Freak Cilantro!

The cilantro is immense and that’s a hell of a wonder
Historically—three years now—the garden’s been a wash
puny scraggly rained-out
moldy worm-ridden
beetle-eaten
Last year I replanted the damn thing twice but it just kept raining
Semi-loathe to accept my role:
No earth mother, you! boomed the heavens
You want to plant something?
Plant your can on that beanbag and read those bound and banned old horror comics
while it storms.
I fancied a solitary rain cloud over my house & garden alone
and the comic-book artist in my mind
draped me in a sexy toga
complete with sash emblazoned: “Anti-Fertility Goddess”
And comic-book me criss-crossed shining swords over my female charms
challenging
“Just try and germinate!”
This year we grew three servings of salad
a bed of snapdragons and a cilantro SHRUB
and might even get a dozen blackberries at last
from the piddly Wal-Mart bush planted many a long year ago!!
Visions of one 3-inch blackberry tart
and leaving the grey in my hair all free and hippie-like
next I’m hanging out the laundry and wearing crowns of clover
stinking out the frowning neighbors with my virtuous compost
Some day.

Betty! I'm Not Fireproof

The house is too new
for domestic mojo
so I carefully consult
the cookbooks
and brittle women's mags
of the dead and dying
and stare
at Bob Hope
offering up his recipe
for pineapple upside-down cake
Bob
Bob
What is the secret,
Bob?
If this cake fails
that's the end of it, man.
(it's all over)

Actually that's fiction.
Nobody here eats pineapple
Well I do
but I'll eat anything
Yes dammit that includes pickled octopus

No but I believe it
Betty Crocker had an
ingenious shortcut for all things
and cancerous preservatives
or no cancerous preservatives
a quarter-dozen offspring
and a weekly cake
that's pure magic
and the blues musician once said
"Most Things Haven't Worked Out"
but he never laid hands on
Betty's Cake and Frosting Mix Cookbook
1966
and the cosmic blame
for all dashed hopes
rests squarely with General Mills
for leaving us stranded here
without the Cherry Fluff powdered frosting mix
the glue of life
the sticky anchor of kitchen success.

Well
I suppose I could go
One cup shortening
2 cups powdered sugar
2-3 Tablespoons maraschino cherry juice
2 cups more powdered sugar
and thin with cherry juice to your liking...

It's not "just add water"
and you can't make Cherry Grasshopper Pie with it
but some days
it's enough
just to get by.

Dirt Fit

And the grubs in the garden
only plagues and nightmare-food
pale shiny curled-double
abdomens
and useless vicious legs
SHAH! they materialize
and explode when I
whack 'em with my trowel
all burst water balloons with
yellow knot-heads
inert little Japanese
horrors
appear in my soil
abundant in my acorn squash
damn 'em
lurking
beneath the sod
like in the graveyard
unseen
below
but you know they're there
fat blind ghostlike and slimy
they lurk
and stomping the grass in a rage
does nothing

patchy brown sod
lie light, lie light
Die, damned larvae!
Good night, good night.

All at once a dim vision
of the direction the bathtub faced
at old #19107 1/2
Independence, MO
where I lived age 2 to 4
and of bending over it
to get shampooed
Only my dear little mom would
say it funny:
"Time to 'poo your hair!
Let's 'poo your hair!"
Hilarious.
So I told my little
boy about it
and he liked it fine
did his maniacal laugh
and told me to go 'poo my hair.
Then I became Dave Letterman
on the Late Show
and couldn't turn loose of it
insisting I needed
to 'poo my hair
the boy attempting
to change the subject
to no avail:
"What if Yoshi were real
and not just a video game?"
"I'd ask him to help me
'poo my hair."
And I know what Mom
would say now
if her wits were still about her
& I told her of that
memory.
She'd say:
"Oh! I was a fruitcake."

Halloween 1978
we moved into the new house
and did trick-or-treating in 2 neighborhoods!
We must’ve been allowed
to choose a candy or two in the old place
for as we waved good-bye to the duplex
I spied a single red-wrapped goody
wedged lonely against the living-room wall
[I think it was Bit-O-Honey].
The new house faced the
same direction—north—
and on the spot where
the Bit-O-Honey would’ve been
stood a fireplace
my mother’s prerequisite
though terrified of fire
she would not be dissuaded
that a fireplace was necessary
to make a real home
that & a piano.
The piano she’d learned on
resided at her dad’s in Springfield
[in the childhood home her
alcoholic mother had set ablaze
once or twice with the wayward cigarette]
and that’s where the songbirds lived.
Not a lot of songbirds
at the [Halloween 1978] new place
because the trees were still babies
and to this day
when I hear certain songbirds
there I am
firmly present
in my granddad’s backyard.

Gas-Station Cappuccino

Well highway driving
gives me slight hysterics
And visiting the family
is a little like a sudden dream
where out of the blue you’re a sideshow self-mutilator—
the pin-swallowing MUST be done
but man the pain that comes after
when you’re not used to that scene.
The sky is rightly grey.
I love a grey sky
for reading ghost-legends
but on the cusp of a pin-swallowing
addictions are useful
in getting you there
When ma’s dementia really got galloping
the boy was 3 and not in school yet
so he & I drove out their way frequently midweek
and always stopped on our way out of town
for a cherry Icee
and an Oasis CD we’d not yet heard
until we exhausted the Oasis library
so then it was a little milkshake between us
and an audio book
and a clearance-priced
Betsey Johnson necklace at Macy’s.
Now 2 years on
mine’s a cappuccino from the Break-Time
unrecognizable to the citizens of Italy
warm milky caramel syrup
Fantastic and healing
making life well and good again
though I must soon
hammer a spike up my nose
and later lift weights with my nipples.

Spring Tonic

I never did accomplish
that spring cleaning
I spouted on about before
but clearly
the more practical
spring cleaning
would be the mental variety
and I know just how.
You turn off the overthinking
The endless introspection
gets the boot
and here’s the way to do it:
cheap dimestore luxuries
bath oil – shimmer powder – metallic nail polish – Charleston Chew
and Ozark ghost stories
once a week
each time with the neighbor gals
and a different flavor of pie
gelatin salads containing
Dr. Pepper and cherries
perfectly unmolded
in gleaming elaborate towers
which echo my coiffure
hot-rollered.
Hairsprayed
Windows thrown open
and titillating rock songs
of tuna fish and banana pudding
proselytizing the backyards
Today we planted strawberries
and cured our anglophilia
we made a Kool-Aid cake
and didn’t apologize
threw down lawn chairs
and had sun tea & bird songs
with our love stories
and all in all
it was a good day’s work.