I wonder now in
as shepherds tend their sheep,
is the grass upon the hills
coarse beneath their feet?
And do the shepherds search the sky
taking light from milk-swept stars
and start to hear a harmony,
a faint sweet sound, forgotten choir?
I wonder now these miles away
with all my concentration bent,
could I hear, too, a remnant play
across the generations sent
to those who would participate
in the Christ Child’s birth, however late?
©1995 Muriel Thumm
He was playing air guitar,
I mean, really. Solo, right out front
of a junkyard, a discarded marble doorknob
curled in his left hand, right hand dream-rolling
from finger to finger reaching
for notes you could see clear through.
Skipping the easy chords, I heard
all the most difficult. I toggled
through faces of passersby
--- they weren't looking, not at his open army coat,
hairless legs, sneakers. If only he'd
had a styrofoam cup or an army cap
between his feet, they might have witnessed,
and tossed a coin.
But
he was playing it solo --
silent guitar, blind audience. I alone stared,
riding along his bridges, and yet,
I was angry no one seemed to want to hear
him. Maybe that's my problem -- I mishear.
The other day, I heard a guy say,
"I graduated from failure," and I thought,
there's a school for that? They should advertise
on the buses. Make a mint. I could use a course
or two, of course, more could improve
my rate of failing. Sustained failure. Pushing
failure to its limits.
Maybe failing was something he left behind. Could
the air guitarist and I, all of us, become such experts?
Congratulating each other when we lost
another case, spilled another cup,
dropped another thou in the market?
Since most of my life looks like
something I need to apologize for, I'd like a degree
to hang, "Expert in Failing." Remember,
I said I have this problem mishearing --
you are free to make anything you want
of this. If you heard me say, "misbelieving,"
for example, that's okay, too, because everything
I say is interchangeable.
Put a Phillips head, blade first,
in the guy's left hand and he could be riffing the air
trying to find the hidden stud
behind the wall of the home he may have promised
himself after the war, in which case, failure starts
when he locates the dull place
after so many remarkable echoing taps, or
is sometimes taken as success
depending on whose side you're on, sort of like
a war, when the headlines say, "War Going Well,"
and you wonder,
for whom?
©2012 Muriel Thumm
It's that whole
sapien thing!
We think we have a
right
to immortality
and the animals
don't.
That we won't rot.
Something about
transcending
the flesh or
whatever.
What's this! The
god desire?
So what! we can
think, can read,
can gain
knowledge. Biggie.
The memory of
knowledge?
None. Memory has a self-editing tool
long before the
worms get to you.
©2015 Muriel Thumm
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
