viper's lullaby

when worlds wash up against the back of your lips,
with their cargo of souls you've loved like specimens,

why must you always then speak, spilling 
your professed darlings over the edge in arranged terror,

pursued by the infected monsters of your
suffocating correction and the deluge of your improving touch?
______

for this.

femme folle avec des fleurs

Out of the hospital AMA,

I buy a street vendor's yellow flowers just outside the subway. 

_______

AMA = "against medical advice"

for this. 

 

Bicycle Wheel

Our milkman brought the war home with him.
I could hear the bottles rattle from my room above the porch.

A doctor used a belt and a bicycle wheel 
to put my dad's knee back in place. 
(That's why he didn't serve.)

Dad's voice was calm.
I could picture him standing in the early chill in his plaid robe.
The milkman's staccato curses bounced off him like a breeze.

Dad died twenty years ago.
I'm divorced with a grown son.
I don't know what happened to the milkman.

Dad and I watched the moon landing together.
I wondered how they'd ever get home.
Daddy, I want to start over.
I need a belt, a bicycle wheel, and something to bite on.
I need to re-enter somehow.

If I do,
if I burn bright the way I used to
when I'd spot you;
If you'd say,
"There's my girl,"
I think I could find the blue ocean one more time
and bob like a cork, light as a child, 
with helicopters coming fast from the eastern sky.
_______

 for this.

Leopards Like Your Ribboned Hat

Leopards like your ribboned hat.
Sun warms the straw and your grassland hair.
The ribbon is blue and moves the way a windy sky moves.
Your hips move the way a leopard moves
across the grassland
under the sky. 

Leopards like your ribboned hat
from a storefront head on a city street.
You saw it and sighed, your eyes the blue of a windy sky.
Now leopards move the way your ribbon moves
the way your hips move
on a city street.

Leopards like your ribboned hat.
They move the way a windy sky moves,
slipping through your grassland hair like windy suns.
They move the way your ribbon moves.
The way your hips move.
Leopards move.
______

for this.


 

Tweetstorm

In a land of black doves, white crows,
only a fool would trust the sky. 
Disguise is the modern currency--
even lovers wear falconry gloves,
fumbling at each other in a panic of talons.

Enter the Queen of Vanity,
with her fool, Mars, stumbling behind on a leash.
No one can open a mouth except to lie.
In a land of black doves, white crows,
mere melanin gives way to a sludge of relentless death.
With heads skewered on blinking devices,
nattering husks burn on pyres and transfer
their dying whimpers
like tarnished pennies for the laughing ferryman.
________ 

For Day 10 and for this. My word was "melanin."

Blue Horses.

Blue horses came out of the sea last night.

Their hooves made shapes in the sand which spoke 

in Arabian symbols and scents.

They wandered into town on the

cobbled streets and stood

under lanterns lit by nuns made of fog.

You came close, then,

having approached for a million years.

You came close enough to dance

and we danced

like mayflies caught in a globe of disappearing dreams.

Blue horses came out of the sea last night,

muscular and graceful, uncaring

whether I loved you, though I did.

I have a refracted vase

where I saved what I saw in your eyes

that made me love you,

that made the sea roll sleepily

and the stars play wooden flutes, then go silent.

Blue horses came out of the sea last night, and though

it has happened often before,

we made them forget their way,

become lost,

and cry for the pastures they carry in their minds.

Forever now, we will follow their symbols and scents,

each of us separately,

blindly, carrying bridles we made from sand.

_____ 

for Day 8 and Sunday Muse #50.

 

Rabbit

Once,
in younger days,
you were
quick
or lucky
but most of all
you believed
that people were basically good.

But now,
in later days,
you are
slow
and alone
but most of all
you know the waking and the heart-pound
at every sound
in the cold-starred night.
_______ 

for this and for Day 6 of the April thang.

Second Skin

It's like wearing a second skin
rough side in
after having dreamed of you last night.

We were weather women, east and west
cursed and blessed
with each the other's brilliant day, killing night.

Decide, the dream demanded, decide!
no vane in sight,
no frost, no thaw, no witch, no bride. 
_______

Day 1 of 30 for this.