Ink Ribbons

 

This is not happening, does not exist

any more than Bogie on the flat screen smoking Camels

and looking world-weary at the bar.

Bogie's dead, eaten up by cancer,

liver hard and beaten-up as a gymnasium medicine ball.

And yet, here I am, and here is my heart

like a twin engine monoplane on the tarmac at Casablanca.

No smart suit and fashionable hat for me.

I want my father's old fedora and his jacket I used to wear

because I loved him, and we both

drove my mother to razor blades like matching bookends

around a collection of Hem and pulp novels and every page

read to her like THE END THE END THE END.

This is prop whiskey, the gin is Dasani water but the lime is real.

This mood, though, it's the view from a blacked-out liner

at night and I can just make out the lanterns at a cafe on the shore

where they drink the real stuff,

spread lovely lies like butter on bread,

and the solitaries read James Joyce with their works in their pocket.

The off-duty ferryman raises his glass. To me? Not possible.

I am the woman with ink ribbons in her hair, erstatz ether bows

imaginary like the humming presses in a 1940's movie scene.

Edit out the brassy blonde coming through the door,

there's only room for one hard case here

with a PI license and a heart of paper, cotton, leather,

but never even around the corner from silver or gold.

So bottoms up, sobersides, please rush in from the rain I've drummed up

and say something nice. It's always 3 a.m. in these scenes

and I long for morning,

                                       and lanterns lit

                                                                 like my father's smile. 

___________________

for Desperate Poets "I wake up screaming: Desperate Noir." 

Image at top: Bing AI

Music: Billie Holiday Willow Weep For Me

The Razorback

 Now enters the razorback visitor

speaking from both sides of every word,

squeezing the sky into a bucket

and calling it concision to juice the bird.

Welcome, we say to the razorback bastard

who turns our hands to fumbling stumps

to play at love and American Sign--

we, its sycophants, we its chumps.

All hail the razorback lying sack

turning our eyes inside our heads

to be astonished that all's gone black,

a sickening formula on which we're fed.

Saw 101010101

 

No one has ever seen Mr. Cobol.

He's like an eclipse, we all use special mirror boxes, but still

he is bright, electrical, and smells of Ozone cologne. 

His disembodied voice materializes out of the intercom.

"Get down from there and report to my office."

Which one of me, I wonder?

No one has ever been to Mr. Cobol's office. 

It's said it's down a long hall, through a tube and up a ladder.

Some say he dances there on the head of a pin.

I select full harlequin costume and megaphone,

trumpeting, "Mr. Cobol, Mr. Cobol. wherefore art thou, Mr. Cobol?"

It's not love, but it's urgent. I need this paycheck.

Mr. Cobol responds--out of the ether!--with mechanical poetry

any simp could compose. I loose my infinite number of monkeys

and hear Mr. Cobol howl jaggedly, bleeding junk data.

Now Mr. Cobol's shadow self emerges, creeping though the ducts

for the air conditioning and all of our eyes. Many go blind.

I play a saw, wahhh wooooaaahh slashing his scores, stee-rike!

Some say that Mr, Cobol is the Ultimate Umpire,

regal, invisible, all-powerful, robed in Rules like Nebuchadnezzar

and the score is always 1-0. I saw lovely Sally in half, now there's 2.

It's said that Mr. Cobol has learned to play the saw, too,

but I know better. My monkeys have him moaning wahhh woooahh

over the intercom, making calculations, spitting out memos.

Me: Two.

MC: One!!!!

Monkeys: five!!!

MC: zeeeerroooooo...

Me: Nine!

MC; zee roooe

Monkeys: Nein! 

Mc: uhhhhhwaahhh oooo

Me: Since I sawwww her standing there!

MC: oeeoowww, oggghh

Monkeys: Not your steppin' stone!

Me: Stoned?

MC: one...zero...liftoff...

Monkeys: happy trails, pardner!

Me: Haw! better skeedaddle!

MC:

MC:

MC: master

MC: master of

MC: Master of Ceremonies

Monkeys: Evacuate!

Me, wearing balloon pants and tapping head: Can't touch this!

Bette Davis: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

_________

for desperatepoets "Slam At The Singularity Corral. "

Note: In All About Eve, Bette Davis actually said "bumpy night", not "bumpy ride", but the misquote serves my ending better. 

