Poetry Gong - Poem 29

Without My Glasses

The supermodel fallen to the floor
on the All Things Glamorous
sampler card looks like Jesus.
I wonder whose funeral
I have been to recently.

My mother keeps mass cards
in her bible. Tiny prayers bearing
dead people's names, dates on earth.
Even though she is a Methodist,
the Catholic cards fall to the floor--
death will speak to anyone--
each time she opens the book.

The blond bombshell has no name
scrawled on her four-by-six,
just her label, Mary Kay, wound
through her wind-blown hair.
When she dies, some near-sighted
everywoman will remember her elegance,
say a prayer for her gold sequined gloss,
losing its luster in the papery folds.


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Here's Something You Might Not Know About The King

Elvis loves Santana. That Latin guitar. That soul sacrifice, each time the Spanish man lays hands on his Brazilian rosewood. Like glass. Timbalas. Congas. Words to roll on the floor with, to roll in your mouth and tremble with. Two sides to each of us. In each of us, a king. Steel drum, sex between the bass beats king. Knitting wool underwear with Jesus king. It doesn’t matter what side of the bed. Just that you sleep. Just that you wake.

(a prose poem I am not sure of...)

Poetry Gong - Poem 26

Sometimes, Nothing At All Happens


Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” Isaiah 55.1-2.

Jesus delivered the milk today.
I was expecting the mailman,
tromping through the fallen

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Alternative title:

June Cleaver Considers an Affair, Decides, Instead, to Whip Up a Devil's Food Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting

Alternative endings: Must be written...

A question: The first three lines each have a "the" I could take out the fallen, and leave it as "fallen leaves" but I like the idea of "the fallen" as in us, the people Jesus is supposed to save. What to do?

A Brief Lesson From the Wife of Jesus (Surprise!)

I am not a nun.

Bless me for I have hidden
in plain sight
all these years.

Every picture ever taken
of me by the curious
the seekers
the pilgrims of fate
and unlucky circumstance
(except the ones smoking
Lucky Strikes…
except for them)
develops into one pulsing red eye.

Giant hulking bull’s eye
on glossy vellum.

You know why,
don’t you?
It’s the blood.
(Always the blood
never clotting,
flowing freely,
an iron river gone mad).

The flash opens my eye,
dilates my cornea.

I see the light

and the light reaches
black fingers in,
stretches the ring wide
wide

pushing back memory
pushing back truth,
scholars,
rough-robed men,

claiming with their pens
to know everything.

The little black spot opens
and all you see is
my blood.
Not spilling
but pooling.

Gelled.
An arc of a broken covenant.

Amen.


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So, one morning, watching my daughter fill up her giant plastic tug boat with water, I imagined a story told by the wife of Jesus. I read about half of the Brown novel that put forth the notion that Jesus' wife was in the Last Supper painting. I never get into reading "popular" novels (I seriously can't remember the name of that book...). But the notion of Jesus having a wife, aside from the nuns who vow to be the bride of Jesus (don't they? I'm not Catholic, so I'm unsure), stayed with me.

So, here it is. Me, the poet, removed from the telling of the tale.

WriPoMo anyone?

I so enjoyed writing every day for a month back in April that I've decided to try it again. We shall see. I missed June 1, but that's ok. If you want to join me, let me know in the comments! I'll make a sidebar list!

A Hiccup in the Long, Long Trail

You stumbled
(literally, a tree branch under foot)
on your husband

sharing a laugh
with another baritone
comrade. Laughing in the woods

on a family hike. Kids ahead
wives behind
husbands bringing up the rear

checking it all out
bracing for the bear attack
or the random unleashed
dog racing the trail.

Do you wonder what the joke is?

Do you shake your Devil's Walking Stick
at him, thorns upside the head?

Do you throw your hands
full of treasure
acorns, leaves, twigs
over your head
in a praise be salute
because your man finally
has a friend?
Do you hide
your fears, your extra pounds
circling the middle,
your latest adult
pimple and laugh along?

What would Jesus do?

That’s what the man said
at church this morning,
tucked in the corner
next to the holy water
trying to give you a drink.

What did you do?

NaPoWriMo #28 - And the prose poem makes a return...

