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Florence Maude
Older, wiser, more eloquent. Novelist. Current novel: Auvera Jane To A Science
Wales   
Mauve Maude
Boston    ©

Poems

Connor Mar 2016
Old Katherine Kimberly had a sty near her eye
it was a bleeding abhorrent electric
dream spilling out her sanity
the sty was not just any regular sty
it was a satyr placed there by cruel forever
just because
why not

old KATHERINE KIMBERLY had a
mute cousin who came over for tea
when K.K was feeling down, he wanted to be a comedian
but this wouldn't work out for obvious reasons.
old Katherine Kimberly
had a recurring nightmare involving the world around her inverting it's layout, a backwards realm with backwards chairs and backwards backs
everyone looking like they suffered a dramatic accident
spine snapped but still walking
she was the outcast with her even shoulders and
delicate form but there it was that sty by her eye
wouldn't quit not even with sleep.
She went to see a doctor about the nightmares he prescribed a miracle
didn't work
so she went to church
met some wiry bald-spot
evangelic addict figure who
gave her mysterious bagged-and-untagged drugs
(those didn't work either)
nothing would help.. Kimberly came to the conclusion that the sty and the dreams were correlated in some spiritual, cursed sort of way.
Nobody could see it they promised

"No! no! you look fine, everything is in order god knows what you're on about Kim"

but she scratched and scratched for hours in her bedroom and looked in the faded mirror with microscopic detail and sure enough it was/gone??
since when??
she could feel it there, she was no hypochondriac it was alive and feeding off her still
that HORRIBLE THING!
some months now or maybe more it had always weighed her down but now gone
or never there...?
IMPOSSIBLE!
this wasn't over, old Katherine Kimberly would tear this ****** apart on a sub-atomic level and make sure it would never haunt her in any respect from "this day forth!" she said poetically,
wearing a conservatively fashioned dress with green flowers on it
and green grass, too.

She took to the New York subway on a Wednesday, the time was.......2pm
and she was headed to the drycleaners but not the one closest her apartment, the people that ran that one were pushy and irritating.
She was going to "Maude's" she and Maude had lovely conversations about the Gardener who lived one floor up from her who sometimes allowed a small hello from his lips on the way up, off of work.
She liked what he liked
or at least she imagined that to be true
but then again we all do that
it's a bad habit
he could be a total *******, she thought.
Old Katherine Kimberly walked in and opened the backroom there was Maude listening to Brian Eno
(Cindy Tells me/HERE COME THE WARM JETS/1974)

"THE RICH GIRLS ARE WEEPING"

Maude heard K.K come in and swiveled around in her office chair with the one off-kilter wheel which she didn't do a very good job of fixing.
"Well I don't shop at Ikea, its no wonder why, Kat"

"This sty! I know it looks like it's gone, but it isn't, do you still have any of that herbal remedy stuff you told me about earlier?"

"yeah, yeah.. the stuff you refused take way back when?"

"I admit I was being stupid, I just need help, I'm out of options and I'm kind of on a bad trip right now, see? some ghoul at the church gave me these pretty pink pills, said they were from mars and that they could cure anything! O Maude I was desperate and now I'm hallucinating all sorts of wack. I'm afraid I won't come back from this! I dunno what to do Maude! I dunno what to do!"

"Relaxxxx poor doll, you're always getting caught up in messes like this. It's like I said! you gotta settle down with that Rupert, he seems like a genuine guy, real caring, real. I'll help you, I have that herbal medicine in my car I will be right back"

Maude left hastily with a pat on K.K's shoulders as she went
K.K was going cuckoo
she suddenly felt that on a very metaphysical level her atoms were remembering this drug
always
and that when she died, eventually..some innocent child would be reconstituted with her atoms
to live with this for all time
and to be forcefully admitted into a psychiatric ward
pleading for lobotomy!

"What is this? what did I take? does that Kubrick-looking ****** use this often? how is he even tethered to reality?" she was dizzy, good thing she was sitting down..

Maude came back, shaking her head in sympathetic disapproval
"Jeez.. you've gone down the rabbit hole as far as ailment is concerned, that's for sure"

"What do you mean..?" Katherine Kimberly kept her feet grounded to the carpet as to not sway reality to a snowglobe catastrophe.

"Well you say the sty has something to do with the nightmares, or vice-versa, so you took drugs from a complete stranger! only made things worse, I'm sure.. and now you've come to me"

"That's true" K.K agreed
"Why do this to yourself?"
"I've been lost, out of tune, completely washed.."
(((((())))(((((()(((((((((())))(())))))))))()()()))))((­(())))))))))
she was going to continue, but felt like vomiting

She lept from her seat and hunted for a bathroom,
A vicious tabla bleached her brain
with supernatural viscosity
her body played like a cosmic instrument
for a higher being in a higher realm.
Next, the frantic sitar which reminded K.K of July and
the humid balcony marijuana, Ravi Shankar melodically spinning in her living room.
This was a much different experience.. as made clear by her
convulsions
the viper's final dose of venom

"The great spirit lifted his hand without much ado, and split apart Flower Mountain's ten million layers." - from Elder Ting Stands Motionless. (Blue Cliff Record)

"-******* that ******* from the church
why I ever listened to him-
-I feel like I am afloat atop the world able to see the stars as vibrant eyes! but I'm wavering without a sense of gravity. I am at once motionless and spinning!-"

