Helena Handbasket

If I could fly,

I would be

up in the sky,

I could dip and dive

be alive,

I would try,

but I might cry

…better not.

Look at me,

I could be

deep

in the sea,

swimming and free,

like fishes, but we

…might get caught, better not.

Listen here,

to the words written clear,

have a beer,

so the lessons get taught

not forgot,

and the fear

…gives up what you’ve got, might get caught, better not.

*****

Mesa Azul

Yapooh was a Hopi boy,

lived out on the plane,

hunted for the rabbit Jack,

dance ‘ed for the rain,

Yapooh saw a shadow tall,

without a man to cast,

“Shadow needs a friend I think?”

was all Yapooh could ask,

Shadow laughed and sang a song,

Yapooh danced a dance,

together they became a pair,

the stander and his stance.

*****

*****

Why did Poe

make the floorboards beckon,

why does the talisman

angrily

speak to me,

And the clock,

Grandfatherly mock,

a big black bird

squawks obscenities

again in chapter three.

*****

I etched me marks on an old shingle

with the scribing tool Grandad used

to cut out a Tory’s eye,

I writes good poetry and true with that one.

I scrapes the words angularly,

making Alpha Alfalfa…

Zed Dread.

I fences them off on the posts right here,

so them diseased locusts can swarm it,

and do the plaguing chew they’re born to.

My bomber run,

an easy one,

all I had to do was walk

into the crowd and then

pull my chord.

I wish I could have seen

my disintegration,

what a glorious red and white cloud

I must have made.

My shock wave

ripping apart mother and child,

bits of me fragmentary,

shards of bone cutting.

…and my glorious ascension,

72, count them, 72 virgins,

the death I’ve lived for…

Who? Moi?

She demonstrates wherewithal,

son poème de la roue tourne,

she shows the spoken shapes,

sur son voyage vers Mars

onboard a spiked chariot.