007 Challenge

[sweepthefloor]

Four Pints Love

Sipping four pints of rich blackness,
With smooth frothy cream heads-

Is the amount of time,
That it takes to figure out-
We want to hold hands.

One out five drinking vessels is a glass,
It’s the last empty pint, he left in my car.

Gulping four pints of rich blackness,
With smooth frothy cream heads-

Is the exact amount of time,
That it takes to drink away-
Our angry youth love.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Great to see you posting, STF.

 

[sweepthefloor]

Great to see you posting, STF.

Thanks PG!

 

[sweepthefloor]

Five Times

I am the hourglass and his love is sand,
The time is flowing through us.

My lips on his stick tally the,
Time that slips away from us.

Let’s quartz kiss, and tell time love.

 

[sweepthefloor]

Six

It is the 59th minute of the hour love-
The master clock corrects the slave clock.

There is every one minute pulsation-
And we keep high quality time tock.

My clock hands follow your clock hands-
And we are wound up on the face of our shock.

This is a master-slave clock circuit-

And then the world went atomic, and I lost track of the time. I wasn’t in sync. I move counter the clock.

-----
*I really did have the end in mind, but it went away.

 

[sweepthefloor]

Seven

Time was measured in the day late poems.
Missing twenty four hours
The days short.

We were short and time was measured
In inches on the wall with a pencil
And we grow so tall.

I ran out of time and missed a day.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

001

Lost Phone Blues

fingers cannot reach
my love my phone my number
one who cannot hear me

pockets empty purse
empty car seat
pulled and pushed but no
phone and no
says the restaurant
when I ask them so

off to the phone store
and start fresh
friend can you spare a dime?

 

[PandoraGlitters]

together we wring
beer bubbles
out of the old long johns

long ago winters
even then I knew
when to dot and
that if you dot once
dot early and if you dot early
dot always

bring all the bubbles
out sweep them high even
shovel them since you have
a shovel since you always
talk of your dead yes
pile those old beer
bubbles high because

we might as well laugh
we never laughed together
you and me because
I have a sense of humor
alright you've just never been
real funny and if you did
not hear that let me
turn it up for you

 

[Angeline]

Turn it up for me

Turn up the volume
and spin the stax play
your chess and sanctify
in the flames of funk.

Now dance. You know
that song: it hits on the hips,
knocks down the night
and flips your switch. Flash
and beat, click and snap
you know that song, it goes
like that. Form a line.
Now dance.

It's like thunder, lightening
crash tintabulation to attenuate
your frame slip along the chain
and claim your place.
Now dance.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

003

Saturday breeze plays
Harlem Airshaft lifting the curried
goat and baby hushing from
soft swept floors below

my life fans
out the emptied purse
over a grey and blue bedspread

stack cards
erect lipsticks
lay all of the pens
you gave me side by side
until they stripe
further stripe the grey

remake our city in my bed

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Walking in a stiff coat
on the way to poetry
she sees sky over trees
and buildings and thinks
love across bridges and sings
quiet as a prayer

truffle held in a silver spoon,
that's us, up there, in the moon.

That's us up there.

 

[Tzara]

001

To One Anonymous
who used the word “fanning” in her comment,
though in quite another context

Lady Windermere left her fan
behind for plot, to mock her morals. Your fingers,

though, spread quaintly over folds
I would not quite die to see,

seem more like Eve’s, startled by knowledge
of sexuality. May I

politely move your hand’s leaf
a bit aside? I’d love to slip

beneath their fan,
there leave some few new feathers with my tongue.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

I wear all the shamrocks of Ireland
and eat all the olives of Greece

so that one day when you look
into my eyes again, you see nothing

but green, hear nothing
but soft

grasses of Scotland blowing,
blowing.

 

[Tzara]

002

American Camp, San Juan Island

Long brown grass whisks
over my jeans as I climb

through spider’s webs
ornamented by dew. Robins

hop over the path,
peck worms from the bare earth.

The redoubt is just a high point
hollowed in its center,

smug—as if the British could not
have lobbed incendiaries there.

That’s why Pickett was afraid,
I suppose—

later, at Cemetery Ridge,
everyone died, so he would know.

Here, from the top, I can see
a dog run down the beach,

chasing a stick
thrown by its master,

and as I look west into Canada,
I know all of what’s hereafter.

 

[Tzara]

003

wireless

what I want is the whine
of your telephoned voice, broken

by wind storms in the mountains,
a sigh that tells me trees

are coming down in the forest,
that your English is lost

and that the only open line
is the one I tap along your neck,

thready as our hesitant pulse,
my fingertip damp with desire

 

[Angeline]

About a Son

Blond angelface blue primal scream
and all the spaces in between
the broken glass, infected dream
empty garage, guitar, drug scene,
the crashing chords and thudding bass
and all the spaces in between.

The brittle rage etched on the face.
I love you I'm not gonna crack
the crashing chords and thudding bass,
the place where sorrow fades to black.

Young Caulfield or young Capulet
I love you I'm not gonna crack

The years are trains the wheels forget
amid the song some cry was mute
young Caulfield or young Capulet,
child ill-fitted for your suit,
Blond angelface blue primal scream
amid the song some cry was mute,
the broken glass, infected dream.

 

[Tzara]

Blond angelface blue primal scream...

