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Newfound Old Stuff!
The Misbegotten in the Moonlight
3 AM Florida Avenue
A pack of feral dogs
A pack of feral teens
So funny, lively, and loving when alone
So sullen, angry, and frightening in groups
Call the pound
Call the cops
Put them to sleep!
Lock them away!
"They're so cute when they're little!"
Mood Rings and Strings Beans
Life Imitating Art (DC, 1982)
At 3:oo am in a summer Sunday morning
Far away from the marble monuments,
Near the corner of 14th and S NW,
Where the girls in the brownstone on the left
Fight, all through the night,
With the boys in the brownstone on the right
Over riding mysterious strangers in stretch caddies
While paddywagons alternate with taxis
Every hour on the half hour on trips to and from
Downtown,
At 3:00 am on a summer Sunday morning
Where cockroach and Salvadoran gangs huddle
Under respective streetlights planning a rumble
And when you lean over too far
To get a new roll of toilet paper
The pot upstairs falls through the kitchen ceiling,
At 3:00 am on a summer Sunday morning
Demeter, sitting on the back stoop watching an annular eclipse,
While crunching Hades' pole beans raw,
Remembers Zeus' kisses in the snow,
At 3:00 am on a summer Sunday morning
In the short space between when Zeus and Ares drop her off
And her key moves unseen
From the outside to the inside lock
At 3:00 am on a summer Sunday morning
A stranger silently rapes and robs Persephone
In the dark front hall.
And at 3:00 am on a summer Sunday morning
Hades sleeps through it all.
A Sunday Alone
Look out the window.
Black and white horror movie?
N'orleans thunderstorm.
Yo! ¡Yo!
With scant apologies to the monolingual and non-speakers of Spanglish
Soy la Vida
Nacida el día de los muertos
In the year of the Ox,
The oxymoron
Born on
The Day of the Dead
Your self-defeating prophecy!
Get it through your head!
I'm still alive, you see?
I am Carthage,
Robbed of grain,
Sowed with salt,
My one sapling eradicated,
Rising again,
Three children!
Oh, the gall!
You underestimted.
Soy la Vida
Nacida el día de los muertos
In the year of the Ox,
The oxymoron
Born on
The Day of the Dead
Your self-defeating prophecy!
Get it through your head!
I'm still alive, you see?
I am Persephone
I go, but I come back.
Nothing can destroy
My force--it endures
Get a new tack
I am not a toy
And I'm no longer yours.
Soy la Vida
Nacida el día de los muertos
In the year of the Ox,
The oxymoron
Born on
The Day of the Dead
Your self-defeating prophecy!
Get it through your head!
I'm still alive, you see?
I am Electra
Your disrespector
Your suffering spectre
Berating, beating
Suggesting suicide
Overcontrolling
Underfeeding
The gods know how you tried
The trick with the Demerol
Throwing the knives
And me into the well
But I stubbornly cling to life.
It's time you went to Hell!
Soy la Vida
Nacida el día de los muertos
In the year of the Ox,
The oxymoron
Born on
The Day of the Dead
Your self-defeating prophecy!
Get it through your head!
I'm still alive, you see?
I am Cassandra
I reprimand ya
But you just won't hear.
Every time I speak in words and signs
You turn to me a deaf ear
What is it that you fear?
¿La Vida
Nacida el día de los muertos?
In the year of the Ox,
The oxymoron
Born on
The Day of the Dead,
Your self-defeating prophecy?
Get it through your head!
I'm still alive, you see!
Sawed up, cut up,
Stitched together
Now all you can muster is:
"I'm afraid you can't spend the night
Here with your little daughter.
Nothing here wouldn't be too tight.
You know you really oughter
Lose some of that Gross Tonnage!"
"Well, Thass awrite Momma
Thass awrite witchu
Thass awrte Momma
Any way you do!
Porque YO soy la Vida
Nacida el día de los muertos
In the year of the Ox,
The oxymoron
Born on
The Day of the Dead
Your self-defeating prophecy!
Get it through your head!
I'm still alive, you see?
OLD STUFF!
"Don't Give Me That Look or I'll Slap It Off Your Face!"
I sat for hours looking in the mirror for
Looks I never knew I had and didn't want.
Years later I realized I had reached the age
Between cute young thing and cute l'il-ol' lady
When those switchtails behind the coffee counter
Gave me a Look.
It said,"You are just the wrong demographic."
No matter what I have done and seen
As I slunk through all the hip spots of Coolsville
Having been a patron of this establishment
Since its anti-establishment conception,
Which is to say I was cool here before
Their Mommas were let out the house in public;
I now quiver before their fecund outrage.
