cspeak

[drew]

I'm Jealous of the guy in the last poem.

[lucimay]

don't be absurd. that's the last time i saw him.

a prophetic poem if there ever was one.

[lucimay]

there's X rated holiday greetings on my blogspot today.

this is the funniest thing i've seen in absolutely years and
an unbelievably great song.

holiday ho hos my friends!!!

i'm still laugin my ass off!


cyn

[lucimay]

bump for iQ...

just in case you haven't read enough of my crap to last you a lifetime! hee.

[iQuestor]

Mild Flirtation


His woman was there, wearing my name, smiling, kind.
I hit him right between the eyes with mine.
Here it is again. Here it is.

He kept still, no shaking, no movement,
stayed still and with his even, deep-gray voice said,
I don’t know how to tell you either.

That was enough. She saw. I saw. We all see.
Now we have had a civil conversation
and I am afraid it is over.

Damn, that hits. A good poem conveys, a great one evokes the response in you. I felt this one. Wow.

[lucimay]

thanks!

[iQuestor]

thanks!

you know, I think we have all been in that place described in the poem, but its not something we talk about. I have been thinking about it since I read it.

[iQuestor]

Adamo Incendia



"So tell us what happened last night."
"Last night?"
"Yes."
"Last night I hiked up to the top of the ridge and climbed out to Eagle Rock and sat there and smoked a whole pack of cigarettes and watched the sun go down."
"Watched the sun go down?"
"Yes."
"You watched the sunset."
"Yes. It was like watching a movie of a sunset. The clouds, the colors, all of it looked computer generated,…you know, not real."
"So you watched the sunset. Then what?"
"Then, when it was completely dark, I crawled back up to the main path on my hands and knees with Harry's lighter stuck out in front of me. It was so dark and the air was so thin that I was afraid to stand up."
"So you watched the sunset, then you went back to the campsite."
"Yes."
"What then?"
"When I got back to the camp site, the fire had gone out. I stumbled over Harry's body and landed in the embers. They were warm but not warm enough to burn. I had to scrounge around for more firewood and restart it. I used pages of the Atlas Harry had in his pack. It made me feel good to light the pages with the silver Zippo and watch part of the world burn.
When the fire was going good, I took off my T-Shirt and jeans and underwear and threw them in. They almost put it out but I stirred it with the barrel of Harry's gun and they caught and burned almost as good as the pages of the Atlas.
It was a warm night but there was a breeze so I went to get one of the blankets from the tent. That's when I noticed that sparks were landing on Harry. They smoldered for a minute and then went out leaving little black spots on his bare back and his bald head. I think I stood there for a long time watching him. I couldn't move. I kept thinking any second he would feel one of those little sparks and jump up, yelling and flapping his arms.
He had a carton of cigarettes and two fifths of Wild Turkey stashed under his side of the foam pad under the sleeping bag. I couldn't figure out why he bothered to hide these particular things. Anyway, I grabbed another pack of Camels and one of the bottles and a blanket and went back out to the fire. It was dead quiet. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and an occasional owl or mockingbird far off.
The breeze had died down but I was shaking really hard so I opened the bottle and took a big gulp. It burned going down but I held my nose and took another one. That stopped the shaking. For the rest of the night, I sat by the fire, stirring it occasionally and getting up sometimes to add more wood. I didn't think about much of anything and I didn't drink any more of the bourbon. I kept the bottle in my lap though, just in case I started shaking again.
When the sky started to get light, I got up and went down the trail to the water pump and washed. The cold water felt good and I stuck my head under the pump and let the water run over my head and neck. I knew that I shouldn't have burned the clothes, shouldn't wash myself but I couldn't help it. I could face having to tell what happened, you know, how stupid I was, but I couldn't stand the feel of his handprints on my skin for one more day."
"Go on."
"Let's see,…then I went back up to the camp. I thought about putting on some of the clothes Harry bought for me at the truck stop on I-80, but I couldn't. My backpack was still in his truck parked about a mile from the fire road and I figured I could find it. I wore the blanket and grabbed the last apple and the half-eaten bag of Doritos and took a last look around the camp.
Harry was still laying exactly where he fell when I shot him. I knew better than to move anything. The Wild Turkey bottle was still sitting by the dead fire. The gun was propped against the log I'd been sitting on all night. The tent opening was unzipped and flapping in the breeze. I started walking down the trail toward the fire road where the truck was parked. Then I remember thinking, Whatever happens from here, I'll probably never stop at another Seven Eleven as long as I live."
"So after you shot him, Ms. Harman, you went to Eagle Rock and watched the sunset, is that correct?"
"Yes."
"And then you went back to the scene, made a fire, drank some whiskey, and waited for the sun to come up."
"Bourbon."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Bourbon, it was bourbon."
"Right, bourbon. You drank some bourbon and waited for sunrise."
"Yes."
"Then you found the truck and drove back to the Seven Eleven."
"Yes."
"To get your car."
"Yes."
"Ms. Harman, where is your car now?"
"I burned it."
"You burned your car?"
"Yes. I burned the car and the house."
"Your car and your house."
"Yes."
"That's the house at 451 Aduro Road and the 1968 Pontiac Firebird owned jointly by yourself and your husband."
"Yes. That's the last year they made that model."
"Uh-huh. The Firebird, you mean."
"Yes."
"And, Ms. Harman, how did you start the fire at 451 Aduro Road?"
"With pages from the Atlas and the Zippo."
"The same Atlas?"
"Yes, Harry's Atlas. I brought it with me."
"From the campsite."
"Yes."
"And Ms. Harman, why did you do that?"
"I told you, I liked watching the world burn."

damn. thats really good really really good!!!

