Apple Valley, CA
—Public Domain Photos Courtesy
of Medusa
STARDUST TELEGRAM TO
MELODIOUS PITY
Poetry magazines stink
with the fear of death—
O poem, I’ve dreamed about you,
or was that your shadow,
sooty sequins up and down,
heaving black sighs,
tragic and disinterested.
This poem demands a sleuth
and a witness. This poem
appears before the Poesy Circuit
Court Judge. It looks suspicious
and wants a rap sheet.
When I started college,
I drove around the desert smoking
OG Kush and throwing
rubber-banded folds of the
L.A. Times. One June somewhere
near four a.m., the headlamps
of my flibbery Toyota long-bed,
its hood held down by bungee cord,
thrattling in a sandy dark,
lit up what looked to be
a hundred blind rabbits bobbing
across some pot-holey road.
With no time to stop, my brake
pads burned away, it was
thumpity-thump-thump for bunnies
up and down my wheels.
I think about those hares
when my eyes roll over the pages
of a poetry rag, all those poems
victims of their own thanatophobia,
dying of self-pity in the
starry blind light of brightness.
MELODIOUS PITY
Poetry magazines stink
with the fear of death—
O poem, I’ve dreamed about you,
or was that your shadow,
sooty sequins up and down,
heaving black sighs,
tragic and disinterested.
This poem demands a sleuth
and a witness. This poem
appears before the Poesy Circuit
Court Judge. It looks suspicious
and wants a rap sheet.
When I started college,
I drove around the desert smoking
OG Kush and throwing
rubber-banded folds of the
L.A. Times. One June somewhere
near four a.m., the headlamps
of my flibbery Toyota long-bed,
its hood held down by bungee cord,
thrattling in a sandy dark,
lit up what looked to be
a hundred blind rabbits bobbing
across some pot-holey road.
With no time to stop, my brake
pads burned away, it was
thumpity-thump-thump for bunnies
up and down my wheels.
I think about those hares
when my eyes roll over the pages
of a poetry rag, all those poems
victims of their own thanatophobia,
dying of self-pity in the
starry blind light of brightness.
DICTATION
When I was then, I wandered into a bobcat den,
rubber suited and oxygen masked, feral, guttural,
underwater in my own skin. When those lights
came on, there was a wet mattress on the floor
and rings around my rubber head, two thousand
blue pigeons, stunned one-by-one by young Father
Thompson. In the name of Jesus, he did it. And
in the name of a thousand burning pianofortes.
Faceless melodic voices rang out from a walk-in
closet, broken, yet in flight, yet featherless, yet
placenta shiny, as they lifted a field of boulders
and held it in the hot black sky. I remember moss
on the mountain, the weather churned dichroic,
colors in utero, and all the stiff old men, in their
fascist convention, with grotty scales, smelling
of decomposed torsos, heaving snake heads like
stroked-out Joe Stalins masturbating in spring.
When I was then, I wandered into a bobcat den,
rubber suited and oxygen masked, feral, guttural,
underwater in my own skin. When those lights
came on, there was a wet mattress on the floor
and rings around my rubber head, two thousand
blue pigeons, stunned one-by-one by young Father
Thompson. In the name of Jesus, he did it. And
in the name of a thousand burning pianofortes.
Faceless melodic voices rang out from a walk-in
closet, broken, yet in flight, yet featherless, yet
placenta shiny, as they lifted a field of boulders
and held it in the hot black sky. I remember moss
on the mountain, the weather churned dichroic,
colors in utero, and all the stiff old men, in their
fascist convention, with grotty scales, smelling
of decomposed torsos, heaving snake heads like
stroked-out Joe Stalins masturbating in spring.
FINESSE
You hand me a bouquet of tombstones.
A dream full of star fire stares me down.
You look away, crestfallen.
Whispers of smoke love you,
slithering like rumors through your hair,
coloring your ear, undressing you
with misty teeth.
Cemetery clouds hover my eyes.
Anise in the air, mascara black, I drop
the bouquet on the ground,
next to your dress. We hold hands,
walk down into wet grass, muddy soil,
where wise dirt roots absorb us,
and now to seed, to flower, to flavor
the herbal tea of the actor learning
to play fresh depression, deftly,
on an out-of-tune lover’s burning piano.
