Who will challenge the beauty

of the moon.

A misty daemon shrouded

clouded, white and old

…time itself.

We watch quite politely as

the moon revolves from

one side of sky to another

Following us, watching our eyes

with dead eyes

a million

or so.

This moon is dreamy

this moon is sublime

and no one can challenge its beauty.

None so bold

can move us like the moon.

Water is a wonderful dance floor

We fly – On surfaces sheened with

Ascension Monster Big and no more

Blue black sky. Black sea

Caribbean Moon is missing in action

I put my hand in hers, placed

a gentle kiss upon opened lips

and she shuddered quite pleased

with the vision of the Caribbean

Moon rising gently over my shoulder

Peeking sweetly as clouds revealed

enjoined us as we enjoined ourselves

Cold river runs cold and colder

live crawdads revolve – understandably

How can you stay in my memorable

castles of steel and words?

silver and dyed blue linens – remote

without escape – we do not plan.

And if my muse is back, she speaks

another language – adroit, uncomplicated

bad fire remains – of course all poetry

is simply dumb sailors adrift beneath

deep sun with much lack of fresh water

eeee oh – ho ho – bottle of gold!

She talks too much, driving me to sing

outloud madness, Spring weather quite

mad – and I go inside. How can

you make any dreams without Sleep

and Sleep comes hard when the

sweat pours off your body like

a clapping sound

Brown muddy water

Brown muddy water going downstream

to winter Palaces in someone else’s

hemisphere. I wish it was ski season

again!

The Kind Ones

Souls crushed like paper cups
Discarded
Stained with drink
From mouths that had their fill
Of kindness
Over sugared
Rotting out mouths

Valerie Hardin

Civilized brawn drawing up

in corporate flannel, leathery chic.

Tests, the old mamma’s type fingering,

bad boy, bad, bad boy.

Men greeting men in this horsey fashion,

jerking chins, the calling card sized

stamp of position. Just who

will actually finish is a volume no sane woman

would actually interpret.

Judge. Marry recklessly. Toss

a salad for, perhaps, in the name of organic progress

& tough, tough choice.

Bad boy, bad, bad boy.

But I am no mother,

not yet.

& I have never–once, perhaps, feigning fluster,

chosen, like flinging a handful of darts blindfolded,

chosen again.

Oh. Thousands.

Volume, mostly: each the antsy, uninvited guest.

Each the maverick socked in a square grin.

Each the good sport. Each better.

The best.

The Call

Pure summons. Perfectly human.

Where did he get it? Not

from neighbors–the slap, slap

of their board games, jagged music,

gruff shouts from the lower register

as all Sunday they crash together a concrete

restraining wall in the dirt garden,

a wall running off wildlife with traps,

scarecrows & poison. No. Not there.

Not from them. Not from me, without

a whistle to my name, or from my overweight

cat staring hungrily from her patio chair.

Up, we look, pulled by sheer clarity,

minions, partners in solitude, not

a blade of grass, a man, or wildness

between us: Tile and carpet, an iron rail,

books, this little padded habitat.

Her genes kick in, the call to kill.

Fantasy, for me–man on the pole,

legs tight in jeans, tan thuddy boots

echoing when he touches down on my tile,

the sexy grin answering its own call.

Call me, call me, please.

Tricked, we stare as he spreads his wings,

startling the finches dolloped along the wire,

dropping notes of the mocking repertoire

to the morning glory, tile, gutter,

desolate twilight fluttering in.\

Cat Under Wheels

Dear doctor: How snide!

Sky closing in, I raced a tide thumping

black rocks, a white hammer, stamping

my heels, pushing me inland; clouds

wheels, bold & thick, rolling over the city,

my city, beetled in cars.

Curbside, a dazzling view

of shimmering street, each headlamp

a pearl dispersing carnival reds, pinks,

upside down starlight in a road slapped with rain–

doctor, into this it ran, a lusty dash

through bedlam, perhaps for love.

There was only the night,

only me, the click of your tongue,

the cartoon on your tie. Minutes

after the little emergency, thumped,

squashed, it didn’t know, but I did,

your blunt smile as the cat I saved, died.

Purr

From a distance, close, then thunder

forcing rhythm in my breath,

fixing it, this roaring comfort,

cat-scream numbing all he said.