Nice Kurt poem, Ms. A. Good use of lyric, and I really like the line "Young Caufield or young Capulet" though I think it should be "Caulfield." Both Holden and Romeo are good analogues for him.

Dive, if you want to.

 

[Angeline]

Nice Kurt poem, Ms. A. Good use of lyric, and I really like the line "Young Caufield or young Capulet" though I think it should be "Caulfield." Both Holden and Romeo are good analogues for him.

Dive, if you want to.

Thanks. I should checked the Caulfield. Sloppy mea culpa.

I'm doing a big editing job these days (a horror of a job, actually) and I'm blasting Pandora radio as I work and you know, Kurt just stays with you--so talented and so tragic. And I guess I wanted to express the connection I see to those two. And I've always been a sucker for a terzanelle.

 

[Tzara]

Thanks. I should checked the Caulfield. Sloppy mea culpa.

I'm doing a big editing job these days (a horror of a job, actually) and I'm blasting Pandora radio as I work and you know, Kurt just stays with you--so talented and so tragic. And I guess I wanted to express the connection I see to those two. And I've always been a sucker for a terzanelle.

You know, I didn't recognize this as a terzie, probably because of your stanza breaks (and the fact that I have trouble with terzanelles, as you may remember). I tried to do something similar with my last sonnet--i.e., use different line breaks to help disguise the form, not that it necessarily needs disguising, but I think it helps the poem to be read in a neutral context--simply as a poem rather than as a form poem.

I did, of course, see the repetons, but didn't think much about those other than you were repeating lines for emphasis.

I think that's kind of the ideal that form poetry works toward--writing a poem that is a good poem without consideration of how well it conforms to a particular form. To the extent that the reader doesn't realize they are reading a form poem is probably (or at least perhaps) a good thing.

Anyway, I'm pontificating, as usual. Good poem.

Be well.

 

[Angeline]

You know, I didn't recognize this as a terzie, probably because of your stanza breaks (and the fact that I have trouble with terzanelles, as you may remember). I tried to do something similar with my last sonnet--i.e., use different line breaks to help disguise the form, not that it necessarily needs disguising, but I think it helps the poem to be read in a neutral context--simply as a poem rather than as a form poem.

I did, of course, see the repetons, but didn't think much about those other than you were repeating lines for emphasis.

I think that's kind of the ideal that form poetry works toward--writing a poem that is a good poem without consideration of how well it conforms to a particular form. To the extent that the reader doesn't realize they are reading a form poem is probably (or at least perhaps) a good thing.

Anyway, I'm pontificating, as usual. Good poem.

Be well.

I always feel the tyranny of the form is in the layout. If you set it up in a way that makes sense to you, the form becomes (one hopes) beside the point. I don't know why this form and Cobain sounded so right to my imagination, maybe because I see some heroic troubador ideal gone wrong in him that suggests older styles of poetry to me. Yeah, I pontificate, too.

You be well, my friend. Reading your poems is always an inspiration for me, as is this thread so kisses to Dora, too!

 

[Tzara]

so kisses to Dora, too!

If we're kissing Ms. D, I am so all over that I would seem to be shrinkwrap.



Oh. Perhaps a bit strong, there. Mayhap a little Tour de France cheek kiss into space might be more appropriate, eh?

I am so awkward.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Kisses to both of you, back. Your poems are wonderful.


006

our bodies still buzz
yesterday's news
in yesterday's dark
he whispers don't wake

yet five more minutes
pulling the covers over
my naked hip and drawing
me in to our pulse

we are braille under
lingering darkness
fingertips memorize
the other's spine

 

[Tzara]

004

Villanelle for One Unnamed

I wrote a poem for her today,
one she may read or she may not,
or even think my poem soufflé—

inflated, puffed to make a play
on her fine morals, as if I thought
I’ll write a poem for her today

would loose her thighs, somehow convey
my want as something pure, not fraught
with thoughts of her as poem, risqué,

laid open, simplement parfait,
idealized as one who’s “hot.”
I wrote a poem for her today

and changed my theme to more assay
what I had wished for, though not sought.
I’d like to think this poem’s bouquet

lives more a heady cabernet
than I, intoxicated sot,
could ever think to give away—
this poem I wrote for her, today.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

....I have trouble with terzanelles.....

Well - that statment's rubbish.........lovely poem T. I thought Angelin'e Terza great too. Makes me want to try forms again.

 

[Tzara]

Well - that statment's rubbish.........lovely poem T.

Thank you, m'dear, but that poem is not a terzanelle. It's a quasi-villanelle, since I don't really repeat the lines exactly. The forms are very similar, in some ways, but I seem to find it (relatively) easy to compose villanelles and Angie seems to find it relatively easy to compose terzanelles. I think we both find the other form (villanelle vs. terzanelle) more difficult. Certainly I find composing terzanelles more difficult.

I'm not sure why. They're really quite similar, but for some reason, the evolving (linked) line scheme is a problem for me.

Of course, I fudge the repetons of the villanelle. Modern practice. 'K?

I suppose I should link in the relevant Wikipedia articles, but I am feeling lazy.

I thought Angelin'e Terza great too. Makes me want to try forms again.

You should. Form makes one think much more, even obsess, about word placement in a poem, which I think is a good thing.

Pat would disagree with me, of course. I really miss him.