Posts for June 25, 2022 (page 8)

I’d like to see some turn in the weather, 
the vane point north for a change. 
This would be the season for it.
Weather crazy as a June bug,
as the old timers used to say. 
Are June bugs especially loco?
Any more ridiculous than cicadas, or cockroaches?
Does a heat wave drive bugs insane?
What if I was to bug you?
Is the overwhelming desire to nibble your ear 
proof of climate madness? Or that my fingers 
are loony for the silk of your blouse?
You know, it’s never too hot to fool around. 
And there’s a cube of ice in my mouth. 

A heron stares
below the surface
of a moment’s pool  

waits for a school
of oblivious fish
so wrong, so right  

198 adults wishing
they were there already
2 little boys giggling with joy

We are in the yellow, love,
a couple of nudes in fluffy sweaters.

Sometimes, we are pale green, submissive,
a Stanley thermos with its movable handle.

We step through pines, apprehensive,
two pale dermides of serrano pepper.

As we attempt the sky, a poisonous surprise,
dart frog bellies above blue wheat.

For a time, while in indigo, we grasp grief,
our hands full of elderberry mist.

Swear to all you believe, our escape from violet, contempt,
half a dozen sweet seizures of macaroons.

Please explain us encased in red, aggressive,
a magical army of falling Circassian seeds.

When we arrive at rest so deep in the orange, keep interest,
depend upon a final sunstone pair of eyes growing in fox fur.

                                                               I remember  

the house like it wasn’t mine                                           the house we once lived in together 
like it belonged to someone else                                     the sun is descending—flaming ruby because Mama drank the rent money                           squeezed and pressed  
I see the house in flashes                                                  seam of white daylight refracts to walls
like a movie reel, film flapping loose                             stripped of color and breath   
the house sits with others like it                                      except the guest room  
sidewalk bulges                                                                   where my belongings live   
with tree roots                                                                     on the wall hangs a print                    yard dotted with dandelions                                            a young woman hair thick-braided   yearns for a cut                                                                   bends head & shoulder   
gravel driveway empty                                                      waits in water-unworthy                          no working man’s car                                                        wooden boat weary 
locked out permanent-like                                                from hopeful waiting   
not the kind of locked out                                                 she knows   
where you forget your keys                                              the score of scars   
the kind of locked out                                                        where white-wash sound   
where your key                                                                   hollows until she                                                                                   
                                     doesn’t fit in the lock anymore                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

A spark set the woods ablaze

My sister is going blind so she built a barn,
fenced her 11 acres and adopted two wild horses,
one white, the other spotted brown and cornsilk.

My sister is going blind, meanwhile she posts perfect
shots of her high-spirited steeds on social media
as they tromp and circle her land.

There are many typos and misspellings
in her ramblings. I struggle to understand
her but she doesn’t care one flake

of a red pepper if I approve. She is slowly going
blind. As far back as I remember
she’s done whatever she wanted and gives a snarly

 ‘go to hell’  if you don’t like it. In grade school
she pushed me in front of a slow-rolling Mercury
station wagon to see if I would disappear.

She used to slyly escape from her bedroom window
and slide into the bucket seat of some bad boy’s
Barracuda. Like crazed teenaged cheetahs they galloped

the main drag and guzzled stolen sangria.
Once she swiped 400 bucks from me. She disclaims it
but I stopped bitching about it last October.

Soon my sister will be blind. She might be able to discern
the blink-blink of Christmas lights or the stubbles
of a hay bale in the sun. She’ll recognize the white mare

by the pounding of its hooves on the trampled meadow,
the speckled mare by the velvety feel of her snout,
the high pitch of her mid-morning whinny.

We the elite, the judgmental, the hypocritical, the bribed, of the divided states. In order to form and maintain an imperfect union. Establish injustice. Ensure domestic unrest. Provide for war profiteering through fearful views of defense. Ignore the general welfare. And secure our underhanded means of liberty to ourselves and our insatiable greed. Do ordain and establish this Constitution for ourselves. The rest of you can pretty much, go to hell.

I kept Dalí on the wall. The labyrinthine tresses of a brunette girl,

in the white and blue dress, surrounded by curtains and a seaside window; 

the Hallucinogenic Toreador above me, in an arena moonlighting 

as Pallas Athena, and sometimes a dandy dressed 9 to 5 in bloody red ascots, green ties.

Painting is irresistible, the confiture of sweet colors classical, and our grey modern times.  

But then a shining point in Picasso’s drab Guernica sent the room into sotto voce at first,

a distant, Doppler wailing bomb approaching breakneck to a roar before impact

made me a multitude. You know me piecemeal, never plainly, like the lightbulb in the room.

Your shirt on my bed, borrowed from your father, young woman; collar still starched

a window arched into your heart, my affection. You looked good in drag, white buttons,

white sleeves, and the tails were brushes against your naked legs. 

Now the shirt is on my bed. It doesn’t know where it’s been. But it will be there later

for breakfast. I speak with my voices to you, because I cannot be direct. 

To speak openly with you would be my death.