Very Superstitious

source

Say a prayer beside your bed

Hope that you don't wake up dead

Throw the salt and knock on wood

so that all your luck is good

Spit three times and close the books

Make sure that you count the rooks

Leave the house the way you came

If you don't, then you're to blame

Charms ward off the evil eye

Keep one close and don't ask why

Mend your clothes and chew a thread

Cut a cross into your bread

Bird in house and hat on bed

Both bad signs, will lead to dread

Close the casket when you die

Fear to look death in the eye

Hang a horseshoe on your door

Don't let luck spill on the floor

If you think that it's a game

Burn in Hell's eternal flame

You must watch each step you take

I tell you this for your own sake.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, FB Friday for which we are to write something spooky!

The Unexpected Stripper

source

Raven had been working as a stripper at the Pussycat Palace
going on 3 years
She was a beautiful girl
skin dark,
eyes like blue ice,
hair shiny
and inky black as a well-oiled glock

Raven didn't love her job;
she didn't hate it either
It beat bagging groceries or
hostessing at the I-Hop

Raven was working the late shift
The moon was round and full,
a fat man's stomach after an all-you-can-eat buffet
It was closing time
Last dance
before the patrons wandered off,
lost to the night

Raven took the stage,
swayed to the techno music
and began to doubt
the trajectory her life was taking

She had stripped down
to stilettos, pasties, g-string,
and a black, feather boa
The dollars were accumulating by her feet,
wet with sweat
from desperate men's hands

From somewhere in the crowd, Raven heard,
"Take it off, baby! Take it all off!"
Raven was an accommodating and literal minded girl
so off came the pasties, and g-string,
then the shoes and the boa
The men shouted louder

Raven looked at the crowd
Sparks shot from her obsidian eyes
She grinned
Then she began to peel off her skin
Slowly
First, one arm
then the other
Gently yanking the skin from her fingers
as if it were a cashmere glove
Then her torso, her legs,
and lastly, her face

The men were stunned silent
No one moved
Next, Raven took off muscle,
tossing the scarlet chunks of flesh into the crowd
like they were signed T-shirts and she a rock star
She stuck out her tongue
at the guy who had grabbed her boob earlier that evening
She plucked out her eyes
and dropped them like ice cubes
into the drink of the guy who had called her a slut

She was bone beautiful
No one asked for a lap dance
Raven was relieved,
as it was near impossible to twerk
having no ass
The music ended and Raven
picked up the dollars,
stashed them in her eye holes,
and sashayed away

No one would ever forget
that night at the Pussycat Palace
and no one would ever speak of it.


submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Friday, Build a Title
and The Sunday Whirl, Wordle 124

Don't Go

scienceofrelationships.com

Don't go

You must always be here

with me

Every minute

Every day

Even when I close my eyes

you are here

Your image

seared under my eyelids

Your voice

burrowed in my deepest ear

Your mouth

stealing my breath like

a cat steals from a baby

replacing it

with your leaden, love laden air

What would I do

in your absence?

I cannot miss you if you

don't go.

https://twitter.com/The_ClingyBf

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Fridays, Doubletalk

The Trouble With Golems

The girl who loved winter

was lonely

and cold

She liked the cold

but the loneliness

made her cry

Her tears were warm

and salty

like a good melancholy broth should be

The girl who loved winter

wanted to wrap herself around someone

to feel the kisses of lips, not just snowflakes

to feel the nip upon her neck

of something other than

the cold wind

That night, the girl who loved winter

wished upon all the stars

in the winter circle

Upon rising, she found

not a lover

but cold, hard earth

Never one to take ‘no’ for an answer

the girl who loved winter

set to work

She put on her robe

(she didn’t have a white robe, just pink

but it soon became white with snow)

She kneaded

She molded

She wrote of truth and of her god

The girl who loved winter

made a golem

and told it to love her

At first it was great

an attentive yet silent lover

always at her bidding

But then she started feeling bored

Suffocated and, frankly, 

all that mud everywhere was getting tiresome

The girl who loved winter

knew it was time for the golem to die

But how does one bury a pile of earth?

The girl who loved winter

 buried the golem under a blanket of snow

with a snow angel on top.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Fridays, Do You Believe In Magic? 

to read more about the legend of the golem (he's like Frankenstein, only Jewish!), see  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Golem.html

Love Poem For a Place and a Girl

photo by Allison Tardio

She understands this place;

she understands me.

We walk the wooden boards in silence

and let Nature speak.

The creek eases past Cypress knees,

anchoring trees who have stood

peaceful witness

through lifetimes come and gone.

"Look," she says. "The paw paws are nearly ripe."

I inhale their tropical musk 

and reach for her hand.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Fridays, Lights, Camera, Love!

