Mariana In The Morning

 Mariana in the morning

by Morning's light possessed

all afternoon she walks the cliff's edge

trying to forget.

Mariana by the window

in a yellow aster smock

She knows November brings the end

of all your foolish talk.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

they ask her for her anodyne

then ask for nothing more.

Mariana, bride of Sorrow

in Sorrow's cottage kept

She counts the coins the stars deliver

and medicates the debt.

Mariana, in her silence

braids the horses' tails

She knows November brings the ostler

with his shoes and nails.

And the mermaids come to die

on her lonely rocky shore

asking for her anodyne

then asking nothing more.

_______

They Are Marching

 They are marching

where the red flowers bloom

They are marching and sometimes stoop to gather

the white and fallen fragments of the moon

They are sleeping

and dying with the hours

they are sleeping and hallucinating sweetly

white swans and lilies in their bowers

They are falling

where bones turn into pennants

They are falling like the spines of dusty hymnals

where angels count forgetfulness as penance.

Hybrid Perennial

 

He brought her a manuscript made from sidewalks

and evening air.

He had eaten stars, nearly died, fathered a revolution,

all while admiring the lilies in her hair.

She complained of her situation and boredom while drinking

formaldehyde.

He developed a cough, and from the cough

came the man she now lounges beside.

Someone buried the manuscript and where it was buried

roses unfurled.

He fills his pipe with suicide, does not recognize his only child

and the woman smiles, become an ingenue, a cipher, a nattering girl.

______

Cricket

 A bold black cricket came in from the night

with a message wrapped around his leg

I offered him bread, my body, my bed

and an indigo blue Russian egg.

He had only the song that crickets know

taught them by their dying mothers

He played it on the silk and scar of my skin

and told me there would be no others.

My hair is blond, his body was black

and hard as the truth in a mirror

The night was warm, the dawn too quick

and the last time drew one season nearer.

_____

for dverse creepy crawlies. 

For Our Lady of Smoke & Window Sills

 You Are Our Lady of smoke and window sills

and I am a wheel made of rope and memories

A birch skin sun, full of poetry and rum

lays out its playing cards on the breeze

If I have hurt you, take this yellow bird

and ask it to sing your childhood back

If it dies in your palm, then you'll know that all along

we've lain our hearts together on the track

There is no dome of heaven blue enough,

to pose as Sunday's ornament

no coin to buy the peacock's lovely strut

and no tongue to tell you what it meant

In every water well, a witching stick

to guide the thirst back to our lips

where we could cure the snowblind trumpeter

and offer him our silence like a kiss

There is no morning glory blue enough

to pose our fanned out deck of saints

or to repair the garland in your hair

that falls like leaves we pretty up with paints.

Crotalus Aquilus

 

The thing in my hair was not there

when I was a child--

only the breeze.

You cannot pet it, it will only

hunker down, hiding.

I am never lonely, but long to be.

Sometimes it slithers down my arms

to my fingers

and lays eggs inside.

(They turn to stone,

change flesh to bone.)

In my belly, its basket swells

with the things it saves--

a crowded hell.

"Look at the fat old lady, dropping things!"

the children call.

The thing in my hair bites their ball.

At night the thing whispers, nips,

draws blood and memories,

worries, fits.

(At dawn it dies and sleeps

wrapped like a hobble around my feet.)

Play a flute and see it risen as a Christ

undulating, swaying

in a mockery of praying

Above my head, a permanent rotten halo

unasked-for, inevitable,

whispering, "You are beautiful,

(Senora, like the setting sun,

mi viejo.")

___________

for The Sunday Muse #177

mi viejo = "my old one"

Crotalus Aquilus = Queretaro dusky rattlesnake, a venomous pit viper found at high altitude in Mexico. 

Trout Fishing In America

 

Left Michigan that June

with two teacher friends.

Saw Looking For Mr. Goodbar

in South Bend.

No wonder the country's going to hell.

All the teachers are cruising the bars!

In a Jackson Mississippi Mickey D's

there were elephants on the wall for art.

They're real, said Jim. No, said I.

Jim's grin. In my world, they are.

Crossing a bridge into Louisiana

we saw white cranes circling the marshlands.

The entire Richard Brautigan library across the back seat;

on the tape machine, Jackson Browne & friends.

It was just something to do that summer,

passing the bottle to pass the time.

But now, with all the black coffee blur behind me,

that year still goes down smooth, holds a shine.

~~~~~~~~~

for Sunday Muse #176.