The Tarot Cards

Back then when we were young and after I'd had a lover or two
I wasn't looking for a man at all but if I were I'd want one
Who didn't want to fuck me
Like looking for an honest man in college or a bar or a truck stop

But you found the glance with slit eye and the slow slide down
Found your body of great richness and utility anywhere like
The wall of the bar just outside the back door, the bushes plumped
Like pillows for your hips. Strange men, old friends, ex lovers,
All comers. You fascinated me so unlike were we

I was the girl they all wanted to fuck
You were the woman who fucked them all
Married with children, it didn't change a thing
You were the one expelled from the campus coffee shop
Obscene language, solicitation and other outrages and I
Worshipped you. Let me live with you.
I'll watch the children, I'll wash the dishes, I'll be the nanny
I'll be the bait and then we'll switch

You read the Tarot Cards and you were the Queen of Cups.
You drew the The Tower reversed, bodies flying through the air
You insisted I was only a Page. I'd had no children. I would always
Be a page, a child, childless, no matter what my age. A Page
I drew the Devil upright and the Hierophant reversed

For a costume party you would go as Medusa, and knew
Enough to call me Persephone. I was that girl, the mere Page
Carried to the underworld by Hades, another name for Daddy
(I told no one your real identity, Daddy, King of the Underworld)
And yet the Queen of Cups knew the ghost of you in the circles
Under my troubled eyes too damn pretty to really be seen.
Ice girl holding The Devil's hand wearing a well pressed black dress
The Page of Swords in love with the Queen of Cups
I still am



©2009 Peggy Pendleton

Inheritance

The things I got from my family
are a hinky heart and a hot temper,
a dark brooding streak and a propensity
to be alone; leave me alone, but listen

They were aggressively smart people
Good looking and full of seductive power
Careless and hurtful.  Don't take it personally
It's all in your head.  Snap out of it!

The house came tripped to crumble five years
Into the second great depression when I was
Finally left alone in the forest here at the back
Hiding on the alley locked and gated all but invisible

Just me and the dogs waiting
For the loud roar in the quiet of a late summer night

When the house implodes with it's secrets intact
And the roof comes tumbling down

Blackbird

Words dark as a blackbird's wings fall like a stone and are gone
All their meaning lost in an instant
Vanished as if never spoken
All the feelings contained in the words
Lost forever, not even a feather remains
Only the black stone where once beat
Blood red and full of passion
Something resembling
A heart

© Peggy Pendleton

Into The Dark Quiet

I must cut myself off
Hide my need want nothing
I must go back to the center
Dive into the dark want nothing

I must gather myself together
Want nothing need no one dive deep
Into the dark back to a quiet center
Drive want deep into the dark quiet

Here

Here at the pulse where the blood brings a blush

Here at this tender spot

Here is the heat, the scent
Here the flesh awaits your tongue
Here is where I want your lips
Here at the beginning
Here

The Talent

I've sealed myself away from love and ceased
To live with passion, hiding where once I wore
Cobalt silk and saffron, where once I stood
In hot white light and stayed up late to have
Martinis.  Eating mussels at the cool club with
The fashionista girls in full throated laughter
Heads thrown back, necks exposed, lips glistening red
We were the ones, the last of the smalltime superstars
In this cozy little world in the good times when money
Flowed like Champagne at midnight, and then one day
It flew apart, and one after another, life took us by the throat, the lovely
Pulsing throat, the long neck, exposed just when it all comes
crashing down, and one by one disappears to babies or booze,
One gets her PhD, another a divorce, one checks her bottom line
And makes a marriage deal worked out by
Lawyers in a conference room.
In agents terms we were the talent,
We seemed to have it all out there on the
Catwalk in the blinding light, bright women
With talent and brains and appetites flying
Smoking through the evening on the phone
As we drove to the next booking for a big
Show wielding a mascara brush in the dying light,
A flash of red lips and cobalt silk.
You see us in your rearview mirror gaining on you
As the sun sets just behind the island we flash by
We are laughing and oblivious to any danger
We lived on credit like the rest of you waiting
For the good times to return.
And then in resignation get on with living alone in a small house
Kept company, protected by three dogs
Existing only as a cyber link to an outer world I will never likely
Enter again with anything but words typed on a keyboard late at night
In anything but a naked face and beige at the grocery store or the bank

The Sound Of Crickets On A Hot Summer Night

In Arlington National Cemetery the night they buried Senator Edward M Kennedy there were
crickets chirping and the low murmur of voices waiting at the gravesite.
I, an unbeliever, was moved to tears by the prayers and answered aloud
Hear our prayer
Hear our prayer

It grew dark and lightening off in the distance over the hill where
A lone soldier stood gun held in white gloved hands waiting for the
Final Salute flashed off and on as a gentle wind blew the
Eternal flame in the growing darkness
And then it was over

Alas Ms M Has Left the House

It's true I'm sad to say
Alas Ms M has left the house
Sadder still she took fair Roscoe with her
He of golden hair, who came each morning
Weeping at my door at dawn to crawl upon my bed
I'd wake and stagger to the door to let him in, then sleep
The warm safe dreamy sleep of a satisfied Woman.
To wake late, to feed him with the others, to listen
To him moan with satisfaction at his pleasure in the meal.
He's been my daily guard and great companion.  He stayed
With me in salad days through Geeky's autumn death
He was a comfort then.

I'll wonder how she's doing when she stops dropping in
To smoke my pot and then her cigarettes.
There are so few people who'll let a girl get by with that.
I know she's using me.  I'm used to it. This is a trial for her.
It's true I love her but
She doesn't know it yet as she steps back
Into her future full of ambivalence
And dread the hopes, and fears to dream
She needs that weighty warm and living presence
In her bed.  But here's the rub. Roscoe hates to be alone.
Alone he'll be, and howl and weep incessantly

And when he's weeping I'll wake to sob along.
He needs his pack.  We're his responsibility
We're always here, waiting, glad to see his proud superiority
His handsome legs, trotting front to back he covers miles.
To waste away alone to satisfy a selfish girl.
At every step he'll make her life a trial
The neighbors will complain about the howl
She'll have to move and move again
And in his pain he'll tear her life to shreds
As it was in their beginning,
Before they landed here.

©2010 Peggy Pendleton

She Roams

My mother never really died.  It seems
She now roams freely in my mind waiting for the slightest self-doubt
Then she speaks to me in my own voice.  "Stupid cow,
I always hated you."She tells me
I have no gifts or talents, no brains no guts
"Failure!  Idiot Failure!"  "All that potential, my good looks"
"Brains wasted on you." "I never loved anyone."
"You know what I mean."
"You always gave yourself so easily." 

"Embarrassment!"  She screams this in my sleep
Contaminates my day with the echo of that word
"They all loved me best" she says, "even your boyfriends..."
The implication hangs there...
"Ask him, you know who I mean.  He'll lie to you." 
"You're a patsy, you know that?" "You always were."
" I should have given you away."
She spits this last in my face in a thin burning stream
That shoots from her mouth like a serpent's tongue

©2010 Peggy Pendleton