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.  

I Am Joe's Mutated Descendant

(Another in the popular "I Am Joe's..." series of articles in which Joe's spleen--or whatever--speaks to us in a friendly, confidential way.)

Hi. I am Joe's mutated descendant! You see, eons ago, Joe wandered down into a creepy, dank, lightless cave, and despite Mrs. Joe's strenuous objections, he decided to live there. Yes, it actually was the first "man cave." 

Over millions of years, Joe and his descendants adapted to this unforgiving subterranean world. By the time I came along, it was a whole new ballgame! With no light to see by, eyes became superfluous and disappeared. Living in a world of total darkness, albinism replaced pigmentation. And Mrs. Joe finally got something she wanted...sex with the lights off!

However, I got bored living inside an underground cave, and decided to come out and live on the surface. With no pigment, I looked like Mr. Clean! I knew I would need a job in order to survive, so I bought a pair of sunglasses and learned to play piano and sing.  Stevie Wonder termed my music "disturbing." All the same, I'm the king of white blues! 

I even got married. I have no idea of she's pretty or ugly; it doesn't matter! We have two beautiful children and even though my wife refuses to feed them the lichen and small invertebrates I was raised on, we're a happy family! For Christmas she gave me SPF 5,000 sun block in an industrial drum. How thoughtful is she? 

So there you have it. I am Joe's mutated sightless albino descendant. Musician. Family man. Regular dude.

If you found this article informative, come back next month for "I Am Joe's Vestigial Tail." Also, don't miss Joe's childhood memoir "How Many Fucking Bats Are In Here, Anyway?" , available from Carlsbad Press.  
_____

for Corey's "Cavern Of My Thoughts" challenge at Real Toads. 

My Violets

My violets
through shelter and shyness made,
not tall, not showy,
content with my bower's border's shade,

And yet
though they never deign confess it,
they live for sun
and hope, like me, that none will guess it.
_____

My regular readers may find this poem to be an odd one from the fiery Blossom, but I was terribly shy growing up and that shyness still is there, coming out unbidden when the stars align.
 

Evolution

Others have come out of the sea, you know;
Venus and I decided enough was enough,
and who knows what all those fish and turtles and whatnot were doing,
how much of their little calling cards were mixing with the water.

You'd leave too, if you had an ounce of sense.

So anyway, a seaside town was kind of inevitable;
all there is is sailors, with their endless uniforms to be kept clean,
expecting you to wait for them, staring out of the window like a dork.
Not me, sister.

The moon pulls the tides,
the waves wash the beach--
and all the while the sirens sing
out of reach, out of reach.

I don't do requests. It's "As Time Goes By" or nothing.
Venus and I share a place in town, behind the take-out restaurant.
She walks around naked all afternoon,
then gets dressed at dusk, revving up her bike and taking off.

Me, I lock myself up in the darkroom with my pictures of people, blooms and bugs.

Sometimes I'm asked whether I miss the ocean,
but it hasn't gone anywhere; I'm not in it, that's all,
and I doubt it has ever missed me, not the way it should.
I'll call my book "Wet Foot, Dry Foot" in honor of my migratory nature.

Could you love a girl like me, do you think?
Check out these legs, I'm not a mermaid,
but when I close my eyes sometimes the world seems to sway,
as if it were made of palm trees and breeze.

The moon pulls the tides,
the waves make their soothing susurrant sound--
bold star bright, shy star behind
white on blue in the night, like clouds.
______

Fabulous photograph by Cloudia Charters and used with permission.

 

Apple Heart

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

Emily Dickinson

 

I'll never tell you what I really wanted.

I'd rather chamber that thought and give it head, and if there are

hookers in Heaven, why then I'll have a job.

 

Keep mystifying doctors, dear,

with your apple heart--

red on the outside,

bloodless on the inside,

 

a sucker bet I lost but lived to tell.

_____

 

a 55 for Kerry at Real Toads.

 

 

Frog Funeral

In the greenhouse, I gave myself to somebody,
saying things I never thought I'd say,
despite the hardness of the wooden table and the potting soil in my hair.

I can't remember why I thought it was a good idea, though,
or why I thought that was the place to consummate our love,
or even who it was, because

the shovel was handy and knocked all that right out of my head.

Not long ago, a week maybe--time is fuzzy for me now--
we had tadpoles in the puddles the flood left behind.
As the water dried up, things got dicey, so I decided to try to save them.

Looking into my bucket, the yard man said, "You've only got sticks in there, Maggie."
He was right, and it was only the moss on one side of each of them
that made them seem green and in need of me.

I did manage to save one tadpole, though.

An apron pocket makes a fine frog house,
and though I walked around wet to the skin on that side,
I felt good about saving a life, a remarkable life besides.

I told Mr. John about my frog, and even though something
in the back of my head told me it was a mistake, I took it out,
just to show him. I screamed when he did what he did,

and we stood there for the longest time, both spitting mad.

Later, I took pansies from the side garden
and arranged them in a circle around the small hole I'd dug.
My skirt got muddy and something started coming back to me.

Some of the pansies were purple, others yellow;
looking at them put me in mind of my room, the mirror there,
my bed, and the door I always insisted be locked

against the arc of the sun, like a bucket swung too weakly, and too late.
________

for Susie's challenge at Real Toads.  

My Haiku

because you all seem to want me to write one. heartless heartless mob.

If a haiku came to me,
the safe lady wearing waves of soft sweaters
and funky book-lady glasses,

I would place it tenderly in traffic
in front of a steamroller.
My hateful heart would expand like an old furnace
and I would say, "Die, you horrid little thing.
Become one with everything, the pavement in particular."

Having murdered the haiku, I would sleep better,
though the cherry blossoms around my bed would turn brown,
then black, with bitterness.
I would dream there in the soot, beneath the stacks my own inferno.
Eat your hearts out, monks.

Here is the woman I secretly burn for, packing her things
chipper as a bluebird,
hugging me one-handed, a book of haiku in the other.
So long, she says, ticket in hand.
Minneapolis might as well be the moon; I hope it snows all summer.

moonlight on water
blackbird on cherry blossoms
soft fruit in stone bowl

If a haiku came to me,
I would tan its little hide, give its dinner to the dog,
and then later, turn the key in the lock to its solitary cell,
bringing the best of all that I have managed to save,
saying I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I know just how you feel.
_________