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Gimme Shelter
I turned the corner,
but how quickly my shadow tucked itself between the sidewalk cracks.
Another humiliating stone to place inside my heavy bag of shame.
I've wandered,
lonely, wayward, hungry -
but every reality ends with the same rejection of me.
Dreamland had arrogantly evicted me -
and I've been pleading my case ever since. (I'd like to appeal!)
Nightmares have a restraining order against me, too.
I was tired and cold and there was nowhere to hide that evening!
I panicked! Forgive my intrusion!
And all those pretty, twinkling stars up there,
well, they like to drop giant, cosmic spitballs down onto my hopeful gaze of them.
Was it rude to wish upon them?
I never meant offense to anyone.
I am just trying to find my place somewhere.
Afterbirth
Have me! Own me!!
Bury me tenderly in your womb, Mommy dearest. Let me hear
for myself
if your heart truly holds a beat for me.
I need some comfort right now. A gentleness only a mother could give,
though I know,
I just need to suck it up, and push it all out of my mind
and just deal with things, right?
Because that’s just the way life goes, correct?
And no one is ever going to care so neither should I.
I don’t think you honestly believe the lopsided advice you give me.
I think that life beat you down so hard
that you just gave up.
You lost hope. You turned down your lamp to faith.
But I see your pain, Mother.
I see a system that had let you down as well.
Generational toxins,
recycling themselves, yet, with each revival,
it all becomes more venomous and unnerving than even our ancestors
could have imagined
would spring from under their aprons and belts.
I understand you were mistreated. Misunderstood. Misused.
There was never anyone in your corner rooting for you either.
No one to support you
or to encourage you to dream and wish on stars.
I understand the difficulty in breaking habits induced from trauma.
And though I know your advice is more to
exonerate yourself from taking any responsibility for your own mistakes,
I still sloppily forgive you.
My footsteps in early life may have been behind your unstable wavering,
but my seasoned voice,
my voice will speak loud enough that even the frightened child hurting inside of you
will smile, too, Mother.
This is for every little girl who was seen but not heard.
Aphids on the Underside
3, 2, 1….. Clang! Clang!
And just look at those feisty aphids on the underside of the Giant Hickory bark!
Watch the crowd of onlookers as their mouths drop during this fiasco!
Oh ho ho!
This speed-eating contest is by far
an all-out slob-fest!
And these wee, tiny pests are suckling like little madmen
for the sweet, sticky sap
that drips on the nether halves of these bark loaves,
to see who can achieve first place
for expanding their perky, pear-shaped bellies to that of a prickly-pineapple figure!
30 seconds left!
Here we go now on to the final ticks of the clock!
And for all of us gathered here at Bluefern Forest to encourage the festivities,
we have come to find ourselves
drenched in the saliva-goo that escapes the lips within this hungry chow-down!
Blah! (Who would’ve thought to bring an umbrella?!)
5 seconds to go!
And 3, 2, 1! Cling! Cling!
WE HAVE A WINNER!
Please, stand up, young, yellow fellow!
Ladies and gentlemen, your new champion of speed-bark-eating in the Aphid category:
Alphonse Beech!
Let this be an honor to you, young speckle,
for rightly did you entertain the eager audience today!
A Little Odyssey’s Arrival (Departing from Imagination’s Station)
He was a giant!
A psychotic fisherman soaring in his traditions,
though,
still upsetting the stream to a chilly April’s opening trout season.
If only I hadn’t stopped earlier to pick the blister from my finger
that I scraped upon a piece of driftwood in my clumsy stumble,
I might never have seen him from across the causeway.
He was some sort of witchy street performer by face,
but,
when my back was turned to swat that pesky wasp annoying me,
he shot at me with his teeny, poison cupid-darts!
The festering holes that linger within my heart were then infected with
his venom,
and how it turned my beating heart cold!
And I was struck paralyzed! Hypnotized,
though I could not speak my pleading thoughts about this.
As if my limbs were robotic,
I had sunk like a ditsy, cartoon accordion under his leash.
Oh, this is not the love for me!
A vice-like chokehold from an ugly one-eyed brute!
And he was just so devout in his adoration of me! It was creepy!
A grotesque rock boring a gigantic, misshapen nose,
that can only take measure by
the steps of his overgrown toes.
If only I could catapult those fabled stones to reach this sort of Cyclops!
What noise he made! What a jittering clatter!
And then,
there was an ominous thunder that rightfully erupted under the dirt floor
after his seemingly drawn-out five-second temper-tantrum.