The Plate

She floats on cobalt china,

holding four aloft, two

per flowery peasant’s sleeve,

two babies per wing.

Hair thick & horizontal, pigtails

lightly bound and fat–blonde

umbrellas protecting their tiny heads.

Her dress overlaps feet oval as seeds,

the train curled up at the hem,

like a fool’s cap.

A wild bohemian border binds

this precious plate, my stock,

my whole, my final inheritance.

Mother, the lady sings.

I know she is singing.

Mother-speak.

My grandmother loved her plate.

Tight in her perms and her pins

and her rubbery nylons, her aprons

flat lakes, the only wrinkles in her skin,

tugged loops freshly powdered,

no one left to tend,

to hush, punish, or bully,

she kept her plate, little blue moon, fairytale,

swiping her cloth over and around

the perfectly madcap mommy,

children chickadees perched,

children with shrieking grins

and unbrushed hair, naked children

secure on arms straight as rifles,

everyone poised in the lulling blue.

She hated my hippie parents,

especially my pregnant mother

in bell bottoms and afghans,

introducing my father to jazz

and barefeet in the house

and lentils

and sex.

But she loved you,

wizard lady, your kids

attentive as flies on a spill.

Mother-speak.

I am twice the age of my grandmother

and mother when they gave birth,

two sons, four daughters

between them, children born

too skittish and rueful and wise

not to drop, one by one,

from the worn, distracted arms

of their mothers.

Snap.

Plate of charity.

Plate of hope.

Single Again

1 btl chard

1 tube Crest

1 pkg pre-shredded greens

1 roma

1 frzn turk pt pie

1 bx cndms–or not.

24 silvery cans of moist cat food, assorted flavors.

Signature goods

tittered over by the doubled,

by the wed,

by the smirking man in rough jeans who has met me before–

cat. female. single!

Or imagine a cattle call in nothing but a bikini,

clinically scrutinized

until the cutie perks,

lunging knees & a fresh breast job,

oh drolly sexual.

Therefore holy.

Until the 35th year of attention

lends her pickings detriment: scowls & blather.

Age dawns–so this is life in the shadow,

scrounged perimeters,

a mellow cool inside.

A thought–maybe (seriously) it was me!

I didn’t like him

the way I knew he

should love me.

You guys is a godsend. Though current budget limitations prevent me from as yet acquiring the necessary software to sate my many muses, it is my hope that perhaps the Greasy Monkey can provide some sort of outlet for this busy businessman’s pent-up creativity.

May I offer, at least, my latest bit of wordplay. I call it “Suffering Melanoma.”

A-hem.

Suffering melanoma

Somewhere several south of Tampa,
No sad reasons to recall to you.
I just ask that you’ll watch my things
Until our safe arrival.
Bring twenty bucks, some beer and a sailor suit.

Last country, I recall,
The bathrooms there were not so simple,
A dollar gas was not the thing
A brighter man might do.
But when we rescued Omaha
From customary purpose,
The local Don, he howled upon
My uncle’s favorite flute.

Bells ring songs throughout the clear night air,
Singing, resounding, everywhere,
Beautiful balladic notes following,
In sequence, song to harmony.

Which ballad do you hear,
Is it strong, serenading clear,
Do you merely hear the words,
Or do hearts beat with notes, playing your chords?

To chime, a bell forged unlike the rest,
Chimerical dome rocks easily swaying,
Listening to the bells of harmony,
Discord steals a song.

Now hollow, hanging from steeples high,
Quietude from quintessence,
And those that never heard,
Alone, keeping company,
Of bats at night in its belfries.

Compendium

It’s rained drops of colorless
Liquid to run creeks,
Sidewaying streams,
To fill rivers, languid lakes
That preserve, evaporate
To finally join salty seas

Wavering rain drops of colorless
Now for quite a time
Winter air is cold and bare
Silence and stillness can’t separate
For something so sure
It may leak a surreptitious glance

But standing with a silk scarf
Wound and coiled around her neck
Hiding green snake lines
A fixed gaze
Frozen

She replies
“I don’t know what the sun looks like anymore,
It’s been too long since I’ve seen it.
Now I’ve been married to him, over there, for 51 years.
When he gets cold, and easily he does, he gets crabby.
So he’s off inside somewhere, until that taximan comes.
And you know what– Weathermen lie!”