Wicked

Eve and Lilith by favoritecolour

You can tempt me with the apple
You can tempt me with the core
Cause once I've had a taste of you
You leave me wanting more

I swallow down a mouthful
While most spit out the seeds
Your forked tongue beside my ear
Bespeaks most evil deeds

When I hear the hell hounds howl
I dress myself in night
I climb into your bed while
Their dark eyes glow like whores' lights

You can tempt me with the bones
Or with the blood or with the skin
Cause it don't take much tempting
For this wicked child to sin.

submitted for Fireblossom Friday, The Devil, You Say! at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

The Dude Abides

His given name was Jeff

but everyone called him Dude

It has been said that he was lazy and profane

and that may be true

But the Dude had a keen sense of fairness

and of friendship

and of how a rug could tie a room together

The Dude's belly and his smokes

were both pot

and he liked his White Russians

Too laid back for employment

he courted enjoyment

"bowling
driving around
the occasional acid flashback"

But when the need arose for action

the Dude responded

grudgingly and

ineptly

It may be said that he was a loser

and that may be true

But the Dude abides.

Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski from The Big Lebowski

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Friday, Get Famous

God In the Synapses

photography by Daryl Edelstein of mosaic by Isaiah Zagar

On my knees

I pray to the gods of pain

Offerings, sacrifices upon the altar

What I won't give up if they will spare me

just for this day

this trip

this event

Do they even hear my pleas?

Are they laughing?

Searching for God in the synapses

between neurons

I realize it's already too late

That familiar haze has descended

a gauze curtain over my brain

I am here yet

Not

My ghost is living my life again

Panic

I must abort abort ABORT

before...

Scents of patchouli and blueberry drift

into my consciousness

I retreat into the dark

I am a bat

I need to sleep, sleep, sleep

but the gods deny even that

They play with me like

a cat does a mouse

Infliction of pain is more satisfying

than the kill

The eye twists in its socket

while a vise tightens around the temples

A garage band has parked its amplifiers 

inside my skull

Bass and drum pounding, pounding nonstop

Head shatters

Dozens of jagged fragments

each holding its own misery

The bed has become a tilt-o-whirl

no way off

The gods won't be bribed

to stop this ride

I make one final appeal

for unconsciousness.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Fridays, Stress

and Sunday Challenge, Featuring Daryl Edelstein, Part 2

The Girl Who Swallowed the Moon

 

The Moon by Emhain submitted (late) for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Friday #6, Much(a) The Artistic

It Is Time

You are not your bra size, nor are you the width of your waist, nor are you the slenderness of your calves. You are not your hair color, your skin color, nor are you a shade of lipstick. Your shoe size is of no consequence. You are not defined by the amount of attention you get from males, females, or any combination thereof. You are not the number of sit-ups you can do, nor are you the number of calories in a day. You are not your mustache. You are not the hair on your legs. You are not a little red dress. You are no amalgam of these things. You are the content of your character. You are the ambitions that drive you. You are the goals that you set. You are the things that you laugh at and the words that you say. You are the thoughts you think and the things you wonder. You are beautiful and desirable not for the clique you attend, but for the spark of life within you that compels you to make your life a full and meaningful one. You are beautiful not for the shape of the vessel, but for the volume of the soul it carries.

-Heartbreaker's Handbook

I believe it is time

to stop mourning the body of youth

Even in her dewy verdancy, we held

a conflicted relationship

She never quite lived up

to her air brushed sisters. They had

melon breasts 

while she had cottage cheese thighs

I believe it is time

to embrace the fragrant dumpling body of middle age

It is more yielding

more willing to both give and

receive

Within its folds are secrets

gained only through time and

experience

I believe it is time

to drape my body in its finest linens and loveliest decorations

Why save them?

Why not now?

It is time to stop mourning the body of youth

and celebrate

Set the table for a feast.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Fireblossom Fridays, Bodies

Hello

The dogs start yapping

before the doorbell even rings

I open it 

about a foot

and there they are

the elders

twin penguins

(minus the tux jackets)

standing at attention on my doorstep

hair neatly combed

smiles in place

Bibles in hand

and I think

Damn why didn't I look out the peephole first?

Hello

We'd like to talk to you about

why out god is better than your god

why our church is better than your church

(oh, you don't go to church? 

well, maybe you'd like to visit ours!)

why you should believe what we believe

why you will burn in hell if you don't

why

why 

why

Why didn't I look through that damn peephole?

I send them away

and toss their tracts on top of the newspaper

Headlines 

shout 

religion and politics

politics and religion

and when did this country become

a theocracy anyway?

Those who don't fit 

better get with the Christian agenda real quick

cause the men are coming

with their probes

(if I'd wanted the government up my cunt

I would have fucked a bureaucrat)

and I have no need 

to be born again

cause I was born just right 

the first time, thank you

So maybe I'll just hide here

behind my door

and be sure

to check to damn peephole

and not open it

until Santorum 

is a dirty word again.

submitted for Fireblossom Friday #4, Imaginary Garden With Real Toads