Dear muse & His last words were ahoy matey
by Maria Cuervo
[ poetry - december 05 ]
Dear muse
You're all that's left of those old things,
the green lilting sculptures,
the desolate lace-covered
forever peeking from drawers,
the square fakirs I called poems
that filled my days, my bureau
but lounging in the trees cocktail in hand
you did teach me something,
what treacherous phrases to avoid.
Inaction was your advice,
do more and ruin Everything!
but oh what hunger devoured me
watching you do nothing so well-
you swam in an emerald ocean,
you stared at the horizon.
always something flitting by, a new friend,
a new fashion. You always could outdo me.
His last words were ahoy matey
just as the sun fell over the orchards.
The almonds hung from the trees,
the dark orbs jangled
like a thousand eyes and the bees,
done with their pollinating,
buzzed their last buzz, as lush as an Italian ballad
their blue bodies reverberating
now but a memory, just as the bland
coo of a hook shiny with bait.
Not then or since did any lover seem softer,
the heart like a canna bursting,
at any moment fish or sailor
apt to turn up and so on and so on.
But the perfect one always
kills you after the great cancíon:
Someone stomps about in heels, maracas
bite your toes. Though the epic
line be sixteen syllables of assonant rhyme
only to be split in two during the romantic
and left to find its merry way on every other line
in later decades, relationships getting shorter and shorter,
unfortunately, in that neck of the woods
last words are antiques, more
attractive if second hand. But what good
is advice, ever the young queue neatly toward Buddha,
though the bone of the ring finger
be riddled with cancer and though of love
there was not then or since any judge harsher.
