December 9th, 1980
Red salvia, lime green chrysanthemum,
lonesome pots of geraniums, browning,
slowly decaying in the cold wind,
in the spotted, anemic sun,
the alcohol of autumn’s mood
drowning the front lawn’s color,
rose daphne shrubs, changing their hue,
the orchestration of birds in the trees
carefully awakening the oak tree’s canopy,
the neighbor’s bullied gutter,
and, the soft, cracked egg of morning sun,
spilling over the old, hard-edged porches,
over rows of parked cars, the soft-drink ale
of morning, fizzling over Hamtramck,
sad-like, lonesome, an effluvium of gloam
mixed in the morning’s flirtatious glitter,
and, the quick eruption of snow flurries –
winter white, a crystalline frizzante
surrounding me, taking me over –
stirring me into wakefulness again
as I step outside, smell the dawn,
take it deep into my nostrils.
The woman I left last night, already
a lost note of music, a transient feather
already taken by the evening’s
calving of moonlight, by the night’s
twilight cave, by a Sagittarius moon,
and, John Lennon, murdered:
shot dead outside the Dakota Hotel
by a man composed of fear –
lost, erratic birds cloying at him,
tearing his mind from rim,
a pistol rising from his hand
like a pointed deformity –
and killing Lennon dead in a blunt,
pitter-patter of gun-shot-fire.
We listened to the news on the radio,
sat there sipping our coffee
at a kitchen table in Hamtramck,
my brother and I,
felt the first bite of winter,
coming on.
Limelight
Lord, you shoot your paintball color
straight up through the petals
of this orange lily
sprouting through cracked pavement
alongside the Temple Bar –
in Detroit – where I sit
at a stool reading how the angry man
shook his twenty one month old baby
back and forth
like he was doing some kind of polka dance
with her – until the baby lost
the light behind her
daffodil face –
and she dropped vacant
with the dull grace
of a pool hall ball. It makes no sense
how the light explodes right through
the lily face –
as if you, Lord, couldn’t quite recall
how to shove the straw
of color into something
already alive and willing, a lily, oh Lord,
and so you did so violently,
abruptly –
as if all life is in vivid color,
fermented in holy fire,
some radiant limelight.
Even the shoeless woman
fumbling with
the brown bag of liquor –
gulping it like she’s
a vampire drinking
the red blood inside your
carotid arteries, rambles on
about the mania
of the orange lilies
growing from the forgettable
side grass along the wall
of this bar,
even as she grabs hold of one,
fingers it up to her mouth
like it’s a tootsie roll.
God, we become psychotic creatures
when surrounded by
innocence
and beauty – like we’re attendees
at some high school dance,
impulses raging –
and we don’t know what to do
but yank at one another,
stretch and pull
at one another,
suck the temper of light
from mouths,
like strings of taffy.
Even the juke box can’t take it,
this song, Love Hurts.
Lord I remember her,
my child, my fireball
of radiance
as she raced so fast
across that park
where her mother
and I were sitting together,
trying to work back
into our marriage
from some pull and tug
of a polka dance we were doing
with each other,
because we couldn’t handle
the taffy of romantic love,
just couldn’t.
And how that child raced up
to greet us
on a summer night
as the dusk marched in –
draping the monkey bars
in obsidian –
and how her face, like an orange lily,
like a quick streak of light,
brightened up
with limelight –
glowed like a firefly
as she grabbed
hold of our necks to embrace us.
And my wife and I
cried so hard
when she ran off to climb
the monkey bars.
And we had a chance
to watch her, and cry some more
at how the moonlight
colored her orange
like a lovely lily as she played,
while we made our way back in again,
to our romantic love.
We are swords of light, I fear,
cutting one another
to bits.
We are the limelight that aches –
as it cozies up against the side
of a wall – oh Lord of color.
Come back to me, sweet child
who followed the moonlight,
rolled over in it:
come back, and dance your festive
dance of fireflies
beneath the lonely stars –
so that I can feel again the lullaby
of your innocence:
what you gave
to your mother and me,
as we watched you
dance, that night.
I long for it – this dance we do –
this limelight
that holds us tight.
Ken Meisel is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, Swan Duckling chapbook contest winner, winner of the Liakoura Prize. His books are The Drunken Sweetheart at My Door (FutureCycle Press: 2015), Scrap Metal Mantra Poems (Main Street Rag: 2013), Beautiful Rust (Bottom Dog Press: 2009), Just Listening (Pure Heart Press: 2007), Before Exiting (Pure Heart Press: 2006) and Sometimes the Wind (March Street Press: 2002). He has work in Cream City Review, Rattle, Midwest Gothic, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Boxcar Review, Firefly, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Lullwater Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Lake Effect.