Ode to L.

 

Here is an ode for you, my dear

to celebrate your ferric heart

and an idiocy of intimacy

as valueless as modern art. 

Here is a pot of chrysanthemums

with viper heads on every stem

to commemorate the quacks you quote

and your absolute belief in them.

Behold the cradle that holds the child

who turned to fog before she cried

and the trivia you cared for more

than the funeral or the fact she died. 

Who holds the torch and crosses eyes

at you in imaginary dance?

You, the center of the world

departing now by ambulance?

We were once and once was us

in kinder intervals that fell

into the ditch like cur and bitch

chasing cast-iron kites through Hell. 

________

for Word Garden Word List--Hapax

Your Angel

 In a curio shop you bought a small angel.

The first thing the two of you did was to eat each other's hearts,

Hospital or cemetery? I asked, wiping spatter off my sleeve.

We have a nest inside Danielle Steele's blastoma, you said.

Take us there. 

Little soft-spoken angel, my partner's darling

breaks playmate's noses when things don't go right. 

There is the law, and there is what is clearly sick and wrong.

The two of you swing on a blade between the two.

Brilliant Ideas, you get them by the bushelful.

Marriage, madness, ill-advised rambles, and your angel

smashing the crucifixes.

Yes, I tried setting her on fire but your tears put her out.

It is her nature to be unnatural. It is mine to try to survive.

Dawn breaks. The neighbor's rooster kills itself. The sun lists.

What about our family, you ask? I scream, I want a divorce!

You smile and it shatters the Hummels like a cheekbone.

_______________

Ode to Jimbo

 

"Kitten," he said to me,

"you are the worst kind of witless cow,"

adding, of course, the rest of the usual blandishments. 

What he meant, translated from Jimbo-ese

and run through a blender filled with

fresh fruits and nectar, was

"You are the sweetest, most appealingly goofy lovebug

that anyone could ever meet, and I am delirious with joy

to know you are mine, my little millstone." 

This is how I ended up on the beach, albeit the one

grandly known as the Salton Sea. Like Jimbo,

it is salty and ruined. Like him, it needs me.

There are locals here, and they eye me dubiously

but warm up and offer encouragements like

"Who the fuck are you? Are you stupid? Get lost."

They've made me feel right at home, they are so like my Jimbo.

I pick up a dead fish and wonder if I could save it.

Just some Evian and Aveeno could work wonders.

My Jimbo lies over the ocean; my Jimbo lies over the (Salton) Sea.

No wait, he's right here, dropping the butt of a Lucky Strike

onto the gray, contaminated sand. "Come home," he says.

He looks like a lost puppy wearing a days-old shirt

and is eating something he probably shouldn't. 

I say, "Miss me, dontcha?" Jimbo squints. "Shut up."

(That's Jimbo-ese for "Yes, baby.")  

Aw shucks and shiny silver dollars, 

if that's not love, I don't know what is!

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Last Seen LeavingLast Seen Leaving

Motto

 

This is the hospital

where the nicked-up blown-up bastards show up.

We give them ice cream 

and a priest.

There is a river

down the middle.  We launch ourselves into the current

and it is unclear

who is drowning, who saving.

It's a system of gradations, and if you don't die in Emergency,

why then, we come into your room with cake and streamers.

Presto! You're ambulatory, then outpatient, then nurse, doctor,

surgeon, administrator, president emeritus, cutting ribbons

instead of flesh.

See one, do one, teach one is the motto. See the staggering

son of a gun falling to the floor with wounds beyond telling.

We lift him as if we were angels.

Yesterday, we were lifted.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Nothing stops the flow of the river or the flow of patients.

We are Boatmen, and Mermaids, reaching, 

saving, being saved. We are heroes of the

Carousel Horse Cavalry, coming over the 

hill, with bugle and blood pressure cuff,

dizzy with purpose, maybe dying, learning as we go. 

________

for Desperate Poets We Can Be (SUPER) Heroes. 

Music: Brass Band of Battle Creek Song of the Volga Boatmen

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"

My Milieu

I found myself in a milieu.
Was this some kind of French gag?

All my stuff in a dumbshow around me.
Paraphernalia patting at invisible walls--
quelle stupide!

A standard poodle carrying a canoe on its back
became part of my milieu.
I fed it aphorisms as we set off downstream.

Eventually, after long exhausting effort,
the poodle and I arrived back at my milieu.
The poodle up and spake:

"Life is circular. The end is the beginning."
I brained it with a paddle to make it shut up,
then composed a letter of complaint.

