I thought love dead
a decapitated sunflower
hanging from the antlers of a tree
who's leaves are dead and inflorescence
radiating fresh road kill!

Or perhaps it was me
with my leaves in a vice grip
lost my mojo as my gameface
turned green with motion sickness
in bed with the red baron.

Up at first blush
and down's brute fortitude,
what once flowed with such clarity from love's spigot
could have won first prize at the fall fair
had I not taken it to heart and put a bug in it
locked heads with Irene's and Sandra's.

I picked through them as they pecked at me
in the bentwood of hunger
preening their ego as their overstuffed
leapt from treetop to treetop, their headless marmots
cresting your boundaries and flooding your burrows
whilst mine buzzed like a piñata with head lice!

Wracking my brains in a stew over love's whereabouts
knowing I was not a part of its inner circle
worth a salt lick signal
I was as important to him
as he was to me.

There's only so much ocean
an elephant can suck up its nostril
before love needs a pit stop or sneeze
peels under a rock it's gunmetal trunk to the taxidermy
never to be heard from again.

Combed of its vagrants loves' judges
could not rub two sticks to set fire to it
were fate's antlers BY GOD not to be toyed with
and rainmakers loves' concubines.

So I took love home and mounted it
to remind me in mule's infancy
dear Jane tic is sure footed as love's mistress,
dear John tic latched to her extremeties.

Should you be coming round the mountain and hit a mole hole
for fear there is only one way to return
from the dark side to love's pinnacle,
burn
all the odes you wish you wrote
chattering in every direction,

Walk around
kick the tires of your moon bug
what's lodged like a bullet in your scapula
scoop up love's dander from underneath the radiator
and wedge hushpuppies up the arse of him -
the fox who gave you cold shoulder in the first place.

Then look up
and look out
as love's quiet as a titmouse in a cliffhanger
melts in an avalanche of greens turned golds turns browns
surrounds the pooh-pooh of your whip-poor-will call
with a drey of love notes like a prayer shawl

And if they do
and if he does
O fortune my fortune aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
let hatch the synapsis of love from upswept trumpets
rocket fueled as your heart for the hunt.

It's a long way down
a long way down
without you around,
said the sultan to salt peanuts;
"the difference is how we get from here to here to here
evolving from what went before
naturally each age has its own shit",
each senbei its tsujiura.

11/25/2013

Author's Note: Gillespie said of the Hines band, "People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here... naturally each age has got its own shit."

In Japan the fortune cookie note is called a tsujiura and the cookie senbei; a small slip of paper is wedged into the bend of the cookie rather than inside its folds.

Karl Orff composed the music to Carmina Burana, whose lyrics were derived from a subset of medieval poems on " the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust." The first and last movement in the composition, "O Fortuna" (the Roman Goddess of luck and fate) is popular in films and advertisements. I found the lyrics an enjoyable read and the music / choir a captivating inferno.

Posted on 11/25/2013
Copyright © 2025 Elizabeth Shaw