Maude Gonne, W.B. Yeats’ muse.
Beauty
She wanted to be beautiful
So she watched the ballet
She read poetry
And listened to songs sung by Disney’s Princesses
And she fiilled her room with glittering frivolities
and strung it up in fairy lights
But when the ballerinas went home and put on sweats
And the poems grew old on her tongue
And the Princesses became symbols of the Patriarchy
And her birthday money was spent
and her fairy lights burnt out
She was in the dark.
A Portrait of a Young Girl, done with touches of impressionism and my hometown.
She is a rainy day in the suburbs, with the smell of the pavement rising up to caress your face and the worms congregating in the gutters
Her eyes are the blue of a June sky and her gnawed fingernails the green of a neighbors lawn.
Her skin is asphault, baking, simply baking in the recess sun and in the tangles of her hair there is a kickball game.
She has a mouth like a rowdy teenager, the smirk and all, and she does pot outside the school and then goes home and walks the dog and does her homework.
Okay!
So, I know I’ve been posting a lot of not-poetry, but this is importante. Up yonder (^) somewhere, there is a new page, that links all of my posts tagged poetry. So, a lot of my older stuff that was all buried in the archives is up there. Check it out? :)
A Love Story in Acrylic and Goddesses
She let her breasts hang free of her flimsy pajama tank top like a Virgin Madonna
She imagines she’s desirable beyond belief, an Aphrodite, Queen of Sheba with a school hoodie
A few blocks over, a gangly boy dreams of those same breasts, and her grey eyes, like Athene
And both sigh, lonely as Ariadne
A Homeric Simile for The Moon
It sits in the sky like a burnished pearl button
On the black satin of a widow’s weeds
as she excuses herself from the funeral
where she took condolences grimly and quietly
to cry and make her face red and blotched in the bathroom.
That is what the moon looked like.
A Character Study, Done In Religion and Sepia
Her face held all the warm severity
Of a picture of a Buddhist nun in a magazine article about Tibet
Hair shorn to the roots, apple-cheeked smile
Esoteric saffron robes over a tiny body
And her voice was like the hum of a radiator
As she sung “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”
Almost so that you didn’t notice it
But deep and true, and atheist though she was
Fully invested in the glory of the coming of the Lord
Her eyes were those of Raphaelite saints in precious icons
Ecstatic and hell-bent on Heaven
Unable to break from glory to look at you twice
A Domestic Scene (I could really use some creative criticism on this one!)
The girl with the plaits
Prays at her mother’s knees
House-maid’s knees
Her own little knees pressed against the floor
Scraped knees, too-tough, too-hard little girl knees
As I lay me down to sleep
She speaks
And a creased mother’s hand touches her head
Like a benediction
I pray the Lord
The father’s shadow is in the door, she will swear
Hours later, covered in cold sweat, with flushed baby-fat cheeks
My soul to keep
She rocks like a Hasid, rhythmic
And her bear’s loose-stuff head lolls to the side of her elbow.
And if I die before I wake
And the mother with her wrinkled face and smokey breath
Will see the shadow too, but her own mother is not there to
Tell her she’s lying
I pray the Lord my soul to take
And she is in bed, freckles and plaits and all
And the mother sleeps on the floor, to a lullaby of an empty house
WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.
—When You Are Old- W.B. Yeats
Booley-Days
The booley-days are past
The green-blue days
The herd days
Of sweet man sweat and animal sweat
Of mingling sweethearts
Of grass and manure and fresh flames
And now the brown-days are here
Days of bonfire and re-meeting
Of shivers and thick wool
The booley days have given way
To the brown
