Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us-
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
******* with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait,
in their short time,
like little utero half-borns,
half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands
for twenty-five illicit days,
the sun crawling inside the sheets,
the moon spinning like a tornado
in the washbowl,
and we orchestrated them both,
calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette,
that played over and over
and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable,
as the rain will on an attic roof,
letting the animal join its soul
as we kneeled before a miracle--
forgetting its knife.

The daisies confer
in the old-married kitchen
papered with blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for they stand for a love
undergoihng open heart surgery
that might take
if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand,
even in prayer,
that I am not a thief,
a mugger of need,
and that your heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.

I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide.

I will observe the daisies
fade and dry up
wuntil they become flour,
snowing themselves onto the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.

For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning:  DANGER!  THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of that orange,
the diamond, the carrot,
both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,
and the love,
although Adam did not know the word,
the love of Adam
obeying his sudden gift.

You, who sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,
both the Camp Director and the camper),
you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,
and calls and letters and once a luncheon,
and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't!

Yet this year,
yanking off all past years,
I took the bait
and was pulled upward, upward,
into the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me!  Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it!  Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and planted the seed that dives into my God
and will do so forever
no matter how often I sweep the floor.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward...this baby that I bleed.

When my mind is feeling
like it's floating underneath a painted ceiling
and the windows crack
to take me back
into another
dream
and the ceiling's just a scene that's crayoned on a bathroom door
but the beauty of the dream is that it shows me so much more
than I would know
that's where I go.

When the hallway drifts into a serene sea
I'll be
there.
In the shaking waking hours of dawn before I'm born again
when the night becomes some distant fix upon an orbital
I absorb it all
and put it in a cardboard case.
In case I want to look again into that other realm
that overwhelms my senses
and makes less sense to me
every time my mind floats free
underneath a painted
ceiling.

Get out your sponges, stippling brushes and pens,
It’s time for makeover-Monday-night to begin.
Think Winky Lux, L’Oréal, Urban Decay,
Maybelline, Armani and Fabergé

It’s a black magic realm where brushes are wands,
where a carnival of colors are carefully crayoned.
We have palettes aplenty, in kaleidoscope hues,
to create fashion looks, both bold and subdued.

In the realm of makeup fashion, where trends never end,
we remodel each other - for fun - when we can.
Tonight, our new friend Jammie has come to watch us play,
and he even brought two bottles of chardonnay.

Lisa has a ‘Miss Rose’ case, like she saw in Bernadette Peters’
dressing room, on a backstage tour of the Shubert Theatre.
Konjac, Kabuki, Doe foots, Spoolie, Lisa’s got legit tools to use.
“When it comes to makeup,” she says, “always avoid dupes.”

That night I was the chosen face, the excited living canvas.
Lisa’s a practiced artist, her process is brisk and never tedious.
She painted my lips a crimson cherry, alluring and brightly sensuous,
my brows were moonlit art, my cheeks a midnight adumbrated edifice.

Lisa created a special look, where rebellious edge met elegance.
We took some snaps, then I washed it off - but Jammie was impressed!

Once upon a time, in a world that looks like yours      
there was a girl with
golden hair
that hung like a banner across her back in a
a sea of sandy metal
that whispered across the air
all the untold secrets of the water and the flowers
and their petals


and when she blinked, her eyes were blue
and if you leaned too close you'd
drown in them
like the hags who tumbled down the wells
and shrieked for help
that no one cared about
because they didn't hear their voice
or see their
ebony locks trailing like abandoned sea **** after them
because they didn't fit into the space the puzzle maker had carved
and couldn't conquer the tedium of difference


and the girl was tugged by hand to go to Church
and her prayers were secret treasures
that trickled from her lips
and tasted like righteousness
each word more crystal than the last
soaked in honey at the tip
and smothered in wonder and glory
and the days as they passed


and they never mentioned the girls she teased
who wore headscarves
or bindis
that she'd printed with the colours of endless torment
in hues of cheerless and agony
and the girls never told her that
if they took them off
like she begged them to
laughter sprinkled in and stirred
they'd have to show her how much more pain
her jeering caused them


