California I

California smiles with only one lip
squeezes her eyes tight
flashing her fake tits to the sky
Her many shiny necklaces
twist around her lengthy neck
rubies and diamonds
diamonds and rubies
lshe lets them all fly
with the shake in her hips
the wiggle of her manicured finger
and everybody falls to their knees
to her dismay, prays to another God.
California lights her golden hair on fire
just to watch it burn.

The Ghost Queen of New Orleans

Madisun only talks to very old men
and drag queens

while standing in a parking lot

handing out poems like dollar bills.

She left her guitar behind

She keeps blurred photographs of strangers

tucked in her windowsill

hoping that collecting them
will give her life clarity.

She doesn't care
about long hair or brown eyes

she won’t sing along

to Simon and Garfunkel anymore

or listen to good advise

Her five dogs dwindled to 2

and her trains have all derailed.
She can no longer find the sky
with her head hung below sea level
so she wishes on city bricks

(she’s run out of stars)
for another way

to say she’s leaving

whispers adieu

to Marie Laveau

and hitchhikes

leaving her ghosts behind

 

Maureen Sings

she slid coins
into the jukebox
selected a handful
of songs, then kicked
her shoes off
no one noticed
her dancing
as waves of
Stevie Ray Vaughn
crashed into the walls
dim lights and golden beer
kept regulars
rolling the dice for another round
slow song
she sings
loud
Patsy Cline cries "Crazy"
caught by the night
and hidden stories
her song ends
she walks out the door
leaving her shoes behind

Fetal Theives

 Fetal Theives

Heavy with child
Mother Nature
rips at her horizon
thick scarlet wound
seizes our undeveloped skin
burns us from within
we hide our faces behind
translucent hands

release us

A thousand times we've seen
A thousand pictures worth
A thousand words

then turn and paint ourselves
in shiny hues of imitation
but only on the outside, so
we cut ourselves
from wooden frames

Fall from grace

and steal back into the night
praying that when we die
closing our eyes
we might open them again
beyond blood red skies
be pulled from this blackened womb
and one day be born of light.

©2013 Carole-Lyn Catron

Expectation of Clarity

     Expectation of Clarity

     Holding knowledge of you, in cupped hand

     like one hundred pomegranate seeds

     lazily consuming each one, before

     they drop through  forgetful fingers

     Listening  to you, a collective breath of child song,

     stripped from one thousand bells.

     secrets bound into verse, aroused.

     tangled in fables banqueting

     upon the tattered edges of  authenticity 

      Take me in or spit me out   

      release me, from locked box of yesterdays

      a caged bird, unaware that the sky

      is not there to tantalize, but to offer freedom

      if unforgiving eyes dare smile

     but then again, maybe you are that smile or

     time bound on wrists of men

     a twenty dollar bill in the hand of John

     along the way, I have forgot or

     have been forgotten

©2013 Carole-Lyn Catron

Daddy’s Girl, July 1983

Daddy’s Girl, July 1983

Before the sun casts its shadowed arms, long

against summer sidewalks, you will have

forgotten me. An oversized suitcase filled

with high water corduroy  hand me downs, threadbare T-shirts

and mementoes, hidden in a jacket lining from the last box

 left of my mother will be my only comfort, once

you hand me a bag of regular M & M’s  and change

from your twenty-dollar bill. Without a kiss or goodbye

you will turn and leave me,  your  12 year old daughter, standing

alone to wait for my time to board. I will have watched your short legs in old

denim and the back of your balding mullet fade into the crowd. A plane

will have sped down one runway at John Wayne Airport, whispering

to the wind of this neglected cargo.   And I will still

not be broken,

And you,

you will rush home on the 405 beating traffic

in your rebuilt Austin Healy, Bug Eyed Sprite convertible

Oldies will blast from transistor radio

transferred from floor to still indented passenger seat

at a red light on Harbor Blvd. You will swear

at the driver who cuts you off, tap your grease stained fingers

against the welded shut door in tune to the Temptations

singing “my girl, talking ‘bout my girl..” You will take the corner too fast

at Beach Blvd. You will push the garage door button, just before

the sun casts its last shadowed arms, long

against the summer sidewalks, and you will have

forgotten me.  

©

Carole-Lyn Catron 2013