Peace arrived in Portland today, landing silently on stocking feet, cocooning itself inside worn, woolen wings.
The world is a dangerous gyroscope of misunderstanding and fear.
So once a year, for a blink of fifteen minutes, Peace escapes its impossible task and closes its all-seeing eyes in a much-needed nap.
Peace slept unexpectedly in Port
You are the smell of a full moon over Babylon,
the taste of a credit card declined by an angel,
the sound of an idea not ripe enough to pick.
the look of a whisper overheard by the dying,
You are the feel of saxophones with reeds made of peaches.
“You have a heart the size of a hummingbird’s.”
The transparent x-ray was held out before me, antiseptic sympathy dripping off the white coat.
“And that means?”
I leaned forward, staring at the Miro of balanced organs, trying to see something familiar in the abstract.
“I’m sorry. A heart this small beats twice as fast. Think of it as constant overtime. I’m afraid to say maybe three weeks.”
I left. No tears, no pain, no regrets.
A heart the size of a hummingbird’s experiences life twice as fast.
He filled the room with lightning bugs, kept in mason jars lined with love letters.
He nourished them with wine and spoken words of poetry until their hearts synched with his own.
And then, one moonless night in August, he released them to the dark where they silently spelled her name against the blackboard of the sky.
“This will only hurt a bit.”
The lie roped his lips into a false smile as he tapped the syringe with a finger.
Air bubbles of mistrust burst like shattered truth.
Why is it that the inoculation for heartbreak is just as painful as the virus of love?
“I am nobody! Who are you?”
She floats out of her mid-size Ford like some anorexic Aphrodite.
“By just such a hazard,”
Emily Dickinson has suffered yet another dent
At the Amherst Public Library.
And it is my job,
For “I asked no other thing,”
To rehabilitate the beloved poet’s hapless vehicle,
Return it to its measure as a reliable, solid sedan,
Body free of scars, engine finely tuned.
I am up to the task.
Next Wednesday after two, Miss Dickinson.
“Unmoved, she (leaves) the chariot’s pausing,”
Expecting complete conservative splendor
After the next moon’s evening ride.
The Belle departs upon the whisper of my
silent, sweet adieu,
A (certified mechanic) kneeling upon her mat,”
Who desires nothing more than to transport her words
on the breath of power,
the muscle of sheer speed.
“So I must baffle at the hint, and cipher at the sign,”
If I, the poet’s poor mechanic,
Could muster nerve and talent
To pimp out Emily’s ride.
“Some things that fly there be”
On the turbo-charged V8.
“Some things that stay there be”
On soft-tread tires, sporting dubs.
“So breathless till I passed her,”
On performance lowering springs.
“Angels when the sun is hottest
May be seen the sands among.”
But my seraph garbed in white
Would find such delicate vision
Guarded by the darkest tint.
And to leave no detail unmatched, forsaken,
For “inebriate of air am I, and debauchee of dew,”
I would string vanilla-scented heliotrope,
A rearview garland of bee dyspepsia,
To pimp out Emily’s ride.
But I only had till two on Wednesday,
Not time enough to love.
So I merely pounded out Emily’s dent
And let the pimp out go.
For this “little tail(pipe) of love, I thought,
(Is) large enough for me.”
(My apologies to Emily Dickinson, her fans, Ford, and auto mechanics everywhere)
Copyright 2014
I want to grab your stem , carve you like a pumpkin
Scoop the fleshy seeds out of your pulpy core
Roast them in my oven for a late-night snack.
I want to sculpt your grin like a jack-o’-lantern,
Using a flick of the wrist, a flip of the whim
Shape your lips into the mouth of my choice.
I want to create the cast of your eyes
As wicked and decadent,
Abandon you totally to a haunt of despair.
I want to hold my breath in baseless superstition,
As I lodge my pagan fire in the hollow of your shell.
And I want to trick your treats
Under this absent midnight moon.
This eve belongs to lost souls and sinners.
Confession and contrition are too holy for us now.
Copyright 2013
(For the Ninja of Japanese Beetles)
The letters are lacy, vintage, bound well along the ends with sturdy strong sounds.
“Grandmother.”
She drapes the word like a shawl around her shoulders, finding comfort in its earthy warm color and unexpected worn softness.
Curling her body into a tight little ball, she slips easily within the concentric “o’s” of “mother” and “grandmother,” a place of unnoticed power and unlimited pride.
She whispers the baby’s new name as if it were magic, unraveling each pronounced sound, stringing them together to form a first memory.
And later tonight, under the watchful guidance of a perfect full moon, she will weave this name next to her own, using the delicate tender threads to create a new circle.
(For Lisa, world’s happiest grandmother)
Copyright 2013
What do you give a poet on her birthday?
A box of rare heirloom adjectives?
Balloons filled with helium and saucy alliteration?
Maybe a matched brace of rhyming nouns for the coffee table?
The elusive consummate title refuses to stay on the cake.
And the silver bracelet of meter and metaphor would bend my budget.
No.
None of these are fitting gifts to offer a poet.
So here is a piñata, shaped like a stanza, chock full of random words and left- over grammar.
And because you’re a poet and today is your birthday,
You’ll know what to do.
(For Ginny in my Wednesday Writer’s Group, a very fine poet indeed)
Copyright 2013
Genghis Khan sits down at the typewriter, a portable Underwood.
His tortured soul desperately tries to conjure up a Mongolian metaphor for love.
It is a task of barbaric proportions.
Mongol is, as yet, an unwritten language birthed from bone and mayhem.
The sounds are raw and feral.
No font can cage their nature.
But the Great Khan, Universal Ruler, senses a sonnet steeped in The Steppes coursing somewhere under his leather-laced armor.
Certain tribal concubines have indicated this to be his heart.
They have placed their tiny bird-like hands over his iron chest and summoned forth strange visions.
A heart!
As if the Great Khan, master of Central Asia, scourge of China, has need for a heart.
Empires are carved out of destruction, death.
A heart!
A heart would be a liability, a stigma of weakness.
And yet?
Genghis feels an unknown creature course through his veins and stop to drink at the place where the concubines held their tender young palms.
His coarsened skin tremors at the memory.
And so, Genghis Khan, Emperor of Oceans, sits at the typewriter, a portable Underwood, hands bloodied with conquest, body still suited for war.
He sheaths his emotions in strands of silk and sends them forth like arrows of unspoken words in search of prey.
These weapons are of a language that cannot break, complicated, strong.
And once embedded in the heart, the tender teasing of the twisted silk opens words into poetry and the wound seems insignificant.
Copyright 2013
(For Bryan, who loves history, even when it’s invented)
Donna Dakota in Word 