and the girl made mockeries of the unconventional
but that was okay because
everyone did
their eyes creasing up into slits of derision
in universal agreement
skidding past the true
whims of their heart and growing to
resent them


and the eccentric pressed themselves carefully
into the mould of society's
baking tray
their souls thrashing out in pain and hatred
as they compressed their emotions
and intelligence
and the beauty they found in the strangest of things
into the shell that had been vacated for them
when its previous owner had shrivelled up
and given in
and died


and all the way through life, the girl was beautiful
but she still  blew char
over her eyelashes
and stained her lips the post-box red that's found in
first kisses and
poetry and
scrawled crayoned hearts and
fading wishes


and she made fun of the red that pulsed
in the form of acne on
her classmates' faces
growing their hair out long to cover their pain
until no one could see their shame
and pouring their money into
the collection tins of mass chain stores
of cream and gloop and products
until their faces were marred by make-up
until their mothers didn't recognise them anymore
and they cried


and the girl was thinner and happier than anyone
but because it amused her
her wrists were slit
so her peers doled out their sympathy
and held battles over
who could make her smile first
and she fasted to become thinner
and she collected
four leaf clovers


and her classmates ignored the tender puckered skin
of the children that hacked at
their flesh and
tried to hide it alongside their hurt
and she cackled at the ribs
that seemed to try and burst from their flesh
like hungry mouths were trying to eat
them from the inside out
and they collected things because they feared
what would happen if they didn't
because that was OCD


and when the girl grew up, she married a boy
and he was tall and
his hair was night
and he was handsome in the conventional way that was accepted
perfect match
the paradisiacal sight of
dainty damsel clutching the arm of the
kind of man she'd read about in books
she'd been infatuated with him before they'd met


and the boys who fell in love with each other were outcast and spat on
their hearts torn into tatters and shredded in machines
by the people who thought they could decide for them
that if they didn't love girls then they'd love no one at all
because in the fairy tales they'd read as young children
they learnt that
prince = princess
and the prince never runs away with the woodcutter
because where would the princess be then?


and the girl still lives on today, in a world that looks like yours
her words a deadly poison
reaping and bleeding
crushing her prey between *******
and showing songs to the ears of the impressionable,  young or old
sowing seeds in their brains
that blossom in their hearts
and she is beautiful
and she is terrible
and she is nameless but for the title of
Society’s own child
and she is blameless
for it is the parent
at fault.

restless summers swimming in lemonade
my shiny janes and your
mud sloshed loafers
swayed like the gulls of our
crayoned fence of a sky

daisies you would crown me
with rings of weeds i'd wed you
lightning bugs stain my lashes like my
fluorescent tears you brush away
dewdrops on my rose embroidered cheeks

i continue building forts armed with flashlights
with puppets of shade that guard me till morn
again i am locked within my tower feeling your
weight of shining armor as you take my locks as your stairway
but the night fades within you

i let down my hair
but you are not there

A darling girl of three
Violet ribbon cradles golden hair
They fuss over her porcelain skin
Blushing cheeks and baby blue eyes
“Eyes you just want to steal,”  say They.
She crayons pictures of castles
And heroic princes.
Her little dolls are played
Then locked in their little dollhouse

A fair girl of fifteen
Mornings she is taunted and condemned
By the mocking mirror.
She stares
And draws a smile on the vacancy.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes-
Strings attached to all.
Puppetted by the fetters of Expectation,
She smiles, and acts,
And dresses in little outfits
To please Them.

A charming girl of seventeen
Immured little fingers cradle the wiled world.
A Crayoned face fronts the masquerade.
Mangled in tangled strings,
She offers her heart and scissors to a little blonde boy
And cries, Kiss it better.
He smiles and smooths her brow
As his honeyed whispers tear her open
And he ties a heartstring.
He stitches her up with the thread of Promises
Leaving ribbon-scars delicate as lace.
Blueblack bruises blossom across
And stain her porcelain skin.
She shatters
While screaming his innocence.

Thieved eyelight
Makes for a jaded girl of eighteen.

A darling girl of three
Plays with toys
As They toy with her.
Just another broken doll to be.

