October 2018 – Page 3 – Aremyfeetofftheground

Vedge Bad

I do not like asparagus
That rooty shooty plant
And you won’t really care, I guess,
About this silly rant
Its stems are pulpy, woody-like.
Its tips have tiny spades.
That look for all the world, to me,
Like mini hand grenades.

I’ve tried to cook it many ways
And give it proper lovin’.
I’ve boiled and steamed and creamed and braised
And shrunk it in the oven.
My daddy used to buy it canned
And put it on his toast.
I fancied him a true gourmand
And to my friends I’d boast.

But, now that I’m a very cook
(I’ve tried each recipe)
I’ve tasted all, and by the book,
But it gives me smelly pee.

Something isn’t right here – Candice Louisa Daquin

Whisper and the Roar

As a woman, you’re taught

To speak frankly, but not too loud

Consequences for girls are worse

So I learned

To whisper in a roar

And when I cried, I showed nobody

Using the tears as fertilizer

For my wild garden

I am not a person who believes cruel answers anything

why ruin someone just because you can? As a punchline?

once I was called ‘too nice’ and I am often referred to as ‘sweet’

which are probably both gentle character assassinations

I admit it is not so great being a gentle soul, because people admire

bitches, sarcasm, sass, verve (is that still a word?), spite, caustic(ism) and other

signs someone is strong, because if you are cruel

you are seen as hip in this society

even my neighbor likes it when we shoot the shit and she gets that

glassy-eyed affection for tearing people down and asks me all…

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The mechanics of falling

the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone
but neither’s connected to the eye bone.

what once the sinews did remember
without resort to math
is now in doubt, in life’s December
we walk a crooked path

trusting not our gyroscopes
that used to keep us balanced
trying to keep our highest hopes,
but vertically challenged

at the stairs on weakened knees
we grip the wooden railing
we used to take them by the threes
but confidence is failing

crocs and socks and velcro shoes
are all the rage these days
be careful of the path you choose
and watch your wending ways!

Twenty… this dream of anxiousness.

I turn around to an unfamiliar sound.
My strange neighbor stands in my yard.
He has a hose, and sprays casually,
glancing furtively in my direction.
The water is warm.
He turns his back to me, then quickly comes around.
Spraying now a fan of fine white sand.
I run for a broom, a shovel, a hope.
i return to backyard dunes,
as over the fence he floats, gone.
I slide open my back door,
admitting encroaching sands,
and run through my house to the front room.
Someone has laid a dead rodent on the white pile carpet.
It smells as i pick it up, and leaves a stain.
A face appears behind my front curtains, then flees.
An image of a long dead niece.
From behind the sofa, a giggle.
I bolt through the front door.
The street is dunes of white.
There is a plant pot placed in my driveway.
A single stick, bereft of foliage, sprouts from it.
And, hanging from a branch, a furniture tag.
It bears the word ICARUS.

number 19- the King of pain

On a wooden bench in a long darkened hallway I sit, in contrived cold dimness.
Shivering in shorts,I look down, dribbling on the bright dog tag hanging from my neck. Number 49. To my right and left, sibling sufferers, all in mourning.
Mourning for lives given over to pain. We, each of us, counting, enumerating, cataloguing its forms, its art. Moaning it out in sad violins, tubas of torture, oboes of woe. We, each of us, think we must be King. Flaunting, pointing inwards, saying see me, do you see me? We nod to one another, in fatuous fondling sympathy, waiting. Waiting to see who will be chosen from amongst the courtiers, and exalted to the royal standing. All at once, there is a hush. The house lights dim to darkness compete. A shuffling and a clanking is heard. A silvering light admits from above, coating a figure grotesque. In a gait at once jerking and shambling, he picks his noisome way, sparing all a proud burning glance, freshets of blood his tears. In fractures compound his bones protrude, splinted over with leg hold traps. The flayed flesh of his back dangles in ribbons. He makes not a vocal sound, but works meaty jaws to spit smoky pools upon the floor. He stops. We stand. Those eyes of his tilt upwards in seeming worship. Upon his head, a crown of Mercury. We bow, prostrate.

It answers

I venture a question:

“What is life?”

It answers (from many mouths) :

A long slow knife.

Another, then:

“And its meaning?”

Suffering and strife.

“Surely, there is more?”

A test of the spirit.

A measure of the faith.

‘Twas not the mud that made the blind man see,

nor magic in the water turned to wine

nor the weave of the baskets that fed the multitude.

Faith alone these things will do.