Posts for June 8, 2023 (page 5)

I never learned to shoot it straight, the shotgun
hawk-nosed uncles placed into my pudgy
town-girl arms. The kickback, landing me to ground.
Harsh crow of laughter hit its mark the way
my buckshot never did, or would. But never
mind. It’s not shame’s bitter aftertaste
recoils my memory back into that dusty field,
targets more pocked rust than cans gleaming
mirrored in my black-haired uncles’ hooded eyes.
Gunpowder’s musty bite mixed with the musk
of men. I’d call it fear, if not then, now,
to see again the girl I was, her weight leaned 
in toward danger, before my granny drew me
back to nest beneath her trailer’s eaves.

Silence,
A form of protection
a survivalist veil to hide behind
allowing dancing
with thoughts
privately
invisibly

Silence,
Sometimes a consequence
of ingesting a poisoned
serving of reality
bitter tasting
causing recoil

Silence,
Refraining from speaking aloud
caused by swallowing rusty nails
sliding down slow
surrendering to fear

Silence,
A smart demeanor
while engaging in secretive
espionage
keys are jostled
to unlock doors
of curiosity
seeking truth

Silence,
A required imperative
when standing
in the presence
of astounding beauty
waterfalls and
works of art
making way for
awe

The human condition is absurd
Tied by necessity to words
Question marks bookend verses
Hesitation and confidence make it worse.

Quickly identify the scheme
Try and sanitize the bed of the stream
Brutalize the natural voices
Hesitation and confidence make it worse.

Create endless death
Hide from it and remove depth
Confuse the source of virtues
As something that sprang from statutes.

Question marks bookend verses
Hesitation and confidence worsen
The human condition that doesn’t want
To be human, but to be from a paradise lost.

What does it mean to awaken
It means to realize you’re not forsaken
Always had what you thought was taken
But now you have to claim it and name it.

What she saw from across the kitchen sink,
             cold porcelain scabbed with the
             barnacled bowls and forks
of some seventeen princely portions,
soles contorted to echo a precipice
pinched beneath pillars of prickling flesh—

a coppery gleam across canted cupboards,
    the sun buffed orange by a nylon lantern,
      spluttering
                         some frail glim
                        from the bowels
                         of a
                                   solar cell,
       scratched, malnourished,
       steeped in a sallow and powdery grease;
         immured in that famously faithless look
                                 of a lead-addled Cassius
         nuzzled through clumsily yellowing gesso
         adorning dentures clenched to the
                     door of a cringing cupboard; some

  waxworks jack-o’-lantern drawn
  by a bastard son,
  discussed in these chiseling whispers—Milne

assessing a sap-licked sapling stressed
to the bristling neck of a snickering mantrap*;

glib as the gilt and acicular sunset summoned
          to garishly pressure a page break, blank
                                             as but paint interred
          in this queasy aluminum

          stocking, starlight, saccharine, oenomel,
          endless, tracing each crepitant
crease, each scar, still shepherding
         erstwhile nerves and veins in a staggering atlas,
                         piebald seeds arranged around glaring sills
                   like freckles of ocherous grease congealed,
                               like spittle of sizzling loins,
                                                 like clarified fat,
                                              like billowing dreams refined,
                     lithe smirk of her brother reprising the tin man,
                     pilled and reckless flesh of a limelight, stars
                 resigned to attire a spryly
                 wizening dollop of clotted cream, the
                   curdling world, bespoke and unbroken as
                               day break—

hyacinths shorn from a stringent shaft,
though dappling impish bruises over the
vines and spines of a tacit path
across wastelands, runny with gorse and sedge;

no door denying the sun to young Jakob’s pewter,
                                    clipped by a blistered sledge—

her mother made Elmer Gantry blush
with the way she spoke about locusts
        and thorn brush; and
she recalled how a man o’ war’d scarred her shin
once,
           oatmeal baths, and a festering jellyfish
snared in the bitterly shapeless sand,
recalling a screeching cyclops scraping up scurrilous surf

for a contact lens.

          
*Think of
  carl andre
  winnowing shims and doorstops
  fresh from a trash barge;
 
  imagine
  a jiggly patty of Cottleston pie
  impressed upon stalin’s death mask.

He’d give up
His firstborn 
For an eight ball

Mother always blamed
It on the drugs

When he got fired from the plant
When he didn’t come home for a week
And a half
When he forgot her birthday
When he wrecked the pickup
When he hit her

Mother wanted her kids to have
Their father in their lives

Since she didn’t

He wanted to do bumps off the key
to death’s door
While a stranger told her to push

She’s never stopped pushing

A three-headed terror
Roaming the English countryside
Born from below
Hell bent for blasphemy
Primitive evil
A nocturnal nightmare
Seeking ritual pleasures
Of sex, Satan, and sin

There are two black cats
Who live in the garden
At Edgar Allan Poe’s home
Edgar named for the author
And Pluto for his story.

I can only hope that my 
Imagination
And essence
Will also live on
Someday
At home in the soul
Of a cat. 

**For those
who need to know
they have a sister named
Catterina
After the cat who
Perched
Upon Poe’s shoulder. 
The universe is beautiful. 

lately I’ve considered how many leaves are on one tree
we’re at the height of tree season
green, green and more
and perhaps it’s a silly thought
but just how many leaves are on these large trees outside my window?
thousands, a million?
from there my thoughts continue, wondering and asking
questions which don’t truly matter
or do they?
who’s to say?
what if every green leaf was instead blue or pink or another color?
causing the world, especially in June, to be altogether different
yes, yes I know about chlorophyl
no, no I don’t know that much about it, any of it
except seemingly, right now my world is mostly
green

A worm’s eye view from the ground where I lay 
enveloped me, sweet smell of soil
and decay, heart-roots to the underworld

held me, briefly, in her arms like a prayer
for you.

Above, a canopy of tree limbs swayed,
and a flutter of `apapane birds fluted,
five million year old forest songs cushioned
the emotions of your impending incarceration.

My eyes catch in slant rhyme, a passing pheasant
crowned with sleek-blue and black-gray, beady glints
aware of my graying hair fallen
like seeds, and crumpled leaves
reluctant to leave the forest floor
ungrounded.

Sadly, I must return to the forest
without you.

In my backyard, there is a shed I use for an art studio.
Sometimes, with a desire to get clean, she stays there.
And then she’s gone. As I reclaim my space,
I write to her in my journal.

My dear,

I see what you have left me. The beauty and the pain draping and dripping, stuffed in corners, messages of your love and despair, so conscientiously placed, an installation,
an altar.

A sunflower card folded and tucked between slices of bamboo.

An old tobacco stick carefully wrapped with silk, holding an art sign declaring my aspirations–secured with ties you must have found tucked away in the plastic box designated for art shows which I never do anymore. Now the silk wrapped stick and sign become part of my studio installation.

The old walking stick from your brother, now gone’s, apartment where it leaned against the wall in the corner with a large feather, and silk wrapped around. I retrieved it when he died, and you have installed it, a relic, a monument. I say his name. I tell him it’s up to him now to hover in your haze, protecting you from all ill-ways.

This love letter you have left me has been well received. I am reading it carefully. At first there was only pain, the way you lit that forbidden cigarette before you walked away the last afternoon you were seeking my gift of salvation, which I could not give, drained I am, I was, with nothing left, everything from the past gone, all the cliches realized.

Now, layer by layer, as I peel away and reinstall myself, I find your notes throughout— a Monet painting on a card, mommy and her daughter walking in a field of poppies you wrote.