Vain wishes

There's one pin-prick light
If I could wish it to move
it might prove... lucky

Sly

Spider slides down sly
thread from flower-cup fixture
Spry when food happens

Saint Nicholas

How do they call you,
those who’ve passed through unmarked
twin doors for the shy
side of one century?

Is it as Nicholas
of Myra,
or of Bari,
or as an unlocated saint,
working wonders in
this home of trim white-stone
block, with three tiers of black-
arches, frowning up at
the merciless
grids behind?

Rows, rows, rows, they float
on glassy, steel-blue oceans,
and these oceans will fall in
violent,
cascading,
millennial
waves unlike any with foam
caps that once lapped
the rocky coast of lost Lycia--
your see
our maps don’t contain,
and our licit hosannas won’t reach.

Who are they?
Who pray here?
Bakers,
sailors,
bankers,
all whose sighs
rise with the torrent of immigrant chants
liaison rafters
fracture in echo-song,
the old coinage that plies your favor.

To which patron can they turn
when your cross crowns not
the work of masons
but one day’s
rubble,
a tongueless bell,
the charred
relics of unnameable acts?

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Carolee Sherwood suggests we use a favorite poem. Often, when I get stuck, I'll return to a work I admire for inspiration and perhaps an idea on how to move forward. That was the case for the above piece, which is the second of three that I hope to recite at a friend's upcoming art exhibition. The poem that helped me with it was The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.

Blades

Tall grass blades, stout friends
lend him sympathetic ears
Words of wilting, drought

Three minds

I am of three minds—
an un-whole trinity
built by ghostly id,
god-sick conscience,
and one son of never-
virginal egos—
interlocked inside
a mortal’s spirited,
head-in-head conflict.
To the fabulous free
goes my prized heart’s
spoiled meat. Cooked rare,
its fetid, red juices
run in all directions.

---

For this week's Poetry on Wednesday prompt, Rallentanda asks, What's on your mind? My minds are on my mind, all three. This was sparked by my drawing of the same name, and my friend Eileen's suggestion that it be put to words.

Limits

Partners in limits
Pleasure-bound mind blocks body's
painful messages

Liquid invitations

Her eyes send liquid
invitations to expire
Tomorrow's lapsed date

I am of three minds...

Willing, but

Upgraded spirit
is coded as "willing, but"
His machine is weak

Collision Course

Wipe away that image of
beating butterfly wings

and the currents they send across
great continents.
See instead, you and me

arranged on the same vast
plate — two irregular green peas
rolling around the nucleus of a split pod.

Even if we don’t meet here and now —
snagged by an intervening fork,
set off course by rivulets of gravy,
separated by marbled slabs of meat,
or consumed by a gravity-defying, black-
holed gob — somewhere
on parallel, fine-clothed
tables, we’ll savor the joy of
big-banged, trajectory-altering collisions.

---

At Big Tent Poetry this week, Nathan Landau suggested we dabble in steganography. Mine isn't a very challenging code to break. Each stanza represents a word. Each line contains one letter in the word, and the line's number indicates where to look for the letter (counting from the left, and ignoring spaces and punctuation). I wouldn't have made a very good cryptologist.

Blunted

He hunts for the blunt
Sworn words once used to capture
fading attention

Making positive use of a double-negative on Bastille Day

He couldn't
not take off
the backward cap
that hides
his tousled hair
as he pulls back
the high-backed stool
he'll perch himself on
next to
this unfamiliar beauty.
He couldn't
not accept the bourbon
shot, a pert bartender
offers to keep
his pint company
and lend him
extra courage.
He couldn't
not exchange
an inquiring smile
then a glib remark
about the heat
and the sudden
appeal of dank taverns.
He could
watch her
small gestures for hours
and never
lose interest.
The way
alabaster fingers
tease auburn hair,
they pull at his longing
for a moment
they'll land to still
his right hand
nervously tapping
so useless against
the emptied glass.
He couldn't
guess where
it all might lead,
but he couldn't
not take the chance
it might,
somewhere.
Her accent
sounds French,
and it is Bastille Day.
Anything's possible,
n'est-ce pas?

---

It's Bastille Day, and the Poetry On Wednesday prompt this week gets us in the proper spirit by suggesting a sprinkling of French and some mimicry of the poet Jacques Prevert. My piece is more Francophile than French, but I did retain enough from my high school studies of the language to understand Prevert's Desjeuner du Matin in the original (with a little help from the translation).

Late summer's stroll

There’s a sidewalk here,
the city has poured,
cemented with smooth
and perfect squares.
It leads to all
the usual places,
only altering when
at last it crumbles.

There's also the rough-
cut route I’ll walk,
taking Aeolus
by his shaky hand
to stroll where moths mingle,
dandelions dance, and
destinations giggle
tickled by our setting suns.

---

This is my contribution to the dialog my dear friend human being is having on her blog Thus Spake the Crow.

Silver Wings

Should stolen silver wings make soft
cutting of glass and steel...

Should thumbs of clouds smudged red and gold
stop watchful gulls mid-dial...

Should broad-shouldered blue shed brave skin,
then feverish crumple...

Should there ever be a morning
when grey snow falls on warm
September sidewalks, and brings us
no damp or cool
relief,
but the burning
silence of five thousand throats... how
could I write that canvas?