Song


Intro


Your bedroom leaves you behind,

Remembering a blurry background.

You’re not in your world anymore.

Look up, look down.

Blue sky, and a green floor.

Look in between and another color

Strikes you like a knife,

And then another color, and another.

You've been stabbed by a tree.




First Verse


You're vision is the clearest it's ever been,

Each individual crease on every leaf.

The trunk is a clear brown, the browniest brown

That brings back blips of brainwork that believe to be begotten.

Crystal-like yellow leaves,

As if someone took the image

And manually added the color.

But you know it's a physical object,

You can walk around it and see the back of it,

And soon

You gain

The confidence

To touch it.


Second Verse


A pulse deep in the tree as you run your fingers across it.

As you recline yourself,

The knife turns gray

And the once eye-catching yellow

Silver leaves dance tauntingly towards another color,

A slow-moving car that tapped you on the back.

A hill overlooking a hill,

With a forest of grey trees.

You notice one is lit up,

A carbon replica of the previous chromatic timber,

And is begging for attention.







Chorus


You almost fly down the hill,

Isaac’s first helping you descend.

You alight beside the single resplendent floral,

Its chromaticity illuminating its ashen brothers.

Brush its rigid shell,

The lights fade in its core,

But analogously,

Its closest neighbor is afire,

You now understand,

You are following a circuit in the wilderness.







Third Verse


You start to gain impatience now,

You flow through the achromic forest

Touching every blush of color you see,

Following the maze of crayoned woods,

Journeying, immersing, submerging deeper

Into a blank woodland.

You soon come across something,

Hidden in the bright green grass.

A mirror, a flat, square plank

Of cooled and melted obsidian rock.

A light ray reflects off it.

You pick it up, the ray

bouncing back and forth,

And store it in your pocket.


Fourth Verse


You almost loose hope,

Not to mention interest,

About your current predicament,

But something, something about the atmosphere-

You stop.

You know to stop, just for a second,

An epiphany.

You look once, twice, three

Quick turnarounds until it glimmers in your eye.

A barely gleaming church door.

And you realize.






Chorus


You realize so intensely,

You almost can’t perform the action.

You pull out the mirror with glee,

Catch a small ray through its skin,

Aim the ray towards the door,

And you spray

The sunshine

Onto the

Door.







Second Chorus


Your mouth agape as the perfect light

Reflects onto the invisible passageway,

Causing it to enamel the door with a beautiful shade

Of orange.

You spray the door planks with your infinite atomizer,

Covering the small blotches you missed

Until you drop the mirror, turn around,

Say goodbye to the gloomy forest,

But discover an luminous explosion of color.

Each tree has awakened for your departing.

You smile, and turn around,

Pull the doors open and walk into the white.


Outro


Blurry background.

You recognize it as if you never left.

Because you didn’t really leave,

You see yourself asleep on your bed.

It’s everything you remember but just a hint

Of chromaticity is left behind the walls.

Not wanting the feeling to end,

Waiting until just the right time

To finally elope from your now distant memory

And regenerate to another adventure

In which you hope will have meaning.

I captained logs lovingly across
a musky pond
to hang stars on this date
when so much happened.
Let’s wake in the missed-me morrow
and I’ll try to recapture it.

6am

My aroused heart pounds with the eager
pecks of new world sparrows
feasting on a found pile of saltine *******
crumbs.

With these easier pickings, they can gloss
over hypothetical seeds lost
and the unfortunate insects
still trapped in their tightly wrapped buds
while emitting
a silky trickle of pollen sweetened tears
I might have once confused as joy.

8am

My mouth is a cast iron bell
robbed of its moistness
and the service of a tongue that would rather be
surgically cut without
the requisite anesthesia
than extol with slithering anticipation
the downfall of cold-blooded prey.

A grubby grimace can’t
switch off the cockle-less warmth
gazed by an elegantly impolite swan,
but amazingly cottony soft escapes can
be ginned with the bait of a choirboy’s tender
“Have mercy!”

10am

My nutmeg brown irises are diced
fresh and tossed into a ***
where spiced hot they’re shown
the urgency this yet-to-be plucked rose feels
when the mid-morning light
accumulates with enough heat
to bake the earth chocolate.

