—Public Domain Artwork Courtesy of Medusa
BATHROOM ANGELS
I taped loosely above the towel rack
an artist's ornate card: "Obedience,"
in black-letter Gothic script on lace.
It bordered the framed and unframed
pictures I posed of nude angels, used
as my own ironic bathroom decor,
mirroring myself shifting my body
each morning over the lip of the tub—
contrasting fallen and ecstatic flesh.
The weight of renaissance anatomies
given them seemed so weightless,
as mine knew only gravity, not grace.
One floated on rainbow butterfly wings,
another lifted a jeweled, papal crown.
One stared and shyly covered their sex.
How else could anyone depict them—
pure being, pure mind—so startled
in looking out at my aging body.
The prayers I repeated to soothe them,
that made them not suddenly sing out,
asked: Who ever shed tears for a mind?
I taped loosely above the towel rack
an artist's ornate card: "Obedience,"
in black-letter Gothic script on lace.
It bordered the framed and unframed
pictures I posed of nude angels, used
as my own ironic bathroom decor,
mirroring myself shifting my body
each morning over the lip of the tub—
contrasting fallen and ecstatic flesh.
The weight of renaissance anatomies
given them seemed so weightless,
as mine knew only gravity, not grace.
One floated on rainbow butterfly wings,
another lifted a jeweled, papal crown.
One stared and shyly covered their sex.
How else could anyone depict them—
pure being, pure mind—so startled
in looking out at my aging body.
The prayers I repeated to soothe them,
that made them not suddenly sing out,
asked: Who ever shed tears for a mind?
HAWK SHADOWS
Today the hawks
like yesterday float
over the open lawn,
hours after the dawn,
close and then remote,
a shadow over us.
Even blackbirds,
threshing the unmown grass,
suddenly have disappeared,
as I saw it pass
its shadow over us.
A treetop perch
where hawks had nested
was removed to open wide
the sky, when branches died,
while dread in me has never rested
with this shadow over us.
THE FALL
Early this morning I flew,
weightless just a moment
like an astronaut in training,
as I slipped, stepping out
of the warm shower into the cold
and my bad leg deftly skated
on the wet linoleum tile
as I barely cleared the slick tub.
I floated, spread-eagled
like a midnight jumper
from a burning apartment's ledge
into the firemen's waiting arms,
holding a stretched rescue net,
only now there were no firemen
and no net or doubled-up blanket,
just the hard, unforgiving floor
and the wall that stopped my head.
Lying there, aching in odd ways
even my new arthritis did not know,
I imagined my house a mausoleum,
where tourists, lighting scented candles,
would gaze at the legions of angels
whose colorful pictures I had posted,
my droll humor for bathroom art
on the walls discolored with mold.
Overhead the vent's mechanical chugging
and the sudden start of the furnace fan
sent a breeze, hot and cold, over me,
like the moment I was lighter than air.
Who would look with any pity upon
my 70-plus flesh, loosely curled
around the base of the toilet stool.
And no body could be lured by this body.
No winged cohort of rapacious eagles
would elevate such a fallen wreck,
ready for Charon who himself hesitates
to swamp his somber, reed-light boat.
I had no choice but to will to rise
and wait for the next falling to come.
Early this morning I flew,
weightless just a moment
like an astronaut in training,
as I slipped, stepping out
of the warm shower into the cold
and my bad leg deftly skated
on the wet linoleum tile
as I barely cleared the slick tub.
I floated, spread-eagled
like a midnight jumper
from a burning apartment's ledge
into the firemen's waiting arms,
holding a stretched rescue net,
only now there were no firemen
and no net or doubled-up blanket,
just the hard, unforgiving floor
and the wall that stopped my head.
Lying there, aching in odd ways
even my new arthritis did not know,
I imagined my house a mausoleum,
where tourists, lighting scented candles,
would gaze at the legions of angels
whose colorful pictures I had posted,
my droll humor for bathroom art
on the walls discolored with mold.
Overhead the vent's mechanical chugging
and the sudden start of the furnace fan
sent a breeze, hot and cold, over me,
like the moment I was lighter than air.
Who would look with any pity upon
my 70-plus flesh, loosely curled
around the base of the toilet stool.
And no body could be lured by this body.
No winged cohort of rapacious eagles
would elevate such a fallen wreck,
ready for Charon who himself hesitates
to swamp his somber, reed-light boat.
I had no choice but to will to rise
and wait for the next falling to come.
LIFE ON THE EDGE
a window cleaner's memoir
A call has brought us to the edge
of buildings: living on the ledge
as rare and wild as red-tailed hawks
that hunt the close-knit city blocks
and make the pigeons daily mourn
their cohorts freshly ripped and torn.
Like a harnessed marionette,
you bungee jumped without a net.
You caught—O blond angelic spy—
reflections in a city's eye,
windows of the soul revealed
what high rise dwellings kept concealed—
the mix of nakedness and gin—
that reinvented deadly sin
or what was deadly even more:
the blather braggarts used to bore
in bedrooms, locked behind a door.
The squeegee squeaks across the glass
and through the window you see pass
the protocols of loneliness
or acts of love that make a mess.
Conscience and remembrancer,
invisible, you dangle, sir!
