Poetry Magazine, Dorothy Bates, February 2003

Poetry Magazine

Dorothy Bates

USA

Aubade

I wake
to the sound
of rain
doing a Fred Astaire
on the roof.
The shower.
The shivers.
My old sweatshirt
takes me in it’s arms.

Eau de caffeine.
Hot buttered heaven.
Blackberry jam.
Vivaldi.
Nothing to do all day
but write poems.

Solitude,
my lover.

The Prince On The
White Horse Is Not Coming

He got drunk, overdosed, impregnated several adolescent girls,
went to jail, and his horse suffered a broken leg and had to be shot.

He never wanted to play the role in the first place.

He needed to run across open fields, ford rivers and streams, climb
mountains, ride naked through rainforests where branches brush
his shoulders and ravens fly down to take seedlings from his hand.
He wanted to spit waterfalls, piss rivers, crack rocks with his fists.
He longed to straddle a winged horse, travel the skies and ride the Milky Way.
He dreamed that he was meant to be a god, but it never happened.

Then, one night in the Cosmos,
a new moon slipped off her course,
held her luminous breasts over the planet, and squeezed.
Men and boys had murky dreams of UFO's and alien visitors placing star
stuff in their secret places, but nobody suspected that the implants were
moon-born and started back before the Flood.

The prince on the white horse is not coming. He will no longer be husband,
soldier, worker, slave. While muttering about that ridiculous glass slipper;
bridal gowns, diamond rings and wedding cakes with two tiny plastic dolls
on top, the prince has been digging his way out of his maximum security
prison and, bloody and bruised, has dragged his desperate body through
the barbed wire and escaped.

Finally free of her spell, he has given Cinderella the old Bronx cheer.
Those deep strangled moans in the distance are the voices of maidens,
crying because the prince on the white horse is not coming. Ever. As the fairy tale dies, he's reborn
in the sky and the horse that he rides is flying.