Bedroom Wall Mural

This is the latest addition to the mural on my bedroom wall. The griffin is from Greece! Rome! Monsters! - written by John Harris with fantastic illustrations by Calef Brown. I talk to him more than I’d like to admit; he gives me career advice.

Underwear for the Afterlife

Another writing prompt from Dr. T: “When I was in the Underworld…”

Most women remember someone telling them – a mother, a friend, a friend’s mother – how it is always important to leave the house in underwear you wouldn’t be embarrassed to have cut off you if you were ever in an accident. Such a strange world we live in. Of course, I had to write a poem about it.

Here is UNDERWEAR FOR THE AFTERLIFE…

When I was in the Underworld
I remembered something weird
My Mother used to tell me–

“Before getting into a car, dear,
Always make sure, have a care
Your underwear is clean and decent;
You never know when you might be in an accident,
Pinned to a tree with the wheels still spinning,
Still turning with the car sideways in the ditch
Or flipped over a cliff.

You never know when an
Eligible bachelor, maybe one of those
Brave Blue-Suited Firemen or Paramedics
Might have to use the Jaws of Life
To cut you from the wreckage.

And even if your friend is dead
And spread along the highway in bits,
Limbs in the thickets and drainage ditches,
Her limp body slung over the center divider-
You never know when
They might still have to cut your clothes off YOU;

You know how hard it is,
When the blood and gravel mix in
With glass shards in your skin,
To get the clothes off to check
For further injuries.

So, my dear, have a care what you wear –

No teddies made of gummy bears
No rubber-studded negligees,
No Superhero lingerie or
Or chocolate covered bustiers
No furry thongs, no leather belts
No corsets made of weasel pelts
No babydolls, no black silk slips
No paste-on cups in the shape of lips
No super-conducting underwire
No French Maid or High School Nurse attire
No garter belts or Union suits
No bloomers made from parachutes–

Because, wouldn’t it be a shame
For some handsome ambulance driver
With a steady job, a promising future,
To find you caught so ill-prepared,
Wearing the wrong sort of underwear?”

When I was in the Underworld,
Even with my chattering teeth
And my blood as cold as ice,
I remembered her strange advice:

“You know it’s never what’s outside that counts
But the person underneath!
If you want to catch a decent man,
Dear, stick to cotton briefs.”

A Wine Country Murder Mystery in Three Parts

For the most part, I love to read and write poetry that can be read aloud. We are reading Billy Collins’ Ballistics in my poetry class at the moment. I have listened to many recordings of Collins reading his work; he has a totally deadpan delivery, which works well with his style of writing. Collins really loves to play with words and language; I understand his humor and playfulness have hurt him in some circles, circles I will try hard to avoid.

In the spirit of playfulness, the following is a murder mystery set in the California wine country in an historically ambiguous and rustic past. The clues are in the homophones.

Enjoy!

La Sirena

This week our prompt was “I sailed the Seven Seas long before you were born.” I was thrilled to have a reason to use my favorite treasury of words: The Sailor’s Word-Book. It’s available as a free download through Project Gutenberg.

LA SIRENA

I sailed upon the Seven Seas
Long afore ye were ever born
‘Til I were caught up by th’aigre
On a bitter Jan’ry morn.

We passed the weary hebber-man
Until we’d reached the Main;
Into heaving waters La Sirena went
And she were ne’er seen agin.

“Luff and touch her!” cried the captain.
Did by the westward drift we blow
Towards black alligator waters
Where the mangrove fingers grow.

The branches ripped the ragged sails,
The roots tore at the hull,
And drew us down into the swampy
Where we be a’waitin’ still.

When the water’s calm and the moon a’full
Glowing coldy through the moss,
We raise the ghost of La Sirena
And sing of loved ones we have lost.

I sailed upon the Seven Seas
Long afore ye were ever born;
I left you sleepin’ at my Mary’s breast
On that bitter Jan’ry morn.

The Quotidian Inferno

Every week we are given three writing prompts in class, and we have to do a “timed write” for ten minutes. Usually these prompts are pretty strange. Oddly enough, with the exception of one, all of my (very few) published poems have been freewrites; this is probably because the prompts are so weird and I’m forced to use new materials to construct the poem. Here are a few examples of past prompts: “When I was in the Underworld,” “The King said once again,” “At the edge of the continent,” etc. Last week our prompt was “At the Quotidian Inferno.”

I happen to love Dante’s Inferno, but I have to admit to having horrible nightmares after re-reading bits and pieces of the cantos, especially the ones with hybrids. I suspect Dante might have suffered a psychic break of some sort to commit these vivid images to words. And, yet again, he’d never seen Las Vegas.

Waiting at the fiery gates
of The Quotidian Inferno,
our guide is a Greek in vintage Pumas.
Says he goes by P. V. Maro.
He’s got something to show us.

