Monday, April 29, 2013

April Poetry, Week 5


Final Poems of April


Day 27



The Last Sister

Lura waits on the stars,
sat in her chair by the window
night after night, calling for Vic
to stroll down from the Milky Way
and ask her to dance. They didn’t dance
much in their younger years. Too much
to do: the barber shop to run, kids
to raise, cooking and sewing and all
that parents do. She listened to the radio,
music wafting up from his shop
downstairs as she made the noon meal.
Her sister was a dancer, a real vaudeville
gal with suitors who brought her roses
after every performance. When she died,
white roses arrived, sprays like tears 
over the coffin, bouquets stood like dance partners
in the corners of the funeral parlor, blankets of them
covered her grave. Lura, the last sister, 
kept one rose, pressed its petals 
into the songbook from Mae’s piano bench.
Now she sits, waits for Vic to dance down
with a rose in his hand, the other stretched
out to take hers. Oh How We Danced
On the Night That We Met plays in her head,
she, the last sister, looks to the window and smiles.




Day 28


A Philosophy

The philosophers of Old Greece
hid out as poets
until poetry devour’d them.

The philosophers of Old France
devoured by wine
fell down, full drunk with poetry.

The philosophers of Old Spain
ran and raged as bulls
until poetry gored their sides.

It’s futile to try to resist.
Accept what gores you, devours
you, causes you to fall down drunk.




Day 29


Resisting

There it is again, that damn voice
coming up the stairs, the bitch
voice that drags me out of bed,
that makes me want to scream
& hit something ‘til it smashes.
She doesn’t get me, won’t let me
do anything I want. Too late,
too soon, too much, blah blah blah. 
I’m never doing this to my kid;
she get to do what she wants. Smoke,
stay out all night, date that Tony guy
over there, the one with the tattoo
on his neck. I won’t hold her back.

Mr. S says it’s a teen’s job, resisting.
We gotta learn somehow. Mistakes:
how can we learn from them
if we don’t make them? Mom ain’t buyin’
it. She takes on that face, that hard face,
and I end up grounded, one toke
and I’m in jail in my room: no tunes
no phone, no boyfriend for a month.
How’m I gonna learn anything 
like this? Mr. S, she says, ain’t got kids.
Mr. S, she says, don’t know his ass from ...

All I know is a whole lotta nuthin’
and how much I want to smash something.


NOTE: this is a persona poem, in the voice of a teenaged girl 




Day 30


Parasite

not ‘shroom, engulfing 
& obliterating its host, red
 spindle-shaped, and dimpled, 
the Lobster Mushroom
lives by insane attack on the real
thing: Russula or Lactarius.
Still, in a lovely cream sauce
bubbled with onion, lemon, & garlic,
drizzled over penne or rotini,
it makes a fine meal. Alone
or gregariously prolific, 
the woodsy conqueror deserves
careful watching. It may be 
catalyst of the next 
  zombie apocalypse. 
Or dinner.

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