The Little Black Dress

The Little Black Dress

Just out of reach
in a shop window,
discreet,
one teasing design’s
perfection.

I am huge,
her heart says,
and incomplete,
without the basic black dress
I’m told a wardrobe needs.

The deeper she studies an innocent reflection, so greater becomes her restless irritation, until she, resigned, repeats:

“Is there no measure,
no sort of tape
to offer kind assessment
and a moment’s
escape?”

Then, as if exact on time,
a blessing breeze sets in,
tousles every skirt the
same
and touches soft
each chin.

What Chapter Are You Reading?

Deft fingers, light puffs of breeze
lift familiar pages
toward a sun’s benign interrogation
when readers,
for one moment,
abandon the book,
turn away to fill that cup
at another faucet
spout.

Forever, curious eyes
find the story,
someplace forward, perhaps
back, it is dependent
on luck or God.

Meanwhile,
excited light bombards
today, dusting our shroud
with a blue under which,
visible movements of leaf
and worm are lies,
teasing that time exists.

A stone has
no connection
to sand.
Tree does not
remember or imagine seed.

The clock reads today
for as many centuries
as complete
an instant.

Only one observer
sees any of this
and only when
he or she
returns to the book,
refreshed.

Trying to Keep Upright

It is slapstick comical,
this furious winter
slippy day.
Folks are looking back quick
to see if
someone else saw…
they are embarrassed,
as the single moment upright
teetered toward
a fall.

It doesn’t look good out there.

I’ll stay inside awhile,
where restless power is humming
and we’ve marmalade
on toast,
a little something warm
that isn’t blood.

“So lucky,”
they say and I am lucky, I guess,
my birthdate an obscure year,
that whispers of a
more remote but
similar mess.

It didn’t look good out there,
then,
either.

Parents, lovers and longtime friends,
are wiggling signposts,
proof of damaging wind.

When I have to go,
unwilling, must travel again,
I’ll slip and I’ll slide,
look backwards,
and grin.

That Force Which Through The Green Fuse

(January 18, 2024)

Outside,
puffed birds are acting
crazy today.
Perhaps
they have a temporary blindness
granted them
by whichever, whomever force
can offer kindness on the one hand

as antidote for icy truth
held in another.
Maybe the flappers
are simple, foolish, joyful?
stamping wings the way I would feet
to get warm?

I am glad the long grass
went to seed,
the berries to dry.
My ordinary procrastination at
bracing the yard for winter
worked.
From the rich perspective
of each hungry
beak,
I did good
by doing nothing.

Centred in a frosted
window view,
two future trees,
with youth’s, respectful grace,
accept accumulating loads
of sparse but steady
white flakes.

I believe, dear fellow
living things, seeking to know,
time is excruciating
slow.
One cannot tell
which is beginning,
which,
the end
and if all schemes are ill
or well
or cautious, on the mend.

The Smallish Artist

December 10 2023

Someday, I will truly understand where I belong, what I should and shouldn’t say in public and whose opinions and actions I should pay attention to. In the meantime, I just say what I like and hope I have good sense. I do care what the world thinks. Perhaps too much. I worry how I am perceived. I snoop on other’s affairs and compare their details to my own. Sadly, my Gladys Kravitz nature gets the better of me from time to time. Like now. Having been sick the last few days and unable to do my singing or concentrate on writing has me thinking the many negative thoughts again. I am convinced that I don’t measure up, I stick my head out the Facebook window and see others being beautiful, smart, young, rich, talented. Ha.

Why do I bother with singing and writing? Any improvement of skill is tortoise slow in coming and there isn’t all that much time left. My voice teacher was absolutely correct, I am too old. My English teacher was absolutely correct, I don’t understand most literature. I only know what appeals to me. I only know which books are really good – I haven’t learned the why. The really good books fly over my head and, in music, I often can’t tell which is the one chord, which the five. Learning that stuff takes time. If my urologist thinks it is more likely I die of old age than I develop as common a cancer as that of the prostate, then I guess there isn’t time to learn something complicated, like how to dig out meaning, how to put it in, how to sing, how to really play.

I will never be great. It is likely that I will never be even good. And, since I put off practicing and writing… I likely won’t ever be middling. Why bother to do it?

I can’t think of a reason, other than my own personal enjoyment, to continue with futile artistic pursuits. When the personal enjoyment is overwhelmed by the amount of effort I have to put forward (to fend off negative comments, negative people and the physical inconveniences) that will be time to toss in my tea towel. I sorta wish that I could magically just do what others are so much better able to but, alas. Sigh. There are lots of reasons why I cannot deliver the kind of music or literature I wish I could. Chief among them is that I never have put in enough practice time or sought out enough education. I know this truth to be self-evident. There are lots of reasons why I didn’t get an education or practice enough, lots of very good reasons. Things are not so simple as Dr. Phil suggests. Ask Tillie Olson, she told us in her book, ‘Silences’. She was a bit more bitter than I dare to be, but to each…(as they say). One big trouble with time and endeavour is that no matter who says otherwise, it IS often, actually, too late. The same folks who say, “it is never too late,” also say, “you can do anything you put your mind to!”. Nah, those statements are not really true. That is the way it goes, sometimes you miss the train. No tears, I did what I did and it was the best I could at the time. When I am thinking right (as a friend used to say) I do what I can and I don’t worry how it appears to others.

