Sweet Charlie, Long Gone
The sea…
The foam kissed my bare feet as I ran…
In my memory, I play always at the edge
And laugh as I hold my sundress down in the wind
And laugh as I hold wet cloth away from bare skin…
Once as the sound of a melancholy violin
drifted from a bungalow at dusk
it nailed me in place;
So sad, it seemed to bleed onto the sunset colored sand,
riding atop the steady tumble of waves.
and yes, the music was in the foam that licked my toes
and yes, I thought the man morose
to play such a sad song
when the world of the ocean was at his feet as well as mine…
I found out later he was as handsome close
As he was mesmerizing from afar
and quite charming.
I had a weakness for black hair and dark eyes even then.
I thought I would never find anyone else so worldly
Never anyone so refined…
as he gracefully played his aged violin,
As he carefully played me.
I played the innocent,
played the piano,
played him.
I remember thinking we played well together; our music, our games…
He said we came together well, smiling as he said it.
So shameless and debonair,
sweet Charlie, long gone.
After All These Years
I don’t know why after all these years,
I’m still surprised
When the purity of your voice,
The purity of your talent,
Wraps me in a womb
Of calm, warm alpha waves
That fills the holes in my heart
Somehow.
To mould a song from thin air
That you coax to grow,
Magically,
Like giving birth to a thing of perfection,
Its notes a double-helix of DNA notes
With not a single protein out of place,
Not a rest or a sixty-fourth note wrong
Or misshapen.
It’s a miracle indeed.
The sound takes me to
So many places
In the center of a universal soul
All placid and full of downy soft dreams.
With never a sharp corner or ragged edge
To tear my peace asunder.
I don’t know why after all these years,
I’m still surprised
When the sparkle in your eyes
Tells me you’re happy
Long before the words are said.
Somehow, the world would hold
Hands beneath you if it could.
It’s karma, I think…
For all the wounds you’ve healed
For the hearts you’ve held in your hands
And failed to crush when you could have.
So many want nothing more from you
Than to know that you’re happy.
It’s a miracle indeed.
© 2007 C. Harter Amos
Sentimental Heart
Safe
Her heart is locked away,
Untouched by passion’s thorn,
Never again to walk on winged feet.
Hollow anxious breezes sway
Where,
Once upon a time,
She danced,
On a beautiful autumn day,
In the arms of Prince Charming
His chosen Fairy Princess;
Their future love a mere kiss away.
Regret
Tugs at her spirit
No more often than every day.
Her mind is scorched by memories
Of love, like Handel’s Messiah,
Written by God,
Translated by angels,
So mankind might comprehend
Such perfectly balanced obsession.
A lifetime gone awry,
Would she take love back?
Play the fool,
One more time to try?
Where her happiness lived
Behind brown eyes
In his perception of their lives,
Her heart is locked away
Untouched,
Safe and sound,
Never again to cry out in pleasure
Or in pain.
When the Journey Began
The rut is so comfortable
I forget that I’m in one…
Until the mud and clay
suck at my feet
and pull me down.
I gasp for breath and wonder why
as the walls of the rut
tumble down around me.
Claws spring from the delicate hands of daughters.
Even if I can’t forget the sweet children are now grown,
my heart is open to them like a mother’s arms stay
out of habit, and history, and old bonds they broke, not I.
Memories of their innocent doe-like eyes
keep me off balance,
keening with the effort of owning empty arms
with the need to rock and sing lullabies
to soothe aches that no longer need my care.
I’ve helped to make them strong
Encouraged them to let me go.
So why am I surprised they do?
Oh mother dear, see here, see here
We really don’t need you near.
Empty nest syndrome is simply so passé.
I realize I’m in the rut again,
But I can’t seem to stop the blood
That pours from my soul
From the wounds I don’t dare speak of.
(They don’t show do they?
Like the hem of a red lace slip from under your Sunday best…)
Mustn’t whine, mustn’t cry
Stick a needle in my eye
Mustn’t make them ask me why
Mother: a temporary state of being that had all the earmarks of permanence
When the journey began.
© 2007 C. Harter Amos
Parchment and Pen
Taking comfort in the parchment of my life,
I push limits toward better things.
What power beyond our lives
decides if our smiles outnumber our tears?
It’s not for you or me to know. Our guesses are only guesses,
but we write,
learning from mistakes,
taking knowledge through the next door
with us as we go.
Take life’s credit card from me, please.
Don’t let me see the total I’ve spent
in minutes
sighing against my lover’s ear,
staring at the sea to dream
or philosophize…
to love who I’ve loved and to remember that love…
Then to write of it…
“What a futile foolTo write of such things…to think…to dream… Peck-peck-pecking out words, making chicken scratches on empty pages like so many others.”
