Electric Dawn

(done in the style of Jim Morrison for Saturday Celebrations at One Stop Poetry)

In the electric dawn,
Revelers appear like hellflowers--
Bones and batons meet...
Unbalanced lovers who devour each other.

A guy and a girl feel like they're in a movie--
Sea creatures froth and surge
Melting in primal acid bloom
Sweeping past
& smoothing them,
Left behind perfect as shells.

Every revolution starts with a kiss
Between stars and tarmac--
Unable to hold either,
They find each other
& fit
Like bullets in a chamber.

In the electric dawn,
Death wears boots,
Bringing graffiti cross-flowers to the cold husk of the poet
Held like a leaf in a stone hand
Where the water runs.

Every revolution starts with a kiss,
Then turns its back on itself.
The theater closes--
Every revolution ends in silence.

 

Serpent

I was longer than desire,
Than regret--
Longer, even, than a bible lesson.

I had no legs to stand on,
But I had backbone--
Miles of it.

I swung low from my branch like a rain cloud;
Falling was inevitable--
At least I kept it graceful.

"See how smooth I am,
How sinuous," I whispered.
"And with a tongue like you wouldn't believe."

Eve laughed,
And spun her wedding ring.
"Don't be a shit head," she cautioned me.

My red and yellow diamonds made me look like a playing card;
I posed a wager with myself--
Rattling as innocently as a baby.

Swinging my pretty heart-shaped head near her ear,
I said all the unprintable things
That a girl might like to hear.

She blushed, bit her lip,
Shivered, then said she had to go--
"At least take this apple," I urged, wrapping myself around her shoulders.

I knew from the start how special she was,
How divine, how discreet, how venomous--
She took the fruit in her fine sharp teeth,
And, smiling,
Filled it with promise.

 _

My Baby Needs A Shepherd

I love this song by Emmylou Harris. The first time I heard it, I cried.

For You

The voice I found
In the rich black ground--
That is not for you.

The uncertain bees
That may sting, or please--
They are not for you.

The little box where I rest my eyes,
The sarcophagus full of bottle flies--
Neither is for you.

The restoration of my better nature,
The eternal enhancement of every feature--
None of that is for you.

My spit, my sex,
Whatever comes next--
Not, and never, for you.

Your boon is what Love only claims to be--
Intact and intense never-endingly;
Receive my Hatred--
That is for you...
My gift, eternal and true.

______

for One Shot Wednesday

Raining Up

It rained up,
Everything launching into the sky--
Leaving the earth a featureless desert much like your heart.

And the one
you were convinced
I loved better than you?

I love her better than you.

She makes everything weightless,
Fantastic;
It rains up.

Hell yeah.
_________

Homecoming

It was one of those dreams of short brown grass,
Like cheap carpet in an entryway to the waiting room of the Ruined Dentist Of Fremont Street.

A tin foil sun shone
Like a child's sheriff badge,
Arresting all
As if we had molasses in our veins, and ill-got trinkets stuffed in our cheeks.


It went on like that for weeks,
Until who we had been,
And what had replaced us,
Diverged so profoundly that as we skittered by, like old traffic tickets wearing preposterous brown shoes,
I looked at you,
Nodded at the shadows,
And said,
"To them, we are the ghosts."

No use in mirrors, then.
No sense in trying to start any more fires,
Though we had become, ourselves, rags,
Melted outlets,
Tinder.


It was only when I found myself alone that grace came.
The path changed,
Became a sea shell road.
There were tree blossoms like cherub faces,
And the weather turned as easily as an old cat in a rocking chair,
From stifling to superb.


Just when I thought I belonged nowhere,
Just when I believed the lying dust I had been living my life upon,
I saw him--
Our uniformed chauffeur, washing the Stutz in the drive under the magnolias.
He tipped his cap,
Smiled,
Said, "Good morning, Miss Anna. It's been a long time."


Oh,
I'm telling you,
I felt my heart spread out like a rose bush in June--
As rooted,
As beautiful,
As loved, for all my blooms and thorns alike.

I fell down beneath my favorite old tree,
In the lush grass,
Not caring about my white dress.
I couldn't stop laughing, fountaining joy,
And I woke up like that,
In happy tears,
Remembering.


_____


photograph by Rob Hanson for One Shoot Sunday

Fingerpaints

Afterward,
Simple with joy,

I have the urge to draw a sea shore
On the skin of your hip
With fingerpaints;

But you touch my wrist
And two birds stay together in the nest,
Playing moon to the tides
Of love in you.

_____