hyrsam, the prince of fools
“be careful
what you eat
there,
for the fey
are tricksy
folk,”
i say
as i
shovel
food into
my mouth
with a rainbow-coated fork.
“be careful
what you eat
there,
for the fey
are tricksy
folk,”
i say
as i
shovel
food into
my mouth
with a rainbow-coated fork.
a lizard on your porch
sunning itself out of focus
in the corner of your eye
move too fast and it becomes
a tail zipping into cracked
concrete, gone until it’s quiet again
sit still long enough,
its narrow head twitches
at the threat of beaks and claws
My Lollybaby,
pink-and-white gingham ragdoll,
she was safety against the night.
I was four, I was five,
I was tiny crescent fingernails and
baby shampoo. In that crumbling housing authority
I slept with a ghost, a long-dead madman
whose gaze violated me,
yanked my neck to look over my shoulder
as I walked down the hall.
When my mother pulled Lollybaby
from a box
years later,
I was an adult with a child of my own. I left her
on my bed
and fell asleep, never knowing the visions she would seep
or the way my body would soak them up
hungrily. I dreamt of things best left unsaid,
and when I awoke I threw Lollybaby
in the trash, unwilling
to let her ruin
another set of sheets.
this memory the scent of spring
a hill above a highway where
we would bake beneath the trees
and silently sing to the notes of
passing cars and surreptitiously dance
leaving our backs and limbs
tattooed by grass and scarred by rocks
She was recognized as Grumpy Cat
but at home they called her Tartar Sauce.
On screens she shined, this well-known fuzzy fixture:
and when she died, a modern world grieved her loss.
For lo, how Grumpy Cat had the nope to give.
How her fixed appearance relieved us from the cost
of rat-races and misfortunes, human ups and downs,
the struggles, the heartless acts and thoughts.
Ha! Her face stuck in a not-today frown,
a perfect response for moments that tested.
For not being bothered, she took the crown,
her internet legacy grumps on eternally invested.
That prissy, poopy attitude. That hissy, huffy cat!
It was not that she could not be pleased,
her underbite froze her expression like that.
Beauty; music that makes holes
in the sky; some unnamable thing?
Living things clamour
to be fed. I’m balancing
on the edge of a thread
of kindness. I want to love
as hard as I can.
I have wasted the years
waiting on corners in fog
because I was afraid
to wrestle something
out of myself. It is so hard
to keep from being choked
and swallowed up. The world
is a mean, sneaking place.
We’ve fouled it all.
I must empty myself
in the inky darkness
the quiet space of opening,
become a channel
for the pouring through.
I must go deeper
into the unvarnished me,
paint below the skin.
When I am through with this body—
little bundle of wreckage—
I want to swirl into deep, rich blue
holy places: a great river rushing
mountain cradling the cloud
hanging in the soft pleasant light
following the shapes of trees
humming among the leaves
in an unknown tongue
nurtured by the myriad of fallen
seeds expanding
each one knowing what to do—
dreams shaping themselves
in purified abandon.
~ Cento of lines/phrases found in Hundred and Thousands, The Journals of Emily Carr, Canadian artist and writer
There are cats in UK. There are cats on your
clothes. There are cats as pets.
There are cats like Lions, Cheetahs
and Leopards too.
Cats are everywhere!
WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Raucous 3 a.m. noise
from the Latin bar
& I’m petrified. I’ve moved
to Brooklyn from a remote
island with no incorporated
town, two stop signs. Some days
there I could hear eagles
mating—their ecstatic
high-pitched screams louder
than mariachis. But big
cities mean double deadbolts,
murder, mace. Keep eyes
down on the subway. I was
flustered by a stubborn
fear—or was it a prejudice? It took
months until I heard
the city’s pandemonium as a living
body. Bar sounds—a tree
of overcrowded crows. Constant shish
of cars & buses—endless rainstorm pocks
intermittent with thunderclap. Click
& shuffle ricochet off subway
passages & roll back as wind
& wave. There are moments
when the constant layers
of sound bundle & surge
like a Beethoven crescendo, granting
me the courage to open
my eyes & then, like a Giant
Rex rabbit, I fix my sight & keep
looking ahead for clear direction.