---

This is a poem I'm working on as a companion piece to a painting by my friend George Kokines, which we hope will get exhibited as part of an installation this September 11.

Re-member

It's a vain effort
To re-member past selves torn
apart hastily

Aspirin

Her sudden loss throbs
Acetylsalicylic
acid works magic

Putting an end to this bad pun, There’s no I in steam

I like to visualize my death
not as a grand moment
fraught with TV-script intimations
at sudden illumination
while I’m encircled by a non-weepy
sprinkling of the usual types:
one surviving relative
curious to see what I’ve got
left to inherit; one forgotten
friend dubious I hadn’t
died quite some time ago;
and one vengeful stranger
anxious for the shock
when I hear her unmask.
No, I envision my death simply
as the lonely release
of a hardly noticeable puff,
its minute droplets lifting
to mix with every other
ever breathed, and bid adieu
to my residue of befuddling
puddles flecked with unresolved bits.

---

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry takes inspiration from The Love-Hat Relationship by Aaron Belz, asking us to take a common phrase and make it "go a little sideways." There's no better cliché to send off-track than a sports cliché.

Consumed

Down on drooling grass
he lets fog nibble over
is consumed by cool

Swift changes

Swift changes ignite
An ignoble laugh from less
evolving creatures

Look here, into the eye of my soulless contraption

Young Johannes keeps his theory
dressed up with petty pink
flourishes and tucked inside her
wicker basket. She plops fat on

a spangled, off-center perch
while surrounded by tangles of
circular mirrors, each reflecting
his fragmented eye. “The fluid

mechanics of my camera’s
lens imbues its gaping human
subject with a soul,” this caged bird
sings, just as he’s coached her.

She doesn’t require very much
care -- a few scattered meat-filled
husks and white space for flapping
her clipped-tones -- but reluctantly

Johannes must set Prolly free
to wing it openly upon
the waves of patterned noise
his vacuous glass can’t see.

---

This week's Poetry on Wednesday Prompt is a photograph (click the link to see it). Don't ask me what leaps in logic my mind made to get to this poem, it's hard to explain.

Full-bellied

His predilection
to flout low appetites flops
Full-bellied friction

Cleaver-made

He hews messy lines
What's cleaver-made, let no man
put back together

(I got "cleaver made" as a word verification prompt, and this is what it inspired)

Gun powder

Clustered oak leaves owe
their trembling to gun powder.
One dove's coo calms them.

Inventions

Lured from bland confines

he locks down eyelids, denies

naughty inventions

Knowing

I don't know
where we were headed,
but the sidewalk did,
and its smells had been
liberated by a hot summer rinse.

You grabbed at my pendulum
arm, and jerked
me back before
the gap grew us
out of being a couple.

My penance was
a hair-shirt stare
and a smack with that saw:
"Life's about the journey,
not the destination."

"Sure," I said, "but the end's
a crappy cul-de-sac.
I wanna see what I can
before we smash
against it."

You summed me up,
mouthing the three letters
you drew on my chest,
still not-chastened:
"A-D-D, Humming bird."

"There's no deficit
of attention here, Old Crow.
It's just this
plugged-up world's got
a surplus of stimuli."

It was one week
later you left,
taking a whole
slew of savory inputs
to the blank without you.

"Everything
happens for a reason,"
you'd tell me.
Knowing the cause,
never changes my effects.

---

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry suggests writing a "Conversation Poem." I cobbled together this anecdote of imaginary call and response.

Chirps

Pirate signal chirps
from the utility box
Six starlings hungry

Weightlessness

You could put it down
as youthful folly, or spit out
the hackneyed line about
pride and what goeth after.

It's true, I over-reached,
wanting to limitless kiss
the sun's crisp lips.

I did hold her glowing cheeks
firmly in my palms
for one exquisite breath.

Can you, rocking there
in your comfy prison,
say the same?

There comes a time to sit
astride clouds and burn off
the waxy buildup of childish things.

The weightlessness before
the plunge feels
like it will never end,
but, I can tell you, it does.

---

This week's Poetry on Wednesday Prompt is a guessing game of "Who am I?" I took a few liberties with the subject of this poem, but he still should be easily discernible.

Clouds without a clock

He peels an azure rind
sure to find click-clack gears clocking
tin-men's timid-toed steps

But these clouds conceal gut
taut strings rain drops plink, teasing out
hours' palsy footed jigs

---

At We Write Poems, Lawrence Congdon asks us to write an English Haiku (or two), forsaking the traditional 5-7-5 syllabic count for an even-metered 6-8-6. I've put together my pair as two stanzas built around an idea expressed by Jonah Lehrer in his article Breaking Things Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to Big Picture (from the May issue of Wired): "We live in a universe not of clocks but of clouds."

Thrifty

Coins clang, and he clings
while singing their mounting sums
Too precious to spend

Rumble and crack

Early morn's thunder
rumbles and cracks. A crow caws
three times, not to fret

Now available in paperback: fosebook

fosebook: summer 2010, featuring the poetry and art of 23 international contributors (including yours truly) from the Flowers of Sulfur community, is now available in paperback for $35.50. For those on a budget, you can always get it as a free eBook (PDF format).

Gossip gushes

Gossip gushes through
restless roofed congregation.
Prayer can't fix leaks.

