Rosey

 I'm not much for babies.

Oh, I dispense a few sweet noises on demand

like a reluctant gumball machine,

but as often as not, the nickel gets jammed and there I am,

stifling a yawn.

My own child was different of course, but he's grown and gone.

I look around, and it feels like my heart is bunged,

So today I'm on the sidewalk in front of a pet supply store,

navigating the cages, looking.

I'm drawn 

to the shy ones,

the small ones,

the hurt ones,

the lonely ones. 

C'mere baby, come to mama,

Come on-a my house, my house-a come on.

I will make you bold.

I will make you safe.

I will make you well.

I will make you loved. 

It's mother-magic, presto! and we'll make a ton of it

out of thin air.

_______

Bareback Rider

 

When I was a girl, I often dreamed

that I rode a haunted horse whose head was ether

and its steady breath was my own pulse

sounding through my ear pressed hard upon the pillow.

We rode in slow procession through 

the house gone unfamiliar in weird shadows

pulling a death-carriage behind us

and it seemed that I labored while the horse hovered

With lantern lights for eyes

on each side in concert with the slant moon

dim-blind through silver windows

but watching as the horse's flanks rose and fell.

A bareback rider, I hooked fingers

through streamers of jet mane like widow's weeds in a breeze,

hoping to hang on, to wake up

only to see Thanatos the ostler smiling and standing

At the stable door holding a gleaming dark apple for his charge.

_________

For Sunday Muse #236.

Music: Snakefarm "All The Pretty Little Horses"

The Hosting Tree

 

What idle devil limned your voice

with salt of falsity

and set such poison in the heart

that was so kind to me?

The thing that curled and grew there had

its own vitality

just as the lush green climbing vine

kills the hosting tree.

_________

I wrote this for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane, but only used three of the words and one of them got removed during editing. As a result, I haven't linked this to the prompt, but that was its origin, nevertheless. 

Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane

 

Hello poets! This week I am pleased to feature one of my very favorite poets--a man well ahead of his time--Stephen Crane. He is most well-known for his Civil War novella The Red Badge of Courage. While spending time posing for a portrait, he had been reading dry accounts of battles and he observed that "they spout enough of what they did, but they're emotionless as rocks." Crane wanted to portray what battle felt like, and though he had never been in one, he succeeded beyond anything else he would ever write. 

Crane is also known for Maggie, A Girl of the Streets." One day he saw slum children playing king of the mountain, but using rocks instead of snowballs, and he got an idea. He took to task a society that encourages ignorance and self-destruction in its lower classes. Crane is also the author of The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky and the excellent and chilling short story The Open Boat. 

However, Crane said this in comparing his fiction with his poetry: "Personally, I like my little book of poems The Black Riders better than I do The Red Badge of Courage. The reason is, I suppose, that the former is a more serious effort. In it I aim to give my ideas of life as a whole, as far as I know it, and the latter is a mere episode--an amplification."

Crane's poems are spare, blunt, filled with raw religious and totemic imagery, and contain an unsparing view of the world. Like Emily Dickinson--whose work he had been shown and may have been influenced by--Crane was far ahead of his time in an era when flowery form was the norm. One reviewer sniffed that "there is not a line of poetry from the opening to the closing page. Poetic lunacy would be a better name for the book" Another called it "so much trash." Crane was reportedly pleased that his book was causing a stir. Time has vindicated him and his influence can be found in the writings of Hemingway, the Beats, and even last week's subject, Jim Morrison. 

Stephen Crane's life was brief. He died at just 28 years of age, after a days-long Christmas party. Like so many poets before and since, Crane never found financial security, was misunderstood and undervalued in his own time, and fell into destructive personal habits. However, the work he left behind is luminous, sometimes shocking, true, and timeless. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words taken from the poetry of Stephen Crane and use them in a new original poem of our own--any style, length, or form. 

And now, your word list:

assassin

bitter

blind/blindness

braggart

brave

child

coward

devils

fool

gardens

God/god

heart

melody/melodies

mountain

puzzled

riders

sin

thickets

toad

violets

Nursery Rhyme

 There were devils

present at my birth

and veiled angels

in smoky violet shirts

with handbells

they'd stolen out of Hell.

Who is the coward

that devils teach to curse

holding Hope out in a teacup

but overturn it first?

A fool's sun

wanes fast, warms none.

See the rose stem

my assassin's throat was vase for

so that every imprecation

that's spoken only makes more

melodies

across my garden's leaves.

Angels kept my heart

in a box with golden hinges

carried by a devil

on its back with burning cinches

in tandem served--

my hidden heart preserved. 

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Stephen Crane

Music: Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa "I'll Take Care of You"

A Season In Hell

Summer that year came with black wings

rising over green suburban trees

and found my blood-beat

like a smiling intruder delivering a shiv.

There is a horror of violation,

a new vocabulary of panic spoken

in chambers where

lions and phantoms trespass the flesh.

It gets dusky inside the mind,

The hiss of a projector spinning out a movie 

made of gin and dope,

actors who live in graves offering their gray stars.

The god-surgeon, numb expert bastard

taught his flunkies torture

and gave me a new face.

I crawled through a radio for fifteen years to slash his memory.

When you always feel wrong, the world is a camera

and your crime is breathing.

There is an underworld with bootleg cures, so you go,

a parade of the altered, weird strangers, sudden sisters

Who come out blinking, holding high 

the severed heads of devils, and unafraid of anything.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--Jim Morrison. 

I had major surgery when I was 16.  That summer, "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm", both by the Doors, were getting heavy play on the radio I had at the hospital. Jim Morrison died right around that time. 

My title is, of course, taken from Rimbaud, a favorite of Morrison's and of mine.

Word Garden Word List--Jim Morrison

 

Hello all, and welcome to this week's Word List. This time our inspiration comes from the words of the late poet and rock singer Jim Morrison. This intro will be shorter than usual because yours truly is still under the weather, but I think most of you are already familiar with him, yes?

The List is taken from the poetry collection "The Lords & The New Creatures" and from his song lyrics.

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in an original new poem of our own. Any style, any length, any structure. Then link up and visit others. So climb aboard the blue bus and show us where you're taking us. Enjoy.

Your list:

actor

cameras

chambers

dusky

eggshell

feast

flunkies

hiss

intrusion

lions

movie

panic

parade

phantoms

radio

soul

strangers

stuffed

vocabulary

windows