Aardvark

 

 

 

 Aardvark

 

"..Don't put on any airs when you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue.

They got some hungry women there and they'll really make a mess out of you..."

~Bob Dylan, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

 

 

 

What were you to me back then,

with your tumbled hair and tequila?

Even Dali had his aardvark, led uncomplaining

 

through the dirty streets of Paris,

a glass-globe feast for insatiable eyes.

Impossible to know

what I was to you.

Your face was hinged,

 

a door at times standing open,

cracked to show the arid

 

arabesques of spiders 

smiling in Poe's palace. Others

locked and bolted, bare and flash

 

as clean brass before it's engraved.

All I remember is you held me

like diamonds worked into your arms' ring

there in the tedium of the shelter

among the do-gooders and the riffraff.

 

The cardboard walls flexed with our love

but when I slipped the rhinestone lead

from your sleek throat

 

you ran

and the streets of Paris

emptied.

~August 2024

 

 

 

 

 

Process note: The photo of Dali shown actually is of he and his pet anteater. Poetic license.

 

 

posted for WG Word List at

Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Dali takes his anteater for a stroll in Paris, 1969    Public Domain

The Smiling Spider, 1887, Odillon Redon, Louvre, Paris    Public Domain

Friday 55 May 18 2018

Another Friday rolls up to offer our brains a wrestle with that fetching little fussy form, the flash fiction 55, brought to the world by a man not fussy and who probably would not relate to fetching, Galen Hayes. Thank you, G-man, (hopefully being entertained by our attempts wherever the good go) for this ever-reliable basket of tricks. The rules are simple, no rules except the word count, 55 of them, no more no less, in any style, shape or slant that offers itself up to your pen. Visiting, commenting, etc is entirely optional because, this is purely about you, writing. Link your result in the comments below between Friday and Saturday at midnight, and I will be by to read what you have rustled up.

Now for a little spelunking...

The Cave

I won't go into the cave, I said

but I'll come as far as the edge. I

heard you laugh and promise

you had all the night inside; moon

stars, pearled city lights,

fireflies,wine-

silvered dreams.

Come you hissed,

louder, redder;

Oh no my dear oh no

I learned long ago

what lives in caves.

~May 2018

Images: Cave Finn, opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, 1900 ©Ivan Bilbin   Public domain.

Detail, Minotaur with dead horse in front of a cave facing a girl in a veil, 1936, ©Pablo Picasso

Fair Use.

Brute Hill

Brute Hill

Ula La was a frycook

at Joy DuVeeve's saloon.

Rusty Naylor was a gambler

who overshot the moon.

Two Gun Shogun smoked his long stemmed pipe;

his katana made no sound.

Little Mort the Undertaker put

old Rusty in the ground.

Loup Garou and Bill McKinley

passed Brute Hill on the high noon train

to catch a bite at Joy DuVeeve's

before the plague coach came.

Heart of lead
and heart of black fade out without a sound.

Heart of gold
and heart of green still laugh and still beat on.

~June 2017

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Some silliness for Fireblossom's Paper Moon

Images: Going West, 1934-35, ©Jackson Pollack. Fair Use.

The Women Friends, 1917, by Gustav Klimt. Public Domain

Chaos Spoon

Chaos Spoon

The figures made the clock work

or were made of clockwork

themselves on a flat plate desert

burnt umber with hunger

where anaplasia is served

with a big chaos spoon.

Fried eggs through the window

shells crushed to dust:

They knew the time

They built the place

where the Handmaid of Fire

and the Blinded Face

kiss with the long drawn

howl of Fate under a black-holed sun

on a scoured afternoon in July.

Those who live by the Lie

will die by the gun, but not before

they make us a bed,

too hard, too long

in  the dreamkiller's cell

feed us rotten red meat

from a toxic pail, pour us

too much dry air from

the poison well. It's a nightmare in time

to lose the door,  but it's better by far

to have a dead fire than to make

the world burn for a dime.

 ~August 2016

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Fireblossom Friday
I only wish ALL of this was a dream.

 Optional Musical Accompaniment

anaplasia : n.Reversion of cells to an immature or a less differentiated form, as occurs in most malignant tumors.

~The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Image:The Meeting of the Illusion and the Arrested Moment - Fried Eggs Presented in a Spoon, 1932, by Salvidor Dali  Fair Use via wikiart-org

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

posted for   real toads

Weekend Challenge

Optional Musical Accompaniment

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