Making a rainstick ...

Rain curtain — Paolo Guidici

Instructions for making a rainstick
When your hidden joy
plumps and swells
purple,
unbearable,
let the wind tickle her tiny feet
and the unicorn cloud
breeze her away.

With your baby teeth
hollow out your gourd
from the heart out,
until you are as empty
as the moon
when she smiles on
the sea and jousts
with the bobbing masts
of wandering ships.



Sweep the floor of your echoless tabernacle
with royal feathers plucked from peacocks.
Dry the bleeding walls of your vessel with a shroud
made of fleece shorn from blind goats.

You are ready now.

Fill your earth top with pebbles and beads,
grains of rice, beans and pumpkin seeds,
leave your sky bottom whistling
clear and clean and cold,
so when the shudder laugh
rolls through you,
tumbles and upends you
in the murmuring wave,
the rains will come at last,
at long last
the rain will come.

© Lorenzo — Alchemist’s Pillow

for Ruth and Terresa … (just because)

Or simply try the following ...



This poem is taking a ride on the Poetry Bus, which this week has been driven by Jeanne Iris. Click on her name to see what other poetry bus riders have done. Jeanne has asked participants to include an audio of us reading our poems; mine is below. This is the first time I do this, so there have been some technical glitches and the audio quality is not good. I'll either think about getting a better microphone or putting an early end to my recording career...

Aubade

Photo by Keith Carter

This week the erstwhile driver of the Poetry Bus, TFE, of The People's Lost Republic of EEjit, has turned bus driving duties over to dear blog friend Terresa, of The Chocolate Chip Waffle. Terresa has posted  this picture prompt, an intriguing photo from photographer Keith Carter, whose website you may visit by clicking on the photo caption ... but please not before reading my humble, moon-besotted offering below.



Aubade
I float in drops of onyx dew
spied by cherubs
maundering from warped walls
pink petals twitch on laurelled brows

in the abiding eclipse
her rose fingers clasp the torch
and in the streaming silence
light an ember in the stygian night

she guides the chariot that pulls me
from the deep ink of sleep
and dissolves the clouded dreams
that ride her golden cape

Stella by starlight ...

It is often said that we men are incapable of doing two things at once. This strikes me as grossly unfair, patently absurd and obviously untrue, given that few people would question our ability, say, to drink and make fools of ourselves all at the same time. So in that spirit I have decided to do a combination post for TFE's current poetry bus prompt at The People's Lost Republic of EEJit and for willow's Magpie Tales 5.

TFE's instructions were that we had to begin a poem with the memorable lines ...

"She was wearing Stella McCartney,
I was drinking Stella Artois"

... to which he added the helpful information that "If anyone from Mars or Carlow are looking in, Stella McCartney is a fashion designer and daughter of famous ex Beatle, Ringo Starr. Stella Artois is a Belgian medicinal cure for warts and walking straight."

And the Magpie Tales 5 prompt was the 'handy' photo shown above.

So drum roll please ... and here goes — two things at once, neither of them very meaningful on their own, but when combined, completely and utterly useless and irredeemably forgettable.

Maniacal mannequin Belgian beer blues

she was wearing Stella McCartney,
I was drinking Stella Artois
for weeks I would steal away nightly
through mad glass wondering who art thou?

by day she was clad in designer clothes
at night she was my naked nymph to behold
a wave of her hand from where no hair grows
hailing my taxi her body unrobed

yesterday Stella’s head and hands were gone
Venus de Milo with a dinosaur smile
imagine the delight in my love song
when I spotted her hand in the trash pile

her hand beckoned me to blessed wedlock
so I brought her home on the ides of march
to open bottles of Belgian hemlock
happily saved from fashion’s tides of starch

so now we stay at home and drink serene
squeezing the juice of tedium’s lemons
to wash and paint my yellow submarine
the handiest cure for delirium tremens

now I am wearying Stella McCartney
and she is stinking of Stella Artois

Well, I apologize for that and if you think yourselves capable of doing two things at the same time, I encourage you to go visit Magpie Tales 5 here and TFE's poetry bus here and see what other participants have done with these prompts.