Blood V: Sacrosanctuary

Blood flees knife's keen eye
No sanctuary in cups
It settles on tongues

Blood IV: Advisory

Wind shifts on a whim
Blood-chilled counsel, "push away"
Fades to gentler, "stay"

Blood III: Predatory

Black-tipped wings beat back
Gray wriggling, vision of blood
Gabby gobs twist up

Blood II: Transubstantiation

That this blood could change
Not to wine, but water drops
Freed to feed parched earth

The degradation (and uplift) of advancing technology

It has every right to bare
this clenched fist of a grudge
embittered by techno-Jovian
whims and base transformations

Once delicately formed— two
tips pressed en pointe, three
others elegantly tucked— it
danced with a golden shaft
pulling indigo pirouettes
across a swept ivory stage

Then came the re-pose: a claw’s
arched looming. Unhappiness
fell as five wilted stems,
beggar mouths forced to fumble
toward those impoverished
humps of white-on-black glyph

The other hand is left
complimentary, richly gripped
by understudy glee, being
drawn from a hapless margin

---

Carolee Sherwood's prompt at Big Tent Poetry this week is to take a "hands-on" approach. I did a comparative study of my hand at work penciling a sketch versus pecking at the keyboard, and this is what resulted. The days of hand-writing poems are long gone, and there may be a wee metaphor in the retelling of the demise. Check out what the hands of the other BTP poets were doing this week here.

Blood I: Revelation

His blood spills secrets
Tangy trysts, lusts fed full red
A heart disordered

Conversation with a pesky subconscious

My heart is a squishy stone
I toss out
across this green-gray gloss
mosquitoes skim
but the odds were always slim
it would skip with any vim given
its mix of bulges
and irregular beats
Let’s not mention that
surprising lack of heft
currently keeping it afloat
There it lies not quite flat
a maroon lily pad
I’ll lay piddling wagers
some nomadic creature
can make a home
Maybe the crawdad whose squeak
nothing like a fog-horn warns,
“Frog dress is on the marsh”
I swear I can hear
her bull groaning,
“The slippery bitch
can’t stay clothed”
Newly hitched
this bogged-down daddy’s got
a passel of polliwogs to feed
and he needs
the lean of her tender
slimy legs for support
The crickets and I
might inwardly snigger
but from such
small giggles bred
is the manly laugh of strife
and that’s when
my heart slinks slowly back

Churning

Crazed eyes churn up, wash
away his watery calm
Salt-licked worries spray

To see...

When I saw her, I didn’t see
a girl who girlish wants
to laugh and dance and breathe in
the song of fall scents
the smiles of dainty sunshine
What I saw was a drumbeat
those questions I had to keep
flat-foot stomped down deep
or I’d blurt them out
the dozen how could’s
one hundred why would’s
and a lone what should
this girl do to make it stop
That’s when it finally did
and what I saw was me
uncovering my eyes

---

This poem is written for Brenda Warren's new site Prompts for G10. Brenda asked writers and poets to contribute to the discussions she will be having with the adolescents in her Montana classroom. The first prompt is to address two excerpts from the YA novel Firegirl.

Uncut memories

Mute grass remembers
One season when scythes didn't chew
Seeds glistened in dew

Rare pebble

Rare pebble, worn smooth
Takes bubbling dares, gives up murk
To gulp at crisp air

(with thanks to dearest human being for her inspiration)

Sinner

My sins run cold, so
Hold me closely and scold me
I've told you, I'm old

celebrating the superficiality of all things being made equal

let us join hands
you and i
and tramp down this falling away
road new paved with over-baked schemes
and the shattered
windshield glass from a dream car
we left for dead many miles back
every tire including the spare had blown
and they still hiss their casual tunes
while popped-out
flesh-tone hoses
dangle and sprinkle
a rainbow gloss on black-rimmed puddles
it’s a cause for deepening joy
these shallows won’t
dry up in either of our weened lifetimes
moisten your lips dear
and make that pineapple-sweet whistle
i love to taste
when i dare to plant my tongue there
the food’s long gone
and pots are now for banging
we’ve lost our way
and maps are made for shredding
into playfully themed streamers
we’ll tie in our hair
as we dance off the waning
silky heat of a too-late summer
the sun’s dial is flipping
and bound by those zeros
we’ve gotta go but it’s best
we’re brought low together

---

This week's Big Tent Poetry prompt is a wordle, that jumbled confection of vocabulary you can see pictured at right. It's a bit of a secret mash-up; the words were taken from an unrevealed but "well-regarded" poet's published poems, so check back in to the BTP site to find out who that was. I'm sure they'd be surprised to see their words put to this particular use :^).

