These are by my friend Nancy!
Apollos, we made our visits
there are maps made of the moon
& no goddesses to draw down
can anything
surprise her now, after
clouds caul her new face
imitations of second sight
meaningless to stone
that has orbited everything once
our flags are there, faded
& shadowing the surface
flags mean nothing to eyeless gravel
& solar wind
what are metal
& striped fabric to her?
we could have sprayed our existence
like graffiti artists:
MAN WAS HERE
temporary things
we like to leave evidence
on an eternal scale
strutting
our shadow
is on the moon
we live a
question, punctuated
by
madness curving into
an ease of marks, ideas of
reference
the . that stops a murder
of
crows, so
they drop (stunned)
where hanging
flights of ideas flock &
fly south, in
loose associations
migrating &
leave me
reeling out lines of
winged heaviness to
catch nothing
***Enjambment is the challenge at Dverse today. Come and twist lines with us!
where we lose count
time does not slide
to drape careless
as yesterday’s coat
over the back of a chair
or hang on a hook
that process of unbecoming
is a measured but uncountable thing
in a landscape where colors run
and paint is not paint
but stained glass
throwing light through canvas
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931
i don’t mind
a tease of tied
wrists/ankles
stilled in silk
or twined cotton rope
i am ripe for it
& blind me too
so I don’t know
where mouth
or fingers
will raise feeling next
the tender curve
beneath breasts
or traced
in the arc of a hip
trailing & tasting
surrender in
my neck stretching yes
***Who would have thought a presidential debate gaffe would lead me here? Not I…Kind of like where the thought led me tonight, but I was SO not thinking of Mitt when I cooked this up. Reminded me of this song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm2J4slYb3s&feature=related
it is not so much where we are but when
tarpon springs, florida, dodecanese street
where we can watch manatees swim sometimes
in that dark water, across the sidewalk from our table that tips,
air spiked with greek shouted from the kitchen
over the clash of pot lids like cymbals.
you and i eat snapper before it was overfished
and i wonder how someone can cook fish
and leave the eyes, roasted and unseeing
but still seeming to accuse us, its consumers,
the eaters of flesh so prettily called psari plaki
heavy with olive oil and tomato, but we are still
murderers, the baked eyes and scales insist
through lemon juice and basil. here the pelicans
are insolent and perch on the railing
and watch us eat too, sideways
as cardboard signs on the patio
tells us in urgent scrawls to not feed the birds.
still, one dares us to do it, watching one-eyed like the fish
he can tell we eat what he eats and I would share
but pelicans don’t share, they bite
so we shoo him away. sometimes
we are too close, reminded by fish eyes
and pelican stares that we are not so far off
from hunting and gathering.
***the prompt today at Octpowrimo is a place, so I took you to Tarpon Springs with me.
zoe sings a kenyan folk song:
ze ze ze zikumi za
but she doesn’t know
the spelling, or
what the words mean;
just loves the z’s
in swahili
echoing her name
and tells me in soccer
she scored a goal
for the other team
right after
she kicked the ball
into someone’s stomach
she is sharp, fast
but not always aimed
in the right direction;
a danger more blunderbuss scatter
than sniper precision
some days are like that
i say. choose your targets
hit them
and come home singing
and zinging
those z’s that buzz a tongue
into smiles
Susan Daniels Poetry 