Fool I may be
That I’ve failed to learn the game, I suppose…
Did I not make a difference to anyone, you think?
Not skeptic, not stoic, not epicurean?
Does everything have to be bathed in obscurity
to be thought clever enough to earn your gold star?
My eyes must be blind
and my art a cage that must surely be a small one:
I learned its maze one inch at a time
by the feel of its edges that were once clean, and smooth,
and as sharp as any razor’s edge.
Suddenly, unexpectedly,
The edges mocked me with flaked and uneven boundaries,
the new instructions you gave me were in a language I never learned.
I promise, I felt each ridge before I threw your list of foregone conclusions away.
I won’t bloody my fingers redefining myself or my writing
because in the end, writing is not an equation.
There is no cage.
There are no boundaries beyond the imagination and the page.
And we write…
Sackcloth and Ashes
Bravely he dared to take his child to see what ignorance looked like in the flesh. Was there flesh or unearthly demons hidden beneath bright white hoods? Anonymous men pranced in the flickering glare of a bonfire in the moonless night. The wicked cross, never again a holy thing, was aglow with the Baptist minister’s promised brimstone. The surrounding woods ghostly lit, the rounded hard steel cars reflecting fire, parked everywhere in straight lines like a simple drive-in. They were putting on a show, like a movie after all, weren’t they? With wide eyes and nose pressed against the window, my breath came fast and hard, to form innocent condensation that I wiped with lily white hand.
It terrifies me now, to think how close I stood to the oozing maggot-eaten decay that a clean white word like ‘prejudice’ fails to convey. This one-dimensional word sits on dictionary’s page and doesn’t kick ribs and thrust bitter blades into human flesh, then stand there smiling, self-satisfied.
Virile Nubian youth, simple gift to man and wife, a near-man of sixteen, had chastely kissed his date goodnight, they say. It was by chance alone that he was who chose to walk the railroad tracks whistling a happy tune, they say, at ten p.m. as the others hid, these white pillars, with hard-ons of anticipation, before they circled like hounds of hell determined to make a point. It was a warning, they say. Later no one squealed on anyone.
“There’ll be crosses burned in yards.” Even spoken softly his low voice rumbled. “Let’s hope there won’t be one in ours,” he whispered and Mama didn’t move or speak. There were times he’d been able to help, been more closely involved, and no one guessed, she knew. His sapphire blue eyes barely hid horror laced with shame, and with wide eyes I pressed my nose to the window to watch for the burning crosses he said would be there that I still see in every campfire’s glow.
© 2007 C. Harter Amos
Dazzle with Glitter
I wish I could dazzle you with glitter.
I stand here feeling glazed and a bit jaded.
It’s a shame it can’t be faked…
To produce a good piece when the time comes,
Every time.
Point a finger and tell me to dance;
I can’t stay on strings though I’ve tried that.
When I change into my red dress
And feel sultry in the dim light,
Just for this one night,
I can’t help but remember even honeysuckle wilts on the vine.
Like a child, right now, I just want to go home for the holidays,
Back through the fog of time to warm Southern charm,
Everyone visiting everyone with dish in hand,
Warm breezes blowing through open French doors
while we drink spiced tea swirling with the smells of the holidays:
cinnamon and spice and everything nice
To go with the soft drawl of good conversation
with people I’ve known all my life.
I want to remember Christmases wrapped in
warmth and everything familiar:
A handmade wreath on the door,
Cut glass bowls on the dining room table
filled with camellia blooms.
“Come help cut flowers,”
Scissors in gloved hands,
Bundles of red, pink and white fresh from the yard.
I was too young to know then,
That family and friends ease into the distant past.
Even the memories are stale,
Taking on the hue of sepia-toned antiques,
Mounted in gold leaf frames
Collecting dust.
So it’s time for me to get a Brass Monkey from the bar
And find a table so I can listen to youth and vigor
Spilling over with uninhibited enthusiasm.
Someone whose time is now,
And whose pictures are not yet faded.
© 2007 C. Harter Amos
Sunday Night at the Orchid Room (Nov. 18, 2007)
Ah, the Orchid Room…
I come here to listen
to youth and vigor spilling out
from inner voices that speak of vinegar and honey,
of sulfuric acid and mercury.
Sweet Voodoo Child tests the waters
giving glimpses of the power of her words
yet to come.
She is what gives us hope for the future,
as delicate as the dew-shimmering webbing
of a dragonfly’s wings,
as strong as the chainmail of the black knight,
a soul with a Kevlar vest made to fit,
The inner visual acuity of a Lennon not dead,
a Leary not burned out on LSD.