Slippery words spew, and I can't stop their flow

I want to paint it
this plaint
I've worded
one thousand
unrecorded instants
only to see both
the deep and tinny
syllables I thought
vibrantly tinted
dissolve into
pale, gooey-bottomed wails

I should pitch it
this paste
to patch an unfrocked
eye searching
puffy tears for atoms
escaped within
abandoned margins
as narrow as
the difference between
my white canvas
and an emptying hand

I have to plug it
this post hole
bored by my frantic
inattentions
and stencil a sign:
bold letters below
a starched cuff,
its pulseless finger
pointing out
there's one way
round sniveling sounds

---

In this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry Carolee Sherwood asks us to fill in the blank "I want to write about _______, but I don't know how." My poem is more about that blank, than what fills it.

Bones

He collects bird bones
to build cut-rate barriers.
The cats still sneak in.

Fly with a dragon

The swampy heat draws swarms of bottle-glass
eyed flies who I buzz with their Christian name:
dragon. They hover, dive, then skim tall grass;

Cellophane wings beating hurricanes. Game's
afoot, but where? I've seen the solo flight,
pairs mating, but never so many flames

bounced off blue-green foils by the sun's white light.
Their gather's a check for black plumes of beasts
gone unbalanced to these hunters' delight.

If on mosquitoes they make seasoned feast,
my meek blood inherits to this world's least.

---

This week's Poetry on Wednesday Prompt asks us to be inspired by a summery song, and then arrange that inspiration the form of a terza rima sonnet. I chose The Flaming Lips song "Buggin" as my muse.

Sea Lilies

Sea lilies
I see as silly
sprawled and feathery
arms lift: either
a birthday child's
happy waves
or the crone's
hunger-mad flailing.
Ethereal, they sift
nervous ticks
drifting down with
the dwindled since
carboniferous
seas rose from
an obsession's
bad-mouthed drought
to my sorrow's
sadly doubted drowning.
The miracle of
this one thought
circles up to me
at a glacial pace.

---

Here's another Wordle prompt, this time compiled by Irene at We Write Poems.

Reverse Christ

Reverse Christ performs
un-miraculous changes.
Wine's back to water.

Sleight

A gloved hand flatters
then slides, its eyed sleight graceful
and experienced

Sea rolls

Sea rolls shoulders, smites
boulders mocking loyalty
to indiff'rent moon

Poorly sketched comedy meets creation myth

First a disclaimer:
My god is not
necessarily
yours, but she is
undeniably
hungry for a comfort-food
snack of peanut butter
and Fluff brand
whipped marshmallow spread.

(Yeah, I know,
nasty stuff, yet
every god has her quirks)

She's actually
more demiurge,
needy and enduring
a dangerously dull day
ideating at the office
that gets worse when
she opens the gripe-box
to unfold a complaint
pasted in ransom-note letters:

"Too stingy with praise.
Resent the ego stroking
going one way."

"Can't stroke what you ain't got,"
she cracks, tipping back
a cold glass of froth-topped milk.

The bubbling laughter
seizes her
mid-swallow, and
caught up by
a soul-clearing cough,
stars spray out speckling
black tile in a no-longer dark
part of the universe
we call home.

---

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry is another wordle (see the image at right). The wordle vocabulary was borrowed from Dangerous Astronomy by Sherman Alexie.

Clean oceans make for a happy planet

Looking for clues in a down economy

My daddy said,
"Hard work has its rewards."
I assumed the wages would
at least tread water,
what with prices rising to a flood.

I always did play my part
the way it was
script-written.
There's a piled-high stack of bills
sitting here to prove it.

The banks won't let me
lay those puppies off,
and I'm too-small potatoes
to get tossed in
the too-big-to-fail bucket.

Someone's to blame,
that's for damn sure,
but with so many likely suspects
I wish I'd been paying
closer attention.

---

At We Write Poems this week, Dan Rako asked us to walk a mile in the shoes of someone for whom we have antipathy. Being leftward-leaning politically, I have a natural tendency to suspect any movement birthed from the right, but there are some legitimate economic grievances hidden in the sometimes nasty rhetoric of the grassroots Tea Party activists (and discounting the motives of the upper-echelon organizers, who I think have a more nefarious agenda).

The voices in my head speak with perfect accents (POW Prompt 7)

Chi sono io?

My i strayed from its o
(divorziato)
decades before the sperm and egg had wed,
hatching me to a self-soaking
tub where the immigrant
pigments of Ermano e Rosa
were twice removed.

Quando dormo
gli antenati stanno sempre
sussurando indicazioni

Rosa e Ermano each descend
(spaesato)
on separate planks plunked down to greasy
rock by proverbial boats.
When they do, Emma Lazarus doesn't
warn them the Lady's "give me"
comes with a take.

Provo a sentire
le due parole dolci
ma non posso

Ermano e Rosa each find
(inamorato)
American spouses, have American kids
who sprout to twist a native tongue
till an ill-fit, its tang is
left in must and un-dusted
just for periodic trips back.

Ripeto, Chi sono io?
E nel questo sogno
i voci mi dicono di nuovo...

Let's skip the unplugged generation's gap
(collegato)
to where my i reacquaints with its o,
but their made-up past makes
a tenuous tether, so together
Rosa e Ermano drift on

the whispers of a forgotten song.

