Magpie Tales 207: Hero in New York

Universal Studios Lot, Instagram by sessepien via Magpie Tales

Come down, come down,

please, you gotta come down

Street knows your here

Perfume stronger than exhaust

Goddamnit, woman, come down

I ain't no Stanley, no Casanova, 

Juliet isn't your name,

No one calls me Romeo

Come down, once more,

Sirens' wail doesn't call me home

Only a desperate reminder

I'm Odysseus on the rocks

Ringing Bells

Mama knew my mind, would know this song
Mama knew my mind, would know this song
I muscle holler and a moan
I muscle holler and a moan
Black chords in the night

"You ever hear a new song, lyrics that sorta knock you out?" she said with a voice that purred even over the music and the traffic outside. Snow fell, light and jittery in the streetlight glow coming through the bar window. Someone laughed loud, there was coughing.

She was looking at me with eyes like emeralds and smoke. I managed not to jump at the sound of her voice. Jeans like paint, copper colored hair, boots sexy and dangerous-looking at the same time. The glass found its way to my suddenly dry mouth, hiding nervousness. Swallow. Pause. Answer.

"Once in a while. You?" I said. She smiled. It made me think of jaguars.

"Yes, I do. All the time. Even make them up, when the mood strikes." Smooth hands, coffee-colored, cradled a glass. She lifted it, sipped. White teeth, one slightly crooked behind lips just red enough. Some things are so beautiful you should burn your eyes out after you see them, because you never will again.

Daddy burnt the dirt, but the seed survived
Daddy burnt the dirt, but the seed survived
Holler and a moan
I muscle holler and a moan
Black chords in the night

The drink looked like a gin and tonic. That alone pleased me so much, I could not say why. Maybe it was just relief at not seeing another goddamn pink drink. I looked down at the bourbon I was nursing. It shimmered in the slightly nacreous bar light, honey and leather in a glass. I sipped again.

"So do you write songs?" I asked, not quite looking her in the eyes. Talk about distractions. My hands trembled slightly. Whiskey or nerves I could not tell.

"No, not really. I mean, I want to. I write a lot," she looked at me, then looked down at the bar, then over to the empty stage, "but a lot of things sound great at midnight that fall apart at lunch time, you know?"

I chuckled. Her admission energized me with confidence. A shot of that does a body good, knowing that Jesus will turn another year older before you can somehow make it home. Assuming you can find out where home could be. I turned on the bar stool, she didn't hear me sigh, and then I looked right in those pools of green. She had leaned in closer.

"What's your name, love?"

"Colleen. And you are...?" Blank mind. The music seemed to swell, drowning out my thoughts. How could I forget my own name. What was my name? Oh, Christ on a pogo stick, my name?

"Liam. It's Liam." I managed a smile. To my relief she smiled back. To my surprise, she started singing along with the jukebox.

The heavy bells, the heavy bells,the heavy bells
The heavy bells are tolling out a tune
The heavy bells, the heavy bells
Oh, God, I felt that metal move
You’re gonna wake up, you’re gonna wake up,
You’re gonna wake up, find the heavy bells
Toll their tune for you too

She had closed her eyes, tilting back her head to expose the loveliest neck I had ever seen. She sang, slightly off key with a throatiness that took my breath away. I gasped, staring. She opened her eyes, looked at me, smiling at my obvious lack of composure. To my shock, she reached out with one hand and took mine into it.

Her hand was warm, silky. The bar tilted in my vision. I squeezed her hand. She leaned in, enveloping me in a faint Tanqueray cloud. Her lips brushed my ear, and I heard her whisper "Merry Christmas, Liam. Merry Christmas." Across the street at Saints Patrick and James, the bells rang. Gazing back at her, dizzy to the point of near blackout, I grinned and answered.

"Merry Christmas, Colleen. I love you."

---

Italicized paragraphs are from a new favorite, "Heavy Bells", by J. Roddy Walston & the Business. Yeah, it rocks.

Magpie Tales 150: Townhouse

image by Daniel Murtagh, via Magpie Tales

"Colleen, I...I...when can I...?"