[lucimay]

thanks!

[lucimay]

the art of a circle
(circa 1995)

The wave runs
up and back up and back
trying to touch it's other side,
trying to meet up with itself
on the other side of the continent
up and back
building momentum to fill the center
it does not begin, it does not end
the art of a circle
is a place of origin
is the heart of
and I have always been centripetal,
directed or moving toward
a center or axis,
in the brain,
in the spinal cord
in a jelly doughnut
in a doughnut with a hole
which is the art of a circle
and I drive around the block
I know you're in there
I know the energy,
the sense,
I call out and begin
and talk about
going around and around
and i meet myself coming around,
I have made it perfectly round
and the art of a circle
is filling the center
is centrifugal
the simulation of gravity
and I am grave oh I am serious
about this going around,
the art of a circle
is examining that core,
that open point
which pulls and pushes
and breathes and senses
and i can sense it
goind around the block
calling out
talking to you
telling you about the wave
and the doughnuts and
the art of a circle
is meeting myself coming
around again,
putting all that energy into
over and over,
and I am wild with breathing,
in and out, up and back
and oh,
I can not do this
I cannot do this circuitous plan
of electric current
circuitry
circumlocution
circumnavigating
that point,which is a circle
which is many points
that make an arc,
and the arcs
make the circle complete,
up and back
up and back
up and back,
trying to touch myself.

[Avatar]

As good as ever LuciMay.

--A

[iQuestor]

The Catfish Ferry



There’s a riddle, I’m told, about memory and time
and it reads like a river that runs wild and fine,
and there is, on this river, a way to be carried,
an answer (of sorts) called the Catfish Ferry.

I had wandered, so long, river’s edge, up and down,
wondering if there was a way to get ‘round
without diving in and risk getting caught
in the current of logic, the eddys of thought,

and so, when it came one day out of the mist,
I packed up my dreams and all that I’d wished,
all my family baggage and my grandmother’s clock,
and set off toward the bank and the old wooden dock.

I pulled out my quarter and asked to get on
but the man at the wheel said I’d got it wrong.
He said none of his riders ever gave him a dime.
On the Catfish Ferry, he said, we all do our time.

We haul on the lines and paddle like hell
so this damned old river doesn’t take us as well,
we roll up our sleeves, tho’ we’ve seen better days,
and we move ourselves and that’s how we get paid.

Now I’ve never minded doing my part
but this kind of work seemed much to hard,
I had my hands full with all I had packed.
How could I do it with this stuff on my back?

But I guess that he saw the fear in my face,
the doubt and confusion I couldn’t erase,
And he said to me then, Honeychild, don’t you worry,
just bring all your stuff up on to this ferry,

and when we get out to a spot in the center,
we’ll help you throw that old junk in the river,
everything you’ve collected that might make you sink,
we’ll just pitch that baggage right into the drink,


and I knew, straight away, that he was quite right
so when we got out to the middle that night,
I heaved all that luggage on over the side and was
light
as
a
feather
at the end of that ride.

Now that I’ve told it, you’ll know what to do
if the very same thing ever happens to you.
We’ll all be right here, un-weighted and merry,
to help you cross over on the Catfish Ferry.

This is awesome, showing yer kentucky roots

[lucimay]

yup! thanks again.

[lucimay]

August 2oth, 1958/ Mercer County


On a long, still, heavy day
when a kiss tasted of salt,
and sweat and the low sun
pressed cotton shirts and shifts
to their backs and breasts
and ran in rivulets down their necks,
I filled my lungs with dog days
and sang my first breath,
raised by the smack of
a well-intentioned Baptist hand.

I came up out of the tobacco fields covered
in small red welts like chiggers under my skin,
tiny bugs of fear and paranoia that itched
for the calamine lotion of Ebenezer Baptist Church,
and I shouted out the hymns
(would you be free from the burden of sin)
while the ladies of the congregation
gave each other permanent waves
and stitched together patchwork pieces
of Vacation Bible School and come-to-Jesus fabric,
biscuit-making, jam-canning women who won prizes
at fairs for their ability to produce perfect pie crusts,
while their men traded feed secrets
and hunted with howling coon dogs.

In the pitch-black country night
I lay under those redemption quilts chanting
the Twenty-Third Psalm while all around me
the evangelical crickets jumped and sang,

and even they, it seemed, knew God.

