Category: Desperate Poets

Ruby Tuesday

~ qbit ~ 10 Comments

(For J&C)

You said “Goodby Ruby Tuesday” to me 
before clicking the lid shut 
on your jewel-box car –

redlining home with your heist
in the passenger seat, her hair 
the theft of every red sky at morning

warnIng you of the storms ahead.
But you had wound and knotted my vision 
to a rocket – gravity harpooned to its soul –

spoutIng fire into water-black sky
in its fury to escape the barbs 
set by iron laws of the land.

My heart caught in the coils –
a Nantucket sleighride dragging me skyward 
away from the river, the estuary, the sea,

the whale-road home –
instead of sanctuary,
you – if you call me Ishmael, I will call you Ahab –

sank us on the graveyard moon
where you filled coffee cans 
with ashes of the dead.

If I fall to my knees next to you and dig,
dig all the way to China,
will I find scrimshaw runes of my mother and father 

written on bones?
Will my lips be caked with dust
from kissing the lunar ground 

where I was tossed ashore
by the Sea of Tranquility
in a  meteor storm?

Will you find your lost limb
when you hobble to the trunk of your car 
In the moonlight?

Back in our story a ruby slipper
was still on her foot
when her leg washed onto the rocks.

Like me, she must have clicked her heels 
three times
and said “there’s no place like home”

so we could sleep with the fishes
and dream of rivers and the sea
where what we’ve lost sinks out of sight

to where there is no light –
where like a blind fish, 
my hair luminous,

waving in the merman dark  –
I ask her name 
and there is no reply.

For Desperate Poets OLN (and Desperate Crossings)

For Ruby Tuesday prompts

On answering the question: “What super-powers would I want for my poems?”

~ qbit ~ 10 Comments 
Incorruptibility of the flesh for one –
roll back the rock from Golgotha 
and I walk free
in my Dolce & Gabbana shades
and lime green Crocs –
resurrection of the flash.

Poems that smash atoms
into quarks of up, down, 
crushed pistachio, and almond –
sub-atomic food particles 
washed from my teeth
by a Waterpik™ stream of words.

Then Reign of Terror poems –
potato peeler Guillotines –
OK, sure, bad bad bad, 
but also some tasty french fries 
and stanzas
from all that chopping.

Would I trade all that
for practical poems that walk the dogs 
in the cold rain like today?
Or smell like my love
in warm sheets, with coffee brewing
just now in the kitchen?

No, no mild-mannered 
Clark Kent poems. Instead – 
like inhaling Popeye's spinach –
Aztec gods that down Habanero peppers,
breathe out fire and snakes
and volcanoes.

For Desperate Poets

Tiptop

~ qbit ~ 14 Comments 
The Good Lord had extra bolts and screws left over
after Creation and the “Let there be light” thing –
might have skipped a step or two, left off a cover
from the Ikea Universe assembly kit, missed some springs

and glue. Oh well, the drawers and humans almost fit
but a little rickety. The angel painting crew called in
to “put some lipstick on that” and get some spit
and polish on the world. Some said “it’s a sin”

but I love the cockeyed dawn and rattletrap stars,
the bugs with too many eyes, the fish with none.
Love tipping between perfection and chaos. The diamond scars
of a world that could be gone in a blink of sun.

Small gifts, these errors of heaven. 
My day rises, fills, bread with leaven.

For Desperate Poets

“I am minister to porcupines…”

~ qbit ~ 8 Comments 
I am minister to porcupines –
my sermons written in quills 
too barbed for poets –
you will need pliers
to extract my meaning.

I light cigars for whales
in their whisky bars,
pour two flukes of courage on the rocks,
stiffen their resolve – 
whale-roads long and cold around the Horn.

I lay a feast before the pack.
”Who’s a good boy?”
Maybe I am.
That which is owed
to jaw and carcass.

Who am I, Spiritus Mundi?
That vast intelligence of body and beast? 
No, I am who I said before:
Animeax, patron saint
of spit and howl.

I am but seagulls 
flying low
this side of the river.
Listen to them scree for 
bread and circus.

