The Irresistible Force*

If you were perhaps
to think about velocity,
then you’d have to include
polynomials and the structure
of the earth, the discrete angles
at which the firmaments curve,
gravitational fields, and of course,
the Pi of existence.

Having done that, it might
just be possible to imagine
numbers that don’t exist—
which would naturally lead
to a contemplation
of the nature of the universe,
the precise alignment of concepts
like you and me and half
a cityful of other concepts,
the whole point of which
is to be able to say
with much authority and wit,
“What did you expect? Answers?”
to which one might blink
like one does when looking
at the brightness of stars
in the sunlight, and say
in all sincerity and awe:
“Well, yes, actually. Yes.”

Thinking all the while
there must be a stop to motion,
the headlong rush into nothing
so sensible as a plan,
wondering if anything
could stop it once it began
except the grey thud of a body
falling, forward, then backward,
whipped, as it were by the velocity
of an object, say a bullet, or a blow
to the heart, even if it wasn’t quite
physical, even
if there were no blood.

*published in Tigertail: A South Florida Annual, 2004, and The Best of Tigertail: Editors Choice, 2007

The Geometry of Dreams*

Origins can find their own way out. Life
a parabola of hyper extended curves
intersecting the trials and tribulations
of an ordinary line. Where are the transformations,
the great leaps of dichotomous innuendoes?
Where are the rotations, the quarter and half turns
to which we all move at some point in time?

Look in the mirror at our reflections!
The plane is flipped, all our invariant selves reversed:
symmetrically, to be sure, but flipped nonetheless.
Have we become, at last, nothing more than fractal images
forming and reforming, repeating and repeating
until we are nothing more than an event,
a equidistant function of the same equation?

And what of the circle that surrounds us?
Bisect it, and we are all on one side or another.
Traverse it, and it is all the same again.
What can we do? Ride the circumference.
Ride as if the least common denominator—
what we all are—were a linear equation,
not this double arc of circumstance,
this sloppy slide toward radical expression.
Ride as if you really were going
Somewhere.

*published: www.NYCbigcitylit.com, 2003

You order me to write
and like a good girl I listen.
The night is cool
and tastes of salt.
I have just finished
your latest book
and want to cry.
I wish I were Latin
or Greek, something
with a history
wider than my own.
Even the crickets know
a language I can't imagine.
I try talking to my cat,
holding her intensely.
She scratches my arm
and twists out of reach.
She sits like a statue
and stares at me coldly.
I know she thinks I am to blame:
I don't know her language either.

*
So why is it we say the night
is full of stars? Don't we remember
so is the day? You can
see them. Close your eyes.
They speak Portuguese.

*
In a poem you said music
was mathematical. You forgot
to say love. Everything depends
on music and love.
Imagine a world with no music,
no sound. A equals B.
That's why when you take it apart
you are left with nothing.
Somewhere there's a song about that.
*
In the same poem you said
"only the truly beautiful go mad."
That's what you called it.
What do you call a night
as light as day?
*
It is summer. No, winter.
How can we tell? Here in the tropics
the heat drives us mad.
It is carried by mosquitoes.
The madness, not the heat.
Perhaps both.
I have listened to the wind tell stories,
the trees drop their leaves like applause.
When will they start spinning?
What is snow?

*
My skin is the color of raw almonds,
smooth and beige with a yellow tint.
I've stopped talking to you,
I'm speaking about him.
He says I taste like summer.
It is no wonder. It is always summer.
He is the only one who tells me with conviction
with his eyes, his hands, his tongue:
I am beautiful. And mad.
It is my only solace, my prize.
I wear it like a silk dress.
Endings are only beginnings in disguise.
Something always follows.
A vowel then a consonant
then another and another.
No one ever has the last word.

*published in The Chatahoochee Review

Romancing the Numbers*

Miranda, naked, sits cross-legged on the bed.
She is loving a man with her eyes only
because he does not exist. She has made him
up in her mind and he is the perfect lover.
His kisses cover her body, reach every crevice,
shed new light on darkness.

Miranda rocks back and forth and shakes her head,
counting beats of her heart. She is practicing Love
in the Perfumed Garden, the Arabic way.
She is on number fourteen and by the time
she reaches twenty-five, she will die of ecstasy.
She knows this and does not mind.

“Desire is the wish for heaven,” she says,
her hands fluttering like hummingbirds
around her body. She feels them peck and bite,
knows the power of suggestion.
What, after all, is reality, but a different spatial plane,
a riddle we move to, traveling in circles?

It is not the answer, she thinks, that binds us,
it is the question unasked—
the one where purpose is not a definition
but an adventure yet to be had.
Miranda sighs, lies down and closes her eyes.
Her lover sleeps, then brings her gently to fifteen.

* published in http://www.mipoesias.com/2005/nightingale.html

Three Takes on a Wounded Heart*

1.

When the moon is half
and half again,
look for me
by the mangrove tree.
I'm the bird all brown and drab
whose feathers ruffle
at the slightest stir,
singing a song to every cur
who lifts his leg and shuffles on.

2.
You give me words:
Lofaham, Lyouel, Solomon
spells for banishing demons,
instruct me in their use.
The trick, you say, is in the sounds.
But where, I ask, are these from?
The Book of Shadows, you say,
then disappear. Yisgadal, v'yiskadash.

3.
Now the moon’s about to rise
full and golden in the dark.
There are lovers leaning in the park,
inhaling jasmine and lilac,
sighing softly as bees.
But you are lost and alone,
your path obscured by trees.
Where am I? you moan,
too blind to see the leaves,
the silver light along the eaves.

published in www.poetsporch.com

•  These are part of a series I did on Fairy Tales.

