Femme Fatale Poet


Femme Fatale Poet


“The roof of a coffin
Detached in the violence”
—Ted Hughes
“The Table”
Birthday Letters
____________________

It was your gift to me—
A solid writing table for poetry

Something that would last a lifetime—
A solid Elm plank two inches thick

Wild bark still snarling around edges—
Rough-cut coffin timber for a corpse

Sitting here tonight writing—
It’s a door opening into my grave

It’s a raft for a long-term voyage—
Over the drowned sailors of the dead

Smelling the North Tawton evening—
Calmly sipping another martini

I drink too much but it’s the only thing—
That keeps these words flowing

I sleep all day trying to forget—
Then I resurrect my Daddies at night

The cuckoo clock no longer ticks—
I killed the fuckin bird a long time ago

I sleepwalk through the house at night—
Blindfolded inside a looking glass

Court Green my stage without props—
A paltry script torn out of time

The peanut-crunchers lean in & stare—
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

After Ariel I started writing noir verse—
Big Sleep Raymond Chandler-esque

The Long Goodbye just kept going on—
I ended up the usual femme fatale

My desk is the roof of my coffin now—
I’m the Lady in the Lake under the dock

I washed up on this side of the Atlantic—
Just another Fulbright frightened girl

I ended up a has-been aging widow—
At least that’s what everybody thinks

Abandoned by my runaway husband—
Ditched by a no-good deadbeat daddy

The Queen makes me Poet Laureate—
Even bestows the Order of Merit to me

Secretly she knows the awful truth—
Murder, My Sweet our womanly secret


No comments: