Bucket & Brush

After God dashed Himself against the world,
those looking for Him were fooled.

"Seraphine, why haven't you made the tea?"
"Seraphine, get busy on the floors."
Seraphine, take up your bucket and brush,
on your knees, facing backward on the second stair,
seeing wild blooms in the harsh lye soap.

After God dashed himself against the world,
He became as tiny as a seed.

See Seraphine, the lunatic, kneeling in awe before the Virgin,
filled with gratitude for her materials--
the Resurrection in candle wax and sheep's blood.
"Seraphine, when you're done in the kitchen...
the hallway...
the upstairs..."
"Seraphine, when you're done...."

All night, on the hard boards of her room,
knees shrieking, back locked up, shoulders cramping,
Seraphine paints with brush and fingertip
the natural visions she sees.
At these times, her smile is drawn by the Divine.
"Seraphine is a mooncalf, a loon, a half-wit."
In the morning, on an hour's dream-soaked sleep,
she returns to her drudgery.

After God dashed Himself against the world,
He rode in the cuffs and pockets of the ones He chose,
as humble and unseen as a grain of salt.
"There's Seraphine, talking to the trees."
"Seraphine, stop that singing!"
"As mad as seven cats, that one."

After God dashed Himself against the world,
He sent his Saints to speak to Saint Joan.
She heard, and led an army against the English.
She saw a king crowned.
Every French schoolchild knows her name,
but she was just an illiterate village girl.

The proper,
the practical,
the privileged and the pretenders
gather in pews on Sunday in Senlis.
They fill the basket and recite the familiar words,
speaking uninflected to Someone not evidently there.

Seraphine took up her bucket and brush
as Joan did her sword.

In the face of every flower,
every leaf,
every bright miraculous fruit,
see the recreated face of God, in Holy magnificence.
See the drudge, the madwoman, the painter,
her face lit up,
singing to nobody anyone can see,
out of her mind,
and filled with a beautiful unwavering faith as simple as seed and bloom.
_______

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads: the art of Seraphine de Senlis. The painting at top is hers.

Famous

Stevens becomes famous.
This fact leaves me a little bit cross-eyed with wonder,
as I have known him all of my life and he has always just been Stevens.

Stevens did not enter this mortal coil riding a golden chariot.
He did not emerge from the sea, fully-formed.
He did not used to say things like "mortal coil",
but now he does,
and he's got me saying them, too.

Listen, he used to bury his army men in the sandbox,
using a yellow plastic bulldozer.
He used a space alien figure for the preacher.
Waggling the alien in his hand, he would make it say,
"Private Pumpkin is dead. Blah-dee-la, church stuff, amen."
He would mash down the grave with a flat stone,
giving it a few whacks for good measure.

Then he would dig up Pvt. Pumpkin, toss him in the air,
and hit him into the neighbor's yard with a baseball bat.
"I'm Kirk Gibson!" he would crow,
but he was just Stevens.
Now he is famous.

In those days, my favorite thing was my horse ranch set.
If I ignored Stevens in favor of feeding my ponies grass from the lawn,
he would grab one of them and make loud noises,
so that the pony sounded horribly flatulent.
This could go on for some time,
until we were both laughing.

Today, Stevens sends a car to pick me up.
I was hoping the chauffeur would be female, 
wearing a snappy uniform and cap, but nooOOooo.
It is some silent Asian guy.
There is a wet bar in the back.
I don't drink.
I make one of Stevens's old fart noises, long and drawn out.
The driver's eyes flick back, just for a moment,
and I give him my best what-are-YOU-looking at? stare.
We non-famous must do what we can,
in order to avoid total invisibility.

I have worn heels, hose, a faux fur and a pillbox hat.
Yes, I am propping myself up.
It's a nice retro look; the more like his mother I am,
the more he'll hate it.
He'll give me some cut-offs and a tee shirt of his wife's to put on,
and we'll play Jenga for half the afternoon,
until the CNN interviewer rings
and Stevens has to take the call.

Maybe I should have married some corporate hotshot
and cranked out some kids.
I'd have a club membership,
and a fucking race horse.
Instead, I'm an available boho lesbian poet chick
with two books that never sell, 
and an extensive collection of stuffed toy raccoons.