I Took a Wild Walk in Nature, and This Is What I Found

The remains of the dead deer, the shrunken head, the mottled fur. Animals had picked it clean; its hooves were still attached. Like dying with your socks on and lying there until someone kicks your ankle to see if the socks stay up. The first time my father almost died he was tied by his wrists in the post-op room. They do that to patients who try to take their IVs out, even the strong silent types. Where are my shorts?, he bellowed. Get me my shorts. This big strapping man, vein blown out by a giant air bubble, three feet from meeting Jesus, and his first waking thoughts wander past boxer shorts. I like to recall this moment and say he grabbed my wrist. When I found the deer, I kicked a leg to see if it would crumble. To see what death felt like from the outside, see what it moved like. And when I heard on the news tonight that a man had kept his daughter hidden, a sex-slave for twenty-four years, I knew. This is the dead deer. This is why a greater aneurysm came to take the place of the first. A son came to take the place of a father. There is bad karma wafting into the air all around us. Daily toxins from bad men, bad medicine, bad blood. When I tripped over the white-washed bones of the dead deer, a piece of back bone sprung up, a final hand waving (not drowning). I walked with it, swinging it like a staff. I took a wild walk in nature, and this is what I found.

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I didn't think I had a poem in me tonight. Actually, I started two or three today, and a few more the past few days, but none of the starts have moved me to finish. They are like half started paintings, languishing in my journal, poor things.

Tonight, I was going to enlist my husband's help. I was feeling that desperate. Help me write a poem. We can share lines. It ounded like fun. Then, I pulled a couple lines from a piece I've been working on for 10 years. Holy moly. 10 years. And I went with it. It helped that the first few lines grossed my tough, black-belt husband out. And he the hiker, nature guy. Ha! City kid. I told him I didn't need him and off I went.

Question--should this be divided into two parts? Maybe at "...my wrist./ When I found the dead deer..."

NaPoWriMo #13

Mangy Looking Fake Fur Boa

It’s not as funny as I thought it would be
strutting through town
in a mangy-looking fake fur boa.
Jesus had better luck
walking the palm carpet.
It’s not as if we weren’t both scouting
for a miracle, holding our breath
praying for an award-winning
lease on a new life, fully carpeted.
In whose house can you bow
and scrape the feathers off your eggs?
On whose cross can you bear
to wake up dead each morning,
start all over again?
This particular dawn I rose
alone, determined to win your love.
Love making, the slogging of ingredients
my day’s dogma.
I vowed to be the son
jerking his hook to the right
so his father can hoist the prize
perch, mount it on his mantle.
I pledged to be the girl less pretty
the blond with roots
letting the handsome man
take her mother’s hand.
But you were just a lover.
Feather boas, even skinned
from a holy goose
have no power over your bleeding
heart. Your bleeding heart
a metaphor for a mangy-looking
fake fur boa. The kind I just threw off.
I can’t function in a messy world.

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Lucky number thirteen. A truly bizarre poem, begun with the phrase "a mangy feather boa," overheard while litening to my mother read Captain Underpants (I am so ashamed) to my son. I had the intention of a sort of love poem to my husband who just left on the train, who I was kind of grumpy to all day. We are on vacation visiting my parents and he had to go back to work. How would you feel if someone wrote you this sort-of love poem? I'm not sure it would be all wine and roses...

In other news, somehow my posting has gone awry. Friday I went to the coffee shop and posted the patchwork poem (NaPo #11). Yesterday, I posted the white sweater poem (NaPo #12). Somehow it's not showing up correctly. I have not missed a day. Nope. Not one!

Clayton Harrington has read the bible three times. Another snippet of conversation from my mother's house. That's a poem, eh?

NaPoWriMo #10

Pre-Planning My Funeral

Have the party in my backyard
on a day with a slight breeze,
no, make that a stiff breeze,
the grass not green but crisp, yellow,
with just a hint of renewal.
I would like my daughter to troll the crowd
with her pink plastic microphone, shouting
three minutes to bedtime!
A little alarm is good for a funeral,
lighten the mood. I will want a good band.
A trio of high-stepping, fiddle playing girls,
wailing melodious about the man they should have married,
the cowboy who dropped his Stetson to earth
on his way to heaven. Be sure to send Jesus an invitation.
He doesn’t have to show up in costume.
Maybe He could stand in the crowd,
dressed as my only long-haired boyfriend,
the one with a motorcycle and a passion
for kittens, Chinese take-out and sightless women.
There will be food.
Casseroles.
I’d like the dinners-in-a-dish served
by a cluster of June Cleavers,
decked out in pearls and plaid aprons.
At the end,
as the chanteuse reaches her high note
a murder of crows can carry the amens
to the clouds,
along with plaster casts of my arms and hands,
silver rings and bangle bracelets blinding the mourners below.