Non dimenticar

---

This week's Poetry on Wednesday Prompt asks us to "sprinkle" some Italian into our poetry. Since that's my linguistic heritage, I may have gone a little overboard with the spicing. Here is a translation of the Italian lines:

Who am I?
*
(divorced)
*
When I sleep
the ancestors are always
whispering hints
*
(lost)
*
I try to hear
the two soft words
but I can't
*
(in love)
*
I repeat, Who am I?
And in this dream
the voices tell me again...
*
(connected)
*
Don't forget

Too early

This bird's gotta call
like nails across a chalkboard.
Sun's up too early.

Mid-day dark

Mid-day dark and soft
splashing — rumbles of relief
Rain's inconstant gift

Persnickety snack

Persnickety snack
won't let yellowed teeth have at.
It wants to spoil white.

Pantoum to an Aging Father

Let's offer up our prayers to a finicky Father
who sits in his segregated heaven, rocking
away senility on that rickety chair
with a spare, tall back wrapped in striped wool blankets.

Who sits in his segregated heaven, rocking?
Our Father, keeping his heart warm against the gusts.
With a spare, tall back wrapped in striped wool blankets
perfectly square (but too small to share with others),

our Father's keeping his heart warm. Against the gusts
and idling time, again he stays busy carving figures
perfectly square but too small to share. With others,
these tokens will help the faithful remain fertile

and idling. Time again, he keeps busy carving figures
on the edges of a pesky map. Mad for expansion,
these tokens will help the faithful. "Remain fertile!"
Father cautions, as he watches a big screen TV.

On the edges of a pesky map mad for expansion,
many errant souls who wander are unable to hear
Father's cautions. As he watches a big screen TV,
the devil's slipping him a low-ball offer to buy

many errant souls. Who wander are unable to hear
news heaven's economy is still struggling, and
the devil's slipping him. A low-ball offer to buy,
our aging Father mulls over hot oatmeal and tea.

---

In this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry Deb Scott asks us to channel our anger through the poetic form of a pantoum. Whatever anger there was dissipated in the process of writing this, and even its original subject matter was transformed into something completely different.

Foundation

Rusted rebar juts
through thick dust, its foundation
still lurking below

Secret Notes

The many faces here
collected
no remuneration.

Dreadful people played
with swollen fingers,
weak after
suddenly being elbowed.

Only two or three seemed
angry and, alternately
thumping and thumping again,
set off to discover
secret notes laughed out
from behind the piano.

---

Here's a second attempt at the We Write Poems erasure prompt. This time I used the text "Pointed Roofs" by Dorothy Miller Richardson, which Angie Werren had suggested (but which I wasn't crazy about at first). You can see the erasure and original text here.

Charles and Will explain love's inevitable decline (POW 6)

And so it began on a couch with a spilled martini.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day
when I was wont to greet it with my lays?

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
there are ordinary women
and then there is something else that wants to make you
tear up paintings and break albums of Beethoven
but that wild music burthens every bough.

Not that the summer is less pleasant now.
Our love was new and then but in the spring
and let’s not over-rate the obvious decency...

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
and who is to say the rose is greater than the thorn?
not I, Henry.

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud
and sweets grown common lose their dear delight
and when your love gets flabby knees and prefers flat shoes,
maybe you should have stuck it into something else.

That night I couldn’t destroy her,
such civil war is in my love and hate,
and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind.

---

This week's Poetry on Wednesday Prompt challenged us to write a "cento," which is like a mash-up. The lines, unaltered (except for capitalization and ending punctuation) come from the following poems:

Charles Bukowski

• i wanted to overthrow the government but all i brought down was somebody's wife
• a 340 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore
• the weather is hot on the back of my watch

William Shakespeare

• Sonnet 18
• Sonnet 35
• Sonnet 102

You can read the full text of the Bukowski poems on the Poetry Foundation's website. To look at the entirety of Shakespeare's written work, go to Open Source Shakespeare.

The effects of succeeding (an erasure)

The leader detects
a foot,
the effects of succeeding
behind him—
his error.

One after another
repeat precisely the
units of
attacking evolutions.

There is rigid adherence
achieved; the last
round dash.

A scream ... men
follow faithfully
and meet
nothing with a
homogeneity
which undermines
the moral material
of lines
in formation.

Simple reflection
will reveal
the observer
specially
rendered
as machine,
beneath the same
panorama.

He must touch
to be positive and
judge.

---

At We Write Poems this week, Angie Werren asked us to experiment with found poetry and erasures. I played around with text taken from "Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War" by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot and produced this somewhat ambiguous poem. I added no extra words, and I tried to keep the line breaks as is. I did add punctuation for clarity. To see it in its purest form (and read the original text) you can go to the Wave Poetry site.

cumulonimbus

cumulonimbus
thunderous laugh convinces
it's superior

fosebook: summer 2010 eBook available

If you sneak a peek over in my right sidebar, you'll see a link to download the new eBook fosebook: summer 2010. This is a collection of experimental poetry and art from the collaborative blog Flowers of Sulfur to which I've been contributing over the past year. In it there is a great mix of verse and visual from 23 international contributors (including yours truly).

It's free and definitely worth the gander. If you like what you see and want it in a more tangible form, there will be a print version available for purchase in a few weeks. We've created a new blog fosebooks where you can keep up to date on this and future releases.

