2013 Challenge: One Poem a Week

[Tzara]

7

Fine. Let me now tell you. I lay
a brick—ordinary,
red,

somewhat heavy—on,
like this bookshelf I built
in our living room

as if the damn thing sums the weight
of our years
together.

I could break a window with it.

 

[oggbashan]

Apologies to Pope

To wake the love by tender strokes of hand,
To raise the prick, to make it proud stand,
To make man, kind in conscious love bold,
Relive over each scene, show what they behold:
For this the Erotic Muse first marked the page.

Parody of Prologue to Addison's Cato.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[bogusagain]

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

the farm (part one)

there are no animals on this farm
this farm is strictly human
domesticated, farmed and milked
obese cats steal the cream
and fat pigs wallow in shit
all human but little humanity
the dog work cocks its leg
scapegoats are hung to dry

Adam Smith’s invisible hand is choosey
picks the runts, scrag ends and the unproductive
feeds them through the mincer
extrudes them into their drawn out guts
sausages are the food of austerity
picked over by sharks and vultures
last year I noticed in London
the scavengers were out in force
sniffing out the niches where morsels collect
bite each other if hunger bites

in the shadow of the bus stop, flies squabble
the stink of urine, vomit and stale sweat
lodge in the throat like a damp swab
you know you’ll choke if you linger
movement, exercise and pointless activity
like a rain dance its an act of desperation
superstition has better results than logic
theories are solutions for theories failed
the underground to the suburbs no longer escapes
you’re fenced in tagged and numbered
you’re fattened or culled but what’s the difference?

 

[Tzara]

8

Beautiful Teeth

My hygienist has them, perfect
as white diamonds, set
in a bracelet.

A Tiffany bracelet. La la la

in the pale blue box
where I would nestle your ring
if I could marry you, but

god, this is why I see you after hours,
in off-brand hotels
near the airport.

You’re like a cigarette—
you’ll kill me, but slowly,
after we share a long and happy run.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Week 8

If Richard's Horse Could Speak

Young Squire, steal me! Chivalry is dead!
Two wasp waist maidens from the village plead

for God inside our tents. As for the priest
to whom God promised victory, he's drunk.

I smelled it in his robe, a smell as rank
as slop from sties where pigs have shat and pissed.

This stink is called the War of Roses, Boy,
its Houses red and white; the white one's dead,

but no one ever saw it wither. Christ!
I'd rather charge with rebels in the Pale

and know just what it is I'm dying for
than take a pike for Richard, House of York.

His kingdom, aye, is no place for a horse.

 

[bogusagain]

the farm (part two)

each morning you are up
and out with the birds
each evening you return
neither richer nor wiser

like the cows in the field
instinct governs your actions
milking time is fixed like a tether
drawing them to the milking shed

you head for the office
no longer questioning the point
of your daily activity, as if to do so
would render your life pointless

I simply wait your return
to beat me about my ears
how difficult your life is
and how easy is mine

each day I want to say
we all have an hard luck story
some of us read the book
and ditched it along the way

ask yourself why you do what you do
not why I don’t do the same
I asked myself some time ago
and jumped the fence.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

8 - Casualties of dawn

In the dark
before that pale line
of light that signals the day
I find my best ideas
but by sunrise
only vague fragments
and crazed ideas remain.

Closed eyes retrieve
the night but still
elusive as dreams
they hide from the sun
never meant to be.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[bogusagain]

8

anti love poem

you arrive late, after
the TV has said goodnight
and radio reminds you
of your loneliness

you make your excuses
a kiss which has intent
your arm hooked about me
should I have missed your promise

this is not love
nor do the stars shine
I am just a body to hold
a grind to warm you

my sexual interest focused
on your breasts, rump, thigh
the triangle of shadow
where my snake tongue darts

your bitter shell discarded
unable to resist the world
with the confidence of Rodin
I enter the cathedral

you open up and reassemble
as I press into you
feeling you beneath me
like a world in turmoil

later you will ask if it bothers me
should I look back and see
I created nothing, but why
hold up such an ugly mirror?

 

[Tzara]

9

Bangkok

The menu on the back
of the driver’s seat in the motocab
made the girls look like food—

Tom yam kung nam khon,
Pad Thai. Blowjob.
Hey, I was hungry,

and the prices were good.
Do not hold that against me.
I never even knew her name.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Week 9

Finding Love in the Arthur Kill

Jimmy laughs so goddam hard
club soda drips out his nose
when I tell him kill is Dutch for creek
before he pours me a half-pint beer
Da called a dimey, now a dollar
because, Jimmy says, the treasury's flat
here at the Knights of Columbus Hall
where High and State Streets melt outside,
and asphalt bubbles up August.

Jimmy and I watch New Jersey Transit
empty a load of uniform ladies,
and maybe it's the way I've been thinking
lately I hope those worn out women
find meaning, Jimmy, in the bleaching of
placenta stains instead of cum
from the Holiday Inn or dried up stuff
from ashes to ashes, dust to dust
at Perth Amboy General Hospital.

A mile from here's the Arthur Kill
where Da once worked the catwalks and docks
at Chevron Refinery where he got
his watchamacallit,
mesothelioma,
when oil tankers rose like Leviathan
all hours of night and secretly spilled
bilge we swam in that looked like mustard
before the state got goddam serious.