Boredom

Boredom drifts, no worth
Yielding eyes pry, floorboards creak
Cracks in his settling

a parable of incomparable talents

when I go
it will be
impossibly late
and I’ll leave you
not multi-talented bars
or pairs of randy ingots
itching to procreate
in a splendid explosion
of golden delight
what I’ll leave you is
a stale-air larder
filled just this once
by dully packaged thoughts
and duller feelings
when I have them
they could only couple
if enlivened with musical prodding
or the sigh effecting benefits
from hands full of mood-altering
pharmaceuticals
so please yourself instead
and don’t
put them to any use
bury them deep
better yet
pile them high on Pyrrhic pyres
where the gathering scorch will send
down leaden puddles
while precious platinum curls rise
up to trickle trickster tears
my greatest possible reward

Hoot

Horned owl ponders
Origins of specious sky
Calls without response

Carcass

Stained-glass wings shatter
This butterfly's carcass lies
Beauty's no trifle

W(h)end

Age's road wends where
Why's get narrow; How's bend... point
When, he can't defend

Possession

What’s mine is
yours what isn’t
all his possessed cheap
and passed on
needle deeds to pour out
the thimbles-
full fitting
nimbly in the shallow
dimples of
a love’s distressed palm.

Its clutch of fare-
well will break
hers down to
beggared bits
so nebulous ours
can’t keep from
advancing
matters and oh how
theirs gets circulated
energetically.

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Cynthia Short invites us to think about our possessions. I've been making a concerted effort to lesson my hold on physical matter, and this piece is an abstraction on possession rather than a focus on any one thing I may "own."

Spectacles

He speaks speckled grays
Good days gone by tinged with sighs
Her missed spectacles

if i had wings, i'd spy

a man cloaked in dust bitten rays skip down the rude lit hall
as a voice calls to him run your fitful bow across my cracked
teacup mouth and draw forth a loosed leaf smile at first
i dismiss it as contrived twaddle one might hear in settings
where silk roses bloom on synthetic counter islands or
a cloth lily wrecks on its maiden voyage mid-way through
a copper sink’s bounded blue but cigarette tip joy burns
peep holes into my cottony resistance it’s a compact thrill
as dense as the peach pit my tooth struck to chip that once
such piquant frissons dissipate into damply aromatic trickles
when the man replies with a tartly rolled lavender bud ready
to burst its pink i’ve the heart of a wobbly kneed boy about
to pull back the tulle cloud on an auburn morn’s feathery
bathers petaled girdle strewn on the slippery rock path
leads up to her dewy lap where luminescent splayed fingers
lay printed hymns when ash trimmed logs fall from his fatty
lips i take the house sparrow’s hasty cue to flap a skyward
exit out from the bony white glow of his unfulfilling promises

---

At Rallentanda's blog this week, the POW prompt asks us to create a "spotlight poem" (one for which we'll have to answer to commenter's questions) based on 30 words she cleverly arranged on the back of the nude in Man Ray's famous photograph. Check out the other poet's spotlights to get in on the fun.

I don't know what to call this new form I'm playing within, but something about it appeals to me. I'm sure I'll get tired of it, but for now the freedom of these run-on lines feels like the wind's blasting.

Tentacles

Tentacles unfurl
Soft ribs neath aqua-blue tent
Preyed upon's shelter

If the world could teach me, I'd sing

I've had this idea for a media project kicking around in my head for over a year now. The basic idea is to  collect art and poetry from a cross-section of the world's children addressing a single theme. For it to work, there would have to representation from all corners of the globe, and as many diverse cultures as possible.

Right now, the question I've settled on is, "If you could be any creature, real or imagined, what would it be?" (Although that's not final at this point.) The children would be asked to write and/or illustrate their choices with a short explanation.

