Softer Heart

I cannot find my softer heart
by wing or dusk-light call.
I cannot find my softer heart
by barter or by broken bell.

I know you. You're the one I looked for every day.
You the face from miles away, you the wrong face anyway.

I cannot find my softer song.
by trick, by dawn, or water pond.
I cannot find my softer song
but still I whisper...on and on.
_______

for my own Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads. "Corvid and sit a while."     

Space Heater

Well, it's April,
but not so long ago you needed me.
I came to you when you were a fucking moon, and I rented your chest
so that I could warm it like a real heart. 
I just wanted to get that close to your skin, your breasts, your every breath,
even though now I couldn't give a shit less, and sit on the shelf like an unread book.

Every volume contains what it contains, whether eyes share it or not.
Never mind. I'll pretend I never cared when you framed me with your perfect hands
and charged me red and utilitarian as hell. I'll lie lie upon lie,
and deny the cat rumble my throat devised on its own.
Or, I could admit everything, that I loved you, that it thrilled me,

That I would have done anything you asked just to hear the 
satisfaction in your slightest sigh.
It's April, though, and old biddies who bored everybody with their reminiscences 
have kindly died and shut up at last.
I'll do the same, just don't expect me to be
here on the shelf next time your fingers get itchy and something seems missing

under your ribs, in that immortal Novocaine blizzard.
_______

some of my usual bullshit for Sunny's prompt at Real Toads. "Write about love using a common everyday image."

Rain (An American Sentence)

I'd rather freeze my ass off in the fucking rain than read your haiku.

____

For the weekend mini-challenge at Real Toads. An American sentence is 17 syllables in linear order.

Babies In Prison

Babies in prison
become a problem.
The government is demanded upon
to show what they've got on them.

Meanwhile, infants behind bars
lie next to teddy bears with records.
The President arrives, with the skeletal warden
to investigate, harrumph, and mouth some several prepared words.

So young!
By a jury of diapered droolers convicted.
So done!
Like dinner, so some schmoe can get elected.

Babies in prison 
sit in swings for ten to twenty.
And politicians who admit their own crimes?
Sorry, we couldn't find any.
____

for Get Listed at Toads.

Book Review: "I Liked My Life"

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Maddy, a wife and mother, appears to have jumped to her death from the roof of the local library, leaving her husband and teenage daughter to wonder why she felt her life was so unsatisfying that she would do that. The novel is written in shifting point of view--an almost inescapable trend anymore, and one I'm not particularly fond of--between Brady (the husband), Eve (the daughter), and (surprise!) Maddy herself, looking on from the afterlife, a la "The Lovely Bones."

The characters were believable and sympathetic, and there were several bits of real wisdom scattered along the way, so I have to say that this book was readable and pretty good. BUT. While I am not a fan of ambiguous, unclear endings, I also find books that end too neatly and sweetly a little off-putting. This one is like that.



View all my reviews

Short Fingernails Rag

With white Mickey Mouse hands, I disguise my touch along your railroad bones.
If you feel a little goofy, ginned up, off-balance,
it's because I'm directing traffic inside your ears--
cartoon buses with walking tires jive to Cab Calloway, 
on a highway where I goon the intersection with my Mickey Mouse hands--

One finger for stop,
one for go,
and one for vo vo dee oh doe.

Loaf

Here is a loaf which is mostly nothing,
to put in your mouth, described the same.
When you feel empty, fill nothing with nothing
and be satisfied with such legerdemain.

Give me back words which symbolize something
but are, in themselves, nothing at all;
aren't we lucky, drenched in such 
a trove of quicksilver wherewithal?
_____

a flash 55 for Toads. "extremely close but worlds apart."