March 2012



sighs of regret on the wind
New Skin
Her Cheshire Smile
Urban Sugar for Brownstone Tea
Turned up to 11

Search and Seizure
Our Brooklyn Steps
Vocal Element
Tendered Bones
Kindred... to Kindling

sighs of regret on the wind

this isle, crisp sawbuck green,
avocado and sienna
starlit gleams winking
through restless skies
tossed beneath the trades
whip-stirring the palms
whining and whirring
through the Aussie pines,

I am surf-line walking, aimless
stumbling   new moon drunk,
lost in the thrum
the blackness
the crash of the sea
the ghostly fragrance of you
slipping further
so distant now...
low sighs of regret on the wind.

New Skin

On the skin of words
lie blemish and scuffs
like Bosc pears pitted
cut    
bruised with imperfections

I love that the skin of our words
is pliant and absorbent
that love can be inhaled by its pores
that silence can sit on a verb
with a naked Cheshire grin
daring the adjectives to make a false move

I love that the skin of our words
peels back
layer after layer
until seven years on
our voice has been replenished
renewed with understanding,
new   quivering,
waiting for the syllables
whispered through the other’s touch

Her Cheshire Smile

In the creases of tomorrow
I’ll hold the joy of this day
when the shadows cross my violets
I’ll smile and imagine him there at the table
tapping his glass
to the glass that holds my scotch
Venus sliding down towards his shoulder
gone from the sky as dawn washes her away

I have your words beneath my eyelids
imprints and echoes
facsimiles and phrases
on my tucked away pages.
I have your voice in my head
snippets and colors,
the quilt of your throaty laugh
I have the snick of your heels as they walk away

In the stealth of lilac
as the first drawn breath of dawn
swirls up the frame  through the screen.
I will smile like a cat with swallowed secrets
and my grin will rip holes in the silence
as the sunlight stalks the shadows
planks crossing the room
to his hand sliding into mine

Painting: Venus Sunrise
by Melody Dawn Germain © 2011

Urban Sugar for Brownstone Tea

Approaching
     pedestrian    cold
bright apple cheeks in the air
the concrete dingy
flat brown
pigeon gray

Entering
     a smoky soft arm
a scent of aged whisky
the polish of old woods
adding glisten to the air
another century’s light

Emerging
     a syncopation
a scattered shower of sound
notes as thoughts
random, ideas in sprinkles
concentric whorls on a pool
congealing    melding
fusion
melodic in squalls

Immersing
     a baptism of moments
chaos washed in structure
a trumpet played
against each pulse of your heart
a piano speaking mountain stream
a rill of water talking to the stones below
pooled
running into the ears of your soul

Disengaging
     a wall of echoes
swirling just off-shore
nourishment for the cold neon night
for the bland that resides
on the other side of the wall
urban sugar
for brownstone tea

Music by Sonny Stitt and Miles Davis

Turned Up tp 11

Nascent in this grim sinner light:
a stem is squeaking through the soil.
A rosebud is dreaming in colors it never knew,
imagining a cloak of petaled demure…
bashful in imagining the blush at its virgin bloom.
You can imagine the chorus that will rise through the acres,
spreading its crescendo through the miles.
And yet we never hear it.

There is an outcry of babbling crows this morning.
It seems the murder capital today.
Raucous caw after nonsense caw
scraping raw, this sweet spring air.
Can you imagine the crows I can’t hear;
just over the houses, just five turns up the road,
I’d be deaf were they all in my trees.
Where does it go, this relentless sound of nature?

Spring screams the most of the seasons.
Shrieks of growth, joy and tantrums on the riotous winds.
It has laid in the stomach of winter,
gurgling, brewing, a reflux wanting out.
This night is quiet, pregnant with croak; no whine, no flutter,
just the flirty romance of a moist wolf-whistle wind.
When this next rain comes the tree frogs will wail
until the night’s ear bleeds, until the volume reaches 11.

Search and Seizure

the sky is manic
racing billows of cloud
shreds of cotton thoughts
great explosive puffs then gone
whisked from mass into vapor
dissolved just as more appear

wind hurtles through the birch
hammering the gables and eaves
clicking their digits like frenzied marionettes
their twigs like whips
switches tap dancing
a grand mal of wood.

it scours our skin
lifting the hem of each shadow
probing every pore
searching through our baggage
for debris to send on
supplanting the old dust with new

Our Brooklyn Steps

Katrina purred
oblivious
as I poured my ass onto the steps
apathetic to the fingers I held to my neck…
just feed me
pet me
tell me I’m your queen!
How nice for you little cat
how nonchalant,
how arrogant you may be

Bruised rose lit my toes
as droplets of me wet the sandstone
even Katrina, was put out
from a night of bad scraps
     pet me   screw you
     I want a rank alley Tom
     in need of a bath

This is our mortality
90 beats resting,.. from 151
Little Friskies for my little girl,
no Fancy Feast or sardines for you.
     get a better job loser… err Master,
     pet me, bring out my claws
     treat me like the pussy I am.

The door hissed shut
as we climbed to 302
Katrina had StarKist
I had blueberry Dannon
and a wistfull memory of you