POEM TO MINDY
and there she is
my cat
she demands that my hands
touch her fur and
she demands my
total
attention
she knows she’s the only cat
that matters
that ever mattered.
She knows the cats of Egypt
I sometimes think she was there herself and added that
unknown quality to
the reliefs in the temple walls, for
she is the only cat that ever mattered as she wimpers that
demanding little
raorw
***
Binding
“A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.”
D.H. Lawrence
It was time to divide your things.
My arms stayed pinned to my sides
like tired doves, toes stayed curled
around a branch split
by razor lightning bolts.
I tottered and I lost my grip.
Mother launched her surly arrows,
lodged them in whatever flesh
crossed her borders of pain.
Striking out at rings around a toilet seat
as if they were death itself
taking a piss in a messy arch.
I understood the ache to clean,
her answer to leaping ahead,
strides beyond this sad reverse,
where prayers were linen packed with snot.
Scrub the awning of this hell,
paint over the fork of this flame.
I loved the wealth of dust on shelves.
Your soul resided in those books.
Binding smelled of glue you were
when winds took off with a dream,
when nightmares called for gathered ash,
some sort of urn and elegance.
Leather wraps you sewed for words
made me wish to dance with thought.
Ways you read a fingerprint upon a glass
as if the oil were part of some eternal well.
These were all my cats to pet
when logs on fires became gray coal.
I read the marginalia —
your fingers scribbled little clues.
“Dickinson’s obsessed with flies”
and “Frost won’t let a season go.”
I loved the ease with which you sang
your operas over trivia.
by Janet I. Buck
***
FROGS
The autumn is coming
soon, that chill like you feel
in a cave stretching down deep
beneath a hill grabs at the air, both
early morning and at the end of the day.
I brought in the patio furniture
and the 2 ceramic frogs
from the garden,
tried to catch the 2 goldfish remaining
in my wife”s ornamental pond,
but couldn”t get the black one.
(Why is a black fish a gold fish, I wonder.)
Didn”t catch the 2 real frogs
swimming around in there either.
I”ll wait another week, see if they”re
still there, also try again to catch
the black goldfish, he”ll be fine until then.
I”ll drain the pond if I have to,
bring him inside before it gets too cold.
And that will be it until next year, in
the spring when the cycle starts all over again ““
put the furniture and the ceramic frogs
back into the garden and wait
for the real frogs to make their way
back up from the stream.
The frogs bring the spring with them
when they come and take the summer
with them when they go, like modern nature gods
controlling nature and the cycle of life.
***
HISTORIES ARE NOT MY STORIES
You read me histories I say
histories that don’t exist for me.
I say
I am all there is
there are no histories but my
history
there is no story but my
story
and when I die
all
is gone
When I die there will be no more
sunday matinee’s smell of the theater
when I die the roses will not bloom
and you can tell each
other then
of your histories and how the
world went on without
me
but you will never
convince
me
***
Get off your ass
and tell these people
something,
anything you fool,
say the dust has collected
in the corners and
the leaves are lining the gutters
and the birds don’t care for your poetry
Say that your brain has
holes in it and cannot,
could not hold the water.
Say it, fool!
I know you want to.
Squeeze it out
of the dirty rag
and wipe
your brow with your angst
until
the birds sing again.
david michael jackson August 5, 2012