NaPoWriMo #9: A Companion Piece to NaPo #8 (see below)

This Morning

All the fish I have flushed
came burbling up the drain.
Fancy goldfish, feeder fish,
tetras, mollies, a rainbow of betas.
The bathroom is awash in toilet water
and resurrected fish. I called
out to Jesus, asked if this was a sign.
Something told me to turn on the shower.
I duck out of my pajamas
slip on my fins
spend the day chasing errant scales,
swallowing transparent bubbles.
If this is my death
I am ready to swim.

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Pretty sure these two poems are connected. Do you see it?

NaPoWriMo #8

On a Recent Visit to Church, A Hot Young Preacher Tells Me Something I Didn’t Know

Jesus had three angels to cover him.
One for his holy feet (two wings),
one for his holy middle (two wings),
and one to cover his blessed face (two wings).
Jesus did not need a robe,
he did not need a wife.
Jesus did not need conversation
or a pet
or sunglasses.
Jesus had angels.
Jesus had wings.
Jesus never wore a suit
or a fireman’s coat.
Jesus couldn’t pick up his daughter
if he had one
because those darn wings were in the way.
Jesus never ate
without feathers
clogging his mouth,
never spoke
without a mouthful of down.
Never trust a man in a wrinkled white shirt.
He has no room for wings.

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Not meant in the least to be blasphemous. Saw a man in a rumpled white shirt today. As my grandmother used to say, "I didn't like his looks." Just a vibe. St down hours later to write a poem beginning with, "I have never trusted men in wrinkled white dress shirts..." See where I ended up.

Random thoughts, words & lines that may someday work themselves into a poem

"I wish I'd been brave enough to ask him to waltz,/
but then Andrew is a sweet waltzer,/
and who knows if Jesus can dance."

from "asking for the bread" by Margaret Szumowski in the night of the lunar eclipse


For a month now, I have been finding scotch tape all over our house. On dressers, on chairs backs, on carpet, on doll heads, on my back, on my socks, on walls. It's as if my son is trying to piece our sometimes fragmented family back together.

When I was pregnant with my son, I shared with a neighbor that sometimes I had "visions," that things I thought about actually came to pass. She said, patting my stomach, "Oh honey, then your son will have it, too."

Today I read they found Jesus' tomb. There is talk that he had a child named Juda with Mary Magdalen.

"...He goes anywhere in perfect

anonymity. I notice him in the pensione, offer him bread
and chocolate with his coffee. He says, "I'm not dead,

remember? Invite me for a walk. Match make me
with Magdalen. Give me a kiss. A good one."

from "christ goes out into the world" also by Szumowski

When I told my son, Jude, that he may have the same name as Jesus' son, he said, "That's cool." Then I heard him mutter, "I don't like my name."

I had talk radio on during dinner and the woman was discussing the whole Christ had a girlfriend and a son issue. Being a very bright, inquisitive boy, Jude had many questions, and much talk of God & Jesus ensued. As I am not the best authority on all matters biblical, and daddy was at karate, I did the best I could.

What struck him the most was the fact that when Jesus comes back, it means we are in trouble and only the people who have been following God & Jesus will be going to Heaven. The rest of us, watch out. This, mind you, is my interpretation of Revelations and it could be very flawed. At any rate, the idea of being in trouble with Jesus and the world ending at any time was probably too much for my son. After asking me several times if I knew when the end was coming (one hour? one minute?), he said, "You don't have to listen to him. Jesus is a fake."

Also in the news today, a lunch lady saw the Virgin Mary in a cookie sheet.

Words from children's book Rain, Rain, Rain Forest by Brenda Guiberson that I like:

splitter, splat,
gushes, thrums,
slick waxy leaves,
squishy like a swamp
every crevice and cup
a slow journey, trickles to a stop
a bathing macaw
roar in a noisy chorus
sip water that drips from leaves
oozes poison

Somehow, somewhere in this collection of random, yet very connected thoughts, there is a poem. I will find it.