Music: William Mapother plays the saw for Brit Marling in Another Earth. 

What I Did Instead

 

Swans came to me 

as they frequently have,

in flocks like nuns

and in nightmares

rising from lilies pressed

in the pages of a bible.

"You must forgive," they said,

"to turn dust to bread."

Wearing a black masquerade

mask, the nearest said,

"You will feel better." So I shot it

and immediately did. 

A crowd cursed me and called

me a devil. They kissed the swans,

held them like bouquets,

offering them to me like scripture.

Now, I carry a thorny rose in my teeth

and wrap the vines around the beaks

of every talking bird I meet. 

I eat my black bread with red jam,

my face a volcano, my heart a ringing forge.

_________

for desperatepoets "wrestling angels". 

image: unknown artist, found on Pinterest. 

Music: The Animals It's My Life

The Duenna

 The light now is a young man

at a long table

with a full plate,

holding forth as jeweled women lean

to catch his words and scent like hungry cats. 

I stay next to the duenna, summer's old widow,

her skin a dead garden under the high neck and long black sleeves.

She used to read him stories

when the silence scared him

and he grew there in the crook of her arm

like a plum added to a grocery sack.

"I wish it would rain," I say to her as I have every day

since summer arrived like a visiting bishop

waving from a sedan chair,

cheered by women wearing head scarves

because others do, and God is watching.

The duenna pats my hand.

I am sick of the brightness of white shirt and linen jacket,

arms gesticulating as children's do when feeding the swans,

and the swans dip their faces in mock modesty.

If only the wind would rise and the sky darken,

this tablecloth would show

how wings are meant to be used,

plates and wine glasses smashing on the stone floor.

"In time," whispers the duenna, as calm as a bread loaf.

These blowy tales will wear themselves out,

the cats and swans will begin to bicker,

and the nights will lengthen beneath our feet like shadows.

Then the duenna will shed her weeds

and wear the moon on her shoulders glittering.

_______

Musci: Bananarama Cruel Summer

Fireman

 

You're right, I was here.

The cats let me in, they are as untrustworthy 

as a broken elevator.

You're right, I had hidden

pieces of myself, like a nightbird's nest

right under your nose.

Sorry about the fire department.

Sorry about my dual nature, always waving my arms

for balance like a drunken signalman.

You know that they burn

saints and witches alike, and me most of all,

but thieves stole the taps

And you just sat there,

like Buddha of the first editions, plastered in poetry,

a wall unto yourself.

You're right, I meant me

but the cats advised me to say you, over and over

begging to be let in

then out

then in

just like them.

The firemen saved them--

the cats, the other tenants, the stairwells and stars.

Me? I died in the fire I had set because I was in pain, 

did not know how to end things,

and you were not there to get that blasé look on your face

and put me out. 

________________

for Sunday Muse #261. 

top image created with Bing A.I.

Handsome Man

 

A very handsome man--

everyone remarked about it. 

Simply leaning back in a chair

with his coat open,

and that devil-may-care casual air--

it made me feel a little drunk, just watching him.

He wasn't gay

as some of us assumed. 

Vi said no, with a canary-cat smile

and she would know, better than us sparrows. 

She told the story

how the war shattered him.

Six weeks in hospital

and the art therapy that brought him back.

Looks and talent, despite a hand tremor that lasted a year.

He was elegant.

You'd feel like the only woman in the room

just because he offered you a cigarette.

With a wave of his hand he dismissed his work as trash

and said better to be

a bricklayer or a dentist.

The thing is, he seemed to mean it

and it felt like watching him vandalize his soul.

He was loved.

One look at Vi told us that.

She said there were nights when he believed he was dying,

and went to doctors in the morning.

They told him, you're fine, really, stop worrying.

He was on the phone one evening with his sister

when Vi said his face changed. 

When she asked him he said he'd mentioned his art 

and the sister had laughed

saying, oh, you're still doing that.

He loved to walk

at night when the air was cold and clear.

He told Vi he was going out for a smoke--

this war veteran,

this handsome, talented, loved man--

and he did.

Then he'd stepped off a bridge into the cold water far below.

At the funeral, Vi slapped the sister, caused a scene.

He wasn't there to smile and smooth it over, for any of us, anymore.

________

for desperatepoets "death by broken shoe laces." 

Music: Billy Joel Goodnight Saigon