Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Quicksilver

Follow the godling of crossroads;
the impudent psychopomp.
He knows which roadsigns lie.
 
If you pay him with coffee
he'll duck you under
the low-hanging branches
and regale you with trivia
from inception to terminus.
 
If you pay him with lost objects
he'll prop you in the path
of the sweet, seething maenad
who'll rip into your weekend
and leave you stunned and stumbling,
two days late to work and smirking.
 
If you pay him in sad songs
he'll lead you below street level
to the basement bar where
he’ll introduce you to your diametric twin--
the one who calls youthe evil twin
for sacrificing happiness for safety.
The twin who can teach you your freedom.
 
Yes.
I know a sad song.
Listen carefully.
 
 

No Exorcism

I can feel you gnawing

and I am tired of it.

 

I have lied to myself;

insisted you are separate from me

but now I see:

 

a bowline and a sheet bend are the same knot--

                one twists a rope around itself

                the other twists two ropes together

--let's twist;

come coil around me and

lash your glistening stinger.

 

I am not afraid--

                not of your poison

                not of your sting

                nor of your rows of gnashing fangs.

 

I can feast on your flesh too, you see;

pull brimstone-smoked strips

with my teeth

from your serrated spine

like meat from a wingbone.

 

I have fasted too long

and you are smelling savory.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Point Freya

Part I

In summertime, on calmish days,
Arthur would have his driver
pilot the cabin cruiser around Point Freya
and out to a spot where
the current would drift them back home.

He'd spend those days writing music,
drinking beer, and shooting his empties
with a sawed-off, double-barreled twelve gauge
which he liked to call “the Devil's Derringer.”

Whenever he needed a second shot at a bottle,
he'd switch to writing lyrics.
If he missed his second shot,
he'd quit for the day and have his driver
take them back to the cottage.

Usually, though, temperance
and a steady aim would keep them drifting
through a breezy afternoon
and they'd sight Point Freya
in time for dinner.

That was decades ago.
The glass has been tumbled by the current,
washed around the point and down the coast.
Sand and silt have rubbed away the edges
and calloused the faces.

Waves are now depositing the pieces
all along the public beaches.
Children gather them;
ersatz jades and smoky faux topazes
and the precious, rare sapphires.

Part II

A mother and daughter
trapped three days by rain
in a beach house.

Intolerable to both
so the daughter, Violet, fled to the attic
while her mother painted
in the sunroom.

Bundles of National Geographic
occupied a day and a half;
day three, Violet found a few hats she liked
and several boxes of notebooks
filled covers-to-margins with music.
No author attributed.

As summers came round and around
the mystery drove her to improve;
to practice at the piano;
to untangle the pages of notes.
She emptied the attic and made it her woodshed;
she saved up for a used four-track recorder;
she drove herself to mastery.

And songs which seemed unrelated to each other
seemed more and more to be related to a third song
which she simply hadn't found yet.

So she wrote it.

She laid down tracks, mixed and mashed,
and the shape of the missing music
began to resolve in her mind.
When she hummed this newer tune
other songs from the notebooks
would slot themselves with a visceral click
into the melody.

She worked urgently
and as the spiral of her song climbed,
she compiled concertoes and fugues
from the pages she'd found
and hooked them to it like ornaments onto a tree.

The music flowed
like a cabin cruiser drifting home in the afternoon;
like pieces of sea-glass
tumbling through the surf off of Point Freya.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Five Card Blues

Come and tell me what's your pleasure
What ya want that you ain't got?
Oh, I wonder what's your pleasure
What ya want that you ain't got?
Let me dig through my bag of tricks
It might be something that I brought

You looking for someone to kiss you
Or someone to pull your hair?
Are you lookin' for gentle kisses
Or a fist clenched in your hair?
I'm a man of many talents
Sure as full house beats a pair.

Everyone at the table will tell you
How I went all-in and lost
All these women who won will tell you
How I went all-in and lost
They raked in all their winnings
And left me to count the cost

So now I play for pleasure
Nickle ante, nothing wild.
Come and deal a hand for pleasure
Nickle ante, nothing wild.
My poker face is a winning grin
And all my change is in the pile.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Knucklebones

Unfold your last dollar
Ain't thick enough to keep you warm
Unfold that last dollar
Ain't thick enough to keep you warm
Then whisper to the knucklebones
Sway the lady with your charms

She loves to smooch and nuzzle
Sometimes she'll flirt with you
She enjoys the slap n' tickle
Some nights she'll dance with you
But that other guy's looking handsome
And she's trying something new

You can ask her twenty questions
What she wants she'll never tell
Go and ask a million questions
What she wants she'll never tell
You'll never find her desire
Till you see how those knucklebones fell

So listen to the knucklebones
No promises, no lies
Yes, listen to those knucklebones
No promises, no lies
They just rattle out the numbers
Don't care who laughs or cries

They just rattle out the numbers
Don't care who lives or dies

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Step Into the Circle

Today's ritual will let you
pour out a shot from
the crystal decanter
of other people's feelings;
will steep us in their essences;
will let seep into our psyches
every trace of their flavors.

This is not a popular spell.
Not every flavor is tasty.

Taste the rain.
Taste the dusty musk of pollen
washed out of the wind and
down into the hungry funnels of flowers.
Tase the rancid-vinegar agony
of crushed love lashing your palate.
Taste satisfaction like green blades waving;
like braids of grain and the
decadent soil from which they sprouted.
Taste ten thousand slights;
rage and humiliation
stinging the sides of your tongue.
Taste peat and oak, the smoke
of twenty thousand fiery triumphs.

This is not a popular spell:

To sip someone else's elixir
means you may never again
be able to hide from yourself
the myriad flavors mixed in your own potion.

Still, for those who dare,
this ritual will reveal
how small even the mightiest feel
and how mighty
even the smallest
(even you).

Still interested? Steel yourself, and
step into the circle.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Demeter Responds

Spend a season
as a dandelion does
calculating the colors of sunshine

on a supercoiled
double helix
abacus.

Tease text from
the signal hidden in
a summer of noise.

Look at a single seed
then try to tell me
wildflowers have no secrets.