Question unanswered, she shuts the door,

While he clutches his Donegal tweed

hair beaded with misty rain,

Going cold there on the doorstep

hands losing sense-memory of her,

Door latches, a metal snick

cutting the strings of his heart

The Ponytail Files, Volume 3: The Sap is Doomed

This will probably cement my reputation as a sap.  What happened was significant enough that, as a writerly chap, I knew I'd probably pen something about it even before it was over.

As usual, it involved a member of the fairer sex*.  It involves a question I had to ask myself:  Do women, in general, know the true power they seem to have over dopes like myself?

The afternoon was gorgeous, great weather, and I was in pursuit of sandwich at a local cafe-bakery.  Sitting down to tuck in, I was facing the door where I had a good angle for people watching.  People watching is one of my favorite things to do while noshing.

So, I was sitting at the table when she came in.  She was a blond, 'the kind of blond that would make a bishop want to kick a hole in a stained glass window'**. She was walking towards the direction of my table, so I had a great line of sight. She was quite attractive, but it wasn't that in specific that grabbed my attention.  It was The Gesture.

She reached up with a well-turned hand, and tucked her hair behind her right ear...and I almost fell out of my chair.  How did she do that?  In that moment, I felt like a goofy teenager again, thoroughly entranced by such a simple but amazingly feminine gesture, one that almost never has failed to gobsmack me.  I found it hard to take my eyes off of her for almost the entire time I was eating.

These gestures have been and continue to be an Achilles' heel of mine.  And I cannot explain it.  All I know is that women in general seem to have these somewhat unique ways of moving, of existing in space-time, that are my kryptonite.  These ways are to my mind innately feminine in the deepest, most mysterious sense.  They are motions or looks that I think of as 'sacred feminine' in some way, and in most cases they reduce me to the level of a awestruck puppy.  This has the unfortunate side effect of making me too foggy-headed to have the presence of mind to actually try talking to some of the ladies who have had that power over me.  I'm afraid I'd open my mouth and I'd sound like the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoons.  Or just stand there, slack-jawed and saying "You pretty."

Longtime readers know I have written of this phenomena before (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).  So you can see the history.

I think I'm doomed.

So, if you see me staring?  Please know its because I'm stunned, and at least you'll know why: it's because I'm a sap.

---

*The use of that phrase, in and of itself, is enough to brand me a sap.

**I heard that line on a radio comedy bit years ago.  Loved it ever since.

From Grace

The song said a man will rise,

a man will fall,

from the sheer face of love

like a fly on a wall

but he has no wings

only the memory thereof

from her he understood rise,

now he understands fall,

arms outstretched in blackness

fingers brush a surface he cannot see

only feel, now raspy, now smooth,

with no purchase for his heart

---

Italicized words above are lyrics from "The Fly", by U2, from the album Achtung, Baby. But you probably already knew that...

Love Bomb

What do you really think of love do you know do you know I'm not sure I know because I have been thinking about it long too long way too long

and it occurred to me I still don't know how could that be after all these years? Maybe maybe its because I didn't understand it then and I don't now but back then I didn't know I didn't understand, you dig it?

Good good I knew that you could so dig this my pretties tonight I had the flash the realization the kick in the cerebrum that if I were to try writing what I really think of love

oh my god my head might explode or my heart burst and yours might too (though I doubt that I suspect yours is stronger than mine) but what I do know is this:

I had love and then it slipped away and that makes me wonder if my grasp was weak,

or love too strong,

or me just unlucky,

and maybe love was a bomb that I could not defuse and it blew up in my face to scatter me to the wind,

or maybe love was a bomb that I should have let explode, catching me in the fallout of grace and the dust of being wanted by someone...swept away by the overpressure of knowing

I

am

love(d).