“Nine levels of scary, a dark wood and
a Satanic freak show at the end.
Don’t worry about the pets, they don’t bite.
I know the way through the joint,
up to a point. Or down to one.
It’s bigger than the Mall of America,
And darker than the Chunnel Tunnel.”

Even if it smells of sorrow and rotten luck,
your curiosity overtakes you.

“For a few bucks,” says our guide,
“Get a personal, behind the scenes tour
of the garden of earthly delights!

A carnal carnival, a dark themed park–
centaurs stand knee-deep
in the shallow rapids of bloody rivers
among the bobbing heads of murderers
to ensure their suffering is eternal.
It scares the stuff out of the living,”
says P.V. Maro with the vintage Pumas.

“At the Sinner’s Apothecary, one can find
remedies for dropsy, drops for Gluttony
cooling agents for Lust, elixirs for Avarice,
leeches for Usury, placebos for Fraud
snake oil for Greed and a stinging nettle
mouthwash, special-made for Heresy.

In the Quotidian Inferno Funhouse
you can walk across burning sands,
confess to the Harpies all of your
marital indiscretions; your own
Congressman is shaking hands
at the Lake of Boiling Pitch, where his
molasses fingers trade in sticky secrets.”

Sensing the sale was going nowhere,
P.V. Varo had a change of heart:
“There’s another joint across the strip–
if you want, half-way between here and
the Contrapasso, just past the Acheron–
The Garden Variety Paradise!
Nice place, good food, clean fun.

Funny,” he says, lighting a cigarette.
“but it never draws a crowd.”

A Brief History of Mirrors

Every semester my poetry prof. assigns something he calls a “fascination object” poem. In the past I have chosen things like a weathervane or a Jerusalem Cricket (aka potato bug); this time I chose a mirror. I found an Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on the history of mirrors – much is borrowed from that entry, so I guess this is really a found poem as well as a fascination object poem.

Whenever life gets overwhelming, I look through NASA's photos of cosmic beings like this jellyfish nebula. It makes the laundry less daunting.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MIRRORS

Pixie of the Serengeti

Besides those sad tales of hardship – the ones
about covered wagons with busted wheels,
Indian wars, short grass prairies and dry wells–
most Texas stories involve beer and broken cars.

Standing two inches shy of five feet, my
grandmother Pixie wore horned-rim glasses,
kept her hair trimmed just over her ears
like it had been cut by fairies in a hurry.

Once, half-way home from Dumas about ninety miles
north of nowhere, Great Grandaddy’s beloved
lemon yellow Chevy Impala overheated,
stranding us on the iron skillet highway.

There we were: the shimmering asphalt mirages,
me and my sister (sticking to the beige vinyl),
panting cows behind barbed wire, a zillion grasshoppers,
Pixie, and a six-pack of Coors tall cans.

After an hour or so of waiting for help to arrive,
Pixie cracked a warm beer:
    Well, cain’t hurt!

The whole time I’m thinking about serial killers
(I’d read about the Town That Dreaded Sundown),
or an eighteen-wheeler with bad brakes
or maybe never getting back to the ranch at all.

Had I known what courage it had taken to
weather the dust storms, with everything dying,
and that Great Plains sun blotted out,
how it filled their mouths, covered their blankets,

I might have worried less about
a poor Impala that couldn’t run.

Questionable Stropharia

I am approaching the end of a twenty six-week long docent training at a wildlife preserve. Last week we did fungi and lichen – right up my alley of weirdness. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm.

One thing about mushrooms  - they have the best names. Common names of birds, plants, fungi, insects, etc. generally make great raw materials for poetry if you tend towards the playful. (Some poets are so serious.)  These words make for good list poems. Mushroom names seem to lend themselves to children’s poetry, where the most immanent dangers are concealed by an illusion of innocence created by rhyming verse.

Jump rope rhymes are great because the rope keeps the beat and forces the person (people) speaking to slow down or speed up certain words in order to keep time. I like the way meaning becomes subordinate to sound while the jumper is in; it’s a great metaphor for childhood.

The Blue-Skinned Man – a Jump Rope Rhyme

‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban!
The blue-skinned man
is a Fungus Fan;
the holy see
of mycology,
He’s the Mushroom Man
from a far-away land

When I went a strolling
Below the forest rainbow,
The blue-skinned man told me:
“Careful where your feet go–

‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban!
The blue-skinned man
is a Fungus Fan;
the holy see
of mycology,
He’s the Mushroom Man
from a far-away land

“I’m a fungus in the dead logs,
A mushroom in the roots;
I’m a truffle in the ground
So be wary of your boots!”

Skip a rope, jump a rope,
get in line–
How many mushrooms can you find?