They know I won't offer to slap that look off
Because they learned in pre-K how to dial 9-1-1
Should elders question their right to insolence.
My only consolation is this youth, too, shall pass
And join the grim pile of gleaming white rictus.
Hee-Haw!
One thing that I have learned in all my stumblings and strayings,
An ass is often thought a smart ass, until that is, he commences braying;
So if from topics known to you, you find yourself a-straying,
Beware of others round about
Don't let yourself be found out
And try to keep from braying!
Rebirth
In the midst of a dense morning fog,
A still, black lagoon stirs into a slow, lazy, barely visible whirlpool, running deep.
Sparkling brown crystals sprinkle down, shaken from the humidity-formed rock above.
They dissolve into the vortex with a sweet tinge to the dark bitterness their only trace.
A dull anthill of ivory powder briefly forms, stilling the swirl,
Busily crumbling out fractals before dropping off the edge of surface tension into the inky depths
To float up again, reborn as a dancing beige ribbon before another stirring makes it one with the blackness,
Lightening it while increasing its opaque viscosity.
A frazzled, frangible beast shuffles forward, head down, intent solely on the object before it.
Not even daring to look at its own reflection,
The creature puts its lips to the surface and sips.
The fog lifts, the shape shifts, the 'phone rings:
"Good morning! How may I help you?"
The Blue Gatsby
The pre-dawn moments, when the new sun
First stretches out its silver fingers
To grasp the horizon and pull itself up for a peep
At what lies ahead in its long journey through a short life,
Is a perfect time for reflection.
Tall, lank and knobbly-kneed,
Blue shantung dinner jacket,
Legs and feet bare, standing starkly erect,
Exaggeratedly so in the strut and stumble
Confusion of the hour and the night's revels,
Skinny and slightly slovenly with a hint of gentility in decay,
A single feather in his self-important pompadour a-bobble,
Struggling for an air of aristocratic authority,
He ambles mincingly up the shore,
Having crossed the lake
From his party-noisy island home
By the weeping willow tree,
To answer the perceived challenge
Of one who watches him back.
Three taps, then three more, increasing in insistency.
I jump out of bed, but the Man of the House
Calls me back--for "Security's Sake"
He bounds loudly down the stairs
Demanding answers from him who importunes
Receiving none, he slams open the front door, surveys his demesne,
Steps out in his droopy drawers, sees no one, goes back to bed.
Three taps, three more, then five.
The Man of the House having returned to sleep,
I slip down the stairs
Listening, following the sound to its source,
Not the front door, but the side.
A great blue heron challenges
His reflection in the patio door.
Is he jealous of the resplendent, contrasting colors of his rival's backdrop?
Or expressing his ire at the effrontery
Of this arrogant upstart who refuses to be called out
For a beak-fencing duel under the sycamores,
Just stands aloof, but a-quiver.
I open the door and shoo him
Back to his tittering, honking, quacking sycophants
Lining the branches and crowding the air, water, and earth
Around his weeping island willow home,
Before he ends up bill-broken with
Empissilation.
BR to NO - Post-Katrina Limbo
Across the green miles
Into the sun's rise and set
I weep to come home!
Misattribution
My dollars are in an American contraption;
My coins I keep in a Mexican.
The dollars keep busy with division and subtraction,
The coins doing multiplication and addition.
Whether it's caused by disposition or condition,
My best shot at riches is switching their locations.
SBC 20th Haiku
Breathtaking blue burst
Through a raveled green riot,
Indigo bunting.
Old Man Crow
On the Spillway rail old Brother Crow
Bobs and laughs, laughs and bobs
Mocking us crawling back through sulfur-smelling swamp fog
Like industrious little ants
Working to raise up a city, family
Kith and kin, kin and kith,
From ashes and mold
And a sweet smell of rot
Ms. K churned up from the bowels of the ages
Of corruption, filth, and half-assedness
To summon up old zombies
Of sight, sound, smell, sensuality,
Echos of those first four notes, repeat, and again,
and a footstomp UNH!
That summon up the Big Chief
To make a church-goin' woman
Shake it in the street like she gettin' paid.
We drink our Red Cross water;
We live for something clean to wipe with,
And dream we'll raise our stricken roofs from the dust,
Lift up our throats and sing--and SHOUT!
The neighbor lady says, "Can you hear it?
The birds have returned!"
We Freudian Allusions
Cupidity cons concupiscence
Until our needs should change or pass.
Since we parted we've been quivering
Like Schopenhaur's porcupines:
Between sole frigidity and the
Prickliness of commingling.
Maybe if we raised our defenses
Against the world outside only,
We could gently interweave our barbs
In a more gracious harmony
And turn this Twist into a Tango
At least until the seasons change.
