Kiss Me, Monk, Again Before the Silence Kills Us Both: A Love Poem Written During One Of Those Mythical Long Walks On the Beach

In the wind, the floating bridge is no more
than a fat tightrope. Quite remarkable:
fish jumping out of the water onto the beach.

In the ballet studio, she sat in the center
a dozen reflections of herself crying.
In the ballet studio, the boy was safe.

When caught kissing the tree, he refused
to pull the bark from his lips.
A monk would never swing a sword. Never
say "I'll kill you." I saw the two of them kissing,
and I did not turn away. Send a thousand white balloons
floating. Bridge the time until wishes come true.

To the remarkable fish, a thousand kisses,
each wet as his scales.

*************************************************************************

Last week's prompt at Read Write Poem was to take five lines from a favorite poem, or five lines from five different poets, then use them in a poem. Well, I took five phrases from David Shumate, prose poet extraordinaire, and shared them with my pal Carolee. We each wrote five lines with the five phrases, then worked them into a poem. And this is what I got.

In a Strange Turn of Events, June Cleaver Shreds Her Apron

I want to be Captain America for awhile.
I’ll kiss my ship.
I love ships.
I haven’t been Captain America
in a long time
I can’t remember if I have a ship.


(Meanwhile, the children roost in my limbs)

Looking really closely
I see it is my heart.
Not my ship, but my heart.

I don’t need a screwdriver
to fix my ship
steady vessel.
My heart rides on the edge
of my sleeve, call it my cape.

(Meanwhile, the children toe the dirt for clues)


My ship doesn’t fly.
(I don’t have a ship.)
My heart hides beneath the folds
of my cape, cowers from crabs
from cats
from bats on the wing.

Flying is overrated.
Perhaps I should take a train.

(The children are grounded)

Am I there yet?


My heart can’t take it.
Captain America,

take your vacation.

Wish you were

here.

June Cleaver and the Soccer Moms Release Their First Single

No one heard us sing
so now we fly.

We drift through suburbia
flaunt our floating (it’s all we’ve got)
in front of the birds.

Why not?
The beautiful and drab sparrows
eat our food
dirty our walks
defy daily our call to silence.

We hold our babies to our breasts
hold our breasts
for better viewing
former rosebuds
now drying blooms
in our hands.

We fly
and boast
and dream
of being held like this
baby or breast
coddled
cradled
caressed
caught in an updraft
or cosseted in cotton.

Winged
wanton
we drift without cords.
Chordless,
we are a silent song.

So long
as we flock together
someone is bound to hear.

*******************************************************************************

Inspired, in part, by Rick Mobbs' gorgeous painting and this week's prompt at Read. Write. Poem.

Not to mention my obsession with June Cleaver.

You're Not Getting Paid To Love

She doesn’t believe the man in the black robe and top hat when he springs the news. You just don’t find men like that anymore, at least not men brave enough to wear black and grey on a hot spring day. If he had given her the news at midnight, she would have been inclined to sock him, right in the kisser. As it is, it’s broad daylight. The pews are filled with broad-brim hatted women, waving paper fans in front of shiny jowls. That’s an awful lot of hot broads for a May-December wedding. Her lilies of the valley are sweating. Leaving bite-sized beads on her satin pumps. She’ll kiss the other man in black, the man with a tail. Or is it the man in tails? Maybe, maybe he’s the guy with a forked tail her mother warned her about. Either way, she’s not going to bed tonight without a whole lot of cake on her fork. You couldn’t pay her enough to go to bed hungry.

Shed Your Skin Only When You See the Light of Her Eyes

I would eat the cat
if her calico fur would coat
my insides. Soft white cream
tea with whole milk
bitter black melted chocolate.

Swallowing a living thing.
Will this bring me closer
to God or death?

Bringing the beauty in.
Like carrying your unborn child
forever. Never giving in,
pushing out, releasing perfection.

I would swap yellow slanted eyes
for useless blue
if only the borrowed light might reflect danger.

Caught in the act
I will apologize to the children
Yes. I love kitty.

