007 Challenge

[sweepthefloor]

Wonderful to read your poems, Sweep. *snap* Well done so far. I love how inventive your writing is and how intimate.

Thanks for the compliments PG! We are all best sellers! <3

 

[sweepthefloor]

6. I Am Your Sextant

If you are the Admiral then I am your sextant.
Simply measure the two angles
Between us and see the horizon.

If you are the hard earth surface
I am the sky that meets you.
But we are still celestial bodies.

I am one sixth of the full circle of you.
The clock means nothing in your
Zulu time hours passing minutes.

My heart is the warm sun
You are limitless perception.
The nautical almanac is drawn on your back.

There are fifty-seven navigational stars
In my eyes that float above you.
We are never lost at sea.

If life is a moving vessel
Then you are the gimbal
That spills no ink from our well.

If I am your special sextant
You are my weatherproof case
Don’t share me with another

Place your eye on my telescope.
I am the object in your hand.
See the heavenly body brush the horizon.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

001

"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." -- Samuel Beckett

it is a wall doing the job
of a wall keeping the in
in and public life out

wall white page mediates
between the many
people I become for people

and the lonely inside
me inside blank that doesn't
hold the mark unless

it is made in shit or blood
or something which one struggles
not to wash away

 

[PandoraGlitters]

002

of course they can't
do decimals here

pizza
bags of pot
all in eighths
or simply bags of
small or large like McDonalds
or counted rocks of
eyeballed mass

so the split from source to destination
is regulated by some unknown formula
as if by magic or god only
somehow mostly we get what we need

we just don't expect change

 

[PandoraGlitters]

003

Americana

Hamburgers leer at the Pilsners until they sweat
which is what we were waiting for, voyeurs

love de
basement even
on the 33rd floor.

(yes we have no . . .)

On the metal box for women's
hygienic discards there are lines
or at least white shadows where

ladies tried to breathe
back the adrenalene of first
kiss dates, tried to pretend the 20
plus elderly

men who bought them dinner
were futures

but there is no more future
for them
than for the leering
chopped meats or
hopped up companions.

(bananas. Where is the Juke)

Darling. Honey. Baby. Sweet
seethingskinofaperson
impersonator.

(box? May I call you
sugarpants? or a taxi?)

 

[Angeline]

Americana

Hamburgers leer at the Pilsners until they sweat
which is what we were waiting for, voyeurs

love de
basement even
on the 33rd floor.

(yes we have no . . .)

On the metal box for women's
hygienic discards there are lines
or at least white shadows where

ladies tried to breathe
back the adrenalene of first
kiss dates, tried to pretend the 20
plus elderly

men who bought them dinner
were futures

but there is no more future
for them
than for the leering
chopped meats or
hopped up companions.

(bananas. Where is the Juke)

Darling. Honey. Baby. Sweet
seethingskinofaperson
impersonator.

(box? May I call you
sugarpants? or a taxi?)

Beautiful! Very personal and evocative, and I love the food/sex metaphors.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Aw, thanks, Ange.

 

[hmmnmm]

Beautiful! Very personal and evocative, and I love the food/sex metaphors.

I agree.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

004

Thump vibrates plaster.
Perhaps a shoe thrown
against a wall where scaled
a beetle.

Thump follows Thump.
Perhaps a sleepwalker
boxing the memory of his
father or sixth-grade teacher.

Another Thump.
Perhaps a body dragged
down stairs, skull bouncing
from tread to tread (now I listen
for the last bounce from the bullnose).

Doors open to the hallway
where neighbors and their giant
duffels of laundry face off
in the race for the basement
washers/dryers.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

004

I carry you the way Nixon
carried Dorothy Hunt. You cling
through the night to my hair, my chest
or sometimes just shadow
swinging limbs but yours are longer
and way too skinny especially now
when you are ten years dead

Nixon threatened the Bay
of Pigs to keep his secrets but I don't worry
because it is just you and I
am the only one talking. I don't have
to mention my fucking
behind your pale, noble back and can choose
instead to remember you bent
over the oars at the moat for the GE house where
Reagan slept early
in his career as puppet
and how you said you didn't fear death
(you had been dead before after all and remembered
everything).

Poet with big eyes whispering
too many things about Proust, you could not
be buried in Iowa, no matter how
they claimed you, scholar
shipped you
belong in Kansas where your name
is carved
in the same cemetery where my father is
buried and where waits
an empty yard
to hold me.