I know it's an extremely ambitious idea, and to do it right would take a tremendous amount of effort and a good amount of time. I could "crowd source" the initial stages by having kids submit their art electronically to a blog or website, but that would potentially exclude a big demographic. Plus I'd like to find a way to personally visit these communities as much as possible. So, I think there would need to be a bit of both electronic and in-person solicitation for material. Ideally it would be coordinated through local school systems.

As a website, the project could be continually evolving, especially if it's built on an open-source content management platform such as Joomla, where contributors could post their material directly to the site. This would also make it possible to submit all types of media (images, video, audio, etc.).

I'm writing this post as a way to concretize my thoughts on the project, but also to get some feedback and/or suggestions (or even offers of assistance, if you're enthusiastic about the idea).

Gouges

Salt and pepper lies
Can't disguise gouges he's made
Peculiar pecking

Brittle

He'd devise strong vows
Where she comes foremost, and stays
Words are too brittle

Ponderous

In youth his might could
Brandish ponderous beyonds
Now here's weight crushes

It's merely evilution, my dears

that gurgling brown hunger you feel deep down it wasn’t you
god knows who put it there no it’s only natural it was she
who planted the initial seed grown up into a succulent leaf
frowning nature abhors a vacuum and she wouldn’t couldn’t
endear herself any more if you sustained such a saddeningly
blank space she’s given you the device for devising wickedly
clever ways of consuming it would be a godless shame
to leave the engine idling now what you eat doesn’t mean
as much as the act of eating itself actively naming god’s
creatures great small may not give you dominion or merit
ownership but ingesting them sure does dainty fingered
sentimentality lost her privileged place when steely
eyed invention serendipitously shoved a crappy cushion
throne up to your table’s edge it’s a divine and kingly right
to take your fill with hands nimbly fashioned for taking
all that’s managed eon after eon to crawl out of a world
engendering slime until there’s nothing left but the awful
runny pallid mucous you’ll sneak back to sated at last

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Deb Scott suggests stretching different poetic muscles. I tried to go "against type" (for me) with this unpunctuated, second-person, prosaic block of text. It's inspired by an article I read (The Scales Fall by Elizabeth Kolbert) about the collapse of fisheries in our oceans due to overconsumption. We're at the dawning of what biologist Daniel Pauly describes as the Myxocene epoch in which the seas will give forth only inedible slime.

Moony

His full, moony face
spins on thin neck, reflecting
bright passerby smiles

Cicada's siren

Cicada's siren
whirs its wayward directions
Crashing waves of heat

Estos Huesos Hermosos

Still he stalks that road in Andalusia
siempre esta noche
19 Agosto

A bleached-back beast
who plays at fat habits
and gorges at ragged bone buffets
while a wobbly, hobbled silence lifts
then bounds from mound to mound

Their gently dusted humps
eulogized by one faint sound:
an insistent insect hum

Cantan las moscas,
“Aquí están
los desaparecidos”

Seventy four years ago
esta tierra roja
had a terrible thirst

First, she slurped peppery blood
Then, she chewed their salted flesh
Then, she ground down their swollen organs
Lastly, she swallowed
their still tender names
and spit up
a gray welt of trunks to replace them

Aquí, aquí, aquí
he digs, gouging out from the deformed,
hardened bellies what remains he can
to pretty himself with
the discard of another worn-out piece

Perhaps he’ll take our splendid poet’s smoothed ribs
or the natty newspaperman’s polished hip
or that meddling mayor’s sturdy jaw

His parts always need changing, but
los años perdidos
filled so by unchecked appetite
offer no shortage of substitutes
estos huesos hermosos

---

I got an early start on this week's Poetry on Wednesday prompt, where Rallentanda asked us to take inspiration from the Spanish. August 19, 1936 was the date that Federico García Lorca was summarily executed by Nationalist militia in Granada. The exact whereabouts of his remains (and those of others who were "disappeared" during the Spanish Civil War) is still unknown.

Clepsydra

Clepsydra dribbles
bead-moments he can't recall
One life's time dripping

Pesty

Pesty he sputters
indeterminate, too kind
Thick ooze trails behind

Let there be sound...

