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Gingerbread
Lady
Gingerbread
lady,
no
sugar or cinnamon spice;
years
ago arthritis and senility took their toll.
Crippled
mind moves in then out, like an old sexual adventure
blurred
in an imagination of fingertip thoughts.
Who
in hell remembers the characters?
There
was George, her lover, near the bridge at the Chicago River:
she
missed his funeral; her friends were there.
She
always made feather-light of people dwelling on death,
but
black and white she remembers well.
The
past is the present; the present is forgotten.
Who
remembers Gingerbread Lady?
Sometimes
lazy-time tea with a twist of lime,
sometimes
drunken-time screwdriver twist with clarity.
She
walks in scandals; sometimes she walks in soft night shoes.
Her
live-in maid smirks as Gingerbread Lady gums her food,
false
teeth forgotten in a custom-imprinted cup
with
water, vinegar, and ginger.
The
maid died. Gingerbread Lady looks for a new maid.
Years
ago, arthritis and senility took their toll.
Yesterday,
a new maid walked into the nursing home.
Ginger
forgot to rise out of bed;
no
sugar, or cinnamon toast.
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Harvest
Time
(Version 5 Final)
A
Métis Indian lady, drunk,
hands
blanketed over as in prayer,
over
a large brown fruit basket
naked
of fruit, no vine, no vineyard
inside−approaches
the Edmonton,
Alberta
adoption agency.
There
are only spirit gods
inside
her empty purse.
Inside,
an infant,
restrained
from life,
with
a fruity wine sap apple
wedged
like a teaspoon
of
autumn sun
inside
its mouth.
A
shallow pool of tears starts
to
mount in native blue eyes.
Snuffling,
the mother offers
a
slim smile, turns away.
She
slithers voyeuristically
through
near slum streets,
and
alleyways,
looking
for drinking buddies
to
share a hefty pint
of
applejack wine.
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Charley
Plays a Tune
(Version 2)
Crippled
with arthritis
and
Alzheimer's,
in
a dark rented room,
Charley
plays
melancholic
melodies
on
a dust filled
harmonica
he
found
abandoned
on
a playground of sand
years
ago by a handful of children
playing
on monkey bars.
He
now goes to the bathroom on occasion,
relieving
himself takes forever; he feeds the cat when
he
doesn't forget where the food is stashed at.
He
hears bedlam when he buys fish at the local market
and
the skeleton bones of the fish show through.
He
lies on his back riddled with pain,
pine
cones fill his pillows and mattress;
praying
to Jesus and rubbing his rosary beads
Charley
blows tunes out his
celestial
instrument
notes
float through the open window
touch
the nose of summer clouds.
Charley
overtakes himself with grief
and
is ecstatically alone.
Charley
plays a solo tune.
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Nikki
Purrs
Soft
nursing
5
solid minutes
of
purr
paw
peddling
like
a kayak competitor
against
ripples of my
60
year old river rib cage−
I
feel like a nursing mother
but
I'm male and I have no nipples
Sometimes
I feel afloat.
Nikki
is a little black skunk,
kitten,
suckles me for milk,
or
affection?
But
she is 8 years old a cat.
I'm
her substitute mother,
afloat
in a flower bed of love,
and
I give back affection
freely
unlike a money exchange.
Done,
I go to the kitchen, get out
Fancy
Feast, gourmet salmon, shrimp,
a
new work day begins.
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Rod
Stroked Survival with a Deadly Hammer
Rebecca
fantasized that life was a lottery ticket or a pull of a
lever,
that one of the bunch in her pocket was a winner or the
slots were a redeemer;
but life itself was not real that was
strictly for the mentally insane at the Elgin
Mental
Institution.
She gambled her savings away on a riverboat
stuck
in mud on a riverbank, the Grand Victoria, in Elgin,
Illinois.
Her bare feet were always propped up on wooden
chair;
a cigarette dropped from her lips like morning fog.
She
always dreamed of traveling, not nightmares.
But she couldn't
overcome, overcome,
the terrorist ordeal of the German siege
of Leningrad.
She was a foreigner now; she is a foreigner for
good.
Her first husband died after spending a lifetime in
prison
with stinging nettles in his toes and feet; the
second
husband died of hunger when there were no more rats
to
feed on, after many fights in prison for the last remains.
What
does a poet know of suffering?
Rebecca has rod stroked
survival with a deadly mallet.
She gambles nickels, dimes,
quarters, tokens tossed away,
living a penniless life for
grandchildren who hardly know her name.
Rebecca fantasized
that life was a lottery ticket or the pull of a lever.
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Mother,
Edith, at 98
Edith,
in this nursing home
blinded
with macular degeneration,
I
come to you with your blurry
eyes,
crystal sharp mind,
your
countenance of grace−
as
yesterday's winds
I
have chosen to consume you
and
take you away.
"Oh,
where did Jesus disappear
to",
she murmured,
over
and over again,
in
a low voice
dripping
words
like
a leaking faucet:
"Oh,
there He is my
Angel
of the coming."
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