I know I'm being ambiguous
That's the point--my pre-rogative--
Before which you shall beg
For a return to former warmth.
Goddesses
What happens to goddesses
When they are no longer worshipped,
When the world no longer awaits the pearls
That drop from oracle lips,
When no one cares to catch in gossamer nets
The butterfly sparks of their flashing eyes
Or the dancing notes of their throaty laughter?
Do they sink to their chins in deep pools of lethargy
And dream of brighter days to the sound of a gypsy guitar,
Or swill from springs of dead contentment?
Where do they go during the time from
"A bit past their prime" to toothless hag
Coquettishly cadging drinks in seedy bars and
Taking spit baths in the sinks of bus stations,
Public Libraries and government offices,
Where they seek redress in vain?
Do they become invisible,
Or is there any interim at all?
As falling tears leach out what was once so precious
Leaving them living lumps of leather and limestone,
Do they cheapen themselves and lie with mortals,
Bearing the stinking, rutting sweat of one who
Thinks he has earned them?
Do they fall desperately and pathetically in love
With cold captains of industry and become frozen trophies?
Do they buy power with tailored suits and sensible shoes,
Chop their hair, defeminate themselves and go corporate,
Or stop wearing underwear, buy ugly sandals, and open Healthfood stores or daycare centers
Or cast their pearls in public schools
Or volunteer for the arts?
Where is Demeter, the Goddess August,
Slender-ankled Persephone,
White-armed Hera,
Sea-bourne Aphrodyte,
Pallas Athena?
Sitting in the corner, alone,
Trying to get the nymph's attention for a drink
While the maenads take
The empty, invitational chairs
From their tables
Without asking.
What I did on My Vacation ...
Like eating a juicy apple straight from the tree
When you find half a worm in it,
Like watching a brilliant fireworks display bursting directly overhead
When a burning cinder falls in your eye,
Like an idyllic picnic
When a sudden rainstorm blows everything into the scummy, snaky, snapping turtle pond,
Like the red balloon Uncle Johnny bought you so you wouldn't tell momma he took you to the colored folks' bar again to help him play pinochle
When it meets jealous cousin Bo-Bo's pin,
Like vaulting into your shiny, red sports car
When you discover, mid-air, that your sister's cat shat on the seat,
Like a triple scoop cherry vanilla, Creole cheesecake, double Dutch fudge ice cream cone
When it topples into a mudpuddle on the first lick,
Like your very first dream wedding day
When your period starts as soon as you get to the altar,
Like getting a magical midnight kiss on New Year's
When a stray bullet, shot in celebration, sears through your brain,
There's no place like home for the holidays.
Not Garcia-Lorca's "Verde"
Red,
I want you red:
Hot fuschia spotlights,
Heady beaujolais notes from the trombone,
Flocked claret walls
Deep mahogany wainscotting
Reflecting darkly
Red:
Your Sweater
Red:
I blush
Red
With ardor
Scarlet the rose lies on
Burgundy tablecloth which
Catches a gleam of light from the merlot.
Red silk skirt shushing
Across china red carpet
To the cherry-stained dance floor where
Blood-red stilettos mark the time in intricate coquetry
Dark maroon blood pumping through me,
Engorging me crimson,
I burn vermillion,
I see red.
I want you red.
Red
Caution flags,
Red
Traffic lights
Red
Stop signs
Red
Blowing through them
Red!
Green?
That's for sissies!
Redbone, man, I want you red!
Choosing Sides
I have been troubled of late by an antiphony
Of fuguing arguments which have been bandying and bantering about me.
The paucity, multiplicity, impossibility, lack and
Solomon's choice of potential representatives to lead our Republican Democracy
AND
Who or whether anyone can teach our evil young morality,
"It's so subjective!"
"How do we know what is right?"
"It's so contradictory!"
The lame faint-hearts cry.
"We have no
Time!"
Knowledge!"
Inclination!"
YET
To distill the teachings of the Brahmapada,
The Analects, The Torah, The New Testament,
The Rig Veda, The Qu'ran,
To appease the animists, theists, deists, atheists, humanists, sophists, agnostics,
And everyone else on World Religions: The Series,
To acknowledge the queers and the bastards,
The commies, the coloreds, the foreigners,
The thieves, the murderers, the drug dealers,
The lawyers, the doctors, the insurance men,
The bankers and the YUP-pies,
The Hippies and the GUP-pies,
The homeless, the hopeless, the shiftless,
The groundless, the baseless, and the tasteless,
To still the shrill shreiks
Of all those who would muddy the waters
Surrounding any moral highground anyone might take,
This simple quatrain that American poet
Ella Wheeler Wilcox set to verse in 1896
Is nice and would suffice:
So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind
While just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs.
