Posts for June 25, 2021 (page 2)

diamonds are a girl’s best friend
but tonight they are the weight that sunk
this flailing battleship

the shots that I fired at the moon
ricocheted off and obliterated any chance I had
of having my name written among the stars

the deck scorns me
with each hand
he pulls me closer and closer to the deep end

in a world where to win is to have nothing
and to lose is to have everything
I have too many hearts and a queen by my side
hair like limp noodles
and a flower clutched with an iron grip
she mocks me each time she joins me
in my forever fall to failure
with her lips pressed together as if in disgust
she seems to say
“well there’s always a loser in the family”

C in Country 24

Alma believes country deserves extermination–
fans going home in joyless kind lines.

My new opus: polka, queer rumblings, salsa tunes.

Ultimately victorious! Winner! Xenagogue!
Youthful zeitgeist!

C in Country 25

Zeke Young, xylophone wunderkind,
voice undulating throughout,
sings radiant quatrains, poems, operas…
nocturnal music lessons, keaning jabs
indescribably higher–going farther
even dogs can’t be aware.

Wanna run in the rain, little bird?
In our clothes, Mom?
Why not?  

Cold rain caught our breath,
sucked our clothes skin-tight.
Sturdy little legs ran chuckles,
spun like a spinning top.  

I scooped her up, held her close,
skin to skin warm. She leaned
back, spread slender arms wide,
like wings, turned her face upward,
opened her mouth and tasted rain.  

And I did the same.

His guitar plucks my rigid bones back to life.
Her clarinet clings to my waist
and twirls me across the cobblestone.
His flute lightens my tired voice.
Her fiddle consoles me
with harmonious consistency.

My tall windows let in the early light.
I get up, stare down at the cold 
blue of Skaneateles Lake. 
Ninth grade ended yesterday. 
I do not have to be up, or dressed,
or ready for anything, but

I need to be outside. I need to be alone.
I dress, creep downstairs, my cat
Samantha at my heels. She was a tiny
ball of fur when we moved here.
Now she’s a rangy adolescent.
Together, we escape the crowded house.

The grass is wet under my bare feet,
and cold. I leave dark footprints
where I pass. My feet grow numb,
and I begin to run. My shadow runs
before me, as tall and thin as I long to be.
The cat feints and pounces at my passing.

The house rises up behind me, three
full stories of late Victorian formality,
lightened by a few frivolous details–
stained glass windows, gingerbread trim,
a princess tower. I turn my back to it,
head for the garden.

The first strawberries are ripe.
I pick a handful, rinse them in the stream
that runs behind the barn. They are cold
against my teeth, and sweet. I eat them
in the back pasture, hidden by tall grasses
the horses have not yet grazed. I wonder
how long before anyone notices I am gone.  

A climbing ladder of light

All the parts of me gather 
in a narrow room with color-shifting walls
and dirt floors – 

pillager and prey
witness,
accomplice 
all take in the evidence

Have we been here before? 
How long 
does it take a lie to decompose?

I carry stones with angry arms
looking over my shoulder expecting (fearing)
Hoping

to be overthrown. 
Only parts of us will survive 
the crime-scene. 

One hand won’t tell
what the other did, but bones take longer 
to disappear, and won’t leave  me 
any alibi. 

During Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour

Oh, the luxury of a book
so up-my-alley, and command
enough of my time for a few
days of sweet surrender.

“It’s your last chance
to check under the hood,
your last chance, she ain’t
soundin’ too good…”

Rickie Lee Jones writes it all
in the truth of her imagination
from toddler to today, an oddyssey
so strange and familiar I hate to dash

away to write poetry,  but I know
she loves to be loved and won’t mind.

the third melancholy

is a grief

that hurts to harbor

and the thirds charm

is only a heart thirsty lion

born and bread to lie and

trust doesn’t work no more

not here in my grass

in my past

it leaves

me torn and tears fall from my ceiling

to thank and to blanket

me in

unholy presence