Ravenel’s Stinkhorn
Deadly Galerina
Turkey Tail, Inky Cap
Bleeding Mycena
Dead Man’s Fingers
Strangulated Amanita

Dryad’s Saddle
Dung-loving Psilocybe
Beefsteak Polypore
Poison Pie
Witch’s Butter
Club-footed Clitocybe

Orange Milky, Panther
Shaggy Parasol
Witch’s Hat, Death Cap
False Chanterelle

Destroying Angel
The King and Slippery Jack
Swamp Beacon, Dry Rot
Fading Scarlet Waxy Cap

Fawn and Pleated Puffballs
Ochre Spreading Tooth
Old Man of the Woods
Pig’s Ear and Velvet Foot

Devil’s Urn and Sulphur Shelf
Sweating, Sweetbreads
If the blue-skinned man
catches you, you’re DEAD!   (jumper goes out)

‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban!
The blue-skinned man
is a Fungus Fan;
the holy see
of mycology,
He’s the Mushroom Man
from a far-away land

Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas

Marjory the Trash Heap: "I'm orange peels, I'm coffee grounds, I'm wisdom!"

We live in a world of disposable objects. In the last few years, widely circulated images of the garbage pickers on the mountains of debris in countries like India and Brazil harken the arrival of what some scientists are now calling the “Anthropocene,” or the Age of Man.  According to a 2011 article in National Geographic, the “stratigrapher’s ” job “is to piece together Earth’s history from clues that can be coaxed out of layers of rock millions of years after the fact.” This article got me thinking…what would one call someone who specializes in interpreting layers of discarded words?

I am constantly scavenging the internet for lists of old words. One of my very favorite books is The Sailor’s Word-Book by William Henry Smyth. The SWB is available as a free a pdf download through Project Gutenberg, and promises hours of geeky entertainment. I can’t recommend it enough.

In “Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas” I imagine a kind of linguistic bag lady, rummaging among the heaps for hidden treasures like a medicine woman looking for healing herbs. She encounters a frail and aging Mnemosyne –the embodiment of memory in Greek mythology and the mother of the nine muses– like one might encounter an artifact on which history is both inscribed and interpreted (i.e., Marjory the Trash Heap).

I don’t remember where I found this list, but it’s a fun one.

Mnemosyne

Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas

Old yes! But a bobbish yet, I is.
“Vagabunda!” They shout, hands over ears.
“Conservadora!” I says to me kindred scavengers,
Who have taken to calling me, in these times:

Our Lady of Palabras Perdidas.

Their language be but sad, cag-mag
Rummagin’ in Latin shards n’ splinters.
“Nossa Senhora, where came you from?”
“Ahhhh,” and here I point North and East,
With a stick of smooth olive wood.

“When the hills were still young and stupid,
I was married over the broomstick to a quaddy lad.
Many, many years back, he died;
I’ve since grown a good-sized hump upon me back –
A hillock cloaked in gray!” I says.

“I’ve no whingle, and I’m no drumble!” Meh.
I make my way scavenging in the rubbish heaps
For las palabras perdidas – unwanted and fluey

Made Time’s poor orphan,
him but a proud Costermonger!
“But when ye rub ‘em up, make ‘em shine!”
Even such a one as meself, of deep wrine can see
Under the oily tarnish and the stain
Ye know what they says (flourish of me hands)

‘Verba Volant, scripta manent – words fly but writings remain!’
Yadda, yadda, yadda.

In one heap Me found a birdish Burdalane
The last one, poor wee lass, surviving of her kin
Cark, she were, and thought a cumberground
“But now, now dear!” I said. “Our Lady
Will make ye a shake-down of fine feathers
And new spring grass, with whittles of white petals
And draughts from the clear, running brook
Before yer queachy young bones sleepaway.”

Her laughter flowed like music, a sweet rindle
And she kept a small pebble in her mouth
Lest felth become strength – its ugesome successor.

It were by chance me found Mnemosyne

– Beloved Eldmother

And muse of old and wordly women
I pulled her up from her Earth-fast taproots
But she, forswunak and grown lanken
Began to speak but clyted.

Her voice was wantsome from moss and rust
She’d become elden, and dwined
Under a wasted of letters and her long sloom
“These young and fluttersome moffles –
What do they know of a word’s wroth?”

We drank tea and eftsoons she spake again:
“Ne’er a word ran deeper than sewers of ruined cities
Nor does history disturb a taproot or a deep-sea clam.
All language will ever be in the heaps.”

Radiant City

When the woman fell through
the crack in the city sidewalk
she fell many fathoms
towards a radiant abyss

There were so many women
down in the crystal caves
they had been falling through
the cracks for so long

The women made a city near
the vents where the blue light
of bioluminescent animals
lit up the long nights

They walked quietly in the sparkling
salt pillar forests, gathering
in the flowing flora, collecting
honey from the honeyfish’s mouth

After they had been there a while
a few wished to swim in the subterranean
sea; and so they grew gills and tales
with prismic, adamantine scales

Soon women fell like rain through
the cracks in the city sidewalks
which are said to cover over
nearly two percent of the Earth

But nobody missed them.
Whenever a man went missing
through the cracks, the other
men would search the manholes

They did not see the radiant city
nor do they hear the mermaids
singing softly to the fallen, turning them
gently into pillars of salt
with their lullabies