Fear me, World.
I am a little cursor blinking hopefully on the screen of life.
Sitting there in Stevens's wife's weekend clothes,
I wonder what it would be like to matter,
to be famous,
to burn brightly, if briefly, upon this mortal coil.

Right then, Stevens comes back,
and he sits on the ottoman in front of me.
He takes my hands in his,
and his look says that he has read my mind,
seen my melancholy,
heard the lowdown blues of my dinky little heart.
He makes a long, operatic farting noise,
and then I am laughing
and telling him
that he was born for fame, 
as surely as Kirk Gibson, or the Transformers,
and he kisses the top of my head with his famous lips.
_______
 

Ugly Bird

In the night garden,
there are two gates, side by side.
There are twin paths,
doubling back on themselves.
There is one sky,
in shades of indigo.

In the night garden,
there are two trees, leaning each into each.
There are hours,
and minutes within the hours.
There is an ugly bird with a beautiful song.
There are two vines entwined.
There are the distant, lonely stars.

50/50

Up in Alamo Heights,
Wayne used to come in to the Handy Andy supermarket where I worked.
She wore no make-up.
She had a Texas twang
and would look down when she smiled.

I knew where she lived.
It was on her checks,
and besides, she invited me over.
Wayne had a roommate.
Her name was Myra and she was the personnel department at a bank.
I dubbed her "Orchestrater Of Demises."
She was six feet tall.
I liked her.

Wayne and I would go to the Broadway 50/50.
She always drank cognac.
I forget what I drank.
We talked about all the things we would do,
and didn't do any of them.
Wayne's cigarette would burn down,
balanced in the glass teeth of an ashtray.

In May, it was my birthday.
I had to work.
By then I had been let go from the supermarket for trying to unionize,
and I had a job closer to home;
closer to the park where the whores hung out.
They would sit on the fountain with their pimps, getting high.

I got in long after dark.
There were twenty-one stairs up to my door.
Wayne had left me a bottle of champagne with a gold bow.
The note said,
"Sorry we missed you.
Sundance snuffled at us appealingly from under the door.
Happy birthday from your harem!
xox
Wayne Anna and Orchestrater of Demises."

I went in and fed my dog.
Then I turned the lights back off and sat near the window,
drinking by moonlight
to a Willie Nelson song.
_____

my attempt at a vignette for Kerry's challenge ran a little long, so I am posting it to OLM at Real Toads instead.

 
 
 

Bashful

Don't smile at me.
I'll look away,
and then, all day,
I'll be thinking about it.

Don't stand nearby.
You'll find that I
back up,
probably into something,
knocking over the china.

Don't kiss me.
I'll surely blush,
and then I'll rush
to say something, anything,
quite idiotically.

Later,
I'll sigh,
dreaming of your lips.
________

for FF55 at Real Toads.  

Porcupine Ball

We are unadorned and smoky, like our world. I will tell you a story. On Bihan, there is a native plant called a zeshi, which has a fragrant pink-colored bloom. This flower folds over and over on itself, forming a small labyrinth, a maze of sweetness and color hidden from view. Enter the tiny shensh, a poisonous interloper no larger than a passing thought. The shensh crawls down into the zeshi flower and hides itself between the folds, where it begins consuming the zeshi from within. But the zeshi can flood itself with sticky nectar, enough to trap the invading shensh. The zeshi then turns the tables and feeds upon the shensh.

"So, what are you?" asks the human called Ben J. He knows just enough about our social structure to ask me this. He knows that females like me live in groups of about a dozen, with one male. Each female has her own particular place in the group, and brings her own particular talents and strengths. It wouldn't occur to any of us to be jealous of a sister; it would be like being jealous of a part of our own body. On the other hand, outsiders we kill. Ben J. wants to know what my place is in my group. I give him a children's answer:  "I am a storyteller."

Ben J. leans back in his chair, taking up an enormous amount of space without seeming to try. He spins a ring of keys around on his finger, then grins at me, mockingly. He spreads his hands and says, "So tell me a story!" He draws out the last word. 

I tell him, "Once there was a man who searched after the truth, but the more he looked, the less he saw, because his eyes were soft but the truth is hard."

Ben J. just looked at me for a moment, and then tilted his head back and laughed. He casually kicked the bars of my cage with his military-style boot, making a sharp, loud bang, and said, "You are one fucking crazy Zeeb."