Meaning

While meaning ekes by
a meager means to survive,
absurdity thrives

Blurs

"This world's full of blurs,"
she blurts, awed by the mixtures.
"Next comes blindness."

Consent

Stones don't nod or shake.
If held gently, they'll offer
a silent consent.

Hair in unwanted places

More wiry weeds than hair, they grow
coarse black and at a heightened clip
from ear-top follicles suddenly fertile
after decades of smooth-flesh dormancy.

Add to that a stubborn snout intent
on lengthening and willful fingers bent
on becoming gnarled claws. The horror
signs indicate a slo-mo transition

from man to wolf, but don't let that put
you off your supper. We're all made to fall
apart. Creep on over. I'll take a little
nibble, and we'll howl at forever's moon

together.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 5 Prompt and Jill Crammond-Wickham's suggestion to poetically "join the ranks of the wild and crazy."

Gauzy

a haze-pinched gaze rests
on the distant gauzy line
between sky, water

Too much TV can strengthen the faith

It was my nightly recurring teenage motif:

The cramped room with a stomach-knotting
presence, creaky floorboards and one wickedly
white door looming as ghastly and large as
any bad-movie omen about to play out.

Being poltergeist-gripped, it swayed back an inch
before a sudden but noiseless slam
shut that unhinged me toward hasty shouts
of, "The power of Christ compels thee!"

(It's a silver-bullet phrase packed and ready in
the chamber of all aspiring exorcists.)

The devil scared out of me yet again,
I'd wake up with renewed vows to avoid TV
horror fests, and those sensational stories
my mom brought home in her Weekly World News.

---

At We Write Poems, Wayne Pitchko suggested we write about doors. Digging back into my childhood, this is what I came up with.

Ventriloquism gone awry (POW Prompt 5)

"The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece
And the footman sat upon the dining-table
Holding the second housemaid on his knees--
Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived"

— From "Aunt Helen" by T.S. Eliot


It's laugh-out-loud funny
how
one death
can change things.

If she were here
I'd blame
it
on a lifelong ill-
fascination with
Charlie McCarthy
or a hang-up
that's lingered since
the bourbon-scented Santa
invited me to sit.

At some point
you've got to
get back on the horse
though my levers
aren't so
easy to work
and, I better get
more
than a stuffed Pooh bear
out of this trip.

It's still-deep
water under the bridge
because
she's not.

---

It may be Tuesday in Chicago, but it's not in Australia where this Poetry on Wednesday Prompt originates. The image of a ventriloquist is what popped into my head first when reading the snippet from Eliot, and yes my mind works in strange ways.

Confetti

Twirling seeds pour down
confetti into the glare
spring's contest over

Heat's due

Wrapped in his own arms
he shakes, defying the breeze.
Heat's due any day.

---

This was written just before the heat arrived here in Chicago. We may yet get another short cool spell before summer takes hold.

Plumes

A plume should be a thing lovely and light
dancing violet as it's fanned
at the flanks of the blue
bird-of-paradise
who hangs limberly
to solicit a mate

It should curl
blinding white at the back
of the puffy Samoyed
prancing fancy to please a master
who also preens on the oval
of a sawdust track

It should flop
red at the top of gold-painted tin
helmet awry on the head
of an aspiring actor
who plays centurion for tips
outside a mobbed Colosseum

It should spray
as clear and cooling drops out
the copper mouth of a grass-snake
green hose uncoiled by
the sneaky dad who tickles
giggles from sweaty kids

It should flutter
gray at the tail end of a quill
bouncing to the frenzied
jottings of an anachronistic
frump who takes the pain to outfit
himself far too seriously

A plume should not be a thing of plague
riding currents kissed by taint-
sweet crude blasted from a wound
gouged in the crust
of a frigid deep to feed
our shallow lust for eases

It shouldn't choke

It shouldn't muck

It shouldn't tar

It can't help
poisoning that last pretense
we cared about anything,
be it plumed or not, but
the finality of
a bottom line

---

We Write Poems posted an announcement from Poets for Living Waters calling for work related to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I wrote this in response to that, but I'm not sure yet whether I'll submit it (pending a possible re-write).

Fledgling eyes

Six fledgling eyes stare
out from willow's feathered shade.
Flying's not safe yet.

Cutting comments

Cutting comments came
couched in careful italic,
innuendoed flames

Stray Eros

Aphrodite's kid
could've handled this
if eons ago
he hadn't wandered off
pining for his precious Psyche.

Where that leaves you and me
today is exploring
the grocery store aisles.

Oysters, sure.

Dark chocolate,
even if it's not.

Saffron would,
at minimum,
put my nose in the mood
for some
hay-scented rolling.

Celery? Really,
it doesn't do much for me,
but whatever
floats your dote, dear.

Treats unsacked, we may grasp
that the chemical boost's
no ha-ha joke
but romantic love could be
based on such practical tricks
to keep our DNA churning.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 4 Prompt, taking the aphrodisiac as its subject matter. It's always struck me as strange that someone would need an assist from food to get in the mood, because if you're not motivated by love then truly what's the point (except procreation).

Customary

the customary
creeping is disappointment
concealed in a fog

The madness of a hatter-less hat (POW Prompt 4)

It might be the pungent steam from a pot
steeping herbs meant to bend its sippers'
minds to potent effect, or an unanticipated
digestive reckoning from that mawkishly flavored
brand of store-bought paste they pass as butter.