For Desperate Poets

Brain Freeze

~ qbit ~ 16 Comments 
We were dancing on buzzsaws – 
our bare feet on blacktop – 
heat so bad, the tar fierce 

Chasing us across the parking lot 
from our bikes to the 7-Eleven, long before 
"no shirt, no shoes, no service" 

Naked backs, skin the hides of sun fawn – 
tanned and stretched 
from chlorine swimming pools 
 
Into the blue, 
Into the blue of it, the blue freeze 
of the store's air conditioning 

Then swirling in a red, white, and 
blue cup, the sweet blue, blue 
brain freeze 

Like ice crystals 
of jet contrails in our mouths, 
frozen altitudes of the jet stream 

Then riding on 
to watch the planes land 
at Buckley field 

Where the US army 
kept all the country’s nerve gas 
in red, white, and blue tanks 

Deep below the tumbleweeds 
and gophers, 
and we would 

Twist and shout in pretend agony – 
show the younger kids 
how to die

For Desperate Poets

Down to Earth

~ qbit ~ 24 Comments 
You asked about wrestling angels
I don’t know about that
other than maybe hanky-panky 
with the wife
But I did once wrestle a 100lb catfish
from the mud of the Tennessee river
it was angelic with its whiskers
that send radio signals to god
a carp archangel needing a shave
burped in my face 
holy mackerel 
the clouds exploded like angels
fighting in the sky
rain pouring down
a 10 count of thunder
I heard the voice of God 
as Howard Cosell
calling Frazier-Forman in ‘73:
Down goes Frazier! 
Down goes Frazier! 
Down goes Frazier!

For Desperate Poets

Boot by Boot

~ qbit ~ 22 Comments
The Man:The Boot:
I hurled what was left of thembig boys tongue tied, slap flap soles, soul
shredded waffle rubber, duct tapecombat stomp Mongol hurl
broken laces, sweat-stained leatherwall wall wall wall
off the topclimbing on the wall wall wall
of the Great Wall of Chinadeath of the sole
deep in the back-country, 4 days of steep climbingpounded into saying goodbye
up and down, the wall mostly rubblegiving up the ghost
walking and climbingfeet are swords pulled from stone
treading stone needing stonekingmakers, empire
a thousand years to carry rock up the mountainblisters like signal fires
then a thousand years to cool the stone with windredemption of the tongue
villagers carried water to us up the mountainshe said gweilo ghost people foreign devils
on their backsgweilo
they called us gweilogweilo
tied together, the boots whirledKamakazi toes that’s Japanese
ecstasy of footwear released, absolutionmachine gun boots army boots
RIP for the next two thousand yearsno quit
an archeologist will dig them upboot boot boot
declare evidence of Bigfootyearning of the boot the tulip faced foot
carry on, rock time, rock timenothing but time on the wall
nothing but time on the wallstone, step, stone, step

For Desperate Poets OLN

TSM 260

~ qbit ~ 19 Comments
What is this picture? Half-man, half-horse, half-dead – a rodeo centaur as played out as an Oklahoma oil field flat on its back, nap-time on the prairies of Mythos singing Home on the Range in Ancient Greek: Οἶκος, οἶκος ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ.
I only see geese by the river, standing in water up to their knobby black knees.
And this – A flower whose red has exploded like a grenade blindsiding us with color. The war of the roses now in full swing. Quick, don a gas-mask of thorns or be paralyzed with beauty.
I avoid stepping on a nightcrawler. It shuffles across the sidewalk, basking in rainwater. Did you know, they are not drowning?
Surely I must understand that a body cast in clear resin will leave its last breath as solidified bubbles. And that if we are lucky, we will watch the sun’s final nova refracted through trees and snow. Our last grace the instant before immolation.
“Can you say ‘Wickaboxet?’” The dogs, out early with me, do not respond or even look at me with curiosity.
That we must come to terms with the tragedy of our faces, mechanized from staring too long at clocks. Or how our louche desire was spiked by a lover we will never see again, black and white all the color we will ever need for that story.
You are sleeping late this morning. Light in our apartment slowly recovers from drizzle. Words recede, my eyes follow barges heading towards the landfill.

For Desperate Poets OLN and The Sunday Muse