without all the makeup the wine birthmark shows ° without donning kevlar the soft flesh is pierceable ° without our pretense we aren’t so quick to pose ° the naked and shaven take so fierce a toll.
so ready your lipstick, foundation, concealer ° your narrative, ringlets, plans b through f, mask ° negotiate warfare ‘gainst foe/friend/revealer ° and say you’re just peachy, should anyone ask.
(First published in the Facebook poetry group Poets All Call.)
signals
the front room has quietly
gradually darkened
and this slice of the world
is concluding its business
and preparing for slumber
but cicadas make noise of protest
they have become loud with the dusk
and other nocturnals emerge
to hunt or travel or mate
without glare
independent of night and day
an attractive lady nudges into my news feed
and tells me she is not human
but a facilitating ai who can help me
find a special someone
now in a soft darkness
my face eerily lit by this phone
I tell you all
special someones, unknowns, friends, beasts
that i am old and frightened
This is an utterly delightful young woman who was born Brittany but has chosen to be Bee. She is a staff member at PIP Coffee & Clay, where I do pottery-making frequently.
True to her name, Bee is always busy, at the pug mill or in the kiln room, helping potters and keeping things flowing. Her philosophy of life is “Relax and be kind.” She would have fit right in at Woodstock, though it occurred long before she was born.
But what truly endears me to Bee is that she proudly displays a visual pun in the form of tattoos just above her knees. And the Bee’s Knees is such an apt description of this delightful lady. Long may she buzz!
I’ve been a fan of Anne Meara since she and Jerry Stiller were on the Ed Sullivan Show as Stiller & Meara. My favorite performance of hers was in the 1980 version of FAME. Fun fact: she won a Writers Guild award.
egg
i intend today to throw
most of an egg on a potter’s wheel
and then sculpt a hummingbird
when the almost-egg is leather hard
I intend to cut its base at a bias
to give it a jaunty axial tilt
then perch the hummingbird
at its apex
absurdly out of scale
with the huge egg
it is valiantly attempting
to incubate
it may show how heroic
motherhood is
or how ridiculous
life is
the egg may have cutouts
to give it a windowed interior
or embossing
to give it a muralesque exterior
it is impossible to say yet
sometimes we just have to see
what happens
when it hatches
One with Clay, Image and Text 