Like Alice in the Glass we look
and see ourselves within a book.
Such secret lives that still perplex
now stand stripped bare at "Madame X".
So may your work for all to see
now wash us pure as Ivory.
ON A DIRTY GARTER: A PASSION NARRATIVE
You had stepped into a blue-white halo pulled like
a wedding garter
in the photo's posed diction, drawing an elegiac gaze
of a last poem
to fill the hungry eyes of youthful longing. At the
ankle level
it would have pictured a prisoner's cuff, designed
for your own
playful binding. Give me breath to take the ripe
features to heart
—faltering—and for a split-second taste the salt
ecstasies
in the sharp scent of electricity against skin. This
seated nakedness
christ-like off the fruitful cross where it hung
Sunday noontide
is silent long after the next-door theatre where sax
jazz blew
to the ceiling at last finished. You led me, let me
view slowly
down the legs, splayed right and left, to the turned
feet, adorned
in grime, real earth, and there planted in the cold
humus
that is our flesh. And now rising, Eros and loss
ascend to that
earthly paradise you open in offering, as if un-
tainted fruit
spared from the original garden for us to taste,
and that
ripe skin becomes the best you have to wear,
becomes light.
MYSTERY
In the Gardens of Hadrian's Villa
Couples strolling look for hidden
places others will not find
in the opulent botanical garden
where radiant light is indirect.
There they see only the beauty
in the white Roman hyacinths
older than the hybrid types
gardeners plant in spike clusters.
The careless lovers do not see
this living warning I bring
against becoming a god's beloved,
loved beyond all mortals.
My body became root and stem
and placed in a sacred story.
So many only see the eye-catching
and then blinding loveliness.
All of me was transformed,
as everything carries in itself
its own death, and some only that,
before this last initiation rite.
The budding flower is not in me,
but instead I am in the flower,
enfolded in overlapping petals—
earth bursting in resurrection.
When at last you consider love,
consider in me, consider
the speechless things it does:
how light and rain will wound.
How can you keep my words
from turning to cold marble—
without scent or a slight shiver
showing what is still alive?
All this the heavens keep secret.
______________________
Today’s (Longer)Nip:
DRAGONFLY
—Royal Rhodes
A dragonfly had flown,
larger as it floated
nearer, through the door
left open so the dogs
could come and go to doze
outside, escaping heat.
It ignored my hand
I waved above my head
and landed on a ledge.
I had tried to save
it from the window, sealed
with plastic, framed in tape.
I meant to spare your life.
Your see-through wings should lift
you to a cloudy pond
or field of purple stems,
lavender with streaks
of white, and raw perfume.
But what would make you trust
my touch? Or choose to trade
your spot upon the ceiling?
I could not let you leave,
despite the tales I learned
of darning wicked lips.
But ransomed from this jail,
you will become a jewel
upon my stitched-up heart.
_____________________
Newcomer Royal Rhodes retired after over forty years of teaching. He lives in a village in central Ohio. He loves to read poetry of all kinds and mystery novels. Welcome to the Kitchen, Royal, and don’t be a stranger!
_____________________
—Medusa
In the Gardens of Hadrian's Villa
Couples strolling look for hidden
places others will not find
in the opulent botanical garden
where radiant light is indirect.
There they see only the beauty
in the white Roman hyacinths
older than the hybrid types
gardeners plant in spike clusters.
The careless lovers do not see
this living warning I bring
against becoming a god's beloved,
loved beyond all mortals.
My body became root and stem
and placed in a sacred story.
So many only see the eye-catching
and then blinding loveliness.
All of me was transformed,
as everything carries in itself
its own death, and some only that,
before this last initiation rite.
The budding flower is not in me,
but instead I am in the flower,
enfolded in overlapping petals—
earth bursting in resurrection.
When at last you consider love,
consider in me, consider
the speechless things it does:
how light and rain will wound.
How can you keep my words
from turning to cold marble—
without scent or a slight shiver
showing what is still alive?
All this the heavens keep secret.
______________________
Today’s (Longer)Nip:
DRAGONFLY
—Royal Rhodes
A dragonfly had flown,
larger as it floated
nearer, through the door
left open so the dogs
could come and go to doze
outside, escaping heat.
It ignored my hand
I waved above my head
and landed on a ledge.
I had tried to save
it from the window, sealed
with plastic, framed in tape.
I meant to spare your life.
Your see-through wings should lift
you to a cloudy pond
or field of purple stems,
lavender with streaks
of white, and raw perfume.
But what would make you trust
my touch? Or choose to trade
your spot upon the ceiling?
I could not let you leave,
despite the tales I learned
of darning wicked lips.
But ransomed from this jail,
you will become a jewel
upon my stitched-up heart.
_____________________
Newcomer Royal Rhodes retired after over forty years of teaching. He lives in a village in central Ohio. He loves to read poetry of all kinds and mystery novels. Welcome to the Kitchen, Royal, and don’t be a stranger!
_____________________
—Medusa
Royal Rhodes
A reminder that
Joshua McKinney and Cecil Morris
will read in Modesto today, 2pm.
For info about this and other
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!
Joshua McKinney and Cecil Morris
will read in Modesto today, 2pm.
For info about this and other
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!
of course—an angel…!
