2013 Challenge: One Poem a Week

[GuiltyPleasure]

18 - Private Places

Tonight a dream with fingers
that smooth cool cotton
over your belly causing
you to flinch
woke you to darkness.

It was my hand that formed
stone from pliant clay and left you
wanting more of my mastery,
your hand over mine, a guide
to the map of your private places
with short paths to pleasure but
I have chosen the longer route through
sighs and moans and forbidden functions
trespassing in a tangle of passion.

Watching yourself below me
bending to you, my mouth an O
filled with you until you surface
gasping, teeth bared and breathlessly awake.

 

[Angeline]

11 4/30/13

What Abides

One wonders
at the undercurrent:
friends, lovers, assorted
others, bon vivants
like bonbons gobbled
savored or disdained,
nudged and tossed away.
Everywhere

clues scattered hints
pop into holes, disappearing
rabbits, notes and even
insubstantial posts come
and go, lean in to stay
or leave, lose some
times win.

How much of is is really seem
and how much really knows?

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Micahb2]

Que Sera Sera

You were not pretty to begin with.
The planets dipped.
The ship shoved off.

In the radio room
We were all laughing
Slapping each others back
Over what was coming.

The telegraph nicked.
I tapped the tip
of this pen to paper.

What? Bach's waterless fountains?
Mozart's condescension?

I am wrong before I begin.
Which evens up the score.

 

[Tzara]

18

Twenty-One Lines Heading toward Puberty
—after Sharon Olds’ “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party”

Ten boys and one girl. One.
Ten pairs of swim trunks and one singlet,
even though she’s still shapeless as a seal,

four or five years from the geometry
that will swerve their male eyes
from the pool to her rear

like a radar dish locking on target.
Right now, she’s just a friend
with longer hair, taller

than most of them. All of them still share
that childhood soprano squeal—
but soon the boy’s voices will darken,

while hers will only lower
when she whispers to a lover
or to her child, and even then only the level

will soften, not the pitch. But for now she can cleave
the water’s glassy surface indifferent to their gaze,
or only caring that they admire

her speed across the pool. The stalk
of sex that will trail her, trail them all,
yet slumbers beneath their boisterous flesh.

 

[Angeline]

12 5/3/13

The secrets are uneasy,
so I hide, embroider lies:
unreal discomfit insecure.
I'm dilettante. A hopeful

shell of ersatz fiction
traveling oft taken roads:
the gatherings of cheer,
those almosts of affinity,
scattered conviviality, perfume,
chill air and coats upon a bed.

I smile and toast, schmooze
and coast till dear familiar
ghosts drift in beloved consolation
prize. You'd be amazed how
easily their spirits animate
the room.

 

[Micahb2]

Butterfly Knife

Pocket up and slice through
This light that's being thrown
our way.

Act indifferent.
Then bring your drums in.

I will affect a vocal.
Bury the mix.

Yes, I know.

The change in my values
does not
Coincide with your collected wares.

Before bolting, and feigning a yawn
Listen to this:

Still:
You must wake
Brush back the covers
wander to a window.

 

[greenmountaineer]

19

Teats & Money in Lemon City

A baby sucks on south Florida sweat
which smells something like pumpkin soup
cooking in a pot that upside down
looks like the top hat of Baron Samdí.

Mambo Leah and three young mothers
pray cholera will die in Port au Prince
and Xavier won't go back to Simone
whose cell, like magic, ring rings it's nine,

time for a John; her boogie night's begun.
If it's not John, it's Harvey I'm Sorry,
except that it's Brad who came twice last week
and, after refusing her overtime,

he had to pay Xavier, how you zay?
tru dhee noze, his white powdered South Beach nose.




 

[Angeline]

13 5/5/13

Anti-Hipster's Terzanelle

I'm skittish in the hipster shops
curated comics, vintage games,
cunning stage set, retro props

all bones of childhood remains
dross remade renamed renewed,
curated comics, vintage games

for carefree youth, nubile tattooed
Marley wet t-shirt, low-slung bells,
dross remade renamed renewed

repurposed relics ghostly shells
graveyard prices, step right in
Marley wet t-shirt, low-slung bells,

the girl's patchouli scented skin
a model me who never was.
Graveyard prices, step right in,

a photograph that time undoes.
I'm skittish in the hipster shops
a model me who never was
a cunning stage set, retro props

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Tzara]

19

Marital Arts Movie
—a kind of terzanelle

She makes love like a crazy thing—
all arms and elbows, legs still worse.
Boy, sex with her has got some zing

especially when she starts to curse
and moan and wail and thrash about
as she makes love. A crazy thing,

who flips and flails like fresh-caught trout
still gathered in the dripping net.
But moan and wail and thrash about’s

a great way to work up a sweat
(you’d lose your inhibitions, too,
if gathered in her grippingness).

It’s Sex mashed up with wild Kung Fu—
Bruce Lee humps Jenna Jameson.
They’d lose their inhibitions (two),

use orgasms to bring down tongs.
Bruce Lee v. Jenna Jameson:
Now sex with her has got some bling.
She makes love like a crazy thing.

 

[Angeline]

14 5/10/13

Sundays

I.
"Ah God I know not,"
saith the bishop busy
in his dying haste
to hence construct
a master scheme fear
some womb of time
and place no doubt
but stone and brick
close in this airless
home gritty sepulcher
for Godless bones,
Man's faith restored
to dust.

II.
On Sundays
we eat oranges and sing
Vivaldi lights the room
and lifts the weight
of promises, morning
deconstructs the fog
of disbelief birds whirl
the breeze the willow
shrugs cicadas humming
tunelessly to vast
indifferent blue.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[greenmountaineer]

20

Holes

We saw so many holes that summer,
those in Rome with frescos of saints,
Paris's less known catacombs,

and holes in the Ypres Salient
whose trenches were once filled with blood
red, bloody red. The war had ended
where poppies now sprinkle the ground

as if red flowers ever could
resurrect peace under white crosses
whose boy bodies should have been found
dancing by the light of the Silv'ry Moon.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

19 - Shortcuts to Sanity

By way of explaining
the map and pattern of damage
on her bare arms, suddenly
brave, she told them
that to feel pain was better
than to feel nothing,
none of the joy, sadness or stress,
just a purple void. She sits slightly
raised above their studious gaze,
to be examined not worshipped,
a lab rat for them to dissect her
psyche where she is