with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless certain
bits and bytes are
altered
but the wind still blows over
Savannah
and in the Spring
the turkey buzzard struts and
flounces before his
hens.

It is seven this crisp April morning. In woods before the rising path reveals the heath, there, no there, just there are the first bluebells. Most still hide their pendulous bells in sheath-like petals. When open into a bell the end flounces, splits, curls back on itself. Then the petals reveal their delicate shades of light-thriven lavender. The stout purposeful stem meanwhile allows a gathering of bells, no, a necklace of bells, bells laced around the neck.
 
I cannot look at this flower without knowing it is the colour that so often graces your purposeful frame, arrayed in the simplest clothes, so often in layered friendly shades; so often falling, loose, quiet, light-enhancing as your blue with grey with green eyes that hold my gaze in pillow-closeness, in that magnification of those intimate moments when one can only whisper.
 
The common bluebell is the first whisper of summer. It is Endymion, of the bower, a 'bower quiet for us and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing'. In that mornings’ moment I am John and you *****. May we this vernal evening sit together as the dusk gathers darkness 'and with full happiness. . . trace the story of Endymion. . . the very music of its name gone into my being'.

i. when completely alone i know what i am.
no, my brain is a liar, is a lie, is a – turn it off.

ii. i run out: on the wildering of my selves.
i trim them down; less to disguise, less to carry.

iii. please take one with you on your way out.
there will not be a chase.

When stretch'd on one's bed
With a fierce-throbbing head,
Which preculdes alike thought or repose,
How little one cares
For the grandest affairs
That may busy the world as it goes!

How little one feels
For the waltzes and reels
Of our Dance-loving friends at a Ball!
How slight one's concern
To conjecture or learn
What their flounces or hearts may befall.

How little one minds
If a company dines
On the best that the Season affords!
How short is one's muse
O'er the Sauces and Stews,
Or the Guests, be they Beggars or Lords.

How little the Bells,
Ring they Peels, toll they Knells,
Can attract our attention or Ears!
The Bride may be married,
The Corse may be carried
And touch nor our hopes nor our fears.

Our own ****** pains
Ev'ry faculty chains;
We can feel on no subject besides.
Tis in health and in ease
We the power must seize
For our friends and our souls to provide.

I feel like Godzilla in a frilly party dress
Wearing ribbons and flounces while causing distress
Or a jalapeno pepper in a pumpkin pie,
Dangerously spicy and living a lie
spiky and snarly like a cat in a cage,
yet trussed up in garlands that tighten with age
I'm sweet on the outside, I'm feeling quite witchy,
If you've read my poem, you'll say I'm just ******.

I catch the rapido train from Milano and edge slowly westward through the stops and starts of frozen points and village stations. The heating fails and an offer of warmer seats in another compartment. I decide to stay here. I put on my coat, scarf, hat and gloves and sit alone. In my grieving time, I feel closer to the cold world outside as it moves past me, intermittently. Falling snow in window-framed landscapes.            

Sky gun metal grey
shot through
with sunset ribbons.
                                                                                                          
Dusk eases into black-cornered night. After Maghera, the train seems to race to the sea. It rumbles onto the Ponte della Ferrovia, stretching out across the Laguna Veneta. Suddenly, a jonquil circle moon pulls the winter clouds back and shines a lemony silver torch across the inky waters. Crazed and cracked sheets of ice lie across the depthless lagoon. The train slows again and slides into Santa Lucia. I walk into the night.                                                                                               
Bleak midwinter      
sea-iced night wind
bites bitter.
                                                                                                      
No. 2 Diretto winding down the Canal Grande.  The foggy night muffles the guttural throb of the engine and turns mundane sounds into mysteries. Through the window of the vaporetto stop, the lights of Piazza San Marco are an empty auditorium of an opera house. Walking to Corte Barozzi, I hear the doleful tolling of midnight bells; the slapping of water and the *****-***** of the gondolas’ mooring chains. Faraway a busker sings Orfeo lamenting his lost Eurydice, left in Hades.
I wake to La Serenissima, bejewelled.                                                                                                                           
Weak winter sunshine
Istrian stone walls
flushed rosy.
                                                                                                          
Rooftops glowing. Sun streaming golden between the neck and wings of the masted Lion. Mist has lifted, the sky cloudless; I look across the sparkling Guidecca canal and beyond to the shimmering horizon.          
Molten mud
bittersweetness demi-tasse
Florian’s hot chocolate                    

I walk the maze of streets, squares and bridges; passing marble well-heads and fountains, places of assignation. I walk on stones sculpted by hands, feet and the breath of the sea. Secrets and melancholy are cast in these stones.                                                                  

At Fondamente Nuove, I take Vaporetto no.41 to Cimitero. We chug across the laguna, arriving at  the western wall of San Michele.  I thread through the dead, along pathways and between gravestones. At the furthest end of the Cemetery island, Vera and Igor Stravinsky lie in parallel graves like two single beds in an hotel room. Names at the head, a simple cross at the foot of the white stone slab. Nearby, his flamboyant mentor Serge Diaghalev. His grave, a gothic birdbath for ravens, has a Russian inscription; straggly pink carnations, a red votive candle and a pair of ragged ballet shoes with flounces of black and aquamarine tulle tied to their the ribbons. So many dead in mausoleums; demure plots; curious walled filing cabinets, marble drawer ossuaries.
                                                                                                      
Bare, whispering Poplars
swaying swirling shadows
graves rest beneath          

I walk to the other end of the island and frame Venezia in the central arch of the Byzantine gateway.  I see that sketchy horizontal strip of rusty brick, with strong verticals of campaniles and domes. It is here, before 4 o’clock closing time, I throw your ashes to the sea and run to catch the last boat.                                                                                          

Beacon light orange
glittering ripples
on the dove grey lagoon.

