Thoughts of the Lady in Blue ~ A Magpie Tale

Banquet Scene with a Lute Player by Nicolas Tournier, 1625

Ghostly servant painted white,
fading into darkness,
what stories your thin lips must spill
what distasteful tales convey
for surely you have heard it all
in your insignificant way.

Utter them now , spin us the yarn
while this good lady looks at you
every one else at the table is bored
with my uncle’s incessant reflections.

Look at him there, that glass in his eye
as if seeing the maker creating
he oooooos and he ahhhhhhs
while he primps and he paws
one hand in the folds of my dressings.
He’s old and he’s cold and likely to mold
and the stench he sets off nauseates me.

Invisible one please come to me
tonight in the day’s lonely gloaming
the stories you hold must surely be told
with your peppermint breath
my throat in a catch,
we can wander until the moon rises.

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A shout out to Tess Kincaid for her blog Magpie Tales.  Visit that link for more takes on the picture as prompt.

Reflecting Tomes ~ A Magpie Tale

1.
Reflecting tomes lined in rows
pages coerced together.
A collision of words lies
trapped in sequential narration.
Stories yearn for the feast of your eyes;
it is you that makes them alive.

Meanwhile, your fingers tease
and twirl through filigreed swirls
recessed upon leather bound spines.
Up to the top, your fingers drop
levering a hardbound down.
Hands caress both front and back
opening pages
dancing a story free.

2.
I am book
I mesmerize you
I take you away from you
I open windows to your soul
I smell inky, pungent, old and new.

3.
paper print typeset font

Once nooks were cosy places
where books with pages lived,
now Nooks diminish the thrill for kids
that a leather bound classic tome gives.

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Tess Kincaid at Magpie Tales provides a picture every Monday for writing inspiration. Thanks Tess!

Max Von Sydow

stone saint

with Max’s young face

tell me his secrets

let me be a stone sparrow

chiseled into stories

of strawberries,

violins, and madness

let me knight you

and ride you through

death’s distant door

all in the palm

of your hand

Tell me

stories of Bergman

On Fårö Island

where the sea

thrashes through

 a glass darkly

and I can

believe in

God through your

so blue eyes

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Thank you to Tess over at Magpie Tales for this photo prompt of Saint Francis of Assisi. 

There is a sense of familiarity that comes with some people.  Some are even famous.  I’ve always felt that familiarity with Max Von Sydow.  He is a Swedish actor who got his start in Ingmar Bergman films.  Born in 1929, Von Sydow continues to act.  Early in his career he acted in Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film “Through a Glass Darkly.” It is the story of one family’s confrontation with schizophrenia.  In the film, Von Sydow’s wife is released from an asylum, and is far from cured.   The phrase comes from 1 Corinthians 13.  It refers to the idea that people will only clearly know God when they die, until that time they see God through a glass darkly. Bergman lived most of his life on the island of Fårö in Sweden.  He filmed Through a Glass Darkly there.  It is breathtaking. 

The Beast ~ A Magpie Tale

Smoldering Fires
Clarence Holbrook Carter (1904-2000)

Columbus Museum of Art

everything I’ve ever
known is changing

smoke and flame
vent a roiling dance
out the sides of
the beast
and my baby coos

he coos
he is a soother
this one
yellow against the
two fingered fist
that holds our ending

pills we’ll ingest
before we become
invisible

merging with
the searing red flow
the beast could heave

there is no time
to leave

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Visit Magpie Tales for more takes on the picture prompt.

Locked in Freedom

The lock covers Amanda's mind. It stares at her everywhere she goes, her own private eye. Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it. "Excuse me, Miss, uh--your bag." Cheezums, Amanda almost walked right through the airport scanner. She hands it to security and smiles, "Sorry about that. My mind is a million miles away." He smiles back, like everyone does when she flashes her perfect row of braces free teeth. Everyone except Billy. "Uh, Miss...the lock?" Confused, the lock in her head closes. She looks at security, holding up her bag. Amanda pulls the chain from her neck and hands it to security. "The red one," she says. Security opens her bag, rifles through it, hands it back. "Have a nice flight, Miss."

With an hour to kill before boarding Amanda buys the latest gossip rag, and finds a chair in a corner, away from the throngs of people passing through the terminal on their way away, like her. She wonders if all locks look like eyes...if there's a reason this lock looked like an eye...if she'd be haunted every day she breathed. Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it. "Is that this week's Go Gossip Go?" A voice brought her back. Amanda looks up at a girl, about 12 dressed to the nines.

