Fairy Fruit

You came to me bleeding dye and belching butterflies
And I asked you what you've eaten, where you've strayed
While you stare toward that empty yard and murmur:

The shouts are melting in the rain, in the falling sky!
I'll wear the words I speak, bitter, salty, sweet...I'll wait
For the tongues of angels to drink me clean.

It rains! They are pouring colors on the trees, the grass;
All the broken wishes are pollinating the forest,
Blooming from my lips.

The squirrels flung fairy fruits at me all day.
Never are these sweet for those logical beasts
But I'll lick the broken rinds of dreams.

I am belching the indigestible hopes of caterpillars
All the ichor trails that we cannot swallow, that fruit
Bubbles from my lips.

Yards are never empty.

---
Not sure whether the squirrels are trying to help or not. Your thoughts? 

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets United for their Sunday poetry mix. It's a good day for poetry and warm socks. :)

-- Chrissa

Five Lines

It's the green of the water and the small water lilies in the center
I imagine my arms stretched out, my body a dark arrow in dim water
The cool bars of shadow, safety; the silent liquid, home and skin
I imagine myself frog, the way I first learned to swim
Legs and arms bending and shoving, pulling me down and through

Sharing with The Sunday Muse--for Wednesday. There is no theme-i-ness here...only I had one of those I'd-rather-be-in-a-pool-this-morning moods. :) Also, the picture is not referenced in the five lines...I just like it. 

-- Chrissa

The Reader and the Read

The tiny black spider who comes from nowhere
To use your book as a ledge and the slowly shifting pages
As a series of caverns--she is
A word grown legs, crawling from one sentence to another
Before becoming fixed, again;
As if you were trying to keep the words in the book, the ink
Tentative against your fingers
But free.
Read her as she slips away, anchored to the story
As you have been
In the sunlight, in the breeze,
And the paper.

A Seasonless Song

Pull the spinning heart from the chest;
Sinatra...sometimes is doesn't stain...

It's dust, not blood, that spills
From the speakers and dials we couldn't reach
Under a hinged lid
When we used to stand in line for dinner,
Like a textbook photo, in the tiled entry
Of a strip center restaurant,
Washed by jazz
And the breath of summer asphalt.

But this throat and heart--
Sinatra on wax nerves unremembered--
Polish it until we decide
How to replace the music,
The vestigial turntable,
Those days.

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse for a music-inspired prompt and with Poets United, which also began with a lovely hymn to rebuilding after war. I've been relying on music this week...we ended up having what seemed like simple repair turn into an ever-larger ceiling surgery...ergo, I've been sitting on the porch when I can with iced coffee and 80's music and watching the bees. Pretty sure I've become a semi-permanent feature on minor bee backroads. :) Pretty sure that's going to become a short story title at some point. 

Hope you're having a kind week & have plenty of chances to go outside and breathe for a few minutes, if nothing else. 

--chrissa

Stains and Whispers

I weave a wife's-nest above the weeds from vines that smell
Of cut grass drying in the heat,
Above the frog condos cut into the clay where they sing
Near the rain or end of the day.

I whisper wasps into a green plastic shed where they sting
Like the thorns roses sharpen in bed.
Berries fall tangy into stained palms from my spiny vines
Our tongues spread the green.

Cross-posting with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United. Looking forward to working up a spring herb garden but perhaps not looking forward to tackling our tiny backyard in terms of the moat that has developed and a concern about snakes after a poorly thought out decision to fill an old garden bed with unused pots and such...a poem, therefore, that wonders whether the whispers hinted at in the image are, perhaps, plots and gossip.

Meanwhile, waiting to find out what this mystery plant is. Picked it up yesterday at our local public garden's plant sale...it was unlabeled and tiny...and my writer's heart couldn't resist the possibilities. :) 

Hope you're having a green & growing (although not stinging) week! :)
-- Chrissa

Where the Blooms Are Going

photo inspiration hosted by The Sunday Muse

I can hear the water elementals raining a warpath.
Behind me, the wake of my tires drowns yards.

***

Spring has been distracted by a dalliance with the snow
Her toes are softly lacing the ice and frost nearby
A cold beach
Curving over the sidewalks, over the lawns.
She drives her love up against doorways
Leaving the world
Underneath.

Her footprints are tide pools of grass.

My truck could probably run its own tracks
Most nights, third shift to Wal-Mart and back
But that morning it was just light
Catching on the blooms she'd abandoned
And we went astray and I could smell
Through the vents
That yard where I grew up, the house, the street...

I stole her flowers.

They smelled like cut grass and soggy Gulf Coast mornings
They smelled like falling back...like
Fifteen, all the anticipation of the glory to come.
I turned toward it, toward the rising sun.

They say it's the jet stream.

I drive through the rain, avoid the streets I can
Only recognize through the mailboxes
Above water. I feel the wake I leave
In the heavy forward pulse: heart, wrists, engine.
I can still smell the flowers and the old house
It's just a few streets down. It could use
Beauty and I could use
A morning forearm-deep in the beds
Against the brick.

Her footfalls sound like hail.
I'm just a block away.

Hope everyone is having a good week! This is being shared with Poets United and The Sunday Muse. Looking forward to spring planting...

-- Chrissa

Field of Discards

You knew the city would kill you.
What it wants you to know or to steal it provides
Where pigeons cultivate the fields of discards.
What does it need of a raven?

I have overflown it, drenched it, wash it, breathed
With all the rage of the ocean swallowing forests' deaths,
Choking on the bones of myths, overflowing--
Recreating each upside down as knives
Glinting toward its heart in the rain
Shivered from my wings
From my bones.

The last surviving story.

I cannot cleanse the imprint of your feathers
From its streets, scrawled in exhaust and tar
Even with an ocean's fury or sadness.

You knew the city would kill you.
Knowledge chokes you every time.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse.

It's been a grey week here just north of Houston and every day it seems I go out walking wearing sleeves a bit too short for the maybe winter weather. Anyway. It's wild strawberry season here so spring is here, even if my sweater is back at the house.

 Hope everyone is having a good week!

-- chrissa