© M.L.Emmett
First published in New Poets 14: Snatching Time, 2007, Wakefield Press, Kent Town SA.
To view with Images: Poems for Poodles https://magicpoet01.wordpress.com

Scraps of lumber, a touch of paint,
with love, became a home.
To the smallest of the birds,
that to our yard would roam.

In his basement workshop,
Grandpa would spend hours.
With his hand saw, brace and bit,
no use of electric power.

At each rip of the saw,
I'd hear that familiar sound.
I'd watch as sawdust drifted,
like pixie dust, to the ground.

With blackened nails and hammer,
he'd assemble the bird houses.
Then he'd paint them brightly,
adding curliques and flounces.

A bit of wire in a hook,
then hung in the Pear tree.
Filled our mornings with the song,
from the Finches and Chick-a-dees.

in my stairway stumble
body and step collides

the bangs and bounces
meet the rug burn slides

as inner chaos flounces
my aches scream inside

rocking in silence

...with no one to hear

Violet, in her blue dress
Of fresh, giddy dreams,
Flounces under waves of wind;
Twirling and bowing
To dandelion greens.

Throwing caution to the breeze,
Unveils her heart
With envious ease;
A natural flirt, and temptingly close
To feathery pink mimosa groves.

Happily she flounces
and bounces
on the ground in
her lemongrass-hued
dress of whatnots

Way back when
The worries of the world
Were nonexistent
She ruled the forests
The toadstool wonders

She never thinks
of sadness or misery as
she performs her silhouetted
pirouette
for the birds

And as she flies
Above the trees she thinks
to herself
It will be like this
forever

Spring**

How many sticky buds, candle ends
sprout from the branches! Steaming
April. Puberty sweats from the park,
and the forest’s blatantly gleaming.

A noose of feathered throats grips
the wood’s larynx, a lassoed steer,
netted, like a gladiatorial *****,
it groans steel-piped sonatas here.

Poetry! Be a Greek sponge with suckers,
among green stickiness drenched,
I’ll consent, by the sopping wood
of a green-stained garden bench.

Grow sumptuous pleats and flounces,
**** up the gullies and clouds,
Poetry, tonight, I’ll squeeze you out
to make the parched sheets flower.

In a dire little spire's shadow
A form pitters, admires a sad show
A girl of the world waits on the drab stone
Waits to unfurl the curl of her mad bones

Hurrying the boldness
To give those bones flight
Into the noblest
Last act of performance night
or exercise in masked spite
Irrelevant, an embellished fate
She crouches, contemplates
The height, the likely injurious spate
The form flounces around the wait

This **** of this morning
Almost hawk of forlorn dawning
Sures it's tastes, titillates
Red shine in the eye reflects
Mind's highs and shy delections
Foreseeing shards of residual head spread
Over acutely angled limbs
and digits subtracted and mangled

To no surprise she rises
It sizes up the prize that provided
An answer to lies so hideously divided
And a thirst for the worst that insidious lives wish
Saviour of absent behaviour
No try, no cry, no mind for saving her
A foot left the paving, the body flailing
Regaining
On gravity and the audacity
Of life's magnanimous, massive, flaccid needs
A sound of pained muddle hounds the cease
Years regain in puddles on the dusty concrete
A prayer said alone from a just, husky tree

***** and undetected
The monster's expected scorn ejected
He moves now towards the poor unsuspecting's rejected
Silhouette of chance and dances dankly in his delected
Tragedy of red majesty and death's rich tapestry perfected

It tangles, twists and twines,
loop the loop around your neck.

bounces and flounces,
swept in the wind.

knotted and split,
frayed at the ends,

tamed with a plastic,
tied into place,

only for it to slip,
and envelope your nape
.

Your poem dances, flounces
Making a rhythm into a hum
Woodland spirits from Isadora
Duncan to Barcelona, flemenco,
The Merry Widow’s mythical song.

Someone once said to me, “It’s the little things that drive you crazy!”

It’s not.

It’s the little things that drive you sane — pills, pats and pets.

All honor for what is small: dollops and gobs and dabs, the edges of pie crusts, chocolate shavings.

Hail micro-sacredness of life, tiny flotsam and mini-jetsam — veins, mists, creeks, fogs.

Is it not life’s micro-detail, womp and woof of wondrous world, that moves us to gratitude?

Drops, pinches, dashes, rain, cinnamon, lotion; fermions, flounces, hadrons, hats, bosons, bacon bits, antiquarks — there is a breath-taking thereness in the smallest things.

And then at last there is the weight and force of slivered, severed time.
The massive power of one, tiny, single “was.”

The mighty microsity of one “will be.”

And the astonishing force of this quickly, quarky, snarky second’s “is.