Siren Song
 
 

This is about

the spells cast on princesses,

the years they spend asleep.

How they awaken with a jolt

staring straight into the eyes

of some throbbing prince.
 
 

But this is not a fairy tale,

it is flesh and sweat.

There is sex and redemption,

violence and rapture.

There is moon and stars and wind,

there is a forest and a Big Bad Wolf.

and what he hacks is not for love.
 
 

There is thunder.

Storms polarize around me

like magnetic dust.

There is lightning and a vision.

There is the endless rain

that falls inside my heart.
 
 

Little Red Riding Hood

First of all, I was not skipping.

I never skip, but yes, I was eating

strawberries: red, ripe, delicious.

I had heard rumors

that girls who ate them

would never want for men.

I was after the woodcutter

not the wolf, but the wolf

was quicker, sly, and intense.

I hadn't meant to enjoy it-

but being swallowed whole

was a definite kick

no man could ever give.    

Looking Back

Briar Rose
 

Any way you look at it

they're all animals

one way or another.

Mine even was one.

It wouldn't have been so bad-

even for the long snout,

the snaky tail;

no it was the hair,

so itchy, so alive,

so crawling with things

I dreaded most.
 
 

Sure my life was grand:

golden dresses and silk sheets,

a castle full of jewels,

and only the Beast and I.

Not that I was bored-

oh, no, I was well-entertained.

The nights too short to contain

the joy I discovered in dark.

And the garden! The roses!

Not a thorn to be found-

except for the hair

that suffocating hair.
 
 

  Master Plan

Snow White
   

She was always jealous of me

even before the mirror spoke,

enraged at what people thought.

Little did she know

my heart was as black as hers.
 
 

Everyone felt sorry for me

slaving after those dwarves

but truth is the other way around.

I was waited on hand and foot-

even the Queen had not such care.
 
 

I didn't want to leave. Why would I?

If it took seven to make one whole,

well that was better than none,

and when that wimpy prince arrived,

I could see none were better than one.
 
 

That was the root of her anger.

That I could choose.

Married to my father,

she was trapped in her own web,

trading herself for power.
 
 

Ok, so maybe I did know

who was knocking on my door,

had some need to confront her.

True, I lost every time,

but oh! She had to look!
 
 

Knowing how the story would end

I almost felt sorry for her-

dancing herself to death

spinning deeper and deeper

ashes ashes everywhere.

These next poems are part of another series, a persona I developed in 1981, called Miranda. They are part of a collection called No Wind To Call My Name, as well as incorporated into another manuscript, Sweet Insomnia
 

Miranda Contemplates Silence
 
 

sees a tornado, a hurricane,

whatever winds tightly around dead space.

The roar turns her deaf,

a muffled sea lapping gently

at the shores of her skin.
 
 

She's been told silence is healing

tries to imagine destruction

reconstructing itself, like in cartoons,

flattened buildings spring back,

trees and people unbend and stand tall.
 
 

She might even like the quiet, grow

used to the sounds of her body,

the rhythms of blood and bone,

if it weren't for the violence,

that initial shock of assault--

and the walls. Everywhere

she looks, there are walls.
 
 

These next few poems came out of a writer's retreat to New Smyrna Beach the summer of 1997. Thank you SPD!
 
 
 
 

Finding Myself in New Smyrna

 
 

Northern Florida has wide white sandy beaches

soft and powdery, not like the crushed shell down south.

There are cars, too, parked against the sea wall like trees

(of which there are none) giving a hot metal shade

to the sandpipers and pigeons, the crabs and gulls

and one lone egret lost from its bovine roost

in pastures far to the west.
 
 

Perhaps the sound of sea, long rolling waves breaking

upon the shore enticed the bird to leave its back

and travel east, against the wind and strict advice

from family back home, warnings gone unheeded

for here he is, pecking softly at the wet sand

delighted with sea lice, crab, a minnow or two

instead of dry fleas, fat ticks

and inarticulate cows.
 
 

Cybergames
 
 

Make me your computer.

Every time you turn it on

it's me; touch the keys

it's me, how do I feel?

Tell me how it feels.
 
 

Look at the screen.

Do you see me there

between the pixels

a crystal shimmer

in my liquid eye?
 
 

Move the mouse slowly,

it's your hand on my arm.

Click, you've touched

me, somewhere

out there, where it's safe.
 
 
 
 

And finally, this is something totally new for me; perhaps I've discovered a whole new area of creativity! I recently wrote this poem, and then decided to illustrate it. Since I can't really draw, I relied on clip art, photo cd art, and my own stick figure drawings and alterations of the clip art.
 
 

If This Were a Dali Painting
 
 

The sky would be red

beneath my feet.

I would be floating

just left of center

one foot in a cloud

the other on a goose

flying upside down.
 
 

My head would be daisies,

tulips, roses, and azaleas.

You would never know

if I were smiling or not.

I might be holding three balloons

or a parasol with stripes.

There might even be a man.
 
 

If I let go, would he rise

off the canvas into air

or sink and be swallowed

by the red sky/sea?

Does it matter that over in the corner

there is a carriage with six white mice?

Why do the doors have chains?
 
 

Look hard and long enough,

the edges of the frame

melt into the wall until fused.

Soon you will forget this is a painting,

this scene before you mundane,

the oddly colored trees (did I mention trees?)

the same you pruned last spring.
 
 

Then-and only then-

will I invite you in,

give you a balloon or two

(which you'll hold for your life),

watch you wobble then spin,

trying for perspective

while you slowly fix your space.
 
 

The bees can wait.
 
 

© Barbra Nightingale, 1997

All of these poems are copyrighted material and are the original and sole property of Barbra Nightingale.
 
 

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