The tattered edges of her puckered lips
glow an ardent shade of pink and make
a beacon, signaling kingly butterflies to abdicate
their aimless flutters and jet
directly toward her alluring realm.

Noon

My usually cool tips can’t maintain
their aloof trance and they trip
red with sudden blushes over the damaged
clasp on a school girl’s lunch box
crayoned with lemonade kittens,
their wordless greetings.

It’s unlatched to reveal no magic
pressed in the chunks of pickle loaf,
but the foetid and desperate
fruits of a wish for can’t-stay-at-home mothers
to be released from the wages of others’
drudgery.

A squirrel drags her white bread
and dappled meat onto the play lot
where the child’s storm-cloud stare
breaks with the flash
and low rumble of laughter.

2pm

My soles crave the touch of loose-dirt
roads, but it’s my ankles that meet
brambles and are torn by their tiny kisses
from which a rubbery
beauty of sappy drips trails back
to grow pastel primavera blooms.

Their long, tapered necks
and delicate, glassy horns blow
the modulated notes of an icy hymn.

Its diamante flecks freckle
the hovering blue before falling
to press these young,
painted plants into a frieze
and free them from wilting.

4pm

My nape aches for the subtle
weight on not supple joints
between thick fig branches
powdered with a maquillage of snowy dust.

No one care can snap them
or keep them from sheltering
the grazes of constantly bleating sheep.

Candy floss wool is tinted
jonquil then apricot then cherry
as the distant and fiery ball of a sun
slowly descends to the quenching
splash in its night-deposit bucket.

6pm

My unencumbered back gently rolls with a raft
adrift on ripples raised
when unknown aquatic creatures
stir in a shallowly cupped liquid.

Their pleasant plunks and gleeful gurgles
are carried on the crisply creeping evening
air to wash away
the unsavory wafts of salty rumors.

Here I can’t scent the far-removed
oceans racked by hunger’s
chilling frissons and the pundit’s
raging rants to at all-costs maintain
the elevation of market-priced pap.

And I drifted off...

I am scant a savant and know it
I do I am just a wannabe poet
A shrew a devotee of
Poe and others
I wish for their talent
And notoriety
At a loss for words
Occasionally I just
Go ahead
And make them up
Dream up a verb
Ending in q
or a noun with no subject
I do
And shame is a good
Descriptive word
Adjective or adverb
I think I am sane
As I digress nightly
into a colored light fest
Of  was crayoned
flesh
On the canvas

Life is not always what you planned.
We were in the back yard of the abandoned house next door to his watching his two mutts chase each other around the perimeter. House after tiny peeling white painted house line the street “Summerbelle” with roofs covered in crinkled brown leaves. He runs his hand through his too long ***** brown hair. Tall and blue eyed, he could have been handsome maybe.
I had stopped by to pick up my glasses from on top of his coffee table. I don’t remember how they had gotten there exactly but at some point last night roasting-marshmallows-and-a-bonfire had turned into mango-juice-*****- forgetting-your-glasses-party with all the neighbors.
We were talking about fall, how the colors and the smells are beautiful, but foreboding, warning that winter and depression are coming. It’s a problem we have. On my walk over I had stopped to pick up a particularly beautiful leaf to give to him. It was just the sort of thing he would understand.
I reminded him we have to dress up for class on the 6th, and asked if he even had a suit. He then launched into a ten minute story about how he used to work on a senator’s campaign, 18 hour days and everything.
Not something I would have expected.
We gradually shuffle into the house, and I pick up my glasses from right where I had left them. The door is never locked in his house, but no one usually steals anything.  The walls are covered in crayoned drawings and quotes, over the top of it all “Fleetwood” graffitied in orange and red. I remember that is what we had decided to name the house last night. I had been sitting on the couch with a beer admiring the artist, bringing him a new Blue Ribbon can periodically for a kiss.
“Are you and A together now?”
I shake off the hazy memories. “Hm?”
“You and A.”
“Oh. We’re…yeah.” His signature grin never faded but his eyes had dipped to the floor. “How could you tell?”
“The way you spoke to him.” It was all the explanation he offered. “He’s a good guy.”
“He is.”
My mind wandered back to the morning, waking up next to the artist brushing my hair off my face, kissing my forehead. Surreal.
There wasn’t much left to say, so it was time for me to go. Turning to the door I saw what I had written on the wall last night, hidden under the windowsill, part way behind the couch. Under the song lyrics, clichéd quotes like “Be good or be good at it” and messages of peace, love and adventure it was nestled.
*All the same, we are nothing.