Forgive me, husband.
The crow you cooked
burnt my tongue. Take the tongs
you used to turn the bird.
Leave the crusted feathers.
They line my throat
while you retrieve the cat.

I have done this before.

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.


**********************************************************************************


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.

I Touched Him

because I couldn't see his back
rising and falling
like the length of his skinny body
in and out of the pool
all sticky
day long.

(Spotlight on the little-known
phenomenon--
dry-drowning.)

They’re never more angelic
than when they’re sleeping,
or so I’ve heard.

(Warning signs every parent
should be aware
of.)

You will not find the kind of mother
here, checking on her children
in the middle of the night.

In the middle of the night
I sleep.
Like a normal person.

(easily overlooked
or misinterpreted.)

I am no insomniac.
I know my children,
the span of their small
hands, the breadth of their
chests, the width of their feet
their lips, the measure of one eye
between their beautiful blue and hazels—
the third eye.

It’s just the media.
Blame it on the media.
Measuring the depth of my love
on the frequency of my obsession.

At one end,
the pool was twelve feet deep.
That’s three times
the size of my boy.
What is the direct route to his lungs?
How much could he inhale
in an instant?

Under pressure
we can all supply
what is needed.

*********************************************************************

I had used some indentations in this poem, for effect, but they didn't all show up when I cut and pasted. Can't seem to figure that out in Blogger. This indenting is something new I am trying...

After the Surgery

He has traveled from New York to Vermont and back again and the only map he has is the one on his belly. A new route carved over the old one. First surgery, second surgery. He lifts his shirt to show my son. See this road? Follow it all the way to here, take a left and you’ll be in Pennsylvania. We intend to head north when we leave the hospital, head for the hills and the work that must be done to open the lake house for summer. Instead we head east, back to Vermont. This is not home. My husband knows I need to travel, even when I do not. We drive onto the ferry, cross the lake. Should we have paid the ferryman? In the time it takes one cloud to traverse the day’s blue sky, green mountain to green mountain, we are lost. Windows down, each deep breath replaces hospital bleach with spring manure. Refresh, renew. Each cow we see wears one too many black You are here spots. I let my daughter-body drift out of the car, straddle a cow. If we move slowly, I can get home. My father has given me a map I can not read. Tom-tom, tom-tom. If I had an internal positioning system, I would know what to do with the lines, the ones on the road, the ones cutting across his body. Let’s rip the map. You take half. I’ll take half. One of us will know where to go. South, north. East, west. Orwell. Brandon. Vergennes. Middlebury. I drag my finger across the map’s wrinkled remains. Ferry to New York. I have never been sure of the plan. Lost or found?

Like an Old Bowl of Soup - A Prose Poem in Three Steps

Roller coasters are boring. All you do is go round and round and round like an old bowl of soup.
- Rudy the cartoon mouse on Maggie and the Ferocious Beast

I. Gather Ingredients

Great googly-moogly, mouse. There are worse things than being caught in the downward spiral of day-old chicken noodle. A gazpacho carousel might be nice on a hot sunny day. Would that be a pool filled with blood, or are we talking metaphors? Mouse, aren’t you hungry? I’ll bet dollars to donuts (and wouldn’t you love some of those?), your second cousin, once removed, would have traded her first born to give birth in peace, rather than in pieces, gray baby hanging out of her hindquarters when the local garbage man opened the door of the dumpster. Delivery might well be left a private matter don’t you think?

II. Empty Into Pot

Sometimes even refuse can serve as refuge, and even then, there is no safety in an empty garbage bin. Everything needs to be filled. A bowl of tomato was nothing until someone planted a seed, someone shook a vine, someone cut and diced, delivered the soup to the bowl. The empty woman. The filled virgin. The empty world. The masses filled, with something like soup, hearty, nourishing, the body of a savior, a filler. And then the empty tomb. There’s the mystery. Always the mystery.


