USA

Buck22874@aol.com

Slow Dance on the Kitchen Tile

The last time we talked was in

the center of death's wadded fist.

Its nails were digging into our hands.

Pain drifted words off cliffs--

alyssum seeds in wide-mouthed

canyons living off that cruel wind.

Shrunken mangers of a moment

lit by flames and up in smoke.

Neither of us recalls the meat,

just omnipresent sense of blood--

his pale, waxen face

in the open casket our tears

tried hard to close and lower into memory.

In the context of a widowed flower,

I hesitate to share sweet news

of slippery palms on passion's

doorknob turning at the speed of light--

when yours is grains in tilted urn,

instant coffee set beside my deep,

brown, whole beans, wafting

through the heating ducts.

But you ask, so I spill.  Hoping the liquid

won't leave a crust you'll have to scrub

when I start my car and you sit silent

on the couch, on cactus thorns of longing rites.

"Is he a hugger and a holder?"

you pry.  My luck, my blessings

glisten on a wetted tongue.

"He is and more.  Our nights and days,

together's press, are love letters

from a cat to a can of tuna fish."

All dead end streets forgotten

for oasis second in blowing sand.

For you are the prism of cherishing

and I am willing prisoner.

We'll slow dance on the kitchen tile

even in the shadow of the valley of death.

The Displaced Mom

The light switch on your bedroom wall

is out of reach; fingers aren’t the butterflies

they used to be in days of youth.

You fill torn pockets of your smock--

food and pens and bottled pills

for long, long treks across the house.

Azalea buds unfertilized by hands

that used to know the soil

like sculptures spinning dampened clay.

Aphids linger on leaves of green.

Sunrise isn't effortless.

Hummingbirds of aging drain

the nectar from an open rose.

"It's time for you to lean on us.

Pack up burdens of your garden.

Let us bring you sips

of water in the night.

Pay you back for sacrifice."

She saw it as a failure measure

tucked into a closing play.

A suitcase full of charms and triumphs,

rotted faded Easter eggs,

slying rolled behind the couch.

Candle cores a metal plate--

flesh wax down to trunks of trees.

Unruly weeds of white gray hair

have earned their place in vases here.

Scent of wise in weak remains.

Treading water same as quicksand,

full of plump mosquito bites.

Her body was a string-less harp.

Its arch still coveted by love

like evening peace behind the light.

Loose syllables were melted mints

on torn unironed pillow case.

Luggage stacked beside the curb

and waiting for Karate chops--

unwelcome changes for her bones.

Aging's snore was louder than

her prideful rage; she acquiesced.

"It's time for you to lean on us.

Pack up burdens of your garden.

Let us bring you sips of water in the night.

Cook your troubles down to mush.

Decorate your bedtime snack

with chocolates on a china plate."

The Pattern

I stopped loving my father a long time ago.

What remained was the slavery to a pattern.

    ***Anais Nin (1948)

Teardrop turpentine on paint.

Where is the wood whittled with flaws?

Clay below this glaze of booze.

I'm smoking poems all day long.

Two at a time in ashtrays of a stunted hour.

Looking at our teraphim.

Lights lose watts at 5 p.m.

I'm aching to dispel the myth

that all is right when it is not

and mother sleeps inside that glass

like flies between the screen and flight.

Finding all this silent sand

in pockets of eternity.

Enough to build a castle with

if only fingers did the dare.

We are that lost puzzle piece

on table tops with wobbly legs.

But I still love you.

Patterns sticking to my thumbs,

craving soap of honesty.

Keys to shackles still in reach.

Can't we finish challenges

with something better than

learned exit locking all

our slamming doors?

Time's pendulum is swinging left,

then right, then centering.

Carpets under parlor chaise

are light, light shades of apricot

and no one walks upon this grass.

Home is a place so neat and clean,

no one could be living there.

Black Toast

It was a matter of one small match.

And a logger who lost his job.

Anger and the hungry mouths

of three young kids

staring at an empty box of Cheerios.

Scorched earth, black toast.

Charcoal where lime grass once lay.

Bugs in hair nets of the trees

up in frying pans of smoke.

It's all about the "once" depiction

of a dream.  Birds at home,

their skinny webs of wire feet

clinging to a bouncing branch.

This majesty was such a fragile

velvet green.  And the throne

now petrified as bodies

looking down at graves

into the cyclops eye of orange sun,

grated by guilt and laciness of luckier.

An ambling creek was nothing

but a vein collapsed

that could not halt the jetting flames.

This rosy sky in cozy church

is laundry day for leprous tears.

We, in all we didn't do,

turning breeze to savage wind.

Old Hurts

This odyssey of ancient fallen Jerichos.

Your walls like a row of Dominos.

If I tap one and force this drive into abyss,

will it infect all thorns you've pacified,

bring black lava up again?

Twist a jagged blade in thighs.

I imagine a trip through fields of corn,

cities swelling in their soot.

To meet scorched dream half-way.

Giving acid, rancid tears

a better, proper burial.

Games are smarter than our souls. 

Ending them is easier than

writing all the rules again.

Cards and pawns, shining their swords

on bishops of death.  Sitting as

all children do on pinched raw nerve,

assuming age has better hands

to strut in rained parades of time.

Ishmael returning now to face

and bind these ring-less folders of mistakes;

old hurts like whores to pay and jump.

Our pounding tires,

paddles at a mortal auction,

raising hands in gesturing:

"I lived a gutsy horoscope.

There are no other ways to sing."

Agony's portfolio

was rubber-banded all these years. 

I worry that its leather cover,

all its cracks, will start to bleed.

But you have holey jeans to patch,

burning belts to put away.  

Miles will be a bar of soap;

love will grow another inch.

I will help you wash your back,

whipped by couldn't(s) of this world.

A cleaner moon will guide us home.

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