Maddie wanted to see a spider this summer: A haiku
under gazebo,
squished one innocent spider
-hope, fear mix in death
under gazebo,
squished one innocent spider
-hope, fear mix in death
A girl was invited a a dance in town. She had never been to a dance before. She was of modest means and could not afford a proper dancing dress. She was walking through town to try and shake her heartache when she saw a dress in the window of a consignment shop. She tentatively entered, clutching her pocketbook to her chest. The dress could not have been more perfect. It was white lace with hand beading, and -most importantly- it was miraculously on sale.
She bought the dress then and there.
She was the best dressed girl in the place. She danced and danced until sweat poured down her face, until the point of collapse. The coroner said she died of poisoning – embalming fluid found on the dress. The dress had been taken by a greedy mortician from a young woman lain to rest in her wedding gown. The moral of the story is being poor can and will kill you. The moral of the story is always buy your clothes new, from Macey’s , and wash them before wearing. The moral is cheap sluts can’t want something nice, above their station. The moral of the story is she wasn’t buried in the dress. No one got it. The first girl’s family had it put into storage, folded neatly with the wrinkles pressed out.
NOTE: THOSE OFFENDED BY COARSE LANGUAGE PASS ON THIS ONE
Miss Manners. Please Clarify
Is it worse to be a feckless cunt than a brain-dead dick?
Is it worse to be a cowering pussy than a towering prick?
Is it worse to be inquisitive and patient than randomly vindictive?
Is it stupid to be rational inquisitive and broad minded when you should
be nothing but vein pulsing angry all the time at everything and everybody
who is not possessed by the same set of momentary delusions as you?
Crimson.
Golden hues.
Melding together.
One sun’s dying beauty.
Cradled by a horizon
It’s last symphony of light.
Night is coming—
Sprinkled with light to carry us through.
Herb and the Bone Witch fell into the same spell of the same book for the same reason from widely different places. This was not a love-lock spell, or some other style of curse; they would never be romantically entwined. Instead it was a seeking, a chance attempt by two to find one to care for regardless of fortunes or fashions. She gathered bees’ combs and bleached skulls to intone over, seed grains and fallen flowers to dry and grind for sprinkling on candle flames. He prayed silently into the darkness of a bottomless loneliness. She failed, lost interest, moved on to other things. He persisted, cursing both gods and the abyss, finally found himself stripped naked by her absence on the side of an ossuary hill, discovered who it was he’d needed all along.
I had her picture on a shelf
I saw it every day
A black and white from way back when
And now it’s gone away
Oh where did that picture go
I looked behind the shelf
But it’s nowhere to be found
It must have moved itself
Well I’d better find that girl
I’ll miss seeing her smile
Don’t know who she was at all
Just one among a pile
Stuck inside a dusty box
for years and years and years
Those brown stains upon her dress
Must have been her tears
Bet she was glad to get released
To see the light of day…
I know what happened to her now
She left and ran away
Early summer morning light
brush of breeze white
cloud trail across soothe of blue
frog croak birdsong wind chime
ting tong
Porch time Adirondack slouch
Kitty jumps onto my lap she loves
this calm so effortless for her purrs
her approval falls asleep Nirvana
doesn’t last I get restless let
the sin of wasted time shake its finger
LETTERS TO THE DEAD: FIVE
6/5/2018
Dear Mark:
I lost those photos we took at Ashland Estate near the “Blue Ash Tree” when I went down with my kayak and digital camera in the Johnson Creek after being caught in barbed-wire someone illegally strung across that blue-line stream. Lucky to escape with my life. Lucky to have been a part of yours.
Here’s two for you:
I. After Mark Morgan’s Acrylic Landscape
(sketched at Valley View Ferry Landing)
Green rustlings drift cooly
amid the moonlight’s rejected
appetites. My heartbeat off-beat
in the inklings of fog lift
Forever fruitless over the veiled ridge
my hot love blown out like the sixtieth
candle… yet unshackled in the mind
of heaven, soaring above earth’s fold
II. On my return from the Memorial Service
at the very end of the newly paved
lane where our two counties touch
a thugerie of vultures chows down
on the remains of Mrs. O’possom –
crushed by the great gravel truck
that lives at the end of the road
there is no protection from the dreary
intercourse of daily life and like
the opossom now knows all things
are possible, especially the possibilty
of nothingness
envoi:
Mark: I don’t think many in our groups of friends (artists, writers, teachers, organic farmers, musicians, jugglers, boomerangists, healers,and all-around-weirdos) believe in a traditional afterlife; but for myself, I feel your presence everyday,
Jim
P.S. There’s a men’s group meeting tomorrow at Wood Betony…know you’ll be there.
Relentless detective
Javert tracked Jean Valjean
through the sewers of Paris
for stealing a loaf of bread
in a fictional story that did
not end well
As methodical
Special Counsel Mueller
dredges the swamp
for unthinkable treason,
we worry how our
saga will end
