Mid-Air

~ qbit ~ 16 Comments

“The cost of flight is landing”
– Jim Harrison

You will want to catch her mid-air. At least break her fall after she sews all the little silk circles together, knots in shroud lines, and tries jumping off the barn roof. She had stolen (just a few) of the tiny parachutes she packed into bombs every day out at Pueblo Field. With her brothers flying by the light of their own flames over Tokyo’s docks, she felt she had a calling.

Or when she was younger, angry that they wouldn’t let a girl go hunting, she saved her penny candy money to buy bullets. You will want to tip their trajectories away mid-flight, when she used the neighbor’s turkeys for target practice.

You will want to spare the lift of her hand to her mouth, because roasting a bullfrog over a campfire is not the best way to find out why the French eat les grenouilles.

Because when you are her very spit and image, what is true for her is true for you.

So much that when you are a teenager, those brothers have to leave the room when you walk in, unable to bear the grief from the sight of their loss.

Because you have eaten bullfrog.

Because you love the smell of cordite.

Because your own grief needs a parachute

for every tall building you enter.

Day 2, 28 Days of Unreason

Slough Talk

~ qbit ~ 19 Comments

“Spring day, too loud for talk
when bones tire of their flesh
and want something better.”  – Jim Harrison

 

Lotta slough talk
in the forest don’t you know,
that hard charging game
of strip poker
they play in the spring,
with bear and buck naked
all bets are off

Gotta shed all pretense
with you is what I mean,
skin that throws down
like bark torn off the trees
if that’s what it takes
to grow new with you again

 

 

Time again now to grow some new skin:
Day 1 of Jilly’s 28 Days of Unreason

Sign Post

~ qbit ~ 23 Comments

I grew up on Jasmine –
which should make for a poet
or maybe a florist,
or at least why I have allergies

We moved to Florence
but alas I could not find
the statue of David
anywhere behind the shrubs

I guess that’s the way of it –
there were never any groves on Grove
or luminous promises
on Pearl

Though I’ve hung the signs
“Life” and “Death” overhead
I hope you will forgive
this shabby poet’s corner

 

 

For Tuesday Poetics

Quadrille 57

~ qbit ~ 43 Comments

I slid my hand inside the rain
To feel how smooth and sparked
Under hushed grey cloth

It unzipped,
My fingers parting drops
Like brushing open
A dress of silk

That first blush of cool
Late in the evening
Clouds slipping off
Their sunsets

 

 

For dVerse Quadrille

Call Me Whale-Boy*

~ qbit ~ 33 Comments

Call me whale-boy,
call me razor fluked,
call me sharp
in my harpoon-skin suit,
call me lungs
of tungsten steel –
you’ll need poems made of bathysphere
to hunt me down.

Lunging shark-breath,
I’m your Voodoo Sleighride
to the bottom of the sea,
blowhole Davy Jones’ locker
to smithereens,
chew the rotgut spleen.

Color me flensed, stripped,
and rendered,
blind faith with fatty acid,
my heart on fire
and burning for you now –
soul light in the tryworks.

All together now children
Repeat after me:

One fish.
Two fish.
Red fish.
Blue fish.

 

 

*Incorporating by reference the first line of Moby Dick: “Call me Ishmael”.
**Dr. Seuss, but you knew that.

For DVerse MTB

Considering Dustin Hoffman

~ qbit ~ 17 Comments

While squinting at the graffiti scratched on the valve of this urinal, I decide I am overdue to consider Dustin Hoffman. Probably because the guy next to me sort of looks like Dustin Hoffman, and because I am in the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City, so Midnight Cowboy et. al.

Most recently I thought about Dustin Hoffman when I helped with my wife’s 6th grade scavenger hunt in the Central Park Rambles – supposedly to evoke survival in the wild. Central Park was the best we could manage. I suggested that better survival training would be to give all the kids a blanket and a knife and no money and teach them to panhandle. Nobody thought that was funny.

I hoped maybe we would see Dustin Hoffman because he lives near the park. But there was only a homeless guy, and the kids shared their macaroni and cheese with him. We gave him a big tub of macaroni leftovers to dole out to the other homeless people who live in the park. The kids voted our outing “the best field trip ever”, there’s that.

Maybe the homeless guy was Dustin Hoffman, disguised so that he can go out in public and nobody bother him. Like his Ratso Rizzo character in M.C., but maybe this time he doesn’t have to die on the bus from NY to Florida. Here in the Port Authority it smells like bus exhaust and like the bathroom hasn’t been cleaned since 1969, so maybe like death too.

The Port Authority is still dangerous because nobody has figured out how to make bus travel upscale and hipster and boutique and artisanal like the rest of Manhattan. Yet I think the cities and towns where these buses go are much more dangerous now. Meth and OxyContin in Des Moines, Toledo, Birmingham, on and on through the lifeblood of America.  That keening sound from the wheels of the bus metastatic with loss.

Quo Vadis Dustin. Quo Vadis Ratso.

 

 

For dVerse Poetics

Nothing Like the Sun

~ qbit ~ 18 Comments

“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;”
– Willam Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

 

This storm is not a shriek-wife,
misery’s rain of love gone cold;

Spring is not thrown down the stairs
by Winter’s violation of restraining order;

The missing sunset is not a corpse,
buried beneath clouds too grey for dead;

Because here inside, under wraps,
your eyes beget a Summer’s promise;

Once again, restored, the sun.

 

 

For April Poem a Day (Metaphor)

Re-morphs

~ qbit ~ 7 Comments

Kafka, you underplayed your hand,
dealt your man Gregor a low,
below the beetle blow.

How much better
to have made him an Assassin Bug!
Or Robber Fly,
or Death’s Head Moth.
Sure, tough to take his humanity,
but at least he’d have his pride.

“One morning,
after a night of uneasy sleep,
Gregor Samsa woke to find
he’d been transformed
into a killer bee!
So great! His family
trembled before that quivering
abdomen of horror.
Puissant, glorious –
death from above.”

100 years is enough wallowing
in despair, Franz. Time for “closure,”
or moving on, or whatever.
At least make him a praying mantis,
all proudly greened and sticked and mandibled.
At least let him die
In his lover’s arms.

 
For April Poem a Day

Superhero

~ qbit ~ 1 Comment

It isn’t the War of the Worlds,
Or even Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster,
It is the War of the Words:

Cerulean vs. Mighty Blue,
Dive Bomber Eyes vs. Fury,
Beryllium Veined vs. Mr. Freeze,
Alas Poor Yorick vs. The Joker,
Nietzsche vs. Super Man,
and not least
Buzzle* vs. rooting around in the yard somewhat, scuffing your toe in the dirt.

Our hearts are drenched,
yearning for The Poet’s
brief victory.

 

 

*Buzzle is a great new word coined by Jilly!

For April Poem a Day