I'm experimenting with embedding audio files on the blog. If the player doesn't work, the mp3 is available here. This one is of me reading my recent poem Saint Nicholas. The sound quality isn't great (I need to invest in a better microphone), so you may have to turn your speakers up a bit.

Liability

Life line dips shallow
With this sharp knife's tip he'll carve
his palm an asset

Lessons in allocentrism

Into our fun house of mirror neurons,
a favorite Fellini character strides
distorted perhaps,
but reflected clearly enough,
none the lesser for our wear.

Who is it? Which one?
It’s truly hard to decide.

It could be that brute Zampanò,
his chain unpopped,
and as ever demanding our attention...

Or the cypher, Steiner,
teetering on edge
to tell us his secrets...

Or a voluptuous
la Saraghina,
reveling in our riveted eyes...

Or gentle Giulietta,
chasing her voices,
their whispers that echo ours.

It doesn’t matter who, in the end.
Better yet, let’s take them all,
and crowd them close in.

What matters is,
we ask they try
a seeming simple task—
touching tongue to nose,
or elbow to chin—
and we watch
their attempts, together.

Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.

These are the Sisyphean rhythms
we’ll need to learn.

We have our limits,
but empathy is endless.

---

In this week's Big Tent Poetry prompt, Jill Crammond-Wickham asks us to imagine pop culture icons in a mundane setting. I'm sure what I find iconic might not measure up as "pop" and my mundane is always quite mental, but Fellini and a fun house seemed a natural fit for exploring some neurological concepts.

Morning, our tomorrow

What we were once, two words,
we are no more, taken in

When ten sticky layers absorb
the shadows of our predecessor shapes.
Purple bruises bleed through
the buried steel

Where one-hundred shouted
stories slid down into
a waiting mouth of obtuse angles.
Vague numbers now,
we follow, ask

How one-thousand labors
couldn’t gird us against not-
birthing gusts, their reverse alchemy,
aching to prove

Why countless precious lines
could turn testily from true
geometry’s parallel path, and seek
an improbable calculus of chaotic drips,
those splats that trace a figure

Who in the flash of flame
realizes his distinctions
have lavishly become
obliterated.

Our tomorrow will know
what our today’s forgotten.

---

This is the last of the trio of pieces I wrote to accompany my friend George Kokines' installation of 9-11-themed pieces, which is to be exhibited at the Elgin public library in September. I wrote this thinking of the iterations the painting went through, its previous versions invisible but still lurking underneath, and how that's a metaphor for so much of the past that we pretend doesn't exist but always informs our present and future. If you missed the other two poems, they are Silver Wings and St. Nicholas.

After Beckett, Words Fail

Better or worse?
Worse.
Maybe if you massage it a bit...
Worse.
You’re beyond help’s reach.
I could squeeze it till numb, and it’d still be worse.
When did it start?
When will it stop?
You’ve got no answers?
I’ve only got questions.
Questions start the ball rolling...
I’d like it to stop.
First, try to start.
I’ll start tomorrow.
Would that be better?
No, worse.

---

I didn't do a very good job of writing to this week's Poetry on Wednesday prompt. Rallentanda posted two music clips: Martha Argerich performing Bach on piano, and Anoushka Shankar playing sitar while accompanied by a violinist. Such music tends to set my mind wandering (a dangerous thing), and the latter struck me as a kind of conversation. Having spent the past week immersed in Samuel Beckett plays (there's a wonderful 4-DVD set called, originally enough, "Beckett on Film," which includes his 19 plays), this dialog is what popped out. It's derivative and not very deep, but it succeeded in its mission to amuse myself. There's a musicality to Beckett's language, which I admire greatly.

Bats

If you asked me what
it is I miss most from
an easy moving childhood,
I’d answer with the simple
toss of a pebble into thick
summer air, like we did at dusk
to trick the echo-location of bats,
and watch them twist,
circle, dive after the false
apparition of a meal.
Far from ideals, in a white-
nosed now, their winged numbers are
receding as quickly as
those innocent days when
a small stone felt like it
could work big magic.

Squiggly dust

Eye finger-pried wide

he awaits sky's drop, to cleanse

aged film's squiggly dust

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