Violent Vegans Speak Peace

At the rally, the crowd was already at a rolling boil
by the time I climbed the makeshift stairs to the platform.
I gave them truth!
Fire!
A little leg!
They responded with howls!
Bouquets!
Bottles!
Drunken gunfire!

I am the associate director and alternate treasurer
of Violent Vegans Speak Peace.
We have our own passwords,
catch phrases,
gestures;
you may have seen people making a vee with their fingers
and waggling their tongue.
This is the Violent Vegan trademark, a call to speak peace around the world.

In New York, Oslo, Paris and Moscow,
we spread our message
with pamphlets,
sit-ins,
arson
and instructive art.
In each city, I deliver my spiel--
I talk and talk and will continue to talk until the creature-eating stops.

Dar L., our leader, handsome in her beret and boots, is concerned about me.
She says that my workshops,
broadsides
and letters to the editor 
have become infused with nonsense about Mariah.
Her who-me? smile,
her widow's peak,
her clever use of rude language,
and my increasing--and, in this case, irrelevant--speculations about her sexuality
have begun to turn up regularly in my polemics.

Dar L. is right, of course.
I believe in the V.V. cause and all that,
but where my genuine passion lies is in imagining that Mariah carries my pamphlets in her boho bag,
that she is there, at the edge of the crowd,
wearing her turtleneck and tam-o'-shanter,
listening raptly as I talk about
revolution,
kindness,
hand grenades and the shape of her incredibly sexy lips.

I am in danger of being expelled
from the Violent Vegans Speak Peace movement.
My loose lips,
my never-ending single-minded sick-making sappy bullshit about Mariah
flows like a Niagra of smitten idiocy
and my inability to stop yapping about her is costing me everything.

Nonetheless, here she comes,
up to my table
with the stickers,
manifestos,
and vegan refreshments.
I can see it in her face, she has heard everything, knows everything,
except for the one thing I have managed to hold back
for fear she might stop doing it if she knew.

Oh sweet reward! There it is,
the who-me? smile,
the "hey, whatcha doin'?" from her impossible lips.
oh goddess
oh goddess
oh gee
aw shucks!
"Want to get out of here?" I ask her, the boldest thing I have ever said. 
"Want to grab a burger? or...."
She does! Here's to my secret slyly kept,
though everything else be compromised, ad infinitum. For Mariah! For love!
__________ 

For my "Secret Love" challenge at Real Toads.

Yorkshire Light Infantry

Drink a cup o' courage, boys,
drink clear to the bottom;
fight for some fine futures boys,
and cuss those swells that's got 'em.

Kick them fakers, Sergeant Major!

At dawn we'll rise and run and die
and be forgotten shortly
by lofty pricks with walking sticks
who like their cricket sporting.
______

a 55 for Toads. 55 words including the title.

I Need Dis !

"Aw shucks!"

The amazing Zac has been in his new home with me for three weeks now, and he has really settled in. He is very pleased to have his own royal forest, er, yard to romp around in, and a large human toy (me) to play with.

Zacky has a toy pile where he stashes anything that he feels he needs. This has included a biography, a sneaker, a Croc, my eyeglasses (he didn't damage them, but pilfered them off of the night stand) and the rug from just inside the side door. "I need deez!" he explained to a local reporter (me). 

Sir Zac eats like a little piggy and I have needed to loosen his collar about once a week! We are visiting the vet today and they will let me know if I have overdone it with the kibble, but I don't think that I have. I think this boy is still growing! If there is no kibble in the offing, Zachariah Puddington MacNeil Popodopoulos has no problem eating my hand, instead. "I am froshus!" he explained to that same reporter. 

Often, young Zac will be inside on the couch, on his back, getting a belly rub, and still be ferocious. The teeth! Oh my! Run for your life! Or just continue with the belly rub.

So, in conclusion, who knows what may end up in the magical mystical toy pile next. Sasquatch? Nessie? A particularly nice stick from outside? Stay tuned to find out!

Coquette

I made a thing from weeds and bark
and called the thing I made--a heart.
I wrapped it 'round with wire and twine
and crossed it, kept it--called it mine.

Love my heart, love it much
despite the rot and wasps and such
and when you're done--I'll love you back
to see what nightmares come from that.
_______

for Rommy's challenge at Toads.

 
 

Falling For Katya

Here, in the ideal post-revolutionary state,
one does not simply fall in love with Katya.

Starry-eyed fool,
stumbling across the cobblestone streets carrying disintegrating roses,
straighten up and lose that stupid smile
before the gendarmes make their hourly pass.

Katya is the perfect and ultimate expression 
of our national ambition.
Tell me, which would you--would anyone!--
rather watch pass by....
a thousand rumbling tanks with their idiot erections,
or Katya, with her smooth, slender outstretched arms?

Night and day, noble workers tend the fields
where they grow the million blooms which shall adorn her in a single week.
As a people, we have dispensed with severe, bearded gods
hovering somewhere in the sky,
and replaced them with Katya, late of Odessa, now our symbol, our pride!

Oh go, ahead.
Float, giddy and love-retarded, to the stone steps of the appropriate bureau.
Fill out the lengthy forms,
sit through the interminable classes,
and then wait in your disgusting hovel for six to eight weeks.
Imagine the moment
when, in your unsteady hands you hold the response,
the long-awaited summary denial of your application to love Katya.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
And what next?

Listen, Pooky.
Let's go to the glorious state-controlled theater
and while they put on some skull-crackingly dull film or opera,
I will trace my tongue along your salt-stained lips,
as easy as a gull gliding along the wharves.
Odessa,
jewel and treasured port city,
is as empty now as you are.
Kiss me back.
What the hell!

Everyone loves Katya--men, women, babies, cats and rose bushes,
they're all silly over her.
Be different!
Pretend you are a Czarist-era poet of some high degree,
and scribble something right now, for yourself, for me!
I involve no tedious mandated process,
no cooling of your heels by the mailbox for months.
Here, in our nook of creaking seats,
we can make our own opera,
Katya-less
and if not perfect, then, at least, immediate,
and as combustible as the Balkans.
________

The line "Why so pale and wan, fond lover?" is, of course, from the poem of the same name written by Sir John Suckling, and can be found HERE.

The Choir

The choir begins to sink.
Their robes cling to them as they submerge,
giving them the appearance of unusually godly torpedoes.

From their practiced throats, come tiny notes encased in air
as light as devotion.

Unfortunately,
this choir, like all instruments of deity,
is subject to that old bugaboo, the same one that always comes along:
The deeper they go,
the less those on the surface understand 
their 
rippling 
song. 
_______

Originally written in 1980 as part of a series of poems I wrote in reaction to having read Russell Edson's "The Wounded Breakfast." I have rewritten it today for the prompt at Toads.

And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him,
He said, "All men shall be sailors then, until the sea shall free them." --Leonard Cohen

Eating Movies

Here is a movie you can watch or eat.
Oh honey, go ahead, kiss that leading man, OR
take a big bite right out of his too-big head.

Oh shit he's dead oh shit he's dead
Ha! It's interactive, hit START and he's back.

A lady never throws up in the bushes.
Didn't they teach you anything at film school?

Okay, now watch this part: turn on the commentary.
You get to hear voices over the regular sound!
Mine are telling me to eat the movie.

I'm flickering inside, it's so retro.
You have subtitles. Strike a pose, girl, be Eurotrash!
Let's watch our previews. Turn inward; it's very Eastern.

Hit START again. Now try the options.
Let's eat this actress, she's sick of always being that guy's girlfriend.
Just go with it! Try not to over-analyze. Don't be lame and cry at the end.
_______

for Susie's challenge