They call us Zeebs, for striped creatures on their world called zebras. They call us this because every Bihana--women like me--have dark red skin and bald heads criss-crossed with deep ebony stripes. Every Bihana's stripe pattern is distinct. The only hair we have is a small patch of black at the base of our skulls. Our stripes continue down our spines, finally diminishing at the hips. We have yellow eyes, and bodies that, due to our high metabolisms and our genetics, stay the same as we age. Though to ourselves our appearance is unremarkable, the human males find us fascinating in a strictly physical way. They have no regard for us, but they desire us. We are what they would call voluptuous, and we secrete a pheromone that makes them stupid with desire when we are in season. The rest of the time, the effect is less. That is the only mercy there is, here.

When they came, our male tried to protect us. His name was Meshka, and he was crafty and fearless. The humans were arrogant and out of their element. He used that to ambush them, and he turned a great many of them to nothing but cinders. One night as I lay with him, I kissed a line along the scar across his face. When I spoke in his ear, and the word I spoke was our word meaning peace within one's self; peace within one's world. You don't understand, yet, the power of my words, but you will. It was the best gift I could give him. The humans murdered him the next day, and rounded us up.

Our world is hot and harsh. The main colors here are red and black. The sky stays smoky. We are creatures of this world.

Even in captivity, we have tried to fight them, but it is almost impossible. There are things we can do, but the price is high. One of the humans was running the blade of a knife along the bars of my cage, taunting me, and he managed to cut off the tip of his own finger when the blade slipped in his hand. He screamed. He was bleeding all over, bright red human blood, not the reddish-orange blood that flows in us. The human turned in quick circles, holding his hand and screaming. The fingertip landed near enough to my cage that I reached out and took it. I put it in my mouth. Bihana have the ability to concentrate heat within ourselves, and I made my mouth searing. The stink of burning flesh filled the room, and when he stopped screaming and turned toward me, I spit out the blackened speck that was his fingertip. They starved me for two weeks for that.

My sister came into season and one of the humans let her out and began doing what he pleased with her. He was kissing her hard--something foreign to us--and had pushed her up against the wall. Bihanas have just three fingers, and no thumbs. Instead, we have a sheathed claw that is smooth and black. We are no stronger than human females, but we have this weapon. She took the human by the shoulders, unsheathed her thumb-claws and sank them into his arms. She wouldn't let him go, and she had got him all the way to the bone. Another human came in and hit her with his porcupine ball and down she went.

The humans' favorite weapon is a porcupine ball they carry on their belts. It has a long handle, and a half sphere on the end. When they swing it and it hits someone, dozens of barbed spikes erupt from the ball and into the victim. My sister was put back in her cage with the porcupine ball still in her back. It isn't immediately fatal. Pulling the barbs out takes flesh with them. The wounds become infected, the victim can linger for days, even weeks, and the pain is excruciating. Our cages were close enough together that I could hold her hand. I held it for two human weeks until her blood stopped pulsing in her wrist. One of the things we do not want the humans to know, is that we can cry.

Ben J. is back. He's looking at me and I know the look. I glance at the porcupine ball at his hip. It would do me no good to try to steal it from him, because, as we have learned, they are fingerprint-identified and if anyone but the owner tries to use it, the barbs explode into one's hand. One of my sisters lost her arm this way. Then they shot her in the head, because she wasn't appealing to them anymore.

I told him that I am a story teller. Here is another story, and it's a true one. On Bihan, there were once flying vermin called quanzi. In our world, the air is hot and full of ash and soot. The quanzi found their way into the flesh of damaged throats and bred there. When the larvae hatched, the host would choke violently and the new quanzi would fly out, stronger with each generation. When the quanzi left the dying host, it was called "speaking death", because the first thing young quanzi do is to look for another victim. In time, very few of us were left, but the survivors had a natural immunity, a mutation causing an extra membrane to develop in our throats, and the quanzi starved to death and vanished from our world.