.
I wish to live on the white page,
Cumulus as cloud, be all puffy,
Pure in new world without guile,
My thin body as bounty, cloud eyed
Sky of unsullied page, true kingdom
Of imagination, without euphemism,
Nor malice, but truth, cleanest light,
Where a child's drawings are welcome
Always, waiting to be rainbow crayoned,
Coloured sheen as the dawn appearing
At blackest moons' end, sheet of seraphim
Created, dreamt of wood and earth and sun.

The white snow turned to black
my heart pained
no! no! no! no !..heart attack
no! no! no! no !..heart attack

the feeling inside was all to see
put out this fire ....look at me
my mind was lost into the black
no look
no!no!no!no!.. heart attack

put out to sea set sail to sink
another soul lost out to drink
red eyes in view no looking back
no look
no! no! no! no!..heart attack

Remember Jim? not many do...
one day all will stay unglued
a stone unloved.. a crayoned name
times like this time nothing changed  

no looking back no time to fear
no ! no ! no ! no ! heart attack
no ! no ! no ! no ! heart attack

(Jenny's Granny's house. Ayr.)

Where seasonal root veg soup
Warmly journeyed our throats
Granny Jean, skin translucent as glass,
Sheer, showing tendril veins beneath
Crinkled cliff-edge lips at Jenny's budding womanhood
She knew hers lay as barren
As insignificant as the pale Mojave borderlands.

Brazen-cheeked dolls and pastel bears
Audienced my transition from slip to sundress
Back in the lucid haze of the pensioner's kitchen
Where dust particles hived like antique film grain
Sat Jenny; painted lips like crisp apple skin
Freckled cheeks hollowing atop
Her milkshake's flimsy plastic straw

Raspy, bubbly ***** filled
The kitchen; appliances groped
By the pious smite of the sun
The kind of light they say never to walk towards
Then, a weathered cough and the stiff moan of a rocking chair
Just to jest fate
Was none of our business yet; I was taken by the hand

We pass many exhibits
On the austere lilac fridge:
"Mr. & Mrs Richard D. Barclay, wed on 11th of Oct 1961"
And crayoned from her own hand, aged 10; "Me and Granny B"
A waxy glyph on lemon sugar-paper not always in memoriam
But among the moth-wing wallpaper lilies
For now

Dust dunes like mattress ghosts
Collect in mushroom clouds above Jenny's sudden weight
While I feed myself to the mirror
My frock, flesh, hair all seep
Into the totalitarian whiteness of our room
And I am happy if this is my course through life
I know I'm no one

I try on, as I shake goodbye,
Jean's hands; fire-crafted leather baseball gloves
They do not fit just yet but
When my hands no longer sheen in the virtuous sun
When I feel citrus hand soap grate into each wrinkled chasm
I promise you, gran, I will remember
Even the Mojave desert will see rainfall.

isn't it the way you're aging?
lines like a childs picture of crayoned rays of the sun.
isn't it the way you twinkle?
when the redness creeps to my face from latest mistake.
isn't it the way you drive that truck?
one arm straight on the wheel, one arm tan from the sun.
perhaps it's the way we're quiet
in the quiet that fills the room with  puffs of white clouds.
surely it's the way you mindlessly,
stroke my arm when you try to make a point.
isn't it the way you work the day?
a mans work, tired and aching at the end.
isn't it the way you erase?
all of my horrid tempers and childish demands.
isn't it the way you love me?
in that space between my stellar and my odious.
and aren't i grateful,
that your broken pieces match my broken pieces.
isn't it an exquisite thing,
that your fragile ego looked for my fragile soul.
isn't it  the way a story ends?
two old people left alone in the big empty house.
isn't it the way the best one ends?
when the children grow up and we hold hands at the park?
isn't it a lovely thing,
a sublimely confounding lovely thing.
sahn 5/11/14