Choo Choo, my girl, used to sing
"My Guy" better than Mary Wells did
on hot summer days in a dinghy
next to petrochemical tanks
that looked like cupcakes, Jimmy,
I swear, giant vanilla ones
next to fields without any trees,
but sheds where an old man, pissing upstream,
went back to sleep after nodding to us,

Choo Choo, an ovum in her bikini,
and me, a sperm, wiggling her way,
wet and alive in the Arthur Kill.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

9 - Mark O’Brian gets laid

At thirty-six my body is all empty clothing,
twisted, tortured, pointless. Turning
is not an option, eyes, ears, mind percolate
all too well. From the neck up I’m perfect.
Paddle-hands, useless as empty gloves,
lie open at my sides, a state of pleading
but pleading for what? Not death,
those days are over for I am loved
and have loved but sex eludes me.
I dream of it at night and wake sticky
with reality. My carer says nothing
as he bathes me but it hangs in the air
like an accusation. I hate my body.

She comes into my claustrophobic world
like one of those pure spring days,
initiates all kinds of possibilities
not just hands but tongue and cunt,
she won’t mince words, a spades a spade
in her world. With talk and mirror she
lets me see my eager body, the straining
thing that I had not seen since I was six
and calls it lovely, not a common word for me.
At last she touches it, nothing explodes,
we wait as she lowers, guides and smiles.
“Breathe” and I do.
Afterwards she kissed my chest.

Mark O’ Brian contracted polio at the age of six. He had three functioning muscles, one in his right foot, one in his neck and one in his jaw. With these he managed to be a successful reporter, publisher, journalist, social critic and poet.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[butters]

six

suffocate in the white space
no words to gasp or
serried ranks in which to hide
I-spy
a fishy tale - slippery at best
but, yes, i'm left here
stranded on a gritty bank
grasping at air

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

10 - Memo to Self

Stop apologizing for accidents.

Don’t say sorry when
you spill some food on the shirt
fresh on that morning. And don’t
kick yourself over dropped things,
your glasses, the T.V. remote, your hair brush,
all have to be retrieved.

That can’t be helped, they know that.

Instead apologize for chewing your nails,
that’s not unintentional, show penitence
for blurting out swear-words if you will,
you do not suffer from Tourette’s.

Sorry.

 

[Tzara]

10

Bali Ha’i

I couldn't move my loins into you
any better
than if I were even a tank

mudding its way over
a tussock on Guadalcanal.
This might be uncomfortable,

but if you lie quietly,
I will give you a ring.
You're supposed to be happy now.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Week 10

Sister Kate

Sister Kathryn, Lord have mercy!
in a state of panic
left from Dublin, All Aboard!
RMS Titanic,

fleeing from one Father John,
"that damn Dominican
tried to kiss me in the vestry.
Save me from that man!"

Alas! We know what happened next,
passengers then frantic,
some of whom would soon be fished
by fish in the Atlantic.

Kathryn didn't worry though,
although just twenty-seven;
faith, hope, love, and Pope the Pius
proved that there's a heaven.

And Poof!, well, there the young nun was
before the pearly gates
but then Alas! she lost her wings
and fell as did the cheats.

St. Peter picked up, seventh ring,
when Sister Kathryn called:
"What in heaven's happening?
St. Peter, I'm appalled,

with all my prayer, my piety,
and Father John's foul drool;
and as if you didn't know
a sackcloth hair shirt too!"

"Now, Sister Kathryn, don't despair,
bureaucracy, you know;
I'll ring you back by five, my Dear,
and have you good to go."

"Some devil's making eyes at me;
I wish you'd hurry, Sir;
He made me take my wimple off;
it's hot as heck down here.

St. Peter's office, what a mess!,
Gabe's horn doesn't blow,
the deus ex machina's broke,
angels flying to and fro

looking for some virgin girls
so that there won't erupt
a second jihad by the gates.
Another cloud blows up.

"Enough of this!" she said at six,
"He must think I'm a fool;"
she called St. Peter half past then;
this time she kept her cool:

"Hey, Pete! It's Kate, the hair shirt's gone.
Red's asking would I like
red meat that's BB Cute tonight.
I told him take a hike,

but if you don't get off your ass
and get my wings toot sweet
I damn well just might PDQ
forget about it, Pete."

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[butters]

seven

not nets no barbs no creels nor cruel bait
just human hands, bewetted, kind and sure
to lift the damsel'd trout from breathless fate
to writhe in wordly bliss? now there's a lure...

 

[greenmountaineer]

11

Converting Feet to Centimeters

In a tattered Beijing Times
she reads about a certain McQueen
who during Paris' Fashion Week

surprises the world of haute couture,
except that his platform boots
are hooves on a water buffalo

in a Chongzuo rice field, she thinks,
reminding her of sister and niece,
one who's dead with lotus feet,

the other in sneakers colored pink,
wheeling her aunt like a pinwheel in
her room in the belly of Beijing

to eat tonight more government rice
before she crawls up to bed
where she will dream of Father again,

dead thirty years, but a three year old
nine-headed bird whose necks will grow
unless she breaks and bandages them.

 

[butters]

incredible write, gm

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

11 - Rapprochement

We were The Perfect Couple then, envied by our cohorts when we wore each other’s attitudes, shared each other’s platitudes, took each other’s side with pride and seldom let our views collide. Now it is that others come, marching to a different drum, seducing us with novel thoughts, tying us in tangled knots. We turned our backs on things we shared as if we’d never really cared, in retrospect it seems a shame but neither of us is to blame. Our circumstances must have changed causing life to rearrange; when we met we seemed estranged, awkward in a childish way. I found it charming, I must say, and want, my darling, to convey a new desire quite unsaid, to re-invite you to my bed.​