My father voted for Nixon. Forgive
me: I did too until 6th grade
when Carter's fields bloomed
peanut and butttered
my slide to the left
where you met me
in a college bar. I wonder
if you see Nixon now or if
there really is some polar shift
in which you are in feathers
and he in cinders.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

late 5

Couch Kiss

You remember how
I slipped in
silky as a ghost
cat's paw under your door
cracking night into the room
and following the splinter of it
to your thigh. Lighted
on that long muscle I hummed
hung smoke from the air
sheets of raw
moonlight
so you wouldn't close your eyes
when I leaned in.

 

[butters]

Couch Kiss

You remember how
I slipped in
silky as a ghost
cat's paw under your door
cracking night into the room
and following the splinter of it
to your thigh. Lighted
on that long muscle I hummed
hung smoke from the air
sheets of raw
moonlight
so you wouldn't close your eyes
when I leaned in.

wow! such original imagery! love these

 

[lubricant]

1

Lexicography

Clavicle, though technically correct,
is not the least descriptive of what lies beneath
that little swell of milky skin,
that simple wave that forms your body, skeleton,
the strut that joins scapula to sternum.

Collarbone is much more apt.
You'll learn this and much more this evening,
my blind, articulated pet.

 

[champagne1982]

I, too, am being inspired into a 007 run.

1

Spoken To A Wavering Lover

Don't try to explain why sugared berry nipples
and bubblegum pink are so fucking sexy
They are.

Paired with the nubile freshness of youth
of course you're entranced, ensnared
I am.

Forget that moment when injections
weren't needed to swell lips with passion
And kisses.

The kisses that sent melt water into my core
and released a torrent of excitement
And tears.

Lust is just a longer infatuation and once fucked
often enough the bubblegum pink simply fades
From view.

So forget that sugared nipples and candy kisses
are so fucking sexy because they don't last forever
I do.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Late 6

Thank you, Lubricant and Champagne. Who could ask for a better mixture for inspiration?

Bronx Walk to Hades

Bag blows into my face and I rip
it off like afterbirth.
Superman can scale
but so can an architect. It takes
a midwife to Middlesex these paths
between dog shit and piles of
bedbug nest furniture. I skate
between refuse slicks and do not look
into windows.

Glass is dangerous.

There is a pause here, walking down
down is a pause that pumps
a little good fright into the heart because it Should
scare one to go
down into the earth.
To go down into the beginning.

Fear is sometimes a necessary
prelude to discovery.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Late Late

Please show me exactly
the stance required for this radiation
to penetrate most effectively
as you watch,
lead encased
voyeur.

Give me the word to say
"begin" and the word to say
"stop" because my language
is too simple for your technique.
Unless you are taking notes
and asking only
"does it hurt when
I do this?"

I try not to sound husky when I
whisper "No . . . ."

 

[PandoraGlitters]

wow! such original imagery! love these

Thank you!

 

[lubricant]

2

To His Distant Mistress

I can't kiss what I can't kiss
even with these careful words, presented
like a syllabic bouquet to
some literary Miss or Ms, coy
for simply living in some elsewhere where
I only can be read, and never heard.
We have no world. We have no time.
And that, my Lady, is the crime.

 

[lubricant]

3

One Form of Suicide

In Japan, they burn
both bodies and trash. There is no space
for either graves or landfill.

May I cast into the flames
our misunderstandings,
akai kami no onna,

or is that another poor choice of phrase—
one more bad translation
that perhaps slanders your parents

or your furniture? I never seem
to get language right.
Moushiwake arimasen.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

gomen kudasai

My hands are empty
but lips round to meet
the bird full cheek
of my hostess.

The door opens
and the host smiles
without teeth the way
he did when guitar tuning--
tiny wince at the eye.

I know it will be warm inside.
I can tell by how her kisu kisu
edges into my hair, warming
my ear. He eases
the coat from my shoulder.
I leave my shoes next to hers
by the mat.

 

[lubricant]

4

.....

 

[PandoraGlitters]

スインガーパーティー

This fire is not for mourning;
it is past midnight and thumbs
find the best routes
down backs and through shanks
of long hair. We four
bookend the blower,
the black of my stockings
ambered by the glow
between swapped partners.

This is when I shyly lift her chin
with the tip of my nose
and place my lips atop the small
stone of her throat

Yes, it was a very nice evening.
Next time we will bring
more than the casserole.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Shinbi

Dark eyes smoke distant
fires in a night forest
only when lit by our breath.
Jealousy is not fuel
for her. Only the pleasure
with which we pluck up
her leaves of finery
to stoke her wild and loose.
She only clutches her husband
to bring him closer
to me.

 

[lubricant]

5

.....

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Naked Man Festival

Oh to be the silver
adorning the gold mass
of loinclothed Japanese
scrunching and stretching
up rope to Satori.

Idolize the chosen unadorned.
Kiss the once-pinched cheek
that shines pleasure
and pride on his generation.