I
being crucified
died.
You did not see me fall
or see the memories that dripped my blood down the concrete walls of yesterday and when I lay there still and broken by the empty stores and unlit lamps,franked as if by postage and the stamps that stamped upon my shattered soul,I felt
whole.
In pieces and yet pieced together,the man you like or not it's up to you whether you do.
I remain a reminder of the pain now gone and one remembers a touch too much at times,
hard and easy times,crayoned soft times,lead pencil lines that tore across my skin,tin tack look back time pressing in on me,
but you did not see me fall or bleed, recognise the need,stem the flow,
it was I who stood aside and watched me slowly drop and couldn't stop the embolism,attacked by criticism,the symbolism all but knew and I,and I
was crucified bled out,read out cuneiform until it dawned on me that you could see and I was but a symptom not the cause.

She'd crayoned indiscriminate orange cheer and saw that she'd later been placed high up on the fridge door. From experience she knew that this meant that she had created something of worth, something with a 3-year-old's indiscriminate love, kept in place by a bright red magnet right next to a half-finished shopping list.  

At their next visit she pointed and laughed - it was still there, though a little askew and over-caressed, judging by the finger-grease stains. Her pride was self-evident as she presented the picture's yellow counterpart and watched it being mounted with a matching magnet.  

This time she noticed the tears, so had to ask her mum what that meant.  

She quickly learned and later at the Royal Academy she was ready with a handkerchief when her grandfather teared up staring up at the family portrait in her signature sunshine palette. She enjoyed the smile as he reached up as if to bless the elevated portrait with his familiar caress and grand-paternal pride.  

But the repeated queries about the bright red spot that featured on most of her portraits went unanswered.

BABBY DADDY

in your tiny hand
I become a crayoned man
much better than I am

Bluetack'd to the fridge
I an icon
made holy by my child

"I love my b a bb y!"
you name me in rainbow
all my "d's" look the other way

Hieronymus Bosch, who was only four,
Had toddled right out of my life,
I didn’t know whether he’d gone on his own
Or left with the trouble and strife.
She’d rave and she’d threaten to fly the coop
As she said that my ways were strange,
But whether she’d bother to take him too
Would have meant a remarkable change.

‘Why did you pick such a horrible name,’
She’d say, as she ladled the stew,
‘You gave him the name of a painter insane,’
(As he baited the bears at the zoo).
‘How can he live a commonplace life
With a moniker he can’t spell?
You’ve sentenced your son to eternal strife
Like that panel, a painting of hell.’

Hieronymus, he didn’t care about this,
He wanted to picture his world,
He’d flop and he’d slop in the mud, in his bliss,
And paint, till his toes had curled.
I knew that he’d be a surrealist when
He played with his mash, and was cute,
He swished it around on his palette to look
Like a man with a nose like a flute.

‘That kid is so gruesome,’ the wife had exclaimed,
‘He’s set on a roadway to hell.’
He’d crayoned a picture of me and her sister
Entwined on her favourite bell.
‘He isn’t like others,’ I used to exclaim,
‘He sees what he sees inside out,
He doesn’t like others, like hair-splitting mothers,’
And that’s when she started to shout.

I’ve searched and I’ve searched for Heironymus Bosch,
I’m trying to follow his trail,
The long line of beetles he captured in treacle,
The dead dog that’s eating its tail.
I know that he’s not with the trouble and strife
For she went into hiding in Greece,
He should be called Chester, the lad’s such a jester,
I guess I’ll be calling the Police.

David Lewis Paget

.
I wish to live on the white page,
Cumulus as cloud, be all puffy,
Pure in new world without guile,
My thin body as bounty, cloud eyed
Sky of unsullied page, true kingdom
Of imagination, without euphemism,
Nor malice, but truth, cleanest light,
Where a child's drawings are welcome
Always, waiting to be rainbow crayoned,
Coloured sheen as the dawn appearing
At blackest moons' end, sheet of seraphim
Created, dreamt of wood and earth and sun.
.

