USA

JBuck22874@aol.com 

The Cloudy Aquarium

It's a messy visage, this life.
So many worms. Too few summers.
Brandy lacing lemonade
with afterthoughts of how I might have
done a sunset differently.
Embracing instead of copying.
A writer in a lava bed 
of hot, hot coals.
Aquariums are full of rocks
and cloudy time. 
Reefed with timeless elegance. 

I'm just one card
in a bad Bridge hand.
Playing poker with a risky poem.
Light off hard syllabic hail
burns my eyes, but the openness
is a treasure to tackle,
not spackle with lies.
The water is cold and furious.
My muscles ache from breaches done
and reaches they haven't made.
I swim regardless.
Long, slow crawls 
toward bars of soap.

Wishing for a Dry Well

A poet wishing for a dry well
when it comes to grief,
just this once.
For butterflies and bubble baths--
little to say but fluff and fancy.
Ironed towels of commonplace
in needlepoints beside the mirror.

That isn't, it seems, to be my fate.
For I am the oil for the rare fire.
Missing toes don't know
the lace of pedicures.
Booze I slugged for fifteen years
like lemonade on a Southern porch
is turning somersaults of guilt
for sunsets that I tore or missed.
My hair grows Brillo gray;
tear gas substance clings
to maps of penciled cracks.

I pummel nuts into shell bits,
bitch at the bitch inside my head,
drink ammonia punch,
wash my colors on and 
notice the stains my life has left,
stomach my loins, spit them out
bulimic style in peppercorn continuance.

City Cast

Climate seemed clematis 
in a bowl of thirst.
Harmonicas of country tunes
were clashing with the city sirens
warming up like tipping tubas
stepping on unpromised land.

A blood bath from that accident
turned heads just once, 
then left its signature on sidewalks 
with their tooth decay.
In urban casts, my skin would itch.
I wanted home like Dorothy did--
followed scarecrows everywhere
until my flesh turned stalks of wheat.
My body was nonentity--
a wad of gum between two cards
of high-rise doom.

Living in needles of Novocain,
joyful was a leg-less ladder
leaning up against a wall.
People drank the silence here
like farmers guzzle lemonade.

Megahurts

They called me in to give advice 
on living with that missingness
protruding where a knee should bend. 
CAT scans of a courage train with brakes on fire. 
Blood left stains emotion-wise.
At sixty pounds, your tiny frame--
a scarecrow whittled to a stalk of wheat.
The nursing home was just an attic
waiting for a merciful torch.
My allergies to trouble zones were acting up 
and I wanted to run and jump and fly, 
that brand of conquest laughable.
Both our stumps, unbidden shames,
would always be the mascot of a wet cigar
and not some triumph parachute.

Megahurts of platitudes and sweet congeniality
did nothing to restore your parts.
I folded hands in envelopes,
tried to make a smile stick.
Asked to read grief's crystal ball--
I had papers of fermented pain
as puppy dogs get pedigree.
Syllables were useless lace, squirting mace, 
untrained tendons reaching for cloudless sky
in taverns of a thunderhead.

Book reports of fairy tales and pink ballets 
I tried to not recite to you 
on motion's stopping music box.
Been there, done that desperation 
tied to stakes beside a match. 
An orchestra on upper decks of sinking ships 
with noses of a giant iceberg 
coming at body's rotting tooth.
Wanting to be a well of quinine poured like wine 
for those who caught malaria.
Every slap my tongue would make 
seemed full of impropriety--
like wearing a coat of satin mink 
for sleeping in a dirty barn.

© cCopyright, 2000, Janet I. Buck.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.