Judas Hand

 

 

 

 

Judas Hand

( a 55)

 

March howls its broken promise

to erase the extra decades in your bones;

 

you're spent in bed still feeling

the burn that made the ash.

 

The ghostwind cuts

your lips with a dead man's kiss.

 

You forget hummingbirds are coming

like children cured by the sea

 

and wish you'd never bet

on that judas hand.

 

 

 

 

March 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for the Word Garden Word List 

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes: a poker hand of black aces and eights with a card in the hole is called a dead man's hand, after the hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was shot in the back of the head in Deadwood, Dakota Territory 1876. It's also known as the judas hand. Alternatively, a judas hand can be three tens, representing the thirty pieces of silver Judas Iscariot received for betraying Jesus Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Landscape in Stormy Weather 1885 ©Vincent Van Gogh  Public Domain

Display in Deadwood, South Dakota with the dead man's hand (here given as A♠ A♣ 8♠ 8♣ 9♦) Vidor at English Wikipedia.Public Domain

Brujeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brujeria

 

I don't know what fetch

was living in his hair

but there was always something

 

when it blew back in the hot breath

of the redtangled hills; new-hatched snakes perhaps

curling from the small broken shells of his words,

 

tendrilous avatars in those nights that hid

the color of blood so well;

or soft rain-threads each sweet as a sugarfall

 

on my open face as we made love,

for the medicine painting, not la brujeria,

skintalking the Healing Way.

 

Whatever it was, it

wasn't the mild dog in his eyes,

not fur, not a tail-wag.

 

It was syllogistic, sensate, restless;

hungry as a hopping flea.

whose tiny itch is only felt later.

Perhaps it even had Buddha nature,

or something else

 borrowed from Kali.

 

It was one of those things about him

that taught me to look away.

I saw only its soft brown habitat

as I slipped my fingers through

felt its satin dance

against my touch

but what lived there never left

like all the other things I tried to disappear.

I could feel them breathing

though they never made a sound

not even now when

they ghost him back to my dreams.

August 2023

posted for Odd Little Things

at desperate poets

 

Art nouveau lithograph poster 1903 ©Alphonse Mucha  Public Domain

Man with Long Hair, ©Odd Nedrum    Fair Use

 

Soup Kitchen

 

 

 

 Soup Kitchen

After the blizzard

it was warm in the kitchen

where the angel-witch cooked.

 

All the survivors

crawled in from the avalanche:

the lost girls, bent heroines,

 

peacocks and choirboys,

pulled along by the wine

to canned soup and oranges,

 

looking for the revolution

that was always stillborn.

He was just another strategy

 

there in the churn

of dream-debris bobbing, plaintive

as old violins; scooped, angular,

 

scuffed but still thrumming.

His sorrows tempted me

but when I touched him

 

he growled

like a sore dog.

Finally the angel-witch

 

took him to Phoenix 

and we were all stuck

with her snow and tomato soup.

March 2022

some nonsense for Shay's Word List #18:

Leonard Cohen

Note: My favorite song of Cohen's is the first I ever heard, Suzanne, released in '67. It was a part of this time I chose to write about, in particular, the blizzard of 1967, which I spent marooned in my best friend's apartment with J.J Cale's , the Doors' and Cohen's music, and a crowd of assorted misfits. 

 

Some notes on the actual event: 

 

"The Chicago blizzard of 1967 struck northeast Illinois and northwest Indiana on January 26–27, 1967, with a record-setting 23 inches ..snow fall in Chicago and its suburbs before the storm abated the next morning. As of January 2022, it remains the greatest snowfall in one storm in Chicago history..

 

The snow fell continuously in Chicago and surrounding areas from 5:02 am on Thursday, January 26 until 10:10 am Friday .. sources estimate [between] 20,000 - 50,000 cars and 800-1,100 buses [were]stranded...Gusts of 48 to 53 miles per hour..caused large snowdrifts..[and]..the blizzard closed both Midway Airport and O'Hare Airport. Ten-foot drifts covered the runways at Midway. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley ordered city workers to clear city streets around the clock..the city was virtually shut down and area schools were closed.^"~wikipedia 

Images: Cars stranded at Oakwood entrance to Lakeshore Drive, manipulated, Fair Use

Volkswagon Beetle stuck in snowdrift at Stockton and Diversey, manipulated,  Fair Use

Both photos © the Chicago Tribune historical photos, January, 1967