Ben J. is opening my cage. He calls me a Zeeb and holds me by the wrist, hard. I told him that I am a story teller, but that was a children's tale. Here is the truth: I am a shamaness. I am a particular kind of shamaness, as my mother and grandmother were before me. My gift is to manifest words. I can animate any word I choose, and our language is twice as extensive as that of the humans. It begins with the feeling of something gathering itself just beneath my second heart. As I concentrate, it grows stronger, and moves up my body, from the inside. My ears ring and my dark red skin and black stripes shimmer. Then, for a moment, I can't breathe, my throat is blocked, as if it were full of quanzi, but it isn't quanzi, it is the word I have chosen to animate. Finally, it fills my mouth, and when I speak it, whatever word I have chosen manifests itself in physical reality. So, you see, when I spoke in Meshka's ear our word that means peace within one's self; peace within one's world, he had that, there in my arms. I saw it in his face, he was alive with it. That is my gift.

Ben J. is moving against me, calling me "Zeeb bitch" and grunting. I put my lips to his ear. After a while, I feel it gathering inside me. Under my second heart, up my throat, into my mouth. I press my lips to Ben J's ear, so close to his vulnerable human brain, and I speak the words that mean "porcupine ball". He falls instantly to the ground, bright red human blood gushing from his ears, his nose, his ugly mouth, even his eyes. He is dead before he can react, his head riddled and destroyed from the inside. 

I take his keys from his belt. Quietly, I let myself out of the cage room and slowly, silently, make my way down the empty corridor to the door out of this place. I am pushing the door open, almost free, when I hear a voice behind me. It is a human voice saying, "Stop right there, Zeeb." 

One of the guards is swinging his porcupine ball, almost lazily, and walking toward me. His smug face is nearly bored. I have never tried to use my shamanic talent twice in a short time before, but I concentrate as hard as I can. He will be on me in just a few steps. I double over, in pain. It has never been like this before. Still, I concentrate. He is swinging the porcupine ball, it will only be a few seconds before I  feel it bite into my body. The word I have chosen rises up in my throat, choking me for a moment. Then it is in my mouth, the word I have summoned, the word that I am forbidden to speak this way, but which I am speaking now as the human takes aim at me, a smile at the edge of his lips.

I speak the word, the word that manifests and animates the small thing that will bring down this human, this place, this entire world except for me and my sisters:

"Quanzi".           

My New Poem

okay...what to write about? I'll try a warm-up exercise. People say they help...

beautiful haiku

you sit there and

oh hell, I hate haiku! "The fucking flower/ blah blah blah" Puke. How about something about a beautiful princess? Yes!  I'll model her after the lovely and captivating Ms. X, model of feminine perfection!

In the land of the unicorn,
through the flower-strewn fields
came a beautiful princess, who--
oh DAMN, what idiot decided to put steps here! I can't even see them because of all these stupid flowers. If I just--ack! Whoa, fallinggggggggggg! Whew, that was close, I just barely caught my balance in time. *snifffff* Okay, what's that? *lifts shoe* Oh frack, unicorn crap. Ugh! 

Or not. I know...I'll try something with deep mystical significance!

The wise and highly respected Swami
kept being undone by vulgar physical matters.
Looking in the mirror one day just before a seminar,
he saw that, beneath his long flowing beard, he had
~gasp!~
face dandruff!

With no time to spare, he went out and gave his presentation
on the mysteries of the universe,
but at the meet-and-greet afterglow party,
all Swami could think about was the offending flakes.
"Hello, yes, bless you, peace! Namaste!" he said to everyone, but
all the time, he could almost feel the nasty little flakes on his face expanding,
becoming huge,
turning his wise visage into a ridiculous snowstorm!

Swami began pretending to stroke his chin thoughtfully,
but soon,
he was speaking to people from behind both hands,
mumbling incomprehensibly, and half turning away.
"Swami, what's wrong?"
All his years of traveling, learning, fasting and studying,
wasted because of face dandruff!

Calling on all of his resolve, Swami lowered his hands, smiled,
and faced his well-wishers again.
Such lovely pilgrims, how could he have ever...

And then he felt it.
He was going to pass wind, and loudly. Oh no!

Shay Caroline, maybe this just isn't your morning to write. After all, April is done with, not that you even tried  to write a poem a day. NooOOoo. 23 poems is not 30. Would Christina Rossetti sit around in her bathrobe, whining "I can't thiiiiiiink of anythinggggggggggg"? C'mon, at least crank out a haiku.   

Cat Haiku

beautiful trash bin

heaped with stinky fish skellies

puts flowers to shame

Aw, damn I'm good!