III. Name Your Soup

After sixty gallons of funky fish water flooded our floors, we needed a man to deliver salvation to our home, one great rusting heap of nothing. Barren. A wretched womb waiting to be filled. The mouse was just trying to have a baby. Fulfill her obligation to society. And what is it that mice do, exactly? Ruin soup. Some wombs are meant to be filled. Take the dumpster, for instance. Scrape the remnants from someone else’s garbage and you might have soup for a swine. Reuse, recycle. It’s a rollercoaster. Round and round. Stir the soup.

************************************************************************************


This poem has vexed me for days. It started out as a free verse poem. Then it stalled. Then, just this morning it begged for the prose poem form. And it grew. I just listened to the muse. Not sure if it works in this form. I'm pretty sure it needs editing. Comments/critique welcome!

PS: My 200th post! Wahoo!

Things My Mother Taught Me, or: Self-Portrait Not My Own

Ironing is good for wrinkled curtains.
Wrinkled curtains are a sign
of a bad woman.
A bad woman
throws butcher knives,
not at a carnival,
but at her blondest daughter.
Go blond for most of your life.
Go back to your roots
at fifty.
At fifty
get your ears pierced.
If your husband says no
to piercing your child’s ears,
wait until he says yes.
Do not wait until he says yes
to go out and get a job.
Go out and get a job if you want
your own money.
Give your own money
to whomever you please.
The door-to-door
Catholic school kids,
the hitchhiker on the mountain,
the single mother stranded
in her attic by a hurricane.
Pray for hurricane victims.
Pray for your grandparents.
Pray every night.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Never wait at the window
for your mother to come home.
If the neighbors sent her away
because she was loose
go out and find her.
Do not cry.
Put on an apron,
tighten the strings.

******************************************************************************

I haven't written much about my mother. She is awesome. Maybe that's why. No pain, no angst. I'm a lucky girl.

We are alot alike. Maybe I've written about her the whole time. Hmmm...

We spent a lot of time together while my dad was in the hospital. She told me many, many stories. I hope I get them all into poems.

Maybe I'll move on to the Mother Diaries.

My dad is on the mend. Hooray! Thank you everyone, for all of your prayers and good thoughts!

I feel kind of at a loss now for poetry fodder. I had never written about my dad, save maybe once or twice, before this. He sure did provide inspiration. Who knew? Too bad he'll never read any of these. Nope. He just wouldn't get it. And that is fine by me.

NaPoWriMo #21 - for read write poem

One For the Record Books

A record-breaking eighty degrees in April.
Seventy-nine years of anger have turned on you.
Sun and shine have children swimming in icy mountain streams.
Four months shy of eighty and your veins are bulging time bombs.
The fish are deep asleep.
To operate could end your life.
The young boy casts his worm into an empty lake.
To rise up and wait could end your life.
He does not know the life is deep below.
Daily, you wrap your age speckled arms in fury’s barbed wool.
Hot flat rocks bask naked in the sun.
Even as the sun shines, a miracle of eighty in April,
you sleep in your rotting chair, inside, alone.
Even the water snakes have forgotten,
how to slither into the warmth of spring’s first soiree.
You are an old bear, trapped in your handmade cave.

**********************************************************************************

What an amazing prompt. Write five (or more) lines about a happy time. Write five (or more) lines of a sad time. Then, weave them together. Thank you, read write poem!

Below are my original lines. As I crafted the final poem, I kept coming back to the two separate originals, adding lines. I still think this could be even better. The irony of eighty degrees and the question of reaching eighty years old bears examining. As does the metaphor of hibernating, even as joyous life goes on around you. Maybe a freewrite is in order...

Eighty degrees in April.
Sun and shine for the record books.
The fish are deep asleep.
The young boy casts his hook into an empty lake.
He does not know the life is deep below.
Hot rocks bask naked in the sun.
Even the water snakes have forgetten
to come to the early-spring soiree.


Seventy-nine years of anger have turned on you,
blown your veins into bulging time bombs.
To operate could end your life,
to rise up and wait could end your life.
Daily, you wrap your gray-haired arms in fury’s scratchy wool.
Even as the sun shines, a miracle of eighty in April,
you sleep in your chair, inside, alone.
You are an old bear trapped in your handmade cave.