Lovely Penguin

by Marie Gordon

Little bugs in my brain
Make antsy thoughts
They twirl tiny batons
Like a giggling campus

Little bugs leave this brain
Shiver and twitch
Until your chants subside
So I can rest my hands

They sing melodic tunes
And play their horns
Shaking spongy tissue
Inside my jell-o brain

Pack up and scamper out
You pesky fools
Who twist and gobble thoughts
And flint nap thorns from seeds

They have set their campground
Built a fire pit
And roasted marshmallows
Until my brain explodes

And my heated brain melts
Solidifies
Until they roast again
On my amygdala

The director
By Marie Gordon

You bobbled with my head
Playing trumpets in my ears
Casting spotlights over my face
Only to pull the plug
When it got too bright
For you were in the wings
Snatching up my every line
Ready to cue me so falsely
Dare I forgot a line
It was your light and sound
Your blocking, your direction
That left me standing center stage
Without a word of life

My Illustrator drawing of the Lovely Penguin…

Centerpiece
By Marie Gordon
Hanging on your walls
And over your sinks
I am silent décor
I am your centerpiece

Resting on sofas
Adorning loveseats
I am brilliantly soft
I am coldly yours

Hung from little hooks
I dangle captive
To captivate your guests
To be your still life

Under your footrest
Gripping wax columns
I am your hearth piece
Your stillborn décor

This poem is about how trauma shatters a little girl’s reality and her once-rosy perception of earthly justice.

The paper jet plane
By Marie Gordon

I can see myself now
When I called this body home
When Daddy set the tee ball
When paper airplanes soared high

There is a little girl
Pulling back a pony tail
Ready to bat and conquer
Coloring her paper wings

She’s invincible
Smudging off bright face paint swirls
Swinging home runs at the plate
Launching her jet plane up high

This is a simple time
Before swollen, tired gray eyes
Sworn in on the witness stand
Scribbled teary paper goodbyes

This is a better time
When a squelched reality
Struggled to mutter a word
And time smoothly glided by

Now I watch the plane dive
And watch as the wrinkles scrunch
And make my trembling approach
Toward an uncertain runway

I cannot pretend now
To be a tomboy princess
This time I can’t grip the bat
Or fly off with paper wings

I must face brutal fact
That earthly justice has failed
That smirking devils do roam
To haunt and to tempt my hate

I am no longer me
I have scrubbed this body raw
I am swinging at the wind
My paper jet plane has crashed

I do not rise again
With eager, rose-tinted eyes
No longer fearless at bat
Trembling hands fold loopy planes

I am not a Phoenix
Because I’m not the same bird
I’m now the victim species
An unheard truthful witness

A view of Christmas from behind
a wet nose
By Marie Gordon

I’m just a puppy
Whose furry dreams twinkle
With Christmas wishes
Of colored lights and tasty bones

Slobbery kisses
An eager wagging tail
Make Christmas morning
Chaos, a family tradition

I’ve got a green bow
Tied to my pink collar
That says I’m a gift
With a right to be by the tree

Wagging pine needles
Plunge deep in the white rug
And my filthy fur
Rubs against Mom’s fancy sofa

Nothing makes Christmas
Like pup dander and pine
And loving sneezes
That rub my head and scratch my ears

There’s no present here
Who can lick ‘I love you’
Or scour the tree
For low-hanging gingerbread men

I’m just a puppy
Sniffing candy cane treats
Curled under the tree
Engorged with sugary decor

This one is more or less self-explanatory.  It deals with the issue of trauma and whether it’s better to remember or forget.

The magic eraser
By Marie Gordon

Hand me an eraser
A magic eraser
For the phrase
“What doesn’t kill you…”

I’ll smudge out the second line
Because what doesn’t kill you
Never leaves you
With sweet nostalgia

Hand me an eraser
A magic eraser
And I’ll tell you the story
As I smudge it out

Turn my memory
Into black rubber dust
That falls off the granite
And lodges in the grout

Hand me the eraser
The magic eraser
And don’t call me a victim
Or a survivor

Just hand it over
I’ll bow to my weakness
For a hard rubbing out
Of this tarry sludge in my mind

Oh sweet amnesia
You are kind
As humans never were
Not to cherish murdered hearts

Not to love the sweet terror
The beauty of remembrance
And the cold screaming sweat
Us men so idolize

Maybe it’s the estrogen
That makes me want to give up
All the prideful glory
Accompanying horror

For the magic eraser
That wipes out shaky hands
And darting eyes
And revives the tiny dreams
Of a bubbly optimist

This post goes back to some of the themes in my earlier poems (”my feeling of figmentation” and “on being a commodity”). It’s really about the eerie fairy tales that become women’s lives and how we immortalize these tales as something beautiful and alive when they are in fact tales which encourage women to be comatose brides and Snow White stand-ins. Anyways, that is my rant… here is my poem:

The patchwork princess
By Marie Gordon

The floppy patchwork doll
With round black eyes peers out
Under her red-brimmed cap
In a felted dress of scraps

Plastic pupils once shined
Although they never lived
Her plaid ensemble matched
She was loved and propped and left

She’s a still little corpse
She died a child at most
That never bled a drop
Never had a single cell

A plushy parasite
That loved, traveled, became
A figment of a girl
A relic of innocence

Oh to polish her eyes
To re-sew her gaffed side
To uncrinkle her dress
To see her in toddling hands

As though she never died
But stitched her own small cells
From giggles and dances
And thin-woven youthful games

If the cobbler could sew
Tiny cells that divide
That resurrect girlhood
With wooden needles and thread

Then she could be so real
As to dance and be fooled
And to learn and to live
In a cruel but soulful world

But she is propped and left
With the fairy tale books
Which narrate eerie tales
Of sleepy benevolence

A beady set of eyes
Dusty scratches and tears
Wrinkled by tiny joys
Which never belonged to her

She cannot speak to tell
A story that is shared
By a girl and her doll
A tale of sleeping beauty
Which is woven but never wakes

Finally, I’m off my sea creature kick…
Weasel
By Marie Gordon

You were my weasel
And I chased you
Like a monkey
Through the bushes

Weasel eyes popped up
From behind oaks
And mulberries
For me to chase

Such round weasel eyes
Big brown and sweet
Pop up and sing
Glimmering chirps

Oh my sweet weasel
Where do you go
You slink under
Rustling bushes

You sweep my garden
Clean of carrots
Robbed of parsley
My loot is gone

Sweet weasel, you’re mine
You chirping mouse
I sink my nails
Deep in your fur

Your little eyes peer
Oh how you squirm
Begging mercy
But not this time

Weasels do flutter
They sing and chirp
Furry instances
Fleeting moments

Captured, my weasel
Imprisoned rat
Ready for truth
Taxidermy

This is me at age 15. This photo was taken by my brother Scott as we were playing with some packing bubbles on the patio.