How it is to be a child.

A creature forged in forges
of crayoned little drawings

A spirit of an open soul
a heart that's always soaring

Don't tell them yet,
don't tell them yet,
how cruel the world can be.

They'll never know,
they'll never know,
if we never let them see.

Of course I’m selfish
What else would I be
Kneeling on bones and shielding them
With my body
With bared teeth
Well where else would I be
Does anybody not build this sort of monument
I want to know whose fridge isn’t covered
With crayoned blueprints
And then I want it to be me
Who told me to think this stuff
And when did I start listening
When did I stop fighting the hands
Pulling at my shoulders and waist
And turn inward instead
But also
Where the **** else would I be

BABBY DADDY

in your tiny hand
I become a crayoned man
much better than I am

Blutack'd to the fridge
I an icon
made holy by my child

"I love my b a bb y!"
you name me in rainbow
all my "d's" look the other way

REVISITING NO. 31 O'HIGGINS ROAD,
CURRAGH CAMP, CO. KILDARE

Time, that great
wind blew

away all the windows
doors and walls

of the home where
I had learnt to read

until now no house
exists at all.

Only the empty space
that a bird flies through.

I keep the roof
over my head

just to spite time
the one I drew with crayon

it still persists
in the child's mind.

My short-sighted dyslexic eye
can still see such things

a herd of brontosauri
moving from sentence to sentence

across a wilderness
of pages.

My finger tracing the sound
of a name

R.M. Ballantyne
my mouth trying to do the same.

Time too has taken
away the boy

and by some strange alchemy
made me an old man.

But the child's mind
laughs at this trick

the mere aging
of flesh.

The child that
cannot die.

The house that doesn't exist
except for my crayoned purple roof

and a name I still like
to sound.

"Come words!" I command them
as they gather me

hold me like flowers
held in a hand.

The herd of brontosauri
moving now from

one page
to the next.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

          Why Can’t You Come Home for Christmas, Daddy?

Christmas eve – and the conversation is low
The chaplains have left the men with their blessings
And have in their turn been blessed by the men
Who gather now with powdered coffee, with words

Christmas eve – written in a little child’s hand:
“Why can’t you come home for Christmas, Daddy?”
And a crayoned Santa Claus who can fly
Above the razor wire, and far away

Christmas eve - midnight’s canvas-pillowed tears
Christmas at home someday - only ten years

REVISITING NO. 31 O'HIGGINS ROAD

Time, that great
wind blew

away all the windows
doors and walls

of the home where
I had learnt to read

until now no house
exists at all.

Only the empty space
that a bird flies through.

I keep the roof
over my head

just to spite time
the one I drew with crayon

it still persists
in the child's mind.

My short -sighted disxyleic eye
can still see such things

a herd of brontosauri
moving from sentence to sentence

across a wilderness
of pages.

My finger tracing the sound
of a name

R.M. Ballantyne
my mouth trying to do the same.

Time too has taken
away the boy

and by some strange alchemy
made me an old man.

But the child's mind
laughs at this trick

the mere aging
of flesh.

The child that
cannot die.

The house that doesn't exist
except for my crayoned purple roof

and a name I still like
to sound.

"Come words!" I command them
as they gather me

hold me like flowers
held in a hand.

The herd of brontosauri
moving now from

one page
to the next.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                    P­aper Sacks I have Known – 2

Like a block of marble waiting to be carved
A paper sack is art waiting to be made
Because after Mom puts the groceries away
The empty sack is full of possibilities:

A royal crown with construction-paper jewels
A Robin Hood hat if you fold it just right
A Halloween mask for a scary trick-or-treat
(Smell my feet; give me something good to eat!)
A boat
A puppet
A pinata
A brave knight’s armor
A cat toy
A three-year-old-daughter toy
A pony express rider’s mail pouch
A kite (I could never make mine fly)
A book cover without adverts
A canvas for crayon art
A luminaria
A matte to be cut out, crayoned on, and framed

And after your art is sent into the world
That tuckered-out sack, that sleepy little sack
Is tucked into bed in the warm garden soil
To awaken in the spring as flowers for you!

