Weeklings

Weeklings

Monday's child consumes her face,

Tuesday's child is lost in space.

Wednesday's child's not what he seems,

Thursday's child's a drug that dreams.

Friday's child works hard for her money

so Saturday's child can steal it on Sunday.

And the child that's born on Black Sabbath day

buys the blind bride a ring, then walks away.

Banker, oilman, Blackwater sniper

dance before the unpaid piper.

~June 2016

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Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image by Edward Gorey, via the internet
No copyright infringement intended

The Bastard

"Hey babe, what's in your eyes?
I saw them flashing like airplane lights.
...What's that laughing in your smile?

...If that's your love, just leave me blind..."
~Jagger-Richards, You Got The Silver



The Bastard

It wasn't enough

performing for the

shell-game professors

and small-time grocers

you called family.

O no.

It wasn't enough

to scrub your drawers,

peel your cow's-tongue,

wait graveyard tables

to feed the child.

O no,

you had to call me

'an authoress.'

A bastard could never

belong in your world

unless it was you.

 ~June 2016

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Flash 55 Plus

Image: Tables for Ladies, 1930, by Edward Hopper  Fair use via wikiart.org

Broken

 

Broken

They were married by the moon

on the Pyramid of the Sun,

best man from the Society of Jaguars,

for bridesmaid a flower boy

who loved her yellow hair,

who thought he spoke English,

words lava reefs cooling

in the Pacific of his Español.

They walked, a sun-specked

collection of curiosities, laughing 

along the Avenue of the Dead,

asked the moon, the sun, the stars,

the snarl of the watching Jaguars

for a child

but none came. Broke,

they went back to the States.

He threw the I Ching; the marriage

was annulled. In the neon-long after,

she lost the feel of his deer's eye

startling wild in the dark, the dazzled

pink walls, azure doors, stone streets 

and jade palms of Mexico

where her heart was emptied

on the altar of the Sun.

~May 2016

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Weekend Challenge

 You can read about the setting of this story, Teotihuacan, Mexico,   here.

Image; by Saiko: Terracotta figures from Teotihuacan in the Louvre, via wikimedia commons

Manipulated.

Hunter's Wish

Hunter's Wish

I see you in dreams,

arms akimbo clutched one-handed,

a beige on blond bending

two-dimensional distortion,

Modigliani-stretched 

or a cave painting:

Hunter, missing one forearm.

Thin as the spear

you no longer throw,

reluctant to grasp

anything at all, 

or pick up the wish

so long on your table,

staring you down,

sealed or smeared,

perhaps just trash or

scratched in a code

mathematically impermeable.

Yet I with no math,

no science, no separated brain

can read,

flat and open as a daisy,

the plain letters curved as

salmon's backs leaping,

your wish for hunt's end:

only be good, it says,

(in antelope tracks, in burnt bones

in crumbled earth,) 

be good

to yourself.
Don't forget how to use
the hand you have left.

~May 2016

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Challenge: Fireblossom Friday

Image: by SiefkinDR :Photo of outline of a human hand, dated 27,000 Before Present Era, dsplayed at the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale (Museum of National Archeology). in the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye via wikimedia commons

Goodbye Without An End

Goodbye Without An End

Let me leave where it all begins.

Let me meet you where fires fail.

Let me know you at last as my kin,

where breath is as close as skin,

where we don't know the end of the tale;

where it's better to go than stay

where it's better to dream than wake

tossed on the sparkle and spray

until we dive or break.

~May 2016

My muse seems to be taking a bit of a hiatus, dear readers and friends. As usual, if something comes, I will write it; otherwise I ask you to forgive my absence. Best of summers to you all and as always, thanks for the support over so many years.

Image: Harald Sohlberg, Sea Spray, 1908, pen,ink and watercolor on paper
Fair use.