So. Here is my milieu, with me in it,
holding my letter, 
openly weeping, 
hoping to impress you.
Have I failed? 
Or, is your heart a stone, part of its own milieu
where love languishes, calling out, dying,

Like an actress on stage 
with the plum role in Camille?
Elle est morte, and yet she lives on, superfluous.
________

for Day 2 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

Budget-Tel Hell

We were too stoned to get home, so
we checked into the local Budget-Tel, room 13.
The guy was pissed we woke him up
and he gave us a crappy room with a tv with a busted screen.

My old man said I made him mad like always,
and swung the towel bar at me so I called my friend
Dotty to come get high with us cos the stupid fuck might really kill me
once he finds out I took 20 dollars from the glove box in his pickup truck.

Well, Dotty came and dumbass didn't want to give her any dope
but I kicked his shin and told him not to be such a dickhead for once
and he slugged me but not too hard while Dotty went in his pocket for the bag.
How does a guy like me--says dumbass--end up in a Budget-tel with you two cunts?

I got right and was wondering crazy shit like would the bedspread burn
and I held my lighter to it but it only smoked a little bit. 
Dotty said Jesus what an ugly picture but when dumbass threw the lamp at my head
it smashed the frame and Dotty said it's an improvement. What ugly shit!

I fell asleep but dumbass kicked me off the bed and said where's my twenty?
so I bit his leg and he yelled and lost his balance and fell through the fucking window
so somebody called the cops and Dotty booked and there I was
high as fuck and under arrest at the stupid Budget-Tel, now ain't that just my luck?
________

for Artistic Impressions With Margaret--Alcohol Inks

 

 

Pheasant Therapist Is Cray Cray

Here I am, the answer to all your dreams.
But please, 
stay out in the waiting room;
when the light is on, I am in session.

Preen
preen preen
preen.
Okay, I'm not in session, I'm preening.
The last client left vermin in my feathers,
diminished their shine,
and brought that scary gun.

Pheasants are known for healing, and luck in love.
I'm a pheasant shore nuff. 
Okay, come in.
I'm right here
hiding behind the waste basket. 
Look into my goofy birdy eyes--
yep, you're pretty screwed up.

Let's see what we can do.
Yap yap yap
yap. 
I think what you really want is to eat me;
that could be fatal or fine.
You're a mess but cute. 
I think we made a lot of progress today, even with me creeping around the desk and along the walls. 

Ready?
FOOM flap flap flap FOOM!
Noisy right?
A girl's got to make an entrance. 
You gonna make a move now, or what?
Here I stand, trying again, feathered and fantastic
if not terrifically bright. 
_______ 

for Unfairy Tales at Real Toads. 

According to folklore, pheasants are harbingers of love and good luck, as well as being healers. The only time I ever encountered a pheasant, it absolutely exploded out of a bush, making a tremendous racket that scared me half to death. Perhaps it went on to establish a thriving practice offering talk therapy, tarot astrology, and interpretive dance. It could've.

A Mail Lady's Golden Memories (Episode 54)

Mrs. Geritolle is missing her Blizzardville Inquirer,
expected via post every week from out of town.

Mrs. G to the mail lady: "Maybe it's in your truck somewhere."

"Or sitting at the post office."

"I think you took it home to read yourself." 

Days later, a post card: "Blizzardville Inquirer has ceased publication."

~sigh~

SMH. 
__________

for those not conversant with text short-hand, SMH = "shaking my head." 

A 55 for my BFF.

Jubilant Bob

Jubilant Bob
loves you 
and describes this love in tiny notes
on the backs of postage stamps which he then uses
to send you empty hatboxes.

"Within, infinity," the eeny little card reads.


Jubilant Bob
hates it
when you sleep with a boyfriend.
He hangs himself in the vestibule of your building,
making it awkward getting to the mailbox.
Inside,
a minuscule note folded multiple times
explaining his despair.

You and your boyfriend look at each other, sigh, run upstairs, do it,
then hate yourselves, but not that much.
Love is strange.

Jubilant Bob
revives,
finds you with a girlfriend,
writes a best seller about his near death experiences, 
both from the noose and from you.
Bob requests his royalties all in pennies,
using some of them to weigh down roses
he leaves for you
on the stair.

Will you never have pity?
Will you never stop fucking around?

Jubilant Bob
gets religion,
forgives you as you stand there blinking.
"Oh for fuck's sake, Bobby," you say, stamping one boot on the pavement.
"Wake the fuck up."
He thought you were better than you are,
hates it when you curse,
and keeps a microscopic cameo of you under his tongue.

In the vestibule,
his fans,
your lovers,
and enough flowers for a parade or a funeral.
Go on, marry him.
File a sharp tongue on his stupid postage machine.
Let him feel you up every Sunday.

Feel free to regret all of it.
_________

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.