Four Poems

Catherine Perkins

My beautiful eye-full, blindingly bright

iridescent blue, green and violet feathers

I wave to sway hens into romantic trysts,

gone.

When splayed more eye-catching than a drag

queen’s make-up and lashes, six feet of awe

sprouting out my fluffy ivory assets,     

gone.

The seductive operatic tenor voice

used to serenade all the eligible pea-gals

to come hither and kiss,

gone.

I feel like a cock wearing dirty socks,

because of two featherless, white quills

stuck in my rump. All self-esteem and pride,

gone.

Fall’s seasonal blues settle in my bones.

Without the feathery fan and love songs

I screech, my mating game isn’t waning

it’s gone.

I lay low, hide high in leafless trees, seek refuge

anywhere where there are no eyes to laugh at me

or ridicule the damn sticks with gorilla-like grip.

          Bebebeee gone I stutter.
 

No longer a strutter, I skulk and sulk, am in a snit

and look like shit yet every year I get over it

when breeding season comes back and so does

                     my magnificence!

Between Rocks

Overwhelmed

by abulia,

with no clear sight

of what might

be the right

way to extricate

from the state

of transition

she’s stuck in,

she wrings

her hands,

paces and frets

until sunrise

when she averts

her eyes

to the nebulas

in the sky

and relaxes,

slinks muscles,

heft, and skeleton

into snake-ishness,

able to slither

up granite facades

forty feet high.

What seems

monumental,

unwilling

to stop,

she reaches

the edge

of the ledge

at the top

of the mountain

and knows

even though

her brain

struggles,

instincts,

the gut of her,

are trustworthy.

abulia (uh-BOO/BYOO-lee-uh) | noun | inability to make decisions.

What occurs inside my head is gallimaufry,

a succotash of thoughts, nonsensical when stirred

in a vat of all that, overcooked, limp like noodles

and mush even a pig would swill and swallow,

but not wallow in unless spilled, which happens

when I blatherskite without thinking before speaking.

This year my poems have no endings.

They hang like a participle or my friend

who killed himself, which makes me think

about a remedy for this poet’s situation

and I’m not going to lie, mortality

stares at me, constantly.

Not suicide, but not not suicide. At seventy,

why go through the angst of how to eradicate

what’s sure to kick the bucket any day.

Besides, a proper execution takes time

and a good deal of thought and preparation

if one is anal, obsessed with doing things right.

Ending one’s existence, correctly, is serious business.

One could survive, possibly thrive after all the therapy

and time off being cared for while in rehab.

Obviously (I am alive), that’s not in my deck of cards,

but all this thinking has my blood pressure elevated,

almost as high as when I vacuum and dust,

so, I yell to my mind gone awry, hush. 

blatherskite (BLA·thr·skite) | noun | a person who talks at great length without making much sense.  foolish talk; nonsense

gallimaufry (ga·luh·MAA·free) | noun | a confused jumble or medley of things, hash or ragout.

Onomatopoeias

Listen

to the almost silent shimmy

of leaves brushing against each other

shhh-shh-shh  shhh-shh-shhh

quivering in the gentle breeze

sss-uh sssh sss-uh sssh sssh

bowing to rain droplets dropping

on, bouncing off sered surfaces

pt-pt-pt-pt-pt pt-pt-pt-pt

to a bird song sung from a branch on high

tawee-tawee tawee-tawee

to the mourning dove's lyrical

coo-OO-oo-oo  coo-OO-oo-oo

to the ftftftftft ftftftft ftht

of a fowl’s feathers ruffle as it suns

to a peacock's barely audible

scritch-scratch scritch-scritch

of four-toed feet stirring dirt

to the pianissimo chi-chi-chi-chi

of one insect's courting call

or the fortissimo

CHCHCHCHCHCHCHCH

of thousands of cicada legs

rubbing together in unison

during breeding season,

listen.