Simple Inspiration
I’ll verify a dozen ways that I’m in the pink,
but I’m not as together as some folks may think.
The course I plod is littered by words I’ve thrown away,
hoping that I’ll come across some better ones some day.
I use no means nefarious to prod words into being.
My syllabic yield is rather based on what I’m seeing.
And so I am a plagiarist of wind and rain and flowers,
recording what is sweet in life and also much that sours.
The MVB prompt today is “Verify.”
For Fandango’s Flashback Friday, we were asked to reblog a blog written on a previous July 18. This one was first published on July 18, 2018
Señor Garcia is smoking today.
Below him,
Maria Phoenix lies on satin sheets
on the wall of Maria Bonita Restaurant Bar.
It is a small palapa restaurant––soft orange front with
hot pink trim–– that I’ve driven by hundreds of times before;
and every time, I’ve wanted to come in, but haven’t.
Now today, suddenly,
I don’t want to go home
and so my car turns in across the carretera.
I am the lone customer.
The cook and waiter
spring to action.
Totopos for him to bring,
a fire for her to light.
This is a fish restaurant
and I am a non-fish
eater, choosing between
quesadillas and beans
or a hamburger and fries.
Needless to say, I’m not here for the food.
I am here for the view and the limits
imposed by eating alone in an otherwise empty
restaurant/bar. I have a poem to write
and need the discipline imposed by a place
where there’s nothing else to do.
My only distraction is the view,
which forms the subject of my poem
and so is anything but a distraction.
The smoke from a dozen fires
rises into the air from the entire eastern slope
of Mount Garcia across the lake.
Whether by accident or by the hand of farmers
lighting fires to clear last year’s stubble from the fields,
the effect is that this extinct volcano
has somehow come to life,
springing leaks.
Fanned by a recent wind, the smoke grows denser, rises higher.
Below the slopes, a patchwork quilt of strawberry and raspberry
fields, covered with plastic sheets,
spawn fruit for the tables of El Norte.
Maria, that other smoldering beauty, lies suspended all around me––
long canvas banners reflecting her screen loves and her roles.
She looks over one shoulder, wears a rebozo or a mariachi’s sombrero.
Cantinflas, that beloved clown, shares her wall but is never in a shot with her.
They are opposites: the sexual symbol and the comic. One raises tension
and the other seeks to dispel it.
I am in between, a mere observer, I know.
In every case it’s likely that the fire has been lit by means unnatural,
but nonetheless, it ignites my imagination.
I am surrounded by it.
“Blue Bayou” plays on the sound system.
Sleepy eyes.
My eyes sting from the smoke
that has filtered toward me
from eight miles or so across the lake.
The tears in my eyes are from the smoke,
not from memories of the departed one
I used to come with to these fish restaurants.
They are not the place for gringos.
Word is out about the sanitation
or where the fish comes from
or who might be encountered here.
A few restaurants down, there was a cartel killing
just about a year ago––perhaps more, perhaps less.
At any rate, Americanos and Canadians are rarely found here.
Today, no one else is found here.
“There’s no exception to the rule”
plays on the sound system.
“Everybody plays the fool.”
Feeling a stranger in the place where I live
is a feeling pleasurable to me––
an emotion I do not feel foolish for pursuing.
The waiter, as though I’m a repeat customer,
brings an entire bucket of ice
and fills my glass each time he passes.
They have my brand of rum.
I have always known this place could be my place.
The pleasure of knowing it to be so warms me
as much as the second jigger of rum.
Shall he pour it for me? Do I want it all?
Just half, I tell him, and fill the glass with Coke.
I like it weaker, so I can spread it out.
Like the fire.
Smoldering.
I received the below new lunch menu from a local restaurant :
This was my mental reply to their message:
Fishless Chips
Never have I had a wish
for any kind of seafood dish––
fillet of flounder or tuna knish.
The only menu I find delish
is piscine-free, served with a flourish.
