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

Time in the Full of Empty

 

these are times for vases
I’ll leave vacant
and not cut the roses lilies daffodils
blooming in my garden

 I’ll feed house crickets to the song finch
for this is its molting season
it will sing again … or die
like the crickets
time

once a dove flew against my window
to drop hurt … still breathing
I caged and healed it
watched it orient and fly
watched it taloned by a diving hawk
time

oh,  now is time in the full of empty
when smiles are merely stretch-ed lips
and fog trails from my fingertips
and I wear his slippers

 I shall sit upon my lawn
close to the roses lilies daffodils
and breath the fragrance
of invisible of presence

 

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Qi Baishi

All Manner of Things

 

as needful to our being,
we partake of the essential
nourishment of air and water
and swallowing of bread and milk
and savoring of salt

we endure the sufferance
of idle conversation dispersed to nothing
(god, keep me from the spider’s web)
and abide time’s slide to otherness

so that if and when our worlds disperse
in gravity of a quasar blasting passion
and firm new courses in existence
frighten us with strangeness

then we shall hold to knowing
that breath means life
and water is abundant absolution
and bread and milk are nurturing
and salt … is preserving certainty
of  friendship … wisdom … love

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Pieter Claesz, 1644

 

wilderness in women

 

I’m old…
I can tell you this

women need wilderness
…especially when they’re young

for in wilderness they learn
not to trust old maps;
and they swim in icy streams
if bridges are washed down

in wilderness…
they hear honest sounds,
and know when nestlings
rasp for raw sustaining flesh
they hear healthiness…
not the noise of whining

and on the day they die
women raised in wilderness
sing to themselves…remembered
songs to float with them from
this world to the next

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork Balthazar Denner

 

Whispers In the Fine Print

 

1.

Always… it comes down to
how badly we could be hurt
by whispers in the fine print.

2.

What the hell…
we balance bright promise,
pain ease, smile…to brush away
side effects possible dire…grim
repercussions for a now relief.

3.

Deus ex machina…
–ex. Snow coughed up coma
apple when her coffin bearer tripped–
can’t be trusted, for we’re on our own.
–ex. Dorothy looked behind curtains,
Gretel baked a raving cannibal…and
Cinderella…for a warning… pigeon
blinded her bloody footed sisters
against their duplicity.

4.

Happily ever after…nebulous it
drifts…sleeps…dreams within us.
Mirror, mirror on the wall
who’s the fairest we can be
with one weird trick…the secret they
always they…those gods whispering
in machinery…want us to know
might cost us in the fine print.

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by theycallmeteddy