007 Challenge

Friday Evening Junk Mail

Dating divertissement, I see zero shame
in getting the courage to achieve steady
career growth and be successful in personal life
Solitary young woman has a craving to infallible
for a cowboy and keep the fire alive for years.
Habitual occasion should inevitably
evolve into eternal lust!
Symbol: YVR will go from $1 to $15
Get a life looser!
 
The Diner at the End of the Road

At the Village Diner Restaurant,
Friday’s Fish and Chips Special
isn’t really all that special but the
waitress is friendly and portions ample.

The tables are full, mostly seniors but
there’s a young farmer with his date
whose eyes light up at the BBQ ribs.

After dinner, coffee is important
but pie is essential and as requested,
I pay my bill and tip in cash before
walking back home wondering at
all those cars passing by on their way
to the franchises down the road.
 
SSSSS

well is swell without the s
while will becomes swill
and wish changes to swish
temple wat morphs to swat
and wipe turns into swipe
 
this land within me

this land lies within me
heart beating to grouse drumming
lungs deep breathing cold north wind
throat quenched by upwelling spring
stomach full with harvest bounty
back warmed by cedar fire
eyes alight to night sky wonder
spirit filled with thoughts of you.
 
Friday Evening Junk Mail

Dating divertissement, I see zero shame
in getting the courage to achieve steady
career growth and be successful in personal life
Solitary young woman has a craving to infallible
for a cowboy and keep the fire alive for years.
Habitual occasion should inevitably
evolve into eternal lust!
Symbol: YVR will go from $1 to $15
Get a life looser!

or one could aspire to a looser life
 
1

Loose life flight requires
hollow bones. Open

24 hours. Loose lives
die quick of heavy sleep.

This branch will hold me
plus one night's snow.

No more. Weather
counts. Cents or Fahrens

either way boughs break
incrementally as measured

miles per winds or flake
by flake.
 
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2

True name vs. use name: used to be
like your social security number. Don't

give it out. It's a secret key
vectoring the hex that could absolutely

wipe you and all future yous and past
out and worse! Replace you

someone with your height but not your
stride. With your words, but not your
voice. With your address, but forwarded.

My name has 6 syllables, or 7 depending
 
Piece of shit platform just swallowed a three stanza poem for no NO NO goddamn reason. GRRRRR. On the bright side, what you can't remember wasn't important. Well. Probably.
 
3

She howls from her
what. Not sure.

Bowels? She Howls.
Halny wind they made
a whole documentary

about how people get driven
emergency services levels of

crazy from the blow blow blow
but you know? That unkind

kind of threat is why we have
friends, isn't it? And cities

societies and families
and, well, maybe champagne
if it agrees with you.
 
When the bough breaks . . .

(erased what I wrote here because it was kinda mean and I'm not mean, generally.)
 
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4

Hydrogen peroxide will not kill
bad mojo if the skin closes over
the open sore.

Only an open sore can be scalded
by vodka, seared by flame.

Once the sore is closed, poison
ferried from its serrations is safe
from casual remedy.

It takes radical treatment: an emergency
room visit. An antibiotic iv. Maybe shots

to staunch those blood kill lines
police them from the heart. When one
is attacked, one protects oneself

by any measure necessary.
 
Piece of shit platform just swallowed a three stanza poem for no NO NO goddamn reason. GRRRRR. On the bright side, what you can't remember wasn't important. Well. Probably.

sigh the perils of writing live
living dangerously
sometimes it bites,
parting such a sad swallow

me I usually write using a
program with autosave
if only it aplied
to my life
 
When the bough breaks
begins with a shoelace maybe

there was an email on shoelace
fails by the way and should

should have known I mean
what kind of idiot

naps a baby in a tree
anyway? Incredulous.

I make my eyebrows agree
before I bow ass first

out of the room. Next
number up.
 
Peril Rhymes with Darryl

Real estate kept him late and then
bridge trouble so 45 minutes later
two soda waters fizz unenthusiasm
on the extension bar because musicians
needed the corner and finally

He strolls in. I have menus ready.
He states, flatly, I ate. So
(asshole I am thinking because
if you weren't going to eat, I coulda
had vegan.)

After two drinks he paws at my hair
like a kid with mittens.

Probably I should have said so then
that Saturday wasn't even a maybe.
 
Our Better Angels

Dusting sleep over too steep
stumbles meant as steps.

Thank you. Moments after
shouting blindly at the gods
one falls exhausted
one accepts

feeling felt and fleet. Accepts
empty where once bawled ire
naked stumbling just

pain. Blind and directionless
punching wind then, exhausted,
pulling plugs out. Sinking down

wind and stream. I hear my silence
ask "remember breathing?" then fall
asleep in angel wings.
 
Love Letter

Bubbly pies and dragon back
way back in puberty I loved you
Ursula K. Leguin. And now,

now again, I love you, birthday deaths,
forests and winters, I loved you all

along. I just forgot. Found and Lost,
again found that lost country

too long in the mountains but now
climbed down to the grass

sand sea.
 
Bananas

The hero of compliance, our district ahead
of all others in the borough, our hero,
Wlad, is allergic to bananas. Deathly
horribly allergic, stiffening, seizing, epi
pen requiring allergic to bananas.

Every time he visits the mortal contingent
responsible for data frame corrections
recorded in ATS as letter codes, the warning
thirty minutes before, goes up.

"Please make sure you have no bananas."

We say, "yes we have none."

One new language teacher of English/Russian
held on, her banana just pushed down
bottom of the bag. Our Wlad
mid presentation choked out

Banana!

Soon singled out, the sequestered banana
slunk out, defiant.

The table, laptop, all the teacher touched
washed down in minutes. All the afternoon
she hung in quiet.

After at the bus stop, she approached, smiling
asking what sort of things I wrote.
Sure that it would put her off, I told her
I'm a poet.
 
Uber has created especially
for idiots such as this one
"I left my phone in a car".

Cars are the intimacy of the muscle age.
Cars are where we have driven in,
staked out, stalked away, and lately

lived. There are youtubes about it.

Those in the suburbs can merely walk
to the garage and check, oh yes.
There's my phone. All the numbers of
all the friends.

I can walk out to no garage. No car.
Phone gone gone gone. Sold off
for a tenth of its sticker.
 
Low expectations

This entire forum was meant for commentary
compliments

salutary to those "publishing" poems here
on the porn rag.

The slavering panters after "e" awards.
As if E were not known as a person
with biases.

But Look back at the million flying stars
lodging deep in the wood paneling

backdrop of some uncle rape scenario.
Poets without awards, without publishers,
without agents, without backslap politics

poets write anyway. What they know.
What they guess. What they have.
What they wish.

Poets soar into space before ships
are ever made.

What interest is accrued on those
borrowed wings?
 
Rote

When asked to identify the names of
English letters
a child chanted A apple aaa
and so forth.

So instructions are repeated.
Added: no los sonidos, solo los nombres.

We begin again. A. Q. R. then
she says "sometimes Y."

Yes. Sometimes Y.

What, after all, is Y but sometimes?
 
The New Rug

A decade of tread, kitten kneaded
pearls of thread--a decade of ex-boyfriend
red is tomorrow for the curb.

Even now the hallway holds the roll
of 2020 blue. The decade going out
forewarns the new that all all all
works of fingers pass. All precious
stains, all generous acts

eventually bloat
with rain, with rats. Get stiffly
stained by candle wax. Eventually
luxury relents, faded. Gently
bowing as it goes.

Red is out. Blue in. In just one day
prepaid: The empress's new clothes.

(ETA the empress is my cat Mitzi.)
 
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