"There a party I don't know about?" Amanda says, looking her up and down, trying not to laugh.

"Enough with the wisecracks, smartass, I'm going from one rich parent to the other. A bizarre war wages between them. Who can dress me better? My mother actually hired me a dresser. A dresser! I am THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, I CAN DRESS MYSELF. Bet you're glad you said anything now, huh....Is that this week's Go Gossip GO? Or do you want to hear more about my enthralling life running from parent to parent in the richest of circumstance"

"Uh here...sorry for the wisecrack." Amanda sits back, tries to meditate, but can't shake the image of the lock. If she watches the girl read, maybe the eye will disappear. The girl lifts her head and laughs, looks at Amanda, "This is some good shit. People are sure stupid, listen to this one. She starts to read. 'Living on his boat The Hornet, American playwright Jonathon Henchion…" Amanda wonders if her face will grace the cover of Go, Gossip, Go...but no, she is small potatoes in a world of Henchions “…If the world finds out, may my boat explode.' Can you believe it? He says that, then his boat explodes, with him on it. Do you think it was a set-up?" Amanda sits there, quiet. "Well I know what my friend Gravy Train Jones always says." Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it. "Don't YOU want to know what my friend Gravy Train Jones always says."

"Huh?" Amanda turns to the girl, "I want to know who in their right mind would name a kid Gravy Train." She has no idea what the girl is talking about.

"That's not the point, it's his nickname. What he always says is,” she slows down and tries to sound mysterious. “Words once spoken take on a power of their own. You be careful Shania, he says to me, any word you say has power, it can make you, or it can break you."

"How old is this Gravy Train Jones?"

"32. He's gay. He's my dresser."

Amanda laughs. "He's right, you know. Gravy Train. That's why I prefer to sit in silence, so nothing life changing can come out."

"Can I ask you something?" Shania says.

"Sure."

"When you were sitting there, before I walked over. You looked so sad, or worried, or angry, or I don't know, I thought maybe, ...uh...haunted? Anyway, I was just gonna walk on by, when I got a glimpse of something, above your head? It was hovering there, like a ghost or something."

Amanda's heart is racing, it's beat is deafening her.  Billy deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it.  "What was it? What did you see?"

"It looked like an eye, or maybe a lock or something, I couldn't tell for sure."

Groggy, Amanda opens her eyes. The room starts swirling. "You passed out Miss. This is the airport holding area for sick passengers."

She sits up, "I'm not sick, I need to be on that plane, I need..."

"Miss, the plane is gone." He put his hand on hers to comfort her. "The police are waiting outside to speak with you. I'll get them now."

The police ascertain her identity and show Amanda a picture. "Do you know what this is?"

"It looks like a trunk," she says.

"Have you seen it before?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it contains?"

"Yes, I do. I do know."

"Well?"

“That box contains my freedom, or I thought it did, until its eyeball lock started hovering above my head. Can you see it there?”

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Shout out to Willow over at Magpie Tales for the picture prompt.

Taluna's Revenge ~ A Magpie Tale

Something always comes knocking on Georgia’s brain reminding her that things are never quite right. Last night it was Johnny’s sister. Georgia sat up at 3:33 am and saw an image of Taluna hanging from the tip of the crescent moon. Her eyes all bulged out. She almost woke Johnny to warn him, but he didn’t put much stock in her “flashes of insight,” as he liked to call them, using his fingers like quotation marks in the air. Johnny’s constant ridicule wore thin. Taluna told her to leave him twenty years ago, but Georgia just couldn’t do it. She wished it was Johhny she’d seen last night. Not Taluna, not the one person who understood what Georgia endured with her big brother. Taluna planted a field of poppies in Georgia and Johnny’s back yard “to soothe your journey, Georgia, to soothe your journey.”

She woke to an empty bed, flicked open her cell phone and pushed the 2. When Taluna didn’t answer cold flooded Georgia. She knew. Sure enough, Taluna was found in her fourth floor walk up loft, hanging from the rafters. With her eyes bulging out, that much Georgia knew. When the police ruled it a homicide, she decided to tell Johnny about her vision.

Johnny flew into a rage, drove his truck straight to Ace and came back wearing his toolbelt, a piece of plywood under arm. Georgia watched, bemused, as Johnny got the ladder from the garage. “I’m sick to death of your little “flashes of insight,” he whined, “this oughta take care of it once and for all.” He trudged up the ladder with that plywood and started to hammer it over her window. A gust of wind picked up. It sent Johnny and the plywood sailing end over end until they landed with a thud in the yard.