However the dough arises, their collective
recollection of storied events, lengthwise sliced
and ritually rehearsed, hops facilely on the hump
of a bucking and overtly nonsensical wind.

Tea parties with slippery perspectives
have been shown quite clinically to induce
heightened sensitivity in participants,
so it's prudent to set about tidying the facts:

The hatter, it's become clear, shifted one place
too many and disappeared with a trace -- leaving
behind his hat to nobody's great advantage.
Lacking a wearer, the headgear's reputation for
producing madness has rapidly diminished.

The march hare pulls off his change in a very
separate and seasonal way: the bunny's
bottom half somersaults its top to occupy
both his spot and the hatter's vacated seat.

The dormouse upon its latest arousal
is re-visioned to be small, but not much mouse
at all. He's plush with the long-in-the-ear habit
of a pink stuffed rabbit, which the crusading hare
furiously declares is most curious, casting
doubt on the vermin's commitment to "no room."

Alice remains foremost in tact and is given
a bonus of two spare feet complete with slackened
bootstraps. She keeps them and her other luxury
items well-sheltered behind a stout table leg.

The absentee hatter doesn't dare shame her
with a radio-show call-in decrying
the waste. She's generously agreed to
cover the medical expenses from his firm flop.

---

This piece is written for the Poetry on Wednesday Prompt 4 and inspired by the painting "Feet Beneath The Table" by Charles Blackman (pictured above). There may or may not be a political metaphor at work here.

Thorny ends

Locust laughs sweet 'n last
as loose-scrupled invaders
meet its thorny ends

Crime story (the demise of the newspaper industry)

The mighty Chicago Tribune got hit last night.

Well, its newspaper box did,
only one picked from a sidewalk-consuming
row of four corner mainstays
to suffer that indignity of toppling.

I found it this morning, blue-
and-white face down, fifty feet further on, and
eating pushed-up daisies from
the commuter rail's prairie-grass embankment.

It couldn't tell me those dead-man
tales of daily mischief's end, but graffito-
tagged its side did sigh, "Someone
feels my news ain't got the values it used to."

---

This poem is based on a true story, but I didn't bother to change the name as there is no innocent.

Calm

Knifing cloud severs
my eyes from strife's horizon.
I'll throb in its calm.

Missing My Miss Sadie

I wrote this as a song for my friend Alicia's dog who was pretty sick recently, but I am in no way capable of putting it to music. Any musicians out there want to give it a try?

My miss may not be expensive, but
she's worth this world's unfolding to me
On bitter days and drearier nights,
her apricot smile's always at my side

She's furrier than some may like 'em
yet when her wag drags it takes
me down with its droop, and that's why
I'm missing my Miss Sadie

She's got an easy-and-gone temper.
There's no bit o' bite in her polite bark,
just a fine fondness to be pampered
and I'm happy to indulge all her whims.

She's furrier than some may like 'em
yet when her wag drags it takes
me down with its droop, and that's why
I'm missing my Miss Sadie

She got sick, now it's me that's hurting,
and while she's away doing another
kind of healing, I'm waiting here for her,
my poor missed Sadie, to come on back.

She's furrier than some may like 'em
yet when her wag drags it takes
me down with its droop, and that's why
I'm missing my Miss Sadie

Figure eight

Figure eight lies plumped
with sideways dreams of being
infinitely summed

Inflation

Days fold, weeks collapse
Then, her broad smile intrudes
re-inflating hours

Mix me a fixer upper

He's part artist, part alchemist,
but a full-on con, self-professed with post-
graduate degrees in mixology
and the god-given sense to know which
smoldering home remedies will catch fire
(give or take an occasional legal glitch).

His healing pitch is grifted on the easy
comparison of queasily lowered brows to
their indistinctly raised betters. You'll doff
the scoffing face as he pulls back a masking
caparison, and your fever gallops hotly
hoof-in-mouth with an uncontrollable itch.

Tinctures, colloids, salves and potions,
they all have twisty caps, blithe boxes
bubbling over with hypnotic patterns
fashioned to cure your urge to avoid
his futility. First'll come the fondle, then
the crumple followed by purse strings loosening.

Don't consider it capitulation.
His assortment of fluid manipulations
bear a singular branding at 100 proof,
and after the recommended daily dosing
(two jiggers with each meal), you'll feel
you're homo erectus made sapient.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 3 Prompt, and marks the return of the beloved "Wordle" — that jumble of challenging vocabulary you see pictured at right. I managed to get all the words into the narrative.

Suspense

bulbous fruit by thin,
brittle stem suspended, sweats
a little suspense

Impure Imagination

Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka once asked me
to step into a world
of pure imagination
and I danced to his voice
of sugary imperfections.
The swelling strings drizzled
on top falsetto inflections
captured me childishly
with candy-coated attentions

But even the finest chocolate melts,
and I learned to let purity be
pushed by treacly lyrics
or stern midgets secure
in their fudge-topped zealotry.
It sifts too pretty for me,
powdering my grown-up
infatuations with petty
wants, getting a little messy

What I crave instead's stained-glass contraptions
to propel me past the stretches
of biblical proportion
where light and dark don't mix.
I'm no Idiot, good-hearted
in the veins of Fyodor
or Akira, and I can't see
beyond the pure tedium
of a blurredly driven snow

I like my mental drifts grime-choked and splotched
with some savory do
dropped in to dissolve flossy
confections to a salted soup
of imagined impurity.