All because I would not say his name. I will take his collar!
But it was what happened next that I took to my diary about! Unbelievable!
A fissure smirked cleverly as it sprawled itself lazily about Earth’s tissue,
exposing itself boldly,
with no respect or consideration for the young!
And, oh, how they all screamed! A societal stampede!
In any case,
it was quite disconcerting to watch the world eat itself up,
and then repulsively purge whatever it could into some unknown recess of a distant
alternate reality.
A crystallizing process capsulating a history for the books
A Girl Within a Girl
She didn’t see the off-road avenue
to the left side of
the sewage plant across the road from the dilapidated garage.
It was all but lined in gold for her,
and it shined like the waking rays of morning’s first gentle sunbeams.
But the poor thing was tired,
and each of her peers took a gouge at her eyes, splintering her vision with their criticism.
She never wanted to be centerstage, I tell you!
She only wanted to be a friend to a stranger.
A falling star to grace hope in a misguided world.
And look how they circle around her and spit!
Steering her from the lighted path that is her fate,
and backing her into that dark well that harbors her every dreaded fear.
She falls.
An endless pitfall, but not without the title of a nightmare come alive.
The saliva-stained walls that capture her silent screams
suffocate her
and scald her flesh.
She is only a delusion inside her own madness.
An Empty Chair at My Tea Party
The artificial taste of your pollutants parachutes cheekily
underneath the sweat bead
of an over-sweetened venom-leaf tucked inside
that colander-like charm.
Just so steadily it sways, and how shiny its metallic hue shivers,
like a royal tea-infuser plucked right from a Medieval breakfast table.
And just like that little, silver holder doing its duty,
slowly your toxins drip down into my dollhouse teacup
filled with an afternoon’s delight.
Then,
how mesmerizing my mania is born under the swoosh-swoosh
stirring motion
of that tiny tea-leaf pendulant
as it tick-tocks like an antique stopwatch.
Cuckoo! Achoo! It’s Noon!
A hollow timber growing as a throbbing belly ache
from under the dark cupboard space inside the pantry of Grandma’s
gathering kitchen.
It’s a bit icy behind these bare and empty walls you left me in,
and I just kind of really
want to go numb in the bite of this frigid silence here.
Can there be a tepid softness to this poisoning of me?
Wrapped up in lambskin carpet and twisted ingeniously.
Ouch. The taping of me.
Thrown about like an anchor in the deadened eye of a Turquoise Sea.
My Perennial Pleasantry
It’s the first fresh scent of a newborn Spring’s hyacinth
that invigorates my spirit
after a gloomy Winter’s slumber.
And I wait,
and I know,
how that joyful vibrance to my essence is brought back to life
when Spring’s reminder of appreciation is gifted
through the awakening of my little guardian angels of nature.
It’s within the little bell faces of each bloom,
smiling up at me under a youthful dawn’s shadow,
that hypnotizes me!
I am mesmerized at this epiphany to cherish life’s blessings!
Every glorious promise that faith could present
is gifted to me
through the pastel garden portrait of a sentimental season’s uprising.
But,
it is the faded, pink hyacinth that calls out most intimately to me.
For it was the very first flower
that rode bravely in the grip of my first-born son
as he smiled so lovingly and presented it to me
on my first Mother’s Day so many years ago now.
What a magnificent treasure is held within the Dutch hyacinth’s emergence for me!
A Thursday Evening’s Indiscretion
Dawn had come and past,
the tulips never yawned and the dew only hardened in sticky clumps upon the leaves
of the shrubs and stuck to the trees like their own sap.
The Sun didn’t awaken this morning.
There was a fire display within the cosmic zone during twilight yesterday,
and here that darn Sun got himself intoxicated by gorging on falling stars that zig-zagged
through the sky
while playing tag with the meteors.
A fond reminder that every organic thing
has a boisterous adolescence;
and a grim caution
that even the Patriarch to life can have misjudgments, too.
Custodial Dopiness
Shh!
I hear him roaming about. Shuffling my things.
That nosey janitor who shifts and biffs,
and scutters the clutter,
inside my hidden closet space.
He’s always bumping into this
or spilling that,
and his clumsiness puts a disruption on my carefully scheduled itinerary.
Come to think of it,
I don’t remember him being on the payroll or even giving him
an interview ever. How strange.
Though,
he does do a damn, fine job at keeping those pesky rodents away!
He can stay today!