What the Muses Leave Behind

Each morning I meet my crazy quilt bright eyed, in from the edge, spectacular as Easter’s ilk eggs tuck in ditch and hedge . What’s so crazy about a mantle pieced from robe and shirt, summer culotte, tartan flannel destined for the dirt. Each day a junta erects regimes Of arms and legs and balls Time is bottled, black deals are sealed, piked heads fill the halls. What’s best about hegemony; when sovereigns step aside? Begets a tidge of larceny and mayhem for its a bride.

"Think of chaos as dancing raspberries." - Judyth Hill from " Wage Peace " I. How the morning meets us matters. A crazy quilt met mine. I woke with a pigeon’s view of Easter processing down Peachtree. What’s so crazy about a blanket? Pieced like family jewels from denim jacket, brocade skirt - my clan spread eagle. II. Truth is - juntas stalk regimes with kudzu enterprise. They’d freeze time to collect enough arms, legs and testicles. What’s amiss with coup d’état? Glorious in stealth, they bring justice home by its scruff, savor the spoils like Hampshire boars. III. Luck finds the writer who consummates work with good whiskey. Good and bad saturated Thomas. Catlin's fire matched his muse. Nothing kindles like lust and duty to goddess and queen - purple robe lifted by salt wind, her ruddy fuse goading the tide.

I would trade for a better dessert, Trade it in for the white skirted waitress. Her chocolate and cream holds its own allure So does thirty three footsteps When there are bullies in the play ground. Give me a hop for good measure. Instead of snapping gum in this cold depression Between Sir Hillary’s expedition and the cold comfort Of sliding home alive, I could be still as a pond Crouching under a roof of stalactites, Dodging the icy daggers that pin me to my word. Summer rain comes so seldom, especially now Under the January skies of the northern hemisphere. My unwashed hair chides me to trade it for a better season Trade it in for apple blossoms and hummingbirds and wilted lettuce salads. But these icy daggers have their own allure, They hide me from the bullies – across the playground now chasing the scent of some other prey. I’ll give it a hop for good measure.

Every morning my crazy quilt meets me bright eyed, in from the edge. I might as well have a pigeon’s view of Easter processing down Peachtree. Tell me what’s crazy about a blanket so carefully pieced from robe and jumper, summer blouse and kitchen curtains. It’s my Ursula Clan spread eagle in slatted sun, stitched together with more than thread. Every day a junta pieces together its regime arms and legs bound in testicles. It bottles time – cramming clock into calendar. Even in sleep it’s abuzz with jolts of blood bullied by heart and lung; abuzz in kudzu dreams. Tell them what’s crazy about conquest; tell them even the tightest stitches loosen, even the best fabrics fray. When water and sun exact their tithe, everything red fades to green. The force that drives that fuse drives the Fundy tide; drives Thomas to down 18 shots of whiskey, drives Caitlin to hedge her bets that he’d ever make her happy, drives her albatross view of the corduroy sea between Wales & Milk Wood. Tell her w...

It’s a big deal, a freshman’s last final big, this revolution back to you. I was a prattling preteen - attention deficit; seeking this and this and this - forgot our heart song, mistook shadow for sound, mistook your silence for thick soft piles of simpatico. Absorbed by orbit, my tethers spiraled behind me. I was a hard shelled beetle banging about a 60 watt bulb. I called it love - seared my wings embracing a dragon; the cavernous the air rippling about me was full of purpose, empty of you. I was a tick encysted for some mega-drought ahead, conjured as if I could be Gaea, creating hunger so I could feed it. Blood is rich but unsustaining. I tasted iron on my tongue and stuck it out. I greeted my revolution; tasted its bitterness for catharsis, how it hates the long view, how it longs for the slow turns that wring out fog and blizzards – how it prefers the incremental procession of heartbeats about an axis. how it baits me with breadcrumbs to trail you...

Before dominion over air and land and sea out on thin ice with jackal and seal ptarmigan and tadpole before dominion did we join pleasure and suffering hand by hand was pain of pox purple as it transformed newborns coral pink into some sacred giveaway did we kneel to kiss the ground wailing in celebration of an icy magic draining one life, filling another taking eye for eye so all could see how did we kiss the ground together nose to trunk bark to feather singing bones and snapping fingers did we climb tunnels to find where scars ended and new petals emerged did we color the water sanguine as we crowded clay churned shores so to howl at our triumph over thirst for another day roll on our backs, kicking the tawny air with hoof and talon before dominion did we feed on our best parts tenderloin and opal visions hot fire to signal the fact we never asked to be born and find it all the more fullfilling before dominion did we forget to be separate forget about everything but to swim in the ...

Inside I push against ancient skins once plankton and algae, soft pillowed bodies buoyancy lost, sunk, oozed with age resurrected on a three hundred millionth year baked brittle. Their cups hold my finger tips I pour words into a holy grail. Outside two gray foxes trace a vital ocher line with ebony noses to pull them through moss and brambles holding, losing olfactory caches. In long litanies of prayer they arrive before dawn for a Eucharist of Sylvilagus floridanus. So busy in and out of the chase so sticky the threads of odyssey we forget who blesses the breath between pulses who parts the curtain to kiss the toad who sings in a scarlet dawn? We forget it is the whole world, its evolution staggering under a gravity of shadow and light; but lucky us holding days like Ball jars, gathering fireflies, night just descending.