It was the time of my Auntie Bee summers
   I was small then
   She had a parakeet that landed on my head
   and a bathtub too
   with water so deep!
   and legs and claws!
   **** thing nearly chased me down the stairs!

She lived in slumbery Windsor Locks
   where bugs hung-out in the haze
   of teenage August
   I played in the tall weeds
   with a shoeless Italian boy
   who ate tomatoes like apples
   and cucumbers right off the vine!
   He was ***** free and foreign!
   We played— reckless, abandoned
   behind the gas pump, under the tractor, in the barn   
   and through the endless fields
   I didn’t know....
   His name was Tony
   I ate pizza with him—the first time

At Auntie Bee’s I had to go to bed at eight
   but I could watch night flowers
   bloom on wallpaper
   She came in to say good night
   slippered, shadowy, night dress slightly open
   and I peeped her *******!
   like Tony’s cucumbers!
   I had never seen my mother’s wonders....

Night spread its wings from the old fan—
   a bird of tireless exhaustion
   whipped, whipped, whipped to death in its cage
   tireless exhaustion
   tic-tocking in time to a wind-up clock
   stretched out on the whine
   of the overland trucks
   Route Five through the night of an open window

In the grape arbor below—
tremulous incessant
   crickets    crickets    crickets
tremulous incessant—insides of a child
   a summer child
   not yet ready for the fall of answers

Auntie Bee had a daughter—Maureen
   I followed her everywhere I could
   I was small then--    
   do anything for a stick of Juicy Fruit
I followed Maureen through my dreams
   of being sixteen
   and woke to Peggy’s “Fever”
   while she tied her sneakers
   against the mattress by my head

I followed Maureen (in my mind)
   tanned and bandanned
   to work in the fields of shade tobacco
   with all those Puerto Rican boys!
   She knew where she was going!

I was small then
...do anything for a stick of  gum

“Mauney! Mauney! Mauney!”
   ...through the goldenrod of roadside
   through the smell of oil that damped the dust    
I followed Maureen’s white shorts
   and chestnut hair...to the corner store
I followed the way the boys smiled
   the way the screen door slammed
   on her bright behind
   the way her lips taunted and took
   the coke-bottle’s green
I followed Maureen

I swear, I tried for hours to get that right!

Must have been Peggy Lee’s “Fever”

Maureen ties her sneakers in my face
Flaunts her years above my head
She has that look—
“We kids don’t know nothin”
(Little turds” that we be)

…followin’ Maureen
through the goldenrod of roadside
tic-tockin’, beboppin’

“Fever— in the morning
Fever all through the night….”

All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.

Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!-
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.

Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!-
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.

In a field of
grasshopper heat
        of
the pride
the prone
        of
the all that
is forever gone
        of
crow hops - hops - hops
down a bug
        of
a bridge I built
across a creek
        of
frogs that
take a peek
        of
overhead
an eagle soars
        of
a mouse
fast in the grass
        of
cattails
around the pound
        of
a snake , branched
hanging on
        of
upon seeing me
falls and is gone
        of
a sea of goldenrod
and green
        of
sadly seeing
yesterday's dream

angelica fits, weaves through
my fingertips,
out my mouth sprouts
morning glories
and wormwood blooms across
my eyelashes. i’ve lost
something i never had;
nevertheless
i feel the lack in
the spaces in my chest.

perhaps some space is left
yet uncultivated,
yet unpopulated by meadowsweet or
marigold --
perhaps i could unfold
the silk-soft petals of
a crocus,
let the columbine alone
and let the moss rose grow.