---

This poem is written for We Write Poems prompt two: Singer, Sing me a Song. The music behind the madness is "Pure Imagination" from the movie Willy Wonka. Click the link in the poem to hear it, but be warned you may not be able to get it out of your head for the rest of the day.

Fruit of a Bizarre Love Triangle (POW Prompt 3)

If I hedge thus a drooling wager and cash
in on my thrice-foiled cravings for her over-due bites
(plus a guilt-free laugh at his expense), I can
use minced steps to sidle around too-lively
trunks, and avoid the need to heed thugs
barking mad from within their crevice-laid traps.

How those bug-eyed brutes'll clamor and claw at me
to discard this protective wrap, clued in by my rep
of never bending willfully to anybody
but her. "Come on, shed! Get, uh, new set of scales,
for you we will -- promise!" is how she'd stammer,
roughly translating their not-so-twee chatter,

if she were there. Rather, in that lavishly apt way
she has, she'll be off picking suitable pelts
to adorn her newly uncovered, quite-public shames
while fending away an advancing clod, who won't go
easily, but who does go on ad nauseam with
a penchant for naming every God-damn thing

that haps vitally across his cocky path. Beyond
a simple relish of mischief, I'm doing this (mostly)
for her benefit. How could a persimmon
be forbidden, as if he had permission to make
such bargains? He's dismissed it as an ungainly fruit,
and mocked its likelihood to "lava thy lips"

with an orange pulp, but in that chance smattering lies
the matter to inflame my soul. I'll feed her
the pudding-fresh flesh, stripping it down
to its delectably small seeds, and in their splitting
I'll glean the silvery utensils to spill
a man's wholly worthless future. Let's tuck in.

---

This piece is written (a little ahead of time) for the Poetry on Wednesday Prompt 3, and it will require some explanation. A passage from a Ted Hughes poem, in which he describes tasting a fresh peach at 25 (click the link to read it), was the initial inspiration, but my mind wandered into the realm of forbidden fruits and somehow interjected a persimmon into an alternate history of the Garden of Eden told from the serpent's point of view. Note that colored phrases in the text indicate anagrams I used for Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

Jays

Jostling smaller birds,
the jay joins his feeding mate.
They'll jabber of hawks.

Silt blessings

River gives her silt
blessings to blacken one hand.
Heads bow low in praise.

Viral

Rude virus bursts in
to make itself, flop-sweat home.
No apologies.

Snobs

The raccoon snickers
at snobs who snub such morsels
above starvation

Infinite potential of a finite mind

Sidestepping shadow-plays
boxed in bonus-sized portions
for garden-varietal religions,
I've had these scuzzy intimations
great big (voids) lie behind
most altruistic inclinations
and the biggest news is,
we're still expanding
with-in-exhaustible potentials
to be eternally filled greater.

Now I'll admit to being
hampered in my cognitive
capacity for meaningful
pattern recognition
by my debilitating
predisposition toward
concentrated forms of myopia,
ergo, I can't shape
a formless mess into anything
but incoherent flimflam.

I've tried alleviating this
condition with meditative
concoctions and palliatives
of sensory deprivation,
yet I fear I'll need
a silicon-chip-enhanced head
before I can glimpse
the cosmic legerdemain spinning
its paradoxes of endless
surfaces but no top.

If I finally do, I'll smile big
as a great-white gull winning
his first demonstration hand at
the three-card monte of not-to-be
reconciled contradictions.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 2 Prompt, and was inspired by the March 7 episode of Philosophy Talk on Infinity. The suggestion was to only use three to six words overheard, but I think I ended up using as many as a dozen here. I'm a philosophy nerd.

Hinky

That wave of hanky
hints at kinky, her hinky
lipped invitations

Firefly

Unwary firefly
transmits its radiant notes.
Love can't be cautious.

Jonesing for Alternative Currencies (POW Prompt 2)

I've been thirsting to burst your bubble since
I heard the low-down we may be over-
supplied with a green-backed bird called Money,
that trollop spread-wide by aliases

A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound
A buck or a pound, a buck or a pound

To a layman's ears unlearned in the fine-
tuned registers of glib-tongued financiers,
it may ring up as reason to cheer with
no tinkling of trouble, but if Money

Is all that makes the world go around
that clinking, clanking sound (they do say)

She sings, clangs a bit hollow when she clings
too heavy in alms of poorly wrung hands,
it's then well-heeled sit'n spins'll turn us about
to the golden-gapped beams of bankers mouths

For Money makes the world go around
The world go around, the world go around

And will till johns who hold little put less
stock in the tart pitches of slick-macking
daddy Street with his tricky fat pay backs
for the ounce of love he's flouncing to sell.

---

This piece was inspired by the Poetry on Wednesday Prompt 2. We were supposed to use as a model an Elizabeth Smart poem in which she combines a Biblical Psalm and a police report. I tried to mix a financial report and lyrics from Cabaret (in italics), but the economics got mixed up by the fun bits and ended up a little compromised.

Alliance

Waves whisper to sand
a grand alliance, withdraw.
Resistance erodes.