Georgia ran to Johnny’s side. She could see that this was the end. “I killed her,” Johnny moaned, “Taluna, baby, I did it…….” His eyes closed for the last time. Georgia shuddered.

That morning Georgia woke at 3:33 a.m. and looked out the window above her bed. There was Taluna, swirling with poppies through gusts of wind. Georgia could swear she saw her wink.

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This story is in response to the picture prompt offered by Willow at Magpie Tales.  Be sure to check out the link other creative responses to the picture.  And thanks, for stopping by!

currents of myth

The phoenix engulfs itself in a blaze
before its progeny rises from ash.
Some things burn to the bottom of always,
500 years disappear in a flash.
Beneath burning flames a beak, with panache
rips through its shell beneath smoldering oak.
Scarlet bright wings stretch out wide against ash
as it twists and twines through spiraling smoke
riding currents of myth immortality woke.

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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the inspiration I took from the word fire. I wanted to try a new form this week, so I searched until I found the Spenserian stanza:
The Spenserian stanza, the invention of Edmund Spenser, consists of nine lines, the first eight iambic pentamenter, the ninth iambic hexameter (twelve syllables) rhyming ababbcbcc.

Magpie Tomato Lune

iron vines cling tight
until rot
liberates spent fruit






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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the picture prompt.  Check out the link for creative takes on the picture.

Thank you to Robert Lee Brewer of Poetic Asides for his description of the lune. “The lune is also known as the American Haiku. It was first created by the poet Robert Kelly (truly a great poet) and was a result of Kelly's frustration with English haiku. After much experimentation, he settled on a 13-syllable, self-contained poem that has 5 syllables in the first line, 3 syllables in the second line and 5 syllable in the final line.”

Magpie Cracker

from this to bits

soft pastel flecks
float below screams
of ye-haw! and holy shit!
as crackers
burst a boy's hand
into bits of skin
that glisten
in confetti fallout
on this fabulous
Fourth of July





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Visit Magpie Tales for other creative responses to this picture prompt.  You'll be glad you did!

Dinner a la Magpie

use and time
dull a shine
sharpening thins
pushing in
blade plunges
ridges rise
along a line
belly fine
guts spill
gills still
fillet and serve
with lemon and dill


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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the picture prompt.  Visit the link for other creative takes on the picture, they are sure to delight and astound you.

Hank and Nancy: A Magpie Romance

Hank found 1000 pencils in a box stashed in a back corner of Nancy’s Knickknack Nook. Eyes shining, Nancy said she found them in a box of poetry and prose peppered with magic. She raised her eyebrows when she said it.

“Uh, I was more interested in the uh, mug, uh, you know, for Guinness.” Hank felt the color rising in his face. Why was it talking to Nancy did this to him every time?

“Sure Hank, but I’m telling you, these here pencils? Magic. Something to do with the cup. Sharpen them.” Nancy grabbed Hank’s wrist, and looked him in the eye, “Needle sharp now, you hear? Then stick them in the cup with the sharpened end up. Do not be drinking beer in that mug Hank Sanders, or you’ll dull the magic.” She let go of his wrists, and looked down. “Sometimes it sticks, Hank. Give it a go.”

Hank remembers his heart racing when Nancy grabbed his wrist, but it’s the soft way she almost whispered at the end that made it skip a beat, still does today. Hank sharpens each pencil and puts it eraser down in the mug that never held a Guinness, until each of the final fourteen stands tall.

At one pencil per day, two weeks remain. Legions of women read his blog, Magic Pencils. Hank pencils all of his posts on pages of half-used notebooks and paper scraps from Nancy’s Knickknack Nook then takes pictures of his poetry and prose. Snapshots of magic, Nancy calls them. 986 posts inspired by Nancy. She thinks it’s the pencils, but it’s not the pencils. It’s her.

Hank started writing poetry for Nancy when he started sharpening pencils. He loves her, always has. Turns out, Nancy loves Hank, too. Hank figures some kind of magic stops him from tripping over his words every time he talks to Nancy. He attributes that magic to Nancy, too. Yup, this Magpie Tale has a happy ending.

Nancy wrote the sidebar ‘About Hank’ for his blog.

