Blue Monday**
BY DIANE WAKOSKI
Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her *******  
and clacking together in her elbows;
blue of the silk
that covers lily-town at night;
blue of her teeth
that bite cold toast
and shatter on the streets;
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens  
hanging like tongues
over the fence of her dress
at the opera/opals clasped under her lips
and the moon breaking over her head a
gush of blood-red lizards.

Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling  
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.

                     You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl.  
                     I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name  
                     is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.

                     Monday is the first of the week,  
                     and I think of you all week.  
                     I beg Monday not to come  
                     so that I will not think of you  
                     all week.

You paint my body blue. On the balcony
in the softy muddy night, you paint me
with bat wings and the crystal
the crystal  
the crystal
the crystal in your arm cuts away
the night, folds back ebony whale skin  
and my face, the blue of new rifles,  
and my neck, the blue of Egypt,  
and my *******, the blue of sand,  
and my arms, bass-blue,
and my stomach, arsenic;

there is electricity dripping from me like cream;
there is love dripping from me I cannot use—like acacia or  
jacaranda—fallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street.

                         Love passed me in a blue business suit
                         and fedora.
                         His glass cane, hollow and filled with
                         sharks and whales ...  
                         He wore black
                         patent leather shoes
                         and had a mustache. His hair was so black
                         it was almost blue.

                         “Love,” I said.
                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.  
                         “Mr. Love,” I said.
                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.

                         So I saw there was no use bothering him on the street

                         Love passed me on the street in a blue  
                         business suit. He was a banker  
                         I could tell.

So blue trains rush by in my sleep.  
Blue herons fly overhead.
Blue paint cracks in my
arteries and sends titanium
floating into my bones.  
Blue liquid pours down
my poisoned throat and blue veins
rip open my breast. Blue daggers tip
and are juggled on my palms.
Blue death lives in my fingernails.

If I could sing one last song
with water bubbling through my lips
I would sing with my throat torn open,
the blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse,  
and on my lips
I would balance volcanic rock
emptied out of my veins. At last
my children strained out
of my body. At last my blood
solidified and tumbling into the ocean.
It is blue.  
It is blue.  
It is blue.

Sestina From The Home Gardener**

These dried-out paint brushes which fell from my lips have been removed
with your departure; they are such minute losses
compared with the light bulb gone from my brain, the sections
of chicken wire from my liver, the precise
silver hammers in my ankles, which delicately banged and pointed
magnetically to you. Love has become unfamiliar

and plenty of time to tend the paint brushes now. Once unfamiliar
with my processes. Once removed
from that sizzling sun, the ego, to burn my poet shadow to the wall, I pointed,
I suppose, only to your own losses,
which made you hate that 200 pound fish called marriage. Precise-
ly, I hate my life, hate its freedom, hate the sections

of fence stripped away, hate the time for endless painting, hate the sections
of my darkened brain that wait for children to snap on the light, the unfamiliar
corridors of my heart with strangers running in them, shouting. The precise
incisions in my hip to extract an image, a dripping pickaxe or palm tree removed,
and each day my paint brushes get softer and cleaner – better tools, and losses
cease to mean loss. Beauty, to each eye, differently pointed.

I admire sign painters and carpenters. I like that black hand pointed
up a drive-way whispering to me, “The Washingtons live in these sections,”
and I explain autobiographically that George Washington is sympathetic to my losses;
His face or name is everywhere. No one is unfamiliar
with the American dollar, and since you’ve been removed
from my life, I can think of nothing else. A precise

replacement for love can’t be found. But art and money are precise-
ly for distraction. The stars popping out of my blood are pointed
nowhere. I have removed
my ankles so that I cannot travel. There are sections
of my brain growing teeth and unfamiliar
hands tie strings through my eyes. But there are losses

of the spirit like vanished bicycle tires and losses
of the body, like the whole bike, every precise
bearing, spoke, gear, even the unfamiliar
handbrakes, vanished. I have pointed
myself in every direction, tried sections
of every map. It’s no use. The real body has been removed.

Removed by the ice tongs. If a puddle remains, what losses
can those sections of glacier be? Perhaps a precise
count of drops will substitute the pointed mountain, far away, unfamiliar?

TELL TALE TALK

Shark's tooth
draws blood

( even though long dead )

a startled red
against the sharp whiteness

lost in a bric-a-brac
box of shells & things.

"Gotcha!"
grins the dead

shark's set of
choppers.

Baby shark
but a shark nonetheless.

I drip a trail
of red

across the Charity
shop

snap up
a tattered HUNTING OF THE SNARK

a battered
AT SWIM TWO BIRDS.

Here
a broken ballerina

on a jewellery box
( minus her music )

there
( I stop dead )

a used
soul

bruised
badly used

Godless
without guile

my fingertip traces my initials
on its dust

tarnished
without hope

immortal and unnoticed
amongst shark's teeth & shells.

I get
a SNARK & TWO BIRDS

for a pound
a piece.

The shark's grin
for a pound again.

"What do you want
for this old thing?"

I nonchalantly
ask

setting the soul
with great care

within the cage
of teeth

perched atop
the books.

"Being dying
to get rid

of that
for ages."

"It just sits there
staring at me!"

"Scares the life
outta me

to tell you
the truth

even though I don't know
what the hell it is!"

"Give us 42p for it
& we'll call it quits!"

I buy back
the soul

( my soul )

I had given away
with some old shirts and shoes

things I thought
I wouldn't ever be needing

. . .again.

But seeing it
discarded amongst shark's teeth & shells

I thought
twice about it.

Maybe
( perhaps )

I can use
it

for a paperweight.

Or a doorstop.

Sedulous

PRONUNCIATION:
(SEJ-uh-luhs)

MEANING:
adjec­tive: Involving great care, effort, and persistence.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin se (without) + dolus (trickery, guile). Ultimately from the Indo-European root del- (to count or recount) that is also the source of tell, tale, talk, Aug 9, 2010
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it. -Diane Wakoski, poet (b. 1937) and Dutch taal (speech, language).
USAGE:
"Elizabeth Bishop was sedulous, pernickety, quietly determined; she would work on poems for years."Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 20, 2008.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
<strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><p>A beautiful thing is never perfect. -Egyptian proverb</p></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong>

my thoughts
often bring me discomfort;
untamed impulses with picket signs
marching and heckling
at the guardians of my comfort zone;
lyrical demigods hurling  verbal spears
into protective shields of conformity,
sparing no means necessary
to crush the mould,
and shatter the paradigm of paralysis
rooted in fear,
the fabled sphere of thespians that didn't...

heed the beat of spontaneity,
the clashing cymbals of discomfort
and dance to deviant drums
like ginsberg and ferlinghetti
and kerouac and wakoski...

disaffected thespians that did

~ P
(7/13/2013)

(Note: The first two lines of this poem were used by Diane Wakoski as a prompt for students in her poetry workshops. I couldn't resist the challenge. The result was this poem. Try it yourself.  - mce)

Next time we meet,
let's keep our clothes on.
Let us observe
the proprieties,
proper and Puritan.
Let us maintain
the distance of fools.
Let us smile
the waxed smiles
of corpses.
Let us pretend
we have never
danced within
one another,
have never sung
unlikely songs
of flesh and desire.
It will be awkwardly
exact and Victorian,
but it will be safe.
No heartbreak will ensue.
Next time we meet,
let's keep our clothes on.
  - mce