And the rain fell colorless
And a red jeep four-by-four honked and stopped.
“Oh there’s the man
I’ve been waiting for.”

And she peered out from under the black umbrella and smokeless rain, with lightning dancing like a star sapphire in her blue eyes,

And concluded,
“That’s not him, I almost got the wrong man.”

And oddly enough, the bleary rain ceased by gray frays of silverlining.

She humored herself with her own mistake and let out an
uproarious laugh, twirling thunder into her own ovation.

Incantation

First ranting rain
Then thirsty thunder
A mist solo wind
Icing catamarans in gales
Arctics of snow surmount
Buried soft and still
Surrendering I heard
And listened
To all that floods
The furrows
Beyond glaciers
When even polar bears
Sleep to songs

all poems by permission of Lynn Lily, copyright, 1998

PS
Lily Lynn: I have since published my first book of poetry called Migrations which is available for $16.50 including postage and anyone interested can reach me at llily@bigfoot.com. It would appeal to adults that value family, and childhood kinships.

I’ve had an intense passion for writing since I was three when my mom found me trying to type a book on an old typewriter in the basement. Hopefully, if I get accepted somewhere, I’ll be in graduate school next fall studying more creative writing. For the future I hope to be a whacked out poetry professor, overdosing on coffee, staying up all night and initiating spontaneous road trips searching for new themes.

FABRIC OF A KISS

Young boy
tattooed himself
to my velvet temper,
My untamed parade.

Slapped him with melody
He choked and smiled
in my hedonistic web.

Coma in my lane,
He swam for my height,
Thinking it was all
that kept him from me.

On a day
Any heifer would do,

When an obscure
Light was leaking
-From his eyes,

Like some buttery monster,
I granted him a minute
on that vinyl couch.

His dizzy feet came at me
With a swollen breeze.

All I saw were
chaotic scraps of light
And stray, red knots.

My counterfeit kiss
peeled him to the skull.

Nine years of him
packed in a kiss.

He heard parachutes of violins,
Swan beaks insisting love.

I saw a drowsy sow.
Still, my lips tugged him to oblivion.

TROJAN MAN

Last night I was touched
by an aged, black-eyed
Trojan from the back woods.

He made me fall like a bold faced
Ballet dancer with unclear eyes.

We lit through a sensuous, agonizing fever-
With the optimal balance
of the Big Dipper.

He broke the nauseating script,
Waking my neglected comedy
with October secrets.

Combing through the morning
bonfire with tribal concord.

Wind-chill bit at his semen.
Through the breathy encore
I accepted his release
Knowing the cold injection
would rapture me

Swelling my prolific doubt.

VENUS

Hours of leaky meteors
Hound the oceanic part of my mind
that sinks for snowy, white soldiers
Back from horrendous scandals-

nights with sharp-toothed jaguars
in their pillows.
The nearest saxophone miles away.

you live there like a
Black dollar rogue
Lurking in
that part of me that is Venus

Rocking metro phases
through the thoughts
I never figured were pliable.

BLEMISHED

The octave of us is an avenue
of blackbirds with marbleized wings
As the blacksnake licks the bobcat
in a herculean daze.

Your impotent homeland spread
the last deep’sea of freckles
on your icy, olive face.

Your blemished hands belong on you like
Auburn liqueur on pale blue tablecloths.

I swim in the black of your eye until it
liquefies like blues in autumn.

We talk like friends of jewel and berry bandits
Erasing halls of bored handwriting.

MINERALS

Rays from his barren eyes
Collect the cranberry air,

Rain’fall carries the temper
of comets to the crib.

Consoled by the concord of thymes,
minerals and misty plums,

His blood is baptized
with the cocoa and
toffee climate.

Prancing through the
crooked underground

His roots condemn
the pressure.

Thoughts of solemn drifts
Time in laps
of waves and sun-down.

His dramatic, purple soul
lives in the sands
of wooden music and butterfly leaves.

Taken back
Not there but all of this here
Balances itself like landing tornadoes.

By Allison Eir Jenks