Who knew I could hurt like this?

If I drop the dish, it doesn't even shatter.

The gray cat's main concern is the moon

and garbage and gray cats and food.

I was sick once,

and became more beautiful.

The fever fell in love with me, poor thing.

Outside myself at last, I hover,

asking what's wrong.

"Bring me my gray cat," I whisper, crying like a child.

Other Me laughs,

says you'll never come back

and were never gray,

                           never gray,

                                      never gray,

but black, dear, black.

______

shared with Sunday Muse #243. 

image at top by Jocelin Carmes

music: Once Blue Now That I've Disappeared

Stone House

 

There is a stone house

with a soft bed

on a metal frame.

The sheets are sky-stolen blue,

the blanket tartan.

I have the feeling I was

a child there, or died

or held someone with love

or was held.

The air is fragrant

like a meal just finished

or being prepared.

I feel sure that you are there

in the next room

or arriving or remembered.

I wrote this poem

yesterday or some other day

or will write it soon.

Now the door is open.

Come in.

_______

Music: Cat Stevens Into White

The Hosting Tree

 

What idle devil limned your voice

with salt of falsity

and set such poison in the heart

that was so kind to me?

The thing that curled and grew there had

its own vitality

just as the lush green climbing vine

kills the hosting tree.

_________

I wrote this for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane, but only used three of the words and one of them got removed during editing. As a result, I haven't linked this to the prompt, but that was its origin, nevertheless. 

Lorca-Hemingway

 

Lorca-Hemingway is a fixture at the cafe.

His blood consists of La Marseillaise and dove-moons.

It pounds through his body like a glorious parade.

When I see him, I walk with back bent backwards,

slinking like a cartoon cat,

short of breath, tail-talking, stupid, exalted, way obvious.

Hand him your copy, he'll sign it in terse bluebirds.

He is his own hotel room, there's always

some blowsy blonde on the bed, quietly detonating.

Young men line up near his table, as if there were a war

or a desperate national need for Gypsy violins.

A waiter serves orange suns from embossed tin trays.

I paint Lorca-Hemingway's skin with brandy cologne,

so that all bullets turn away and take trains to Barcelona.

I send myself as a telegram into his latest masterpiece:

I am a peony petal inside a bud stop

you are a man and a girl and a secretary bird stop

angels inside you carry death and glory in little satchels stop

Now I conceal Lorca-Hemingway inside me like a trick lighter.

No one in the cafe can find him, but in the nick of time

Brett Ashley smiles with a cigarette in her lips and 

I flame!

Oh yes,

I flame.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #191, where I am hosting one last time.

Aberdeen

 

Here is the vine that weakened the wall

that dripped with rain in the shrouded dawn.

Here is the touch that tenderly kills,

and climbs so slowly, on and on.

I've forgotten the hat that I wore in the wet

and the path to take to your black-latched door.

I only remember the cardinal that kept

its perch on the pine, and petrichor.

Mornings are early, dusk comes late

and the wall is gone beyond the gate

but the fallen bricks still hold the green

of the ivy, cruel potentate.

__________

the photo is mine, from my yard.

Double

Our horse was haunted, afflicted with a doppelganger

said by the stable hand to portend death.

She could see the moon like an ornament on the dawn,

or the bulge of an apple in my coat pocket,

but not her double dipping its head as if weary from its own mimicry. 

Aunt June said she has to see it, the way we saw owls in the barn rafters.

If she doesn't, it's just foxfire

the devil dancing on a rotten log.

She won't get moon eye from a dream.

All spring and into the summer the double stayed,

unfed, unbidden, inexplicable. 

Rain on the roof sounded like snap beans.

Sun made the ground stream, ghosts rose, bewildered.

An old horse collar fell from its nail

though it never had before.

After that, we stopped seeing the double, and Aunt June said 

that's the way of things, girl,

but it gave me a peculiar feeling, 

like hearing a handsome boy tell a bald-faced lie.

______________

for Sunday Muse #147.

Pack

I was there, at your childhood Christmas,
crouched behind the tree, my striped backside against the wall.
You missed one gift because I had it in my mouth--
we have always shared everything.

I was there, the first time you made love,
denting the corner of the bed with my weight,
the breath from my nostrils sliding your hair across your eyes.
I was there in the morning,
and there a week later, pacing and turning circles as you cried.

I was there, with a chicken in my mouth
in the sacristy as you said your vows.
I was there at the end of the table with the cousins
that night, yawning wide while you danced.
I was curled silently in the back seat when you drove away.

I have been there, at your job,
at reunions and funerals and vacations and hospitals.
We have always shared everything.
I am there because my chest breathes air, 
my heart moves blood-- 
I want my life just as much as you want yours.

When the man comes, with his gun or his scythe,
I will be there.
He will hang us up by our heels and say, "Well now. Lookit you,"
and we will be still forevermore.
Until then, I am with you, with one eye cast down
on the dirt trail in the night,
and the other cast up
on the impossible wheeling stars. 
______

For Fireblossom Friday