A lot more trouble than it was worth,
O the wisdom of consequence!
K.K, poor doll, lucid consciousness
and an acute awareness for her disposition in this Universe
and all alternate universes for that matter.
(Including the version of her that decided against taking those pink pills from that pink-cheeked man, Stanley Kubrick lookalike ******* probably only posing as a religious man, they never met in one reality, they ****** in another. In one he is god! he is the only god! and in one she is god! anything better than this reality now! her lungs foaming up with death)

GLOBE-O-VOOTY/
GUIDE-O/
ME SOFTLY/
GET THIS THREY-WAY/
OUT FROM MY MIND/
(That's VOUT language for you, there. Slim Gaillard's timeless bop language)

after puking up the rest of her morning meal
she wiped her mouth dry with her sleeve and
reunited w/ Maude who handed K.K that herbal
music
and wished her well

"Look, I know it's none of my bussiness.. but if I were in your shoes, I'd make some changes.. that's all I'm gonna say about THAT"

so Katherine Kimberly went home, she wept
wept about her disposition
about her mistakes
about that inoperable mental sty which was more than a sty
parasitically latched onto her for ages
she wept about how boring people were
how after all this protest and bloodshed
we're just the same as before if not less intellectual!
this fever dream of a day hath made her realize
that she SHOULD make a change.
Hell, Maude was right, sometimes insufferable (tho not as much as others)
She couldn't keep doing this, whatever this was.

The herbal medicine was contained in some cutesy vial
a kind of amber-shade
thick liquid.
Just in the fashion of Lewis Caroll she
drank up her prayer potion, with the sensation that the room was expanding around her, shrunk down to the pathetic dreamer once again,
and so she tried to sleep this desperate sickness off.

One floor up, Rupert thought about whether or not he should *******, he decided to make some coffee instead, continuing where he left off on a new-age book about hypnotism.
Hilda  Nov 2012
Maude
Hilda Nov 2012
'Neath leaden skies, amongst windblown, agèd trees
Lies an old graveyard swept by moss laden breeze.
Each stone cries a volume of heartbroken years,
While one, yew-shaded, marked "Maude" weeps unshed tears.

Now only a broken heart and shattered dreams
Telling of long lonely days and unvoiced screams
Caged within her chest those nightmarish years long;
No more able to enjoy the wood thrush song.

Tongues of old wives wag in the village below,
Afire with wild rumours why Jed had to go.
One night in mid-June he suddenly took leave,
Never minding his wife and children would grieve.

Alas! Jed—tall, handsome, dark with manner suave,
Had a weakness for drink, neighbours never forgave;
Blaming Maude for her melancholy silence,
The reason they claim for poor Jed's defiance.

Early each Sabbath morn she sat in the pew
With her weary heart bleeding and pain anew;
Sighing as she watches each mother rejoice;
Asking God why heaven gave her no such choice.

Lo! There sits gold-haired Edith, babe at her breast,
Beaming radiantly how much God has blest.
As if at some angel her proud husband smiles
While with dimples and coos Baby Jane beguiles.

She recalls little Willie who died with flu,
Red-headed and freckled with eyes of green-blue;
Mischievous at seven and so full of life;
His memory pierces her heart with a knife.

Beside him rests sober Alice only four,
Whose grey eyes brightened with each rap at the door.
Day after day waiting for Papa in vain;
Little knowing she'd never see him again.

Homeward she trudges, July's skies ablaze,
Scorching heat of midday sun's blinding rays.
Lo! There runs little Willie with open arms
That long lost freckled face her doleful heart warms.

Behind him skips Alice, her pale face aglow.
Maude's heart quickens as tears start to flow.
O! How can this be true? She feels in a daze.
A flashback of time in this sweltering haze?

"O, Mamma! We're home," they so merrily cry.
Her arms outstretched with sobs as their small feet fly.
Her heart soars with rapture—then suddenly gone!
Vanished fore'er like glad dreams at break of dawn.

Heartbroken anew, she trudges home again
To a lonely cottage while tears spill as rain.
Before her looming a thousand bleak morrows
Stabbed with yesterday's knives and endless sorrows.

As years drag by, old wives stop to mock and scorn.
"Crazy Maude Heathcliffe!" Sneering at her forlorn;
Blaming her yet for Jed's wild drunken ways,
A judgment from God for the rest of her days.

One morn—silence! When Edith raps at her door.
Gasping she runs across the creaking old floor
Where Maude sits quietly on ladder-back chair.
"Wake up! Shame on you! Why is it you don't care?"

'Neath June skies, pines whisper, silvery moonbeams play
'Round yew-watched bed where Maude's slept years since that day
When Edith found her in the ladder-back chair.
A mocking bird scolds, "Shame! Maude! Why don't you care!"

**~Hilda~
November 20, 2012
Who told my mother of my shame,
  Who told my fatlier of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
  Who lurked to spy and peer.

Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
  With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world
  And worthy of a queen's embrace.

You might have spared his soul, sister,
  Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
  He'd never have looked at you.

My father may sleep in Paradise,
  My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
  Either early or late.

My father may wear a golden gown,
  My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
  Perhaps they'd let us in:
But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,
  Bide you with death and sin.