...
I like to convince myself that she's a walking solar system.
                                              (One)
­                                                          (It will never be enough;)        
She has the sunken cheek bones of Mercury;
~filthy shadows, caked in crimes~
they forge her face,
oh so well,
and engrave her smile in
stone; the sun
laughs sourly,
and then,
he spits on her.
                              (Two)
                   ­                    (Because sorrow is a sweet thing.)
         She reminds me of Venus the most.
         Her hair is the murmur of violet,
         her beauty, it lingers,
         ~like cigarettes beyond the boundary~
         the cosmos, the constellations, and the milky way.
         She is my dragon princess,
         draped in stars and wounds.
         She bleeds
         the somber color of night.
         She is royal, yet alas
         "The queen didn't come
         without a crumbling castle.
                                                                ­  (Three)
                                            (So take it in, don't hold your breath)
                                                      ­   Beneath the arc of her spine;
                                                         Is where Earth plays
                                                         poker with her bones.
                                                         It's such a shame,
                                                         that her ace is her 'unkempt heart,'
                                                         and she lost it to a pitiful bet,
                                                         with a certain ghost I once knew.
               (Four)
                               (The bottom's all I've found.)
            Her fingers gouge through time's fabric, and her hands
            remind me of Mars;
            Powerful and ******,
            Oblivious to what she's created;
            I'm afraid
            the phantom
            she wishes so dearly to see,
            is only getting hungrier.
(Five)
               (Diamond wings were meant to be torn)
Jupiter is the core of her anxiety,
and she basks in it every day,
never by choice, never by desire.
Muscles and skin of iron and goldenrod,
they carve out our very own Aphrodite,
which is you,
it's always been you.
A rabid angel,
a calamity of chaos,
frothing with  blackened fear.
                                                        ­       (Six)
                              (Spill every flower from your garden of thoughts)
                                             Subtle depression lurks between the
                                             the crooked sea of her ribcage,
                                             it's Saturn smoking rings,
                                             brewin' up the cinders.
                                             ~I reminiscence in the white lace~
                                             of the cobwebs that hold her
                                             heart together.
                                             I've plucked them,
                                             those strings play a mournful
                                             sonata, with her name written all over it.
        (Seven)
                          (Promises bend at every funeral we attend)
              In the graces of her palms we found Uranus,
              like teal teeth
              and whimsical witchcraft,
              I watched her thread magic into this world.
              Her hopes shift-shape into 'nocturnal fairies',
              and 'grim reapers' with broken music boxes.
              She is naïve, but that is
              a trait she needs to survive
              in our world of
              metallic dreams and navy nightmares.
                                                    ­(Eight)
                                       (Rejection is a survivable heartache)
                                                   ­  And so what if her heart reminded me
                                                      of Neptune the most?
                                                      The royal vastness
                                                      of­ blue and ivory;
                                                      ~rip­tides on the walls of her soul~
                                                      I want her to know that ambitions
                                                      l­eave more scars and
                                                      tear more crystal flesh;
                                                      tha­n her polished wishes ever will.  
      (Nine)
                       (Have you ever seen blood and water in love?)
And her lungs,
they remind me of the honesty of Pluto.
So small, and docile,
like an elliptical smile of grey fire.
Would you lay with me a while,
count your unconditional lovers;
like our burnt stars in mason jars?
Struggle is the birth
of the void and the 'rapture'
~Your king and poet will wait for you,
in the radiant abyss of our ink-hearts~
I will guide you to his open arms,
              a hug awaits my dragon princess.

                                                     ­                   He wears the stars for clothes,
                                                      li­ke an outlaw,
among the banks of the universe.
               Where disease can't reach him, or she,
                                          Cancer can't harm you anymore,
                                                       ­          "Not anymore, Belle."
...

She will choke you with goldenrod
And I will watch you get so close to death
That your body's going cold

Oh, flawed leader you were so confused
Not absolutely monstrous, just downstream
With shattered paddles. At the height of your power

You must have known - it would all burn to dust.

Blood and gold and memories made inside of a certain time and place

I had not been born yet.
Still, I can see you at your labor -
alone, scouring the meadows
for the stones -
lifting their gray shoulders
from the moist earth -
pulling them from the
green grasp of briars,
goldenrod, and
Queen Anne’s Lace.

