Helpless Leaves

Good sense is a good thing,
and good things deserve admiration
and consideration;
it's a fool who says it isn't so.

I'm thinking, though, about the helpless leaves--
all summer they keep a pleasant, constant green,
and none of June's cajoling charms
can make them break that easy grace.

Winter has still less success--
she is too hard,
too harsh,
and has no reward but her deepening cold.

It is the Autumn that makes me think of you,
because that is when the helpless leaves
love the shortening light,
a certain angle of the sun,
and the crisp late mornings of spiced cider days.

Good sense is a good thing,
but god how I love the things that are,
simply because they must be--
yellow, gold, crimson, these rise because Nature insists.
Like my love,
the helpless leaves can't help themselves;
it is Autumn's touch they were born to adore...
They fall.

_______

La Vieja Bruja

The bells are as hard as the street,
but, though so much more beautiful than pavement,
like pavement, they can fail.

Fill them with mud, or chocolate,
or a choking storm of pigeon feathers,
and they whisper
like lost children.

The old witch reaches midtown
under a bitchy sky, twin to the pebble-hidden concrete sidewalk.
She knows,
spirits have been walking up and down across them
both the same
like double evils.

Damn the crows who stole my beauty
(says the witch).
Damn the time that took the talent I had
for soft-talking the bells, and filling them
with cayenne sways
like red-skirted gypsies.

Now, the bells are as hard as the street,
and the old witch makes heel-sparks across the church steps,
hurrying past, looking for her stub-tailed cat,
unseen and unremarkable
as dust.

_____ 

linked with Real Toads open link monday

Speak!

(this is a mirror oddquain)

so
completely
correct you are, sir;
don't get shy now, Pooky Bear...
speak!

so
adorably cute how you
really think I care...
ruff harumph!
speak!

____

for both Imaginary Garden With Real Toads and Magpie 86. 

Fairy Palace

In early morning's misty cradle,
where the banshees pace and tear their hair,
hidden by green in the Toad Queen's bower
I awaited no other's kiss for fair.

I slew the crone who had worked the spell,
shed my skin and shook out my hair...
behold my Palace risen from Hell,
and cross at my pleasure the blood-pinked stair.

______

for the name prompt at the Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.

Your Name Meaning
SHAY Gender: Female Origin: Irish Meaning: Fairy Palace

Let's Dance!

Some total silliness to liven up your Friday...

Some Fucking Haikus

Hello, students. It is well known that Zen Mistress Fireblossom hates haiku. But "hate" is such a strong word. So, she is going to assume the lotus position, clear her mind, and release all negativity. She will meditate, seek oneness, and refer to herself in the third person. Oh my gosh. Look! Haikus!

pink blossom receives
the hummingbird's eager kiss
gets chlamydia

zen master teaches
each lesson sweet as cherries
but still needs night job

house with paper walls
requires a patient artist
frames keep falling

birds like toyotas
fly quickly over the trees
never slowing down

_____

for dverse form for all, y'all 

Sweet Man

He's a sweet man.
Am I allowed to say that?
He looks like
A little bottle of India ink.

It's a perfect day.
The sky is full of puffy clouds like lazy angels,
And I'd love to lay a sweet slow one on one of 'em.
Am I allowed to say that?

He's a sweet man,
Like clear water rushing over open hands.
He makes me feel peaceful, like my shit-crazy girlfriends never do.
Am I allowed to say that?

He knows I'm the kind of woman who burns the breakfast
And runs off with somebody's sister first chance I get;
But he's balm for the wounded spirit,
And I love the way he smiles when I say that.

_____

dedicated to N.