untitled 55

Sound isn't what you think.
Your boot soles flat on the wooden floor
is how your feet make fools of your ears.

"Forever" is the froth
offered up by every stranger I have loved.
I turn to it like a bloom,
but fissures up my back 
is how time finds the fool in the room.
______

A 55 for Kerry.

Maureen

Maureen tied summer to her wrist with a shoelace--
now the sun rises and sets in her sleeves.
Maureen left home at age 8, became a nun, quit, joined the army.
Now she wears her hair loose, 
knows the algebra of your every word before you sigh it.

Maureen talks to the Holsteins in the pasture,
contemplates the squares of the fields as seen from the air in planes
taken from high school geometry and woodworking class. 
"This was all a salt water sea," she tells the cows with a wide gesture,
sun spilling across the sloping green with the arc of her arms.

Maureen likes her milk frothy, her paintings surreal.
She likes you when you tell her she's a habitable planet in a colorform sky.
"We are rapidly approaching a tipping point," she opines dramatically
as you roll her over, then she rolls you, you haystack fool,
stood up on a stick with a silly grin because summer, because crows, 

because Maureen.
_______

for Wordy Thursday at Toads. I have used vintage jellies' word list for reasons explained in the comments there. Just as a nod to the original intent of Sherry's prompt, there is a Grover Lewis reference hidden away here. 2 points for finding it.

Back in the 80's I had about a dozen buttons pinned to my jean jacket. One of them was Nena, who I thought was just the coolest ever. I also had Chrissie Hynde. I still have the jacket, and it still has a couple of buttons but not those. The one everybody likes is a crayon face with a big smile that says CHEER THE FUCK UP. 

MY NEW BOOK IS OUT ! ! !

Hey friends, my new book "Nickel Remedies" is out!!!

Get it on Amazon HERE.
 

Lily

Direct sun is bad billet for cuttings.

Lily was long-stemmed, 

half drunk

half honest

night-starred

giving head to a bottle in a graveyard.

She never chose her own tattoos--

just once born, once baptized, 

seven times left crying  by the roadside.

Lily likes her Ginny with Georgia lime.

O Lily fair, Lily bright,

gives all her love 

to a runaway cat

and salts her bath with anything white.

Lily used to pose on a coffin lid

half sweet

half willing

 half live, half dead.

Long-stemmed Lily talking out of her head

to the peonies out by the garden shed. 

Of course she loves you,

tap-water blank with soft pale hands.

Lily fair, Lily bright,

long-stemmed Lily in your circle stands

almost straight

almost strong

almost saved, and almost 

gone.

_____ 

for Camera FLASH! at Toads.

Untitled Experience

I fell asleep in the bath and shed my skin.
Waking, I had no idea at all
where I was or
who I was or
when I was.

At first, the drawn curtain gave me a panicky moment feeling entombed. Was I in a box? The back seat of a car?  A bed? No...in water. OK. Then I thought I was back in San Antonio, in my 20's, never having left or aged. I expected, for just a moment, that my old dog would be sleeping just outside waiting for me. I cast my mind about, and finally--finally--placed myself in space and time. It was a very odd, naked, fearful feeling, to lose my bearings like that. 

Now I'm back--in this life--
but did some other me, my doppelganger, 
wake in the old green tub in Texas, 
without a clue, having imagined that she was much older, calmer, not so poor,
and did she--this other me--
get up, towel off, and say to that big sweet dog, "I knew you'd be here" ?
_________

Not sure if this is a poem exactly, but it's a true story. They say that when you wake up disoriented like that, it means that your spirit has been out of your body, traveling. All I know is that I woke up as a blank slate for a few moments. 

for Susie's "Bits of Inspiration: Doppelganger" at Toads. 

Red-Winged Blackbird

Red-winged blackbird,

wearing your mantilla,

the low branches of the young mulberry trees

are your church steps

and the breeze is bells for your wedding.

Dear blackbird,

how I long to watch you braid your hair 

into feathers for this glorious day.

Demure blackbird,

give your mantilla to a sister or an aunt.

Tonight they all will envy you

as your dainty shoes as small as rosary beads are shed--

 you'll go barefoot on the mulberry trees

swaying sweet for a warm moon

like a rung chime.

 

Wolf Pack

Where is my child?
Out there, in clockthick air, the icy air.
Where is my mind?
Unspooled to find him, find him in the icy air.

Who forgot the door, the open door?
How soon the night thorn, blood scent, pack with golden eyes?
I forgot the door, the night door;
forgot to call my child, my child with golden eyes.

Where is my body, my body like a bell?
Calling mouths of night thorn, offered as a trade.
I ring under the open door,
To bring the pack my way.

Where is my child?
What fog made me forget?
He runs alone, just flesh and bone,
warm-blooded testament.

Here they are, the thorn sharp pack
to watch me fail and fall;
Why don't they strike, why don't they kill?
Why don't they move at all?

Where is my child? His devil sire
assures me he is dead.
But starlings in his tongue take flight
and leave him mute instead. 

Who forgot the door, the open door?
Who sees what clockthick time becomes?
Where is my child? Out there with them--
in icy air he runs.
_______

for Brendan's "A Little Night Music" at Toads.  

Notes: Recently I had a dream that I had left a door open at night which I should have closed. I realized my boy was outside somewhere and that a pack of wolves and wild dogs which had been waiting and watching, would now have their way. I cast my mind out to find him, but couldn't. So I went to try to shut the door but the pack was already inside. I backpedaled and fell, expecting to be torn to shreds, but the pack just watched me. My ex smiled in a mocking way and told me my boy was already dead, but I didn't believe it. And then I knew--far from being dead, he was out there, vibrantly alive and running with the pack.