To Give a Damn

 

 

I.

from someone else’s mind
I gathered image word
and feeling meaning

it sorted to my brain
somewhere in a neuron
synapse cell to cell

I hear him say it …
that Rhett Butler voice …
that cocksure gaze …

brilliant framing of the
door between his worlds

at the turning point
he didn’t give a damn

about her

flawless timing  … always
absolutely perfect for
remembering of know

 

II.

Giles from Salem
beat someone’s heart
to stopping … damn you
Giles from Salem

old Giles from Salem
they witch hung his love wife
for mumbling in a corner

cried him out for wizard
to claim the family land
if he, innocent,  confessed

plank and boulder pressed him
rigid … Puritan … earth
three days to eye bulge, tongue loll

“Confess you are a witch!”  they shouted
one on the plank to crush his heart

“More weight … more weight.”  his dying words
damn them, Giles from Salem

 

III.

in the revealing black and white of it
The public doesn’t give a damn about integrity.
A town that won’t defend itself
deserves no help.
Lon Cheney’s  jaded sheriff lines, High Noon

Katy Jurado tells Lloyd Bridges
And, it takes more than big broad shoulders
to make a man.
she is a survival realist
leaves on the high noon train

before she leaves she talks with Cooper
Jurado: Kane, if you’re smart, you will get out, too.
Cooper: I can’t.
Jurado: I know

 

Bonnie Marshall
artist unknown

thoughts for the color blind

 

love is shade movable as shadow;
it is scintillant brightness;
it cannot be defined as if it were
a color described to someone blind
as orange…azure…emerald… a
dainty pink…a blood deep red

its thinking etches or erases like
lace edged sea foam on a beach

it is invisible as gravity…sensed
like space between tick…tock

no spell is implicit in its sounding
for its spelling is not sacrosanct…
it may as well be evol…olev…velo

enough…for we think of it as warm
or chill or thrill or pain or ecstasy…as
literal as pinch…sustaining as if breath

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Thomas Pollock Anshutz

 

 

 

she needs carpet tacks

she needs carpet tacks
for imagination steps
so she will not trip
when she thinks
from here to there…

she needs paper clips
to sort random need
into categories
as demarcations fade
from use and disrepair…

she needs masking tape
for worn out wishes
that fray and tear
when she shuffles them
in and out of dreams…

she needs due diligence
to guard against neglect
so when her love escapes
against all vigilance
she will have persevered
to keep her soul intact

 

Bonnie Marshall

green apple harm joy

she warned me
I’d get bellyache
from tart green apples
that cracked open to my teeth
and made me so mouth happy
I dripped juice…
and, later then
her smirk and narrow eyes
pure Schadenfreude
at me doubled over
groaning on a couch
in the living room

how could she…not,
and I fault her…not,
for I, too, think harm joy–
know the gentle sense of it…
There! I landed on her space
and sent her back to Go!
Aha…I won. She lost!
or pious contemplation of…
There but for the grace of God go I.
or…She had it coming–stupid ass.
or the killer one…I’d never say,
She’s such a sweet thing.
heartless thought…not
far away from me,  a lot like
Don’t think bluebirds.
I’ll not disown it…never could,
this bite of human nature
that still aches inside of me

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Rene Magritte