[lucimay]

The Book Of Shoulds

I have that book now,
that doctor book,
the one with the shoulds
nailed to the cover.
I rolled my eyes upward
at the suggestion that it
ever existed,
but now my hands are on it.
I pummel the pages
for order and rules,
I turn the corners down
to dog-ear because the
book is mine and I can,
I kneel before the spector emerging,
long-legged and slender, from the spine.
She is my blessed virgin, my mother,
my dark girl.
She cradles my sallow face in her hands
and croons her deathwish at me.
Don't think, don't feel, don't scream.
Her breath is foul but i am lost in it.
and the book?
On the last page it says
you should close me.

[Seareach]

I love your work, Luci!!!

Dim River

The long awaited rain arrived,
spun me down
into some river dream,
some water wheel spoke of a girl,
some slipstream velvet calm
where I muddied up and floated,
muddied up,
no thunderstruck, no lightening fire,
just a mindful mist, eddying out,
dew mist, unbreathable and slick
under my bare feet,
felt like wet clover,
felt like some lost summer,
some gone by where the leaves
turn over backside up to the tears, to the gray blanket,
and I put my toes in and tried to walk the dams
the kids built on the curbs,
tried to make branches and tributaries,
tried to get in up to my chin
so I could hear the leaves change color, but
the downpour downpulled at my wet dress
and I slid forward
into a public pool,
smelling like Coppertone
and hard cold Hershey Bars,
and smelling like the way my Mother laughed
when I launched myself off the deepend,
and I sputtered
and coughed
and spit chlorine,
into the breakwater,
into the dim undertow
of the dim river dream rain.

II


The windows positioned themselves in rows
and stared me down,
and I blinked back the dim river
and hollered out my count
at those numbered pigeonholes,
those vacant, dingy open and shuts,
pressed my hands
against the cool, clear lining of my heart
and chanted chanteys to the shades.
"What do you know of the dim river!" I sang,
and the windows glinted and winked and shimmered at me,
up to my knees in the tap dancing,
up to my heart in the rain,
"We stand tall atop one another, they said,
we view and reflect and our surfaces
bead up with moist diamonds,
and the sun will come and eat them."
And my lungs began to fill with their mockings,
their understated emptiness,
and the bank eroded and crumbled with me,
into the rapids,
and I foamed and fumed and spun gulping,
no wading, no puddlejumps,
just a vague notion,
like when the sand empties into the glass,
and I opened my eyes under the green water
and held my breath and touched bottom,
where silt and skeletons lay in drifts,
and the dim river gushed
into the deep blue,
and I came up gasping, onto the hard deck,
hauled myself up and rode the swells like a bull rider,
whooping and yelling, rode high and fine,
licked my salty lips and pushed into the spray
with my arms outstretched and aching.




III


The gulls cried to me alone,
their arcs and hoverings bordered me,
fixed me in a swim toward the delta,
and I pushed upstream, into the beginnings,
into the currents, past the shallows,
past creeks and bayous,
toward the place where the sun
bakes
the ground
hard.

It is a desert where the dim river washes out,
and the sky is cloudless and the color of blue topaz,
and saguaro arms hold me,
and my feet are not native,
landscapes beyond the white salt flats,
no pin oak,
no snowfall,
just a hot dust, settling out,
landsculpting layers of silver sediment,
dry and articulate,
and a thumbnail sliver of a moon
sings coyote hymns to my wanderings,
paints the rocks and fills crevices and formations.
I am thrown over planes and hills
and blown into valleys,
like sage
and bone
and hard grains of memory,
and scattered over a peninsula,
where the fog closes in over me
and I sit, on a bench,
3000 miles west of the dim river,
waiting for a squall.



IV


A pigeon bobbed up to me
And, winking and blinking his red eyes, said
Do you remember the wingwords
of a late summer cicada,
pastures of fresh mown sweet grass,
the first frost, crisp November bats
flitting from limb to limb,
the taste of curbfires on All Hallows Eve,
the quiet crunch of your small foot on snow
in the winter, woodburning darkness,
the dogs, shivering and barking over backyard fences?

Well I have a sparrow cousin
who swears he saw you 3000 miles east of here,
sitting by a spring window,
listening to the nine pin game of the old men in heaven
and waiting for a downpour.

Yes, I told him, that was me.
I was there behind the screendoor,
watching a dim river,
I heard your sparrow cousin singing
and thought he was a mockingbird.

...and that is how it's supposed to be done! Bravo, Luci!

[lucimay]

thanks. makes me happy ya'll like my work.


you're the best Thelma!!

(tho your avatar butt is going to distract from that first stanza quite a bit i think!!! )

[aliantha]

Luci, I just wandered in here and started reading your poetry. I am in awe. Great stuff!

[lucimay]

thanks ali! (i was startin to get jealous of iQ's fan club!! )

[lucimay]

Giverney Without Alice
for daniella

Hello Monet.
I looked for her today,
up and down the boulevard
where we used to meet.
The wind was high and misty
and above the pines,
the sky was gray and happy.
It was as quiet a Sunday as any
and I put on a dress.
I knew it would have made her laugh.
I looked in the window of our best cafe
but she was not seated at our table.
I could not make myself go in without her,
so I came here,
to see you and Auguste and Mary.
I like your shade of blue, Monet.
It matches,
line for line,
my melancholy.