I salivate at the mere thought of new words,
of wisdom so ancient
it free falls from his soul
…Older Than Aztecs…
Look into his eyes, it’s there to see.
Listen to his voice, it’s easy to hear,
A prophet, he’d scoff at what I say,
but it’s as real as this dream we live.
Only a man who’s seen beyond time
Could play the music so well
And wear that gray fedora with such grace and style.
I come here to listen to
Sweet Child of Mine,
who brings out the mother in me
and my she-claws spring to defend.
But she’s quite grown up, speaking of love,
her voice grown strong
the way Women’s voices do
when they leave prince charming’s behind
sitting in a mud puddle of pig shit, his mouth hanging open
as she saunters away.
Make no mistake,
None of these people need my
clipped and broken talons in their lives.
They don’t often know it’s me there at the corner table.
I simply listen to the timbre of their souls
carried on the blue smoke of the Orchid Room
and love them for the fact
they don’t simply live, they feel in ways I recognize,
in ways I respect,
they stand at this mike to sing their songs for us all.
Ah, the Orchid Room…
I order my drink here:
A Brass Monkey
That’s ½ oz rum, ½ oz vodka, 4 oz orange juice in a high ball,
But the bartender knows me here, knows my drink.
He fixes it a bit stronger and longer and forgoes the optional Galliano
on nights when I come in
nodding my head in his direction.
Pardon my bare feet;
This is the place I kick off my shoes
And let my hair fall down.
I sing my song at the mike
for the others who come here to listen.
Pardon my low cut crimson dress;
This is the place I show myself for who I am, it’s true.
There are no lies here for me.
It’s far too easy for the others
to feel insincerity in my words if they aren’t stripped bare.
.
.
© 2007 C. Harter Amos
Winter: A Southern Perspective
People from Omaha say this is an extremely mild winter so far. Even so, it freezes almost every night, which would be a major cold front in SC or Texas, but a fact they take for granted here. I have no frame of reference. It feels like the dead of winter to little ol’ me. I keep hearing people complaining that it hasn’t even snowed yet. Some decades, I’ve failed to see snow. I gather Omaha is suppose to be knee deep in gray by Thanksgiving. My daughter says that’s what she doesn’t like about Nebraska; the constant gray from first snow to Spring. I’m not really sure how I’ll like it, but know one of the first things I’ll do is freeze myself building the biggest snowman I can. I’ve only twice had enough snow in my life to have a snowman. This should be a good year for snowmen. I have three grandsons to have a snowball fight with…AND Christmas should be white. I’ve never had a Christmas when we didn’t have the windows open and a warm breeze blowing the tinsel on the Christmas tree. Never a white Christmas though one year it snowed north of us. My two girls were young and my husband and I drove two hundred miles so they could see snow. It was about two inches, but we thought it was a miracle on Christmas. Maybe I’ll change perspectives, but I’m singing Christmas carols already!
Student of the Past
Near water’s edge,
the delicate sound of thousands of shells
dancing on turning tide
make the sound
of most delicate wind chimes
ringing like tiny bells, fairies at play.
routinely cast on shore,
on shore to be collected
as treasure.
She didn’t doubt she knew more about him than the woman he married. They had been old and secret friends for far too long. His wife would never think to ask him about the collection of small seashells in an intricately decorated wooden box nestled in the bottom of his armoire. There were several tiny conk shells in his collection that took a magnifying glass to see if you expected to see more detail than a simple dot. Probably his wife would never know the shells existed. She would never hear the excited explanation of the type and size of a shark when he found a shark’s tooth there on the white beach sand. It was his favorite place; his skin well tanned by summer’s end. Would his young wife ever bother to ask what was in the leather bound book that held the drawings and descriptions of new things that he stumbled onto in his travels? She could still picture the pages covered in drawings and in his left slanted script in blue ink on parchment. No doubt the young girl only saw dollar signs and he was blindly in love.
He was handsome, rich, and well endowed and these attributes were all a woman like that would care about. He’d put a three karat diamond on the girl’s hand, not because of its worth, but because she was so much like the living ghost of the sweetheart from his youth. He couldn’t help but lust and give. He’d had too much money for too long to remember how much power it held over most people. Other people cared about what seemed too superficial to matter to him: people like his young wife and things based around looks and money. It would be only a matter of time before those rose colored glasses would fall from his face, and his heart would be broken again.
She sat beside the water and listened to what he said she would hear; the delicate sound of seashells in the turning tide. It was the sound of thousands of small fairy’s bells striking each other as they played. The salt of the sea spray blended with the tears she cried for him.
© 2007 C. Harter Amos