Childhood - no batteries or programming required

Why are all the girls simpering
Over young Norman Bates?
His life comes to him
On food carts and plates

My mum would let me
Leave anytime
And not lock me up
In her dreams of lost crimes

But no, they’re for Norman
They’re aching for him
They like his strange eyes
His thick crayoned skin

They wait on the corners
They text him in town
To them he’s a curio
Not a sick clown

They sing with sympathy
And swoon in real spice
“Oh isn’t he cutesy
Incredibly nice”

Those girls thinks he’s weird
In a wholly good way
How wrong they are
What would mother say?

Plenty of time to make it
More than enough to care
Why don’t you swing by his house?
There’s always a room to spare

REVISITING NO. 31 O'HIGGINS ROAD,
CURRAGH CAMP, CO. KILDARE

Time, that great
wind blew

away all the windows
doors and walls

of the home where
I had learnt to read

until now no house
exists at all.

Only the empty space
that a bird flies through.

I keep the roof
over my head

just to spite time
the one I drew with crayon

it still persists
in the child's mind.

My short-sighted dyslexic eye
can still see such things

a herd of brontosauri
moving from sentence to sentence

across a wilderness
of pages.

My finger tracing the sound
of a name

R.M. Ballantyne
my mouth trying to do the same.

Time too has taken
away the boy

and by some strange alchemy
made me an old man.

But the child's mind
laughs at this trick

the mere aging
of flesh.

The child that
cannot die.

The house that doesn't exist
except for my crayoned purple roof

and a name I still like
to sound.

"Come words!" I command them
as they gather me

hold me like flowers
held in a hand.

The herd of brontosauri
moving now from

one page
to the next.

This **** spills too much
this dam strains
wrong things in

bigger awareness's
and smaller fears
puppet me out

drift against a marker
with knobbly knees
'neath cutoffs

and crayoned
messages meant
sincerely

an arm around
a younger self
this way i say

REVISITING NO. 31 O'HIGGINS ROAD

Time, that great
wind blew

away all the windows
doors and walls

of the home where
I had learnt to read

until now no house
exists at all.

Only the empty space
that a bird flies through.

I keep the roof
over my head

just to spite time
the one I drew with crayon

it still persists
in the child's mind.

My short -sighted disxyleic eye
can still see such things

a herd of brontosauri
moving from sentence to sentence

across a wilderness
of pages.

My finger tracing the sound
of a name

R.M. Ballantyne
my mouth trying to do the same.

Time too has taken
away the boy

and by some strange alchemy
made me an old man.

But the child's mind
laughs at this trick

the mere aging
of flesh.

The child that
cannot die.

The house that doesn't exist
except for my crayoned purple roof

and a name I still like
to sound.

"Come words!" I command them
as they gather me

hold me like flowers
held in a hand.

The herd of brontosauri
moving now from

one page
to the next.

THE MUSIC OF WHAT HAPPENS

The sun a crazy crayoned
yellow swirl

with a sky so blue it has
completely used up the blue crayon.

This is Memory’s drawing of...
...a moment from 1972

complete with furze declaring:
“WE ARE YELLOW TOO!”

I sit stick-person-like upon an Irish hill
upon which perches the old English graveyard.

I read to English soldiers from 1872
MARY BARTON and  NORTH AND SOUTH and such like.

A captive audience of broken Celtic crosses.

They listen with all of themselves.

They listen through wild flowers and grasses
holding fast to the sound of my living

voice.

And when sun showers
Interrupt the text of my breath

I climb inside
some tumble-down-tomb

and read so that
even the rain stops

to listen & then

I freewheel down the hill
back to the world of tea.

My dead soldiers
eagerly awaiting

tomorrow’s chapter.  

*

Reading for my Leaving Cert. If you have ever seen the John Huston version of Joyce's THE DEAD then...you have seen the entrance to this graveyard. and a few of its graves covered in snow..it's briefly glimpsed as the voiceover narrates the beautiful passage "...: snow is falling all over Ireland...."