***
His name is Hank. He likes his beer dark, a smidgen below room temperature. He understands the underbelly of a woman the way most men understand the engine of a truck. His words make women purr.

***

It’s true. Nancy knows. Nancy knows she will keep purring whether Hank has magic pencils or not. And Hank? He knows that real magic is the stuff that happens when Nancy touches his wrist and whispers, and he whispers back in couplets that burn with desire.

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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the prompt.  Be sure to click the link and visit for other creative responses to this cup of sharpened pencils.

Magpie for Isa

When I was 14 we drove from Montana to Minnesota, to Lake Vermillion. It was the last time I saw my great grandfather Evert Vaino Sulin. He was 92 (and had his driving priveleges revoked 4 years prior for pulling back and forth to the side of the road looking for a spot for his fourth wife to pee). The only person he remembered in our family was our dog, Floppy. My mom’s face changed when he didn’t know that she was Karen, his granddaughter.

~~~

I knew Evert as Isa,
which means father, in Finn.
Isa built the cabin at the lake
by himself when he was 19 years old.
(In his 50s, my father
built a cabin
near Holland Creek
in a Montana valley—
a grizzly corridor
between the Mission Mountains
and the Bob Marshall Wilderness—
he felled the timber,
peeled the bark,
notched the logs,
stacked them.)

Isa managed the dump in Virginia, Minnesota.
Isa scavenged the dump in Virginia, Minnesota.
I envy the trash at his fingertips
treasures in his hands.

He found this head of clay
hiding in the dump one day
and made of it a legacy
to send our dead away.

Sylvia, my grandma’s sister

received the head of clay—
a funeral dirge to wail away
the accordian’s quiet Polish grief
at her husband Emil’s passing
(and every member since,
of our family’s heritage,
marriage
lineage,
death).

This head of clay picked up one day by Isa at the dump, follows us to our grave. The youngest over 5 carries it: a solemn honor bestowed. Isa believed in his heart that the head came from the bow of a ship sailing from Finland to America-the ship that brought him here...he swears he could hear her wailing in the wind. "Serendipitous, what you find in the dump," he'd say, a twinkle in his so blue eyes.


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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the great picture for this ekphrastic piece.  Visit the Magpie link to check out gems others create from the picture.

Gifts for the Magpie

Never one for heels,

Pauline used them for target practice.
Traveling fast down Montana back roads
sling back shoes shot from a catapult
anchored to the bed of her green Ford truck.
With a “PULL!” Pauline pulverized
8 out of every 10 shoes flung.

Locals say magpies still line their nests with pieces of Pauline’s pumps.

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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the weekly prompt.

Ken and Barbie Star in a Magpie Tale

“Anyone can catch fish, Ken. Most people clean them before tossing them on the table.” says bitch-and-a-half Barbie as she digs dirt from beneath her nails. Her plastic ball hinge knee creaks when she swings her leg. Ken wants to take that leg in his hands and snap it in half.

Melanoma took Malibu Barbie. It makes bitch-and-a-half Barbie smile just to think of it. It makes Ken want to cry, but his damn face freezes in that dumbass smile. Only two females remain—bitch and a half and her sister, Mod living Skipper, who still mourns missing Malibu Barbie’s tanning tutelage and believes her little girl pink skin keeps Ken’s eyes on her big sis bitch-and-a-half.

“Well we’re not people, are we?” Ken growls back at bitch-and-a-half. “We’re fashion dolls, stuck in some freaky ass story, and these fish?” Ken picks one up. “Pewter. Tell me how I’m supposed to clean them. Tell me.” He grabs bitch-and-a-half Barbie by the hair, pulls her head off and swings it in the air. Slipping out of his hands it twirls to the floor of the room and Jonesy, the house mongrel chews it until nothing is left.

“I like the fish, just the way they are, Ken.” Mod living Skipper purrs. If Ken had moveable eyes, he’d roll them.

Later, the people laugh when a big chunk of bitch-and-a-half’s head shows up in Jonesy’s shit.

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A shout out to Magpie Tales for giving Ken, bitch-and-a-half Barbie, and Mod living Skipper a chance to share the drama of their closeted lives.

magpie haiku

heart pounding wildly

he poles past my father’s men

me hidden on board

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Shout out to Magpie Tales for the picture prompt. 

The Eyeball

It lives in the briny deep sea

its visions filter to me

every day with no notion

scenes from the ocean

enter my mind’s eye debris.

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Magpie Tales supplied the unique prompt.