Mother Wolf

Whimpering wet against my belly,
searching, suckling blind,
you are deaf to my mother song -

the song
that rises from the deepest heat of my belly,
and drifts, gentle, into the sacred blind

of snow and ice, the savage blind
of slow death. I sing the mother song
to silence the growling of an empty belly -

the belly that shiver shelters you - whimpering wet, suckling blind, and deaf to my mother song.

An arctic tritina for Real Toads and dVerse.

Silvered

Sad and silvered are these bones -
safe from sinner's death decay.
Oh, but where you held my heart,
hell's hateful hemlock has its way!

I'm always drawn to the imagery of bones . . .
For Words Count at Real Toads

Close Up 2012

Underside by Jaime Clark

In close up,

stripped of rhetoric,

flag waving,

name calling,

and all other distractions,

it's clear that we're screwed.

For the Sunday Challenge at Real Toads

Letters In A Drawer

I keep your letters in a drawer
under jeans I can't get into
and swimsuits I don't wear.
I keep you there
with things that no longer fit me.
You no longer fit me.

I don't hate you anymore.
But, I can't say for sure I loved you.
It all seems so blurry.
Why was I in such a hurry
to be somebody's girl
as if that's all there was to be?

Your letters in a drawer
are like ashes in an urn.
When I'm feeling funeral black,
I let them take me back,
not to the corpse of you,
but to the ghost of me.

For Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads

Watermelon

We fall

sticky
in the fresh cut grass.

Fingers
seed slick.
Legs
vined.

We kiss

lips
watermelon wet

from the sweet suck
of flesh from the rind.

Fall

Lacking a dead horse to beat,
I water the garden.

Late August of a very bad summer -
everything is sun scorched
and dry as drought,
but I have a root deep reluctance
to just let go;
wishful thinking is my blind indulgence.
Fall, I say to myself.  If we can just hold on till Fall.

Hose in hand,
I watch the water
slant sparkle
against the unforgiving menace
of sun and cloudless sky,
then bounce splash the dead, dormant dirt.
If it would matter,
I would fall to my knees on the parched earth,
dig the tender leavings by hand,
and clasp them to my rainy heart.
If we can just hold on . . .

Inquiry has brought me
only quaint tales and distraction:

Fear not!  For the Master Gardener will come
to claim this sad herbarium
and take it to the great utopia in the sky!
You will be left with photographs,
lovely parting gifts in probate,
and granite carved grief!

I grit my teeth
and tighten my grip on the hose.

hold on till Fall.

A Flipside poem for Open Link Night at dVerse.

Green Grass Summers

My green grass summers
are but brown grass memories
as my days shorten.

For Haiku Heights and dVerse

Stairs

I wanted a home
with stairs -
two stories of stability to house
a happily ever after
rooted deep
and backdropped by unchanging scenery.

I didn't realize there would be so much climbing.

Sick Bed

When my illness craves your illness
and my plague pines for your dark plague,
I prepare my pride and poultice
and take to the sick bed I've made.
With Bible, bleeding bowl, and blade
atop my fever twisted sheets,
what unsuspecting haste is made
to bring you, my disease, to me.

For Poetics at dVerse

Monastery Wine

We drank monastery wine,
got leather lashed and vacant,
and chewed the long day's demon fruit
down to stone pit night.

From our hospital hearts
came poetry -
surgically scarred,
but grammatically correct -
limping through our thickened lips
in a mad mix
of thumb crunching consonants,
strutting sex,
and slouching innuendo

until we fell

into silent genius
and the well-tried triangles
of our own eccentric geometry.

A Flipside poem

Kinky

Kinky St. Curvaceous
is the patron saint of me.
I preach to non-believers
from the alcoves on Avenue B.
I hand out maps to heaven
to the lost who wander past.
Narrow is the invisible way,
and the time it dwindles fast.

Praise Kinky!

