The Third Rail
Is close enough to touch
Should I? Dark and mysterious
Down here on the tracks
Wish I could be like the others
Smiling on the platform, some glum
But none taking the risks I take
Some call it reckless
But if it’s wreckless, no wreck involved
Then the risk is a gain
So where do you come in
Sad and reckless man
Will you join me on the third rail
Watch out for sparks
©2019 Muriel Thumm
I saw a young
scientist
at work today
and could see him
as an old man
tufts growing out
his ears. But
just the other day
I saw an old man
and, for him,
I erased wrinkles
firmed his jaw
muscles
and could see what
a fine-looking
young fellow he
had been.
What is my mind
doing
of its own
volition?
I didn't ask for
this second sight.
©2016 Muriel Thumm
I carried her suitcase
No, it was my suitcase
I never saw it again
My blue cloth coat was full
The girl in the drugstore giggled
When I asked directions
Her mother, the owner shushed her
Lorrie was in the Florence
Crittenton,
A home for unwed mothers
Her due date was approaching
We went to see the baby later
I brought it a present
She didn’t, just her big toothy grin
Life was like that for Lorrie
At least I thought it was
I was her friend
She went to see her biological mother
once
She didn’t have time for Lorrie
Ironing board up, kids running around
Barely acknowledged her
Lorrie left for Virginia with a sailor
I never saw my suitcase again
©2015 Muriel
Thumm
Bayonne, NJ
He came home from his
mother's wake,
surprised the burglars in his
own driveway
was beaten and robbed of
everything on his person
and then they went through
his car.
Hadn't he suffered enough, we
ask?
The answer is no. It's never enough.
There is plenty suffering to
go around.
©2014 Muriel Thumm
I think I’m in
the Age of Erosion
No, no, not
that one from a billion years ago
But I’m in my
Own Age of Erosion
In the
scientific one, things crumble and tumble away
If my age has
anything to do with this
I see things
sagging and bagging
Enter face lift
creams, booster bras
I’d like the
sagging and bagging allayed
©2021 Muriel
Thumm
You tell me it
wasn’t
I ask, Please
tell me
how to know
Is it something
I’d see
in your eyes?
Feel when you’d
wrapped
your coat
around me,
shivering
yourself
that day on
Carson Beach
Or sense when
you shared
your family
memories
while we waded
at Mattapoisett?
Do you really
know
for sure,
it wasn’t?
©2021 Muriel
Thumm
Working
remotely
The house-bound
skeleton
Not eating much
Drinking too
much
Dressing
occasionally
Climbs the
stairs
To log in to
daily zoom
Jaw locked in perpetual
grin
©2021 Muriel
Thumm
My friend said, “Take this,
it’s more you than me. My
boss
brought it back from Italy.”
“Little Italy,” I said. “It’s
just
a version of Fendi.”
Offended,
she left. If perfumeries, in
their
flimflammery can depose attar
of rose
to mere coal tar perversion,
why not
“Inversion of Fendi?” Instead
of attracting,
this perfume could repel,
excite
if only for the length of a
smell
with the option to create one’s
own world,
to corrupt a perfume which
once could be counted on
to deliver essence of lily to
my earlobe
and a man to my feet,
when I still wanted that. And
why should I when
the real essence of our time
together isn’t love
but approximation brought on
by proximity, by shared toothbrush
holders,
pajama bottoms, colognes, a
belabored labor
of clasps and gasps and
orange juice
spiked with disinterest.
So maybe I go shopping. Maybe
the scent draws
me in to someone else’s
funeral where I find
Lily, rich and falling over
in bloom. Maybe I doubted her
existence,
essence not aroma but supine
elegance
created solely to disturb my
equilibrium.
But am I kidding myself?
Initially, bouquets
were placed at head and feet
so you could approach
the corpse without gagging.
Corpses
don’t stink these days, but
banks
of flowers scream, “Dead
person ahead!”
And it’s my life which smells
of embalming fluid until I
sense
the real essence of flowers,
and at a kneeling rail
for supplicants like me, I
discover what happens
to those who want only to
worship her
cascades of bloom, not the
rot
in the casket, not here where
they are tucked
and trussed so tightly in
imposed bouquets
there is no room for individuality,
and even her colors run
together and are stained
with that vein of purple
blood which links
us all to each other, where
artistic impulse ends
in the grave, a pool of mud
where someone
other than us is bent
on tidy categories, strings
of delineation
that keep flowers and women
nameless and aromatic.
I want to say I cut her free,
but she was cut
anyway and no one could touch
her essence. I want to say
I drove out that night,
leaving you, and now my own life
lures me along new high ways
and solitary lanes
where untidiness is all I
speak of,
defending Fendi herself.
©2021 Muriel Thumm
I want a room I've never entered before
A pen I've never held
Blank paper
Bare chair
I'll sign a confession, but my stipulation?
I write the body of the confession
I'll confess to everything that I have ever done
I'll confess to things I wish I had done
I'll confess to things I never would have done
I'll confess to the blackest thing you can think of
in your heart...in my heart
Well, I didn't exactly do this blackest thing
but the Bible says thinking about doing it
is as bad as doing it, doesn't leave any margin
Oh, let me confess in a bare room
with a pen of no nomenclature
a quill even
on a steady piece of paper
and in a firm hand
© 2019 Muriel Thumm
Maybe in the morning
with
trees against clouds
my headache will be gone
like
thin boundaries of time
Maybe in the morning
so
easy the slip
he’ll come for me again
into
the frame of my life
Maybe in that morning
in
my life I’ll see them
when he’s no longer here
in
my own space, but
Maybe in some morning
with
membranes against the sky
I’ll see rainbows in the trees
leaves
eaten by worms.
© 2022 Muriel Thumm
We
never invested in it, you and I
so
it never did go any further. Miles apart now,
but
no further apart than we were,
we,
who never gave it a nickel’s worth of passion,
maybe
an arm around the shoulders on Carson’s Beach
where
you shared your jacket as we leaned up against
that
tree and I could paint a picture like that,
but
it still seems like there’s not enough paint to cover it
all
in sepia. Did you feel it, too? The non-feeling
and
then, standing up once more, we felt the wind
in
our faces, my hair blew into your teeth
finally
giving up for something better –
him,
her – not you, not me.
Skirt
flying straight back, molding my legs
but the
wind had the only passion –
when
it blew past, there was no heat exchange,
just
bold breeze looking for a cheek to stroke,
but
passing so quickly, it had no time
to
feel the coldness of the moment,
the
catch and caw of the crow over the sands
not
even a phrase that would catch a passerby
and
make him strain for the rest
we
were far beyond anything a seashell would listen to,
harbor,
and pass on next year to another on the beach,
plunging
her feet in the sand until
the
moist undersand cooled the pads of her feet
like
the bottom of a well is always cool,
even
in a dry season, the memory of water remains
and
will my memory of you remain
or
did it go off with that wind?
Copyright
2016 Muriel Thumm