So if this bod you wish to nourish,
just french fry spuds and skip the fish!
The prompt for SOCS is “chip.”
These folks were the epitomes of every her and him.
The men were all smooth-shaven with haircuts short and trim.
The ladies of the fifties had their pearls and curly hair,
and fancy little house dresses were what they chose to wear.
Their kids were the epitomes of reproductive joy
who could serve as patterns for the perfect girl or boy.
They came out cute and perfect, created just to please.
They never fought or cheated or brought home F’s or D’s.
How do I know that what I say is not stretching the truth?
How do I know these folks were all red-blooded, honest, couth;
and that every one of them maintained the status quo?
I know for I’m the perfect child that sits in the front row
who somehow by the sixties got somewhat out of step
and later by the seventies had misplaced all her “hep,”
did not become a hippie until nineteen eighty seven,
and will join the moral majority too late to get to heaven.
I am not the epitome of any group you know.
I do not wear the clothes you wear or go where you may go.
Epitome’s a talent that I forgot to hone,
and ever since I’ve chosen a pattern all my own.
So, thanks to Forgottenman for reminding me it is time for SOCS. Today the inspirational word is “curl.”
The Day Cracked Open Like an Egg
The rain falls
fresh as cucumbers
on cobblestones and tiles,
the dust of summer
washed from crevasses
and curves of stone and clay.
The air is cleansed
of the scent of primavera,
jacaranda
and flamboyan trees
and the whole world
breathes easily again.
Clouds dried up
by sunlight,
the silent birds
are flushed
from their covering leaves
and open in chorus
to the booming crack
of cohetes, splitting the air
in celebration
of Saint John the Baptist
who has baptized all
this day.
The prompt for SOCS is “Something that opens.”
Summer Nights
Maneuvered by some radar
through the summer night,
haunted fluttering creatures
are captured by the light,
soaring over the river,
then swooping down to swing
lower to catch tasty
morsels on the wing.
A thousand tiny little eyes
strung out far below,
draw these winged predators
everywhere they go.
Rattlesnakes lie coiled
beside their shed-off skins
far from the pebbled riverbanks,
safe within their dens
as legendary wing tips
flap quietly higher
ripping through the midnight skies
lit by our camping fire.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle the prompt words are: radar string eyes haunted legends swing rattle river skin tip pebble rips
Bali Afternoon
Their shadows float behind them in the afternoon.
Sari-clad, they hurry, ahead of the monsoon
where water sheets in currents, a brutal driving hand
sweeping away the humid heat of this exotic land.
Morning-listless palm trees dance to gamelan of rain.
The dust of temples washed away, they glisten once again.
Monkeys cower in branches. Dogs slink away to hide.
Only water in the streets. All else has gone inside.
In the shadows of their studios, the batik-makers hold
their wax-pots, streaming rivers of waxy molten gold.
They’ll stem the flood of colors as each gently pours
precise tiny rivers that echo those outdoors.
Shadows in the corners. Great baths of brown and blue,
that when the liquid wax is hard, they’ll dip their cloth into.
Then boil off the wax so they can make rivers anew.
A different course determined for each successive hue.
Outside the monsoon blows away and sun comes out again.
As all the voices of the world—the music and the din
start up again and heat comes back to bake the village street.
Mud turns to dust, sweat beads the brows of everyone you meet.
Tomorrow in the afternoon, another hour of rain,
for nature follows her own steps over and again,
like the batik artist, who dips his cloth once more,
dries the cloth, gets out his pot, and once more starts to pour.
Sheltering from the Monsoon, Ubud, Bali, 1996
For Friday Writings #183: A perfect afternoon.
Unplugged
When I’ve passed a restless night,
and once more welcome morning light,
I do not leave a lover’s grasp.
No knitted legs need to unclasp.
What time on waking I can afford
is spent by me, unwinding cord:
the earbud cord around my neck,
my PC power cord from the wreck
of pillows, comforter and sheet
that somehow, now, are at my feet.
My MacBook Air, just by my shoulder
has come unplugged and so is colder
to my touch. It won’t power on.
Then, when plugged in, my poem is gone.
The Friday Reminder and Stream of Consciousness prompt is “plug.”
Brooch and pins by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Chewing the Train
A metaphor is a freight train
that gets us within 30 miles
of our final destination,
but we still have to catch a taxi to get all the way there.
And a simile is just a metaphor whose brakes have failed.
If we know that peanut butter
is like a circus on a tired tongue,
does it bring us any closer to the smell of peanut butter?
Elephants and sawdust
and sequined camisoles flavored
with the sweat of 100 performances?
Is that what peanut butter smells like?
Does it taste like candy apples
and too-bitter mustard
on stale buns
and hot dogs turned too long
upon the rollers of their grill?
Does peanut butter feel
like the unoiled bump of the Ferris wheel?
Does it sound like a calliope
or look like an ice cream cone?
Peanut butter is peanut butter.
I rest my case.
So how am I going to write a poem
without metaphors and similes?
How can I write verse
while telling the pure unadulterated truth?
How can I make you taste a poem
that is only itself?
How can I be Janis Joplin
when I’ve been taught to be Joni Mitchell?
A Rose is a Rose is a Rose,
said Gertrude Stein,
predating my insight
by a generation or two.
But this isn’t Paris,
and folks in Mexico
want a dollop of figurative language
in their poetry.
So let me say
that my mind is a busy beaver,
trying to fulfill this impossible task
of twenty little things.
I’m expected to imagine
how peanut butter sounds.
The sucking gumbo sound
of South Dakota mud
or thick mucus of a cold?
Anything but appetizing.
Ay, Caramba! you might say,
but if you were Australian,
you would say, “Don’t come the raw prawn on me, mate,”
and you would mean
“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes,”
or “Don’t try to con me, man.”
So let me just say that peanut butter is made
by grinding peanuts so finely
that all the oil comes out
and it acquires the consistency of butter.
It isn’t like butter
nor is it butter.
It acquires the consistency of butter.
This is literal fact.
But to know the taste of peanut butter,
you will need to spread a bit upon a cracker
and have a taste, or grab a finger full.
What you will taste will be peanut butter.
The truth of it. Its reality.
And only then will I tell you
that literal truth doesn’t always tell
the whole truth.
My friend says
it is the peyote leached into the soil
the corn grows from
that gives Mexicans
such a remarkable sense of color.
The bright pigments of imagination
flood his canvasses.
His peyote dreams leak out into the real world
and wed it to create one world.
“Peyote dream” becomes its opposite—
a freight train taking us into the universal truth.
A larger reality.
This stalk of corn, this deer,
this head of amaranth,
all beckon, “Climb aboard.”
So when you bite into a taco
or tamale, when the round taste of corn
meets your tongue, and pleasure tries to flow
like a lumpy river down your throat,
look up at the poet standing in the shadows.
She’ll call herself by my name if you ask,
but do not ask. Instead, look deeper
into the shadows she wears around her like a cloak
and see that it is light that creates shadow.
See the many colors that create the black.
Follow where the corn beckons you to go––
into the other world of poetry and paint
and dance and music. Hot jazz with a mariachi beat.
Chew that train that takes you deeper. Hop aboard
the tamale express and you will ride into your
new life. It will be like your old life magnified
and lit by multicolored lights and the songs of merry-go-rounds
and when you bite into your taco, it will taste
like cotton candy and a snow cone
and your whole life afterwards will be a train that takes you nowhere
except back into yourself—a Ferris wheel
spinning you up to your heights and down again, with every turn,
the gears creaking “Que le vaya bien.”
I hope it goes well with you
and that you see the light
within the shadow
and the colors
in the corn.
For dVerse Poets synesthesia poem. You’l have to sift through this poem for the synesthesia, but I promise you , it is there.