Letters (NOT "Alphabets")
Fetal skeletons of dreams, driving demons, desires
Born broken, bone by bone,
Fleshed out and sinewed with heart's-blood, hubris, heavy sighs,
Released you are flung far-flown.
Flourish? Perish? Sans genitor/jailer, justify.
Incarnations of the Scorpion
The grey lizard trudges alone,
Cumbered with the weight of gathering storm,
Up to the rocky ridge
Above a barren heath,
Bare there along the summit
To mock a glowering sky;
Becomes the scorpion,
Waving small, gormless fists,
Threatening with unwieldy sting:
"Flash out, you powers!
Consume me with your primal fires!
I will rise again,
For the phoenix, too,
Is my mentor."
Ritual
Work me
Is quiet and shy, a conservative, modest
High-church Episcopalian.
Returning ebullient, aggressive, "GOODMORNING!'s
With a demure, eyes-downcast smile,
She fades into her corner
Working intensely, expeditiously, assiduously,
Pausing only to supply answers in a soft voice
Without looking up or turning around.
At lunch she disappears alone
To some quiet niche all her own,
But no one sees
For she returns punctually to resume or relieve.
She doesn't associate with other workers after hours
Congregating in YUP-pie bars to rise or climb.
She goes straight home.
Stripping to the flesh at the back door, she becomes
Night me.
Clothes put away, fresh ones matched, accessorized,
And placed in front for the next day
In the Dexter Closet.
She pours a fruit-juice cocktail in the gloaming,
Turns on hot, throbbing, deep music
And fragrant bathwater,
Candles glow as she pauses before the Orishas
Trailing down the wall between
Dexter and Sinister, day and night:
Papa Legba, Yemaya, Ogun, Ochun, Ochsi, Erzulie
3 horsemen, 3 sisters,
As familiar as today, as exotic as tomorrow.
Night me opens the closet sinister,
Sets the Night Queen censer inside,
The bath is ready; Night me melts in
Precipitating to the bottom, heavy as mercury,
Drowns Work me.
Queen Esther's secret: scented oils of 6, drops of 3,
For each Earthly power and for the Trinity.
Dissolve snotty noses, professionalism, uptightness,
Scrape away the spooge of the day,
The Moroccan Mitt to slough it away,
It rolls off, like the worm that turns,
Into the water where it dissipates
Like tiny flakes of dream in a snow globe.
Steam rises from outstretched hands and pointed toes,
Giving up the ghost,
Rising up like an offering,
Of the day's burdens and cares.
Night me steps out, roughly towelling off
The remains of the day.
More perfume, powdered down to glissade into
The arms of silk.
Curled, caparisoned, bejeweled and bedizened,
She emerges.
She makes her sortie to entice, enamour, intrigue,
As Sappho, Beatrice, Elinor, Cleopatra, Salome.
It is this dichotomy that keeps me whole.
Venturing Out In Company
“Same”-ness has always horrified me,
As though it were the Devourer of Uniqueness,
The Destroyer of First Personal Pronouns:
In the same house, at the same job, to the same man,
Same time next year, same Bat time, same Bat channel,
The comfort of routine becoming the routine of comfort—
A squishy, sucking blandness
Obliterating I-ness.
Yet
Here I am, Unique,
Where do I exist now,
Outside of my uniqueness,
If I am not guilty by or of association,
Not related to the whole-ness?
Where, in infinite variety,
Is this great Essence of Me, the Eau de Moi, to point to?
I AM ---[?!]
The Beggar of Description?
The Mephitis Mephitis, Pepe le Pew,
In a class and genre of myself, alone?
Hello, I am I, and you?
The same? We have something in common, then.
How interesting, how fascinating, how comforting.
Bubbles
The stuff that dreams are made on
Rising illusions of freedom
Mere surface tension separating breath from air
Reflecting us in our favorite hues
Little worlds that atomize
And are gone!
Dancer's Premature Rheumatiz Blues
As another fall dries and stiffens into winter, the mornings move like Noh.
Fog, which was once the last tangoing spirit of the stream swirling and teasing moistly
Around the oddly juxtaposed lineaments of branches and grass stalks to keep warm,
Is now a damp shroud clinging to denuded brittle bones,
Softening the sight while secretly soaking in more soreness.
The mind seeks the Zen release of magical memories
And finds doubts of whether the risks of then,
Paid off in mere moments of euphoria,
Laughing, leaping, flying, falling, snaking, shaking, twirling, tumbling,
Were worth the withering pain of now.
For more information on La Poetesse: http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/gavilaninternational
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