Hymn: Tupelo Heart

It was a sweaty camping trip
I was there, corduroy shorts
She was there, green eyes

Lots of friends, and noise,
I didn't know her
I knew her friend

I opened my mouth,
small miracles, she opened hers
she didn't walk away

To know her lips
was to know sweetness,
tupelo on the tongue

We said I love you
Not knowing what that meant,
Years apart, I still don't know

Stir the honey in the tea,
she whispers in my ear,
and I remember

White Bowl

Animal sounds, jawbone working
and noises echo off the plaster,
reverb for the solitary eater

Mopping the remains with bread,
uncovering a field of snowy white
tasting faintly of memories unswallowed

leaden spoon cracks the bell
shattering a porcelain heart once held
by hands that once held his own

I Don't Want to Do This Alone

And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home
And when the fog horn blows I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it

The wind blows hard outside, snow powder swirling around the eaves and across the porch.  There is no music tonight, a conscious decision to take a breather, let the gray matter cool off.  In the gaps between gusts, the rasp of leaves and ice strikes up the band with the tick and murmur of the radiators.  I knew this would happen, helped along by a finger of Bushmills Black Bush, and I give myself up to the music playing in my head.

And I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And magnificently we will flow into the mystic

I get it, Van.  I really do.  I mouth the words as I can remember hearing them on the radio and live by other people, and it puts another crack in the stone of my heart.  A duet needs two, and there is only me.

Lyrics from "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison.  In case you really did not know.

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P.S.: In a nice turn of events, I was published in Indie Ink today!  Please visit and drop some love!

Winter Poetry Slam: Patuxent River Meditation #5

Venus overhead,
heart rising, fumes of the glass,
Winter toasts her name

Vena Cava Syndrome: Elegy

Awakening in the night, or is it dawn?
I used to know time from your slow breaths
and warm flank under my palm
The only clock I needed

Now i don't know, it's just dark
but the flush on my face
a Pemberton's sign, limning
a mass in the path to my heart

I raise my arms from under covers
Blood waves in the wetlands of my soul,
Salt reek and slick cheeks faintly glow
I whisper your name, and weep.

Language Barrier

Bard I am not, when the language
is love and the talk is of amour
Words I know, having read the dictionary
but phrases I cannot string together

Homily on love, you ask?
I think not, god, the doubt
The dizzying want, the parted lips,
Wine turning into vinegar

Knowing a little of the language,
Is it worse than none at all?
To speak of passion, hurl an insult,
Yet not truly touch the heart?

I said I am not a poet, nor can I sing,
at least not well, hunched in the dark
hovering over the tattered hymnal, breathing.
Arias the shadows of my inamorata

Fire in the Mine

Not heartburn that makes him
grasp at his chest, slyly, furtively,
when he thinks no one is looking
but surely the world is not blind

He is, maybe, or pretends to be,
to deflect the truth, reroute the magma
to burn and sputter in another channel
working its way to his surface

No, it won't be quenched by guzzling chalk,
or pickling in alcohol of myriad hues,
and a thousand shades of bittersweet,
this is acid, slow-acting, on the soul

In the window glass of dark, deep summer
a reflection bends over the table, silvered,
bathed in the light of liquid crystals
and the heat of love, redacted.

Led Zeppelintine's Day

If the sun refused to shine,
I would still be loving you.
If the mountains should crumble to the sea,
there would still be you and me.

Kind woman, I give you my all,
Kind woman, nothing more.

Little drops of rain whisper of the pain,
tears of loves lost in the days gone by.
But my love is strong, with you there is no wrong,
together we shall go until we die. My, my, my.
Inspiration's what you are to me,
inspiration, look... see.

And so today, my world it smiles,
your hand in mine, we walk the miles,
Thanks to you it will be done, for you to me are the only one.
Happiness, no more be sad, happiness....I'm glad.

If the sun refused to shine,
I would still be loving you.
If the mountains should crumble to the sea,
there would still be you and me.

I racked my brains for something special to say, and found that I had been beaten to the punch.

Sometimes, delicacy comes from the unlikeliest sources, and your heart is not where you thought it was, nor expected it to be, but is there just the same. What a wonderful thing it is to find one’s heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Beautiful lyrics courtesy of Led Zeppelin. Rock on, Cupid.