Checking My Box of Almost Never

They're piled in an Amazon box of almost never-
(that is, all not-quite not-ever-
but sometimes twice- and most often a mere once-)
worn clothes destined for another,
bigger green metal box proclaiming itself
charitably fashioned for such donations
as these nearly pristine shirts,
jeans and sweaters that have only those holes
their makers intended but still lack the want
I've wasted for arms, legs and torso to fill them.

What they don't have is shabby stitches
or those counterfeit claims mocking
a public thread-lust for luxury labels,
but they are mild misfits of the well-meant
gift or of my poor-choice selection
and they carry an ill-suited look,
whether it's fleeced too loose and loud,
or flanneled too bold and blousy,
or otherwise woolly with any too fuzzy
je ne sais quoi that puts me off.

Too's had grown too many as if the clothes bred
while tucked in nice 'n cozy at backs of drawers
rarely drawn or stacked sleepy on the bottom
of a closet's clutter-topped shelf,
and if proved it would be a miracle
on par with Christ's gospel-touted cloning
of the loaves and fishes, but it's not,
so I can't compare my parlor-trick sharing
of two dozen hand-me-downs carelessly passed-on
to his magic of multitudinous feeding.

After all, the real comparison is,
I could have accomplished even more
than this speculative giving,
had I been retrospectively better
in my retroactive accounting
and made the significantly less sinful
omission of never (not just once or twice,
but actuarially quite not-ever)
accumulating so much always
not-needed, however tasteful, stuff.

---

Another new poetry site, another new prompt. This one comes from We Write Poems, and tasks us with writing about boxes. I wrote this while battling a head-cold, so if it's more of a ramble than usual I have the excuse of diminished concentration.

Gullies

Perusing her palms
etched with dry gullies, she finds
some answers won't flow

Consort

She's not the sort of
consort you'd call devilish,
but her kiss does burn.

Pride

"Death be not proud" ... but
it should be, speaking all tongues
with perfect accents

Savoir Faire

He lacks savoir faire,
savoring favors granted
by coarse-mannered louts

Bred to a Circus, I'm not

From that moment the mouthy man in the middle,
top hat in hand, barks and waves our three floodlit rings
into motion with a flourish of brassy blasts,
the big top gets turvy and my stomach's all nerves
making the bushel of peanuts I just munched feel
like broken glass chewed by my friend the tattooed geek.

Martha says, Elephants are supposed to be more
dignified... don't mope! It is hard to grasp for her
tail day after daisy-chained day when I'm holding
this bouquet of forget-me-not rubber-banded
by a grudge. I tell her, The real indignity's
being dressed in a rhinestone-studded satin cape.

---

This poem was written in response to the new site Big Tent Poetry's Prompt #1. Keeping with the Big Tent theme, we were supposed to write a persona poem based on the circus. I'm a sucker for misfits and animals.

Wish

His breath can't compete
with wind's complete abandon.
A birthday wish blows.

Goat

One goat's load: bucket
of woes; but their source spills on,
long after its scape

Poetry on Wednesday (POW): Vita's Dance

It's a common trope,
the Danse Macabre that troops us
toward hushed tombs.

Blame its plague on Wolgemut
or Bruegel (Pieter the Elder),
and certainly Bergman

What with his iconic black-clad Death
and the parade of captive players taken
hand-in-hand on a joyless march.

But Life has her own fleet moments to lead,
and these flip-flop pageants though ragtag
are not the less enriching to behold

Or so I'm told in passing by
the delicate bluebell peaking its buds through
a monochrome rubble.

---

This poem was written for the POW Prompt #1 based on a photo collage, which you can see by clicking through the link, but after its evolution it bears only a tangential relationship to the inspiring image.

Alewife

If you could bottle
this night, it would smell of dead
alewife, moldy bread

What love becomes, when you think too much

To concretize my theorized love,
I could play the accidental odds and strew
slippery tongues of spotted petals
onto thickly trafficked highways,
or use the best predictive modelling
to deduce when and where I can poke out
a well-heeled boot to trick unwary spills
and snatch a kiss from the unsuspecting
lips of any suitably compatible
passerby oft times inconvenienced and passed
on by.

These well-oiled and crudely experimental
methods do produce expected results,
but not the breakthrough nor the looked-for
satisfaction of appropriate reactions,
so I'll keep my dotted eyes tucked in
their pulpy stems and my shoddy toes curled back
while I beam my bits of invitation through
circuitous routes spatially arrayed along
parallel paths where one might search
with an extra-terrestrial inventiveness,
and wait.

I know the trials of these errant waves
won't add up to a guarantee
my burpy blips of a pulse can reach
the receptively comprehending and responsive
soils I seek, but it's the remoteness of a stead
to come stalking that appeals, and despite
the Hawking drone of unveiled warnings
I might regret such contact, I'll risk it all
on vaguely washed wishes this astronomical
anomaly with an alien sensibility has
one match.

---

My mind processes information in strange ways, a fact you've probably noticed if you've visited this site before. I often have lines come to me in my sleep and "slippery-tongued petals" was one of these, though don't ask me why. The oil spill in the Gulf has been weighing heavily on my thoughts, and that crept into my language here. Plus there's a reference to Stephen Hawking's strange caution against alien contact thrown into the mix to add a little flavor.

Contraction

Solicitous snail
finds fondness for brevity
requires contraction

Stars peer

Have you ever thought,
It's the stars that peer from night
and search, for our eyes?