Kinky keeps her counsel
behind her veil of lace.
Police car lights refract the night,
a red and blue ricochet.
Last week we flooded out again,
and the stick-spin men said "go!"
Well, the water warped the clinic door,
but didn't wet the methadone.

Praise Kinky!

A Sunday Whirl for Open Link Night at dVerse

Books

Had I not

run out of books,

I would have not

come out.

A Magpie Tale for Open Link Monday at Real Toads

Animal Girls

We are laugh eyed dogs
sniffing under logs.
Feeding on the frogs
that failed to prince.
We are alley cats
with a taste for rats
we've caught and crushed flat
in our pawfists.

We are birds of prey
circling through the day.
Seem to fly away . . .
and then we strike.
We're nothing like you.
We're untamed and true.
And, we're gonna do
just as we like.

A Cyhydedd Hir for Kerry's Challenge at Real Toads.
Also submitted to Poetry Pantry.

Summer Blonde

I starved myself blonde
that summer.
Wished on every star I saw.
Cluttered the backseat
with boyfriends and girlfriends
and fed myself raven
come fall.

For Poetics at dVerse

Grinding Stones

Meet me at miscreant
midnight.
Cradle me
like a character flaw.
Bear witness
to my weakness
and tell no one

of grinding stones
and rot.

For A Word with Laurie at Real Toads

Venus Aphrodite

Tame her tangled hair.
Paint her lips a pleasing coral.
Sweeten her to sate
a sugar craving tongue.
She is alabaster clay,
bloodless at the wrists.
Her finger dipped in gold
hardens in the sun.

for Poetics at dVerse

Critics Rave

Doomsday hit on Tuesday.
The reviews were terrible.

Cheesy.
Predictable.
A poor excuse for an Apocalypse.

Personally, I didn't think it was that bad.

For Izy's Doomsday Challenge at Real Toads

A Shanty

A pair of loose lips
may sink a ship,
but, oh, what happy sailors!
Before you navigate the boat,
you gotta navigate my trailer.
Don't bother dropping anchor;
I'm just a port you're passing through.
And, if you wake my Ma,
you'll get a good, stern talking to.

I'm always at the rail
when a ship comes sailing in.
A link to shore and what's in store
for our fine seafaring men.
I've never felt the pitch and roll
of a deck on a stormy sea.
But, I'm salty to my marrow
so the seamen come to me.

A Sunday Whirl shanty for Open Link Night at dVerse

Ouija Circle South

A Shayzen

He hadn't been there to see, and so didn't believe
in the empty, loss-scented envelopes
that arrived each day by post.

Each pastel,
each precious
as a past nursery rhyme.

He said, "you are excitable,
hysterical,
to believe we have a ghost."

And, my mind saw my womb
wandering waste
in the night.

This form is called a Shayzen poem.  Combining the undisciplined, scattershot doubletalk of Fireblossom with the stingy, taciturn, snotty monosyllables of Mama Zen, this form has been hailed by the avant garde even as it has been panned by the literary establishment.  The Shayzen can be used to get stains out of carpets, it can rid your dog of bothersome fleas and ticks, and can even be worn as a fragrance.  Do not read Shayzens near an open flame.  Talk to your doctor about Shayzens.  It's our form.  Eat your hearts out.  You may now touch the hem of our garments.  





For Open Link Monday at Real Toads

Big Tent

photo by Teresa

No blacks.

No gays.

No women.

No brown of any shade.

No Occupiers

or leftists.

Socialists,

keep away!

No liberal

tax and spenders.

No atheists

or sluts.

No pansy, pussy

war-enders.

But, we proudly welcome 

NUTS!

Oh, relax!  I'm just having a little fun with the Sunday Challenge at Real Toads.  Also submitted to Poetry Pantry.

Tally Mark

ink melts
drips
from my fingertips
and splashes the page

no love poem today

just scratches on the coffin lid
and another tally mark
on the wall

August 1st

Separate the clouds
from the cobwebs.
Weed the lightning fields.
Hold hands with the sky
and midwife the moon.

A zuihitsu for Kerry's challenge at Real Toads