I suppose I should pick up the book and finish it as best I am able, leaving the hopeless swirl of rewriting and critiquing for nobody to do, after I am gone. I need not be embarrassed. No legitimate publisher has to see the book and only a few people have to tell me it’s good when I know it isn’t. Ha. For me, it is fun to just type and edit a bit, without regard for which clause is which, what an infinitive is (for the splitting of). In truth, as it regards writing, I am so totally free to do as I like that it stupefies me. I can look at a critic (one of the many) with a blank stare. You know the one, the one that says, “nyah, nyah.”

My cold is getting better. It is the first head cold I have had in a few years. I did get Covid a couple suns ago but I have been sort of isolated beyond that and enjoying good physical health. (Umm, as good as this 73 year old can enjoy.) I ventured outside today for the first time in four days. I hope I can sleep tonight, that would be lovely. The fourteen hour Sunday into Monday sleep of a week ago was the last real sleep I had.

Poor Eyesight and the Heart’s Desire

Poor Eyesight and the Heart’s Desire

There was a time
I dear remember,
when fresh and new
were printed bold
upon my private menu
but I am older, now
and more mature.

I learned
there is great spoilage risk,
after a long day
in the sun or two and
time,
a maggot creature,
chews away,
as they best do,
until the darkest eyelash
comes undone, its
glue
proved not true.

Through
measured, ground,
high-polished glass,
I see my grand
illusion of you
and
your once terrific
ass!

In Six Seconds, I Will Get Back to You

Many statements true
or not
receive that broad applause
which indicates, in glitter-sound,
alignment with the laws
a group of social voters pass
with random muster-calls.

It has been said
in public means,
written
crude on walls,
that thoughts of sex
invade not women
but men, most often
of all.

By this belief,
it’s every seven seconds then,
those full-grown boys,
the masculine,
think of hairy parts
or carnal acts
from which all living starts?

Aha!
The obvious root of accident,
the misstep a thousand
careless feet
make,
can be linked to a native error,
one chromosome-driven mis-
take?

From this it’s true
I’m certain damned,
cursed and starred,
to think of someone’s
gluteus max.
six times making one pass
mowing across the yard!

A Dead Spider

These lines speak of a man who
wrote poems in his head all day long.
For this fellow, it was ‘twenty four seven’.

The poems were observations,
points of view,
not necessarily unique
or new,
but constant.

On one occasion,
a very large spider died and
hung from its web for
several days.
The season of year was fall,
one window was open yet
and the inviting web, with its weight
of motionless, fearsome body,
stretched across the centre,
displayed prominently.

As if required by
integrity’s law, under the subsection
regarding action of witnesses,
the man observed this spider carcass
and wrote a poem about it.

The spider loomed large,
lying as still in the poem
as it did on the sticky filaments,
created of a life’s labour.

One of eight crooked
limbs wiggled free at the brushing
of light breeze, causing
a lifeless, back-and-forth
swinging which gave
the illusion of further movement,
maybe future bug-killing.

The man noticed all of these
facts and wrote his interpretation
of them, in his head.
It was compelling,
so he then typed them into a concrete
shape, on paper.

The poem, as written,
edited and completed,
was about death,
how it hangs, voluptuous,
threatening, in the middle of
an otherwise gossamer, vibrant,
living web.

“Death…” said the poem,
in a matter of fact way,
“also stills the killer.”

A Trick To It

What can sun do
to brick
that has not already been done?

Time, with circumstance,
shapes the mud and straw heart,
that, still eager for fulfilled promise,
will leap, head last,
toward the nearest oven.

Is it possible,
sun might further harden
that thing,
built of rock broken over eons,
ground to small grains,
mixed with the many tears,
strengthened by dry, fibrous life?

Is the furnace sun
but more ‘love’
seeking to bake
the soul empty?

The trick,

oh my dear friends,

the trick is to remain porous
though hard, insoluble
and

let those eternal, gentle breezes
(which carry the softest sand)
slowly erode you to dust again.

Something is Wrong With the Moon

There is something wrong with the moon,
it doesn’t shine.
In utter dark, night tosses but will not get up,
fumble with a candle,
open a book,
pour a glass of warm milk.

Tender night fears
it will stub a restless toe
on cast off, half-concealed,
nearly forgotten woes that
wild day left where they fell.

There is talk of one whom
fills space with light but
that boss is busy,
with more sheep than
can be counted.

He might tip a cup to salve night
but is less than careful,
will not remember
a tense drama when the last one spilt.

What is to do
and save night’s dreaming?
With the moon turned off,
no clear path shows.