MARS IS STARING RIGHT IN MY FACE
The moon isn’t killing anyone, isn’t
really concerned with dark matters.
A moon only looks good when some
star is violently aflame. But Mars
is another story: his blood is real,
his sword is true, at least according
to the cop I flagged down this morning
in front of the dispensary. Orange
has become the color to care about,
the color to watch. Sneaky, like a
sick dog, it creeps around with one
eye half-shut, the other bulging. Cops
know more than astronomers about
all this stuff: their blood is orange
when it should be martyr red. No,
not anymore, the cop told me as he
patted me down, nicked my eightball.
There is no heaven, he said, then
cuffed me, coughed, and he added,
We’re eating the cats, we’re eating
the dogs, and we’re shipping all you
Martians back to your planet to die.
The moon isn’t killing anyone, isn’t
really concerned with dark matters.
A moon only looks good when some
star is violently aflame. But Mars
is another story: his blood is real,
his sword is true, at least according
to the cop I flagged down this morning
in front of the dispensary. Orange
has become the color to care about,
the color to watch. Sneaky, like a
sick dog, it creeps around with one
eye half-shut, the other bulging. Cops
know more than astronomers about
all this stuff: their blood is orange
when it should be martyr red. No,
not anymore, the cop told me as he
patted me down, nicked my eightball.
There is no heaven, he said, then
cuffed me, coughed, and he added,
We’re eating the cats, we’re eating
the dogs, and we’re shipping all you
Martians back to your planet to die.
JAMES WRIGHT
And why are you not reading James Wright
right now? He’s got the true heart down pat—
his first drafts were often written in sky blue
chalk, on a sidewalk Whitman refused to use,
even when Uncle Walt was saddled by extreme
feelings of Big-J Joy and Big-B Brotherhood.
Walt says you didn’t know that. James Wright
knows you knew it was fake. Poets do that. Lie,
I mean. There’s no profit in banditos on a beach
unless you can shape their moves, speak their
truths, rock the heavens with their big, pressing
questions. Veronica never wrote a sonnet, but
she wanted to be compared to a summer’s day
by someone, preferably a Malibu lifeguard on
the prowl for a divorcée with two disgruntled
kids. “Destiny’s legs are wide open,” she’d say,
“You just have to strap it on and ram it home.”
This fluorescent light is flickering. The battery
in your remote is low. Gotta get my Superman
cape to the cleaners by five, so next time just
remember: James Wright. His heart was in it.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.
—Regina Brett
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Michael Dwayne Smith for today’s fine poetry! Watch for more from him next Saturday.
And why are you not reading James Wright
right now? He’s got the true heart down pat—
his first drafts were often written in sky blue
chalk, on a sidewalk Whitman refused to use,
even when Uncle Walt was saddled by extreme
feelings of Big-J Joy and Big-B Brotherhood.
Walt says you didn’t know that. James Wright
knows you knew it was fake. Poets do that. Lie,
I mean. There’s no profit in banditos on a beach
unless you can shape their moves, speak their
truths, rock the heavens with their big, pressing
questions. Veronica never wrote a sonnet, but
she wanted to be compared to a summer’s day
by someone, preferably a Malibu lifeguard on
the prowl for a divorcée with two disgruntled
kids. “Destiny’s legs are wide open,” she’d say,
“You just have to strap it on and ram it home.”
This fluorescent light is flickering. The battery
in your remote is low. Gotta get my Superman
cape to the cleaners by five, so next time just
remember: James Wright. His heart was in it.
____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.
—Regina Brett
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Michael Dwayne Smith for today’s fine poetry! Watch for more from him next Saturday.
For info about
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
during the week.
Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Poets’ bios appear on their first MK visit.
To find previous posts, type the name
of the poet (or poem) into the little
beige box at the top left-hand side
of this column. See also
Medusa’s Rapsheet at the bottom
of the blue column on the right
side of this column to find
any date you want.
Miss a post?
You can find our most recent ones by
scrolling down under this daily one.
Or there's an "Older Posts" button
at the bottom of this column.
(Please excuse typos in older posts!
Blogspot has been through a lot of
incarnations in 20 years!)
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
Guidelines are at the top of this page
at the Placating the Gorgon link;
send poetry and/or photos and artwork
to kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world—including
that which was previously published—
and collaborations are welcome.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
