Sly Little Devil

Here's the thing -- I'm engaged in blog tag w/ a friend of mine. Today she posted a poetric haiku of mine and name-dropped me on her blog. At first I thought she was Satan incarnate, but I had to extol the truth, which is, I had this stupid crescent moon grin affixed to my in-awe-of-her mug; I even became uncharacteristically speechless. However, some would say Bravo for eliciting that kind of reaction from me. I had to thank her, my artistically fiendish sovereign, because honor permeated beyond measure, but I would've preferred if she deferred from referring to me as my real name and, instead, tag me as So 'n' So & my blog as Such 'n' Such in the future.

The following is a stroke of artistic genius from my friend Goldilocks's blog. Please see her link ("buy her art," says Miss Subliminal) to the right of this page. Please note: the art masterpiece shown here is the exclusive copyright of Kathy McCullen (aka Goldilocks). If you damn steal it, you'll be damned. Sorry, I don't mean to threaten bodily harm or voodoo hexes. I'm just saying.

Moondance 16 X 24 Mixed media on canvas. SOLD
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Now a score of her blog groupies may come over for a sit-in so I need to tidy (with a pretentious broom) my blog cubbyhole. Or, out of slight fear, I might even be compelled to defenestrate it as it humbly reclines in a bay window.

Husband's Day

Love
carved of ocean stone
on a baker's block
in a florist's home
awaiting delivery
in a musician's case
to lovers of wild leisure
who refuse to dance alone

Three Tenors of Spring

I must've loved you that first minute
w/ those yellow tulips in my lap
when we talked in circles & polka dots
just so we could prolong the date

Daylight Savings

I listen repetitiously to the twelve strokes of midnight, far and near, they sing. And while counting back the twelve strokes, I lose myself in tomorrow's concave footsteps. Thus, before me, a de novo serenade of countless moons and stars and suns, all conspiring w/ the twelve strokes, here and there, to shepherd me like far-sighted angels, w/ whom, will allay me for everlasting salvation.

So I won't anymore borrow your time

on sunshine days and sunless nights

for at the stroke of midnight's severance

I, a docent wanderer, will listen to jazz

in an underground of my own nirvana

Graffiti Fiend

Even though the scenery seemed aristocratic, I was on a characteristically dilapidated kind of train, a really crummy (Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your Fears) kind of train, not entirely a spic-n-span kind of train, not the Orient Express kind of train, from Italy to Rome, sorry, rather, from Rome to Venice, or visa versa. And I remember two things distinctly that referenced that hovering day of highbrow summer: a. abandoned graffiti and b. poised rainbow flags hanging from all the inundated balconies. I was entirely clever in noticing. I thought, "Wow, they really embrace their gay community here." And then I found out about the rally. And thought, "Wow, they really embrace their gay community here." I was so overjoyed that their minds weren't vitiated by narrow-minded prejudice or thinly-veiled intolerance. I had faith that hope hadn't torn from its seams.

Turns out that gay pride was thwarted by peace; the rainbow flags and banners that said "Pace" were really the doodied-up decorations for a perfectly parfit demonstration of peace. Hip hip hooray for peaceniks in tie-dye, but I was ultimately disappointed that we couldn't all be gay as pink ink. Anyway, after my gelato pick-me-up, which left me blithe in spirit, I was left marveling at the graffiti art, while sprightly skipping thru the streets, feeling jocular in rainbow toe-socks. You know, even under a nervous rain, not everyone can be a graffiti artist. I mean, it takes inventive lettering and something to say, more than a baseless tarradiddle. Maybe I'll drive up to Canada and graffiti something colorfully keen in the snow, nothing marred by verbosity, but rather, a one-word stream-of-consciousness catch-my-drift quip, from a sky-scraping ski lift.

If given the opportunity to aim a Krylon can, w/out arresting consequences, what would your bubble-letter byword be and what site would you choose?

Billet-doux

Dear Past Love --

This day, you came to my house after school. I don't remember what we did (probably made-out to a heavy-petting motor ballad) or if we said anything different or out of the ordinary. I know that I had to have smiled at you when you kissed me goodbye and I know that I handed you the sun to keep until the next day. But you went w/ my sun and it shattered into a million glistening shards of golden resin on the silver rails of the Lauderdale County train tracks. "Journey's end in lovers meeting" is the title of that percipient day, where the day lost its sunshiny demeanor to a clamoring void. That day we sort of became undone, our serendipity, like a lovelorn leaf ripped of a tree. And it left me feeling unseated on my knees after a twelve-paced duel. Since you've been gone, I haven't held my breath, but I've felt the ligature of outstretched shadows, where headstones lived dark, like haunting monasteries on the walls.

I can't begin to tell you why you were here or what your legacy is. I could selfishly say you were here, not to touch the earth but to touch me, that you must've been born for me, that you were made for me. But that would be me falsifying some bigger truth I'm sure, bearing false witness to your memory. I could tell you that I've changed for the better, that it propelled me into some cathartic change, that I grew from your absence. You'd have to ask for a show of miscellaneous hands there. But I can affirm and tell you that I was suffused in melancholic alibis and I wrote things of earnest despair for a while, because my self-induced perdition was persistent, in the amplified mourning or at the tumultuous end of night, vivified in about seventeen death poems a day I would guess, consumed by ineffable mannerisms of sadness. And I can tell you that my reliquary was filled w/ rueful darkness. Like this:

From darkness to darkness
my voice echoes
in the emptiness
trying to find its way

From world to world
my voice cries
for life
w/ death
lurking to prey

From light to light
my voice chants
with fear
hoping darkness
leaves me

From east to west
my voice travels
in many directions
hoping to be found

From life to death
my voice reigns confusion
wondering
which is better

From me to you
my voice falls silent
again
(1989)

Over time, in a deserted mirror, I found me, under a moonlit charade. And I suppose some age-old adage applied because I learned to not ignore love and life, because even the vulnerable clouds became studded w/ jewels. I learned to embrace it daringly and to stand in its crossfire because it was always in my face and I found myself good at it. Wholly and effortlessly. Not tramp-like, not easy, not immature-like, not free to everyone but without erect walls and without hesitation. I stopped dwelling in the habit of losing people and I stopped passing out untruthful gambits that denied love's existence. I stopped visiting the orchard of dancing silhouettes.

But I still like to be alone because the quiet swales I swim in enhance my madcap escape to a copse of dreamy isolation, where the leaden silence is instilled and where my youthful regrets w/ you probably equal that of every other flower petal pulled. I wish I had said something different that day, something more or real or knowing or believable. But if it's all the same, as poignant as I can be now, I suppose you knew I loved you innocently. First & forever. And, by the wave of God's whisper, I suppose you know I miss you.
m.

Twins

You stole my one day
I could've been born a star
You had to butt in.