The smell of the earth
must have filled you with
your own childhood memories -
of plowing fields
and cold mornings
trudging across barn yards
mud thick on your boots -
promising yourself
that someday you would leave
and never return.

I can hear the pick axe -
the sharp strikes
against the stones,
and the dull thud
when the earth
swallowed the blade -
and the deep exhalations
when the stones tumbled into
the old wheelbarrow – new then -
that now leans rusting
against my garden shed.

Some of the stones were so large -
far too large for one man –
how did you move them?
I look at the old photographs
and you seem so young –
so much younger
than I am today - and so thin –
staring off-frame beyond the camera.
What were you looking for
in those fields?

I can see you sorting the stones,
stacking them -
building and unbuilding
and rebuilding the walls
and  terraces
until the walls were true
and the terraces level
and planted with dogwood,
birches, soft grass for bare feet,
and bordered with roses.

Did you know
that you were building my castle?
That the highest terrace
would be my tower and keep?
I remember calling out to my
knights, my legionnaires,
and tribesmen –
rallying them in defense
of the citadel –  ready for
the coming siege.

I also remember looking out
across that verdant kingdom
for the last time -
no longer a king or a boy –
and miles away, across the river
to the west, I imagined
the new home that awaited us.
I couldn’t know
how far away it would be
or what it meant to leave.

This morning,
as I looked out across
the garden that I have built,
I felt the weightlessness of time
and its gravity
settling me into place.
For a brief moment I had
the sensation that I was standing
on the shoulders of
gathered stones.

(for my father, Guy Spencer.)
Tom Spencer © 2015

My sweetest soldier left me and was dragged across the sea
My nights are now silent and my heart is drowned with fear
So, here I cannot stand to be

Through weary nights I held my guard
'till the stars came out to torment me
For, all the beauty of the night was now forever marred

My heart trembled with the candlelight
So I went to seek her chambers,but all was locked and barred
Even whispered words from my dear soldiers could do little to ease my fright

I wrote letters to my sweetest knight with sparkling, savage fury
I fought sleep away with every ounce of my might
Too soon, my hands and eyes grew weary

I filled my pages with stories of beasts we would nevermore fight
my eyes where too full of tears so I could not see clearly
I've lost my dearest companion and the bringer of my light

She sent letters back,of course, and they were wept over with many a tear
For a day, sprigs of goldenrod adorned my collar bright
for a day, at least, I forgot to think of fear

Then I had dreams of feathered serpents wrapped around her throat
her eyes were scratched out by hoary hell-kites and her heart was pierced with a spear
All my daylight hours, and all my nighttime too, to my knight I did devote

We continued writing letters and I lead my soldiers too
no one ever asked of what this did denote
'till fever caught me by my throat and threw my mind askew

My hands shook too violently and ink had streaked my page
In my letters, I tried so hard to have my pain seem subdued
My dear light-bringer needn't fear a fever's shallow rage

She saw through my ruse too quickly and I think she panicked more
I tried to calm her with winged words and locks of sage
I promised her there was a cure

My dreams were fueled by fire and the darkness lurking there
when I woke I fell sobbing to the freezing floor
She would have gathered me in her arms and kept me in her care

Beasts and berserkers set my night under siege
I could only see my sweetest knight scarred by bloodless warfare
Her spirit fell to the mercy of my new-found, thankless liege

My throat was streaked with clawing pain
cups of water I did beseech
bitter liquid assailed my body and bound my fate with chains

I saw my sweetest soldier and her hands skimmed through my hair
Her eyes shined like pearls which I hoped she would retain
Her kisses on my cheeks were so radiant and rare

I knew then never would we be apart
and in my chambers with the firelight there
I could rest with the keeper of my heart

Walnut trees release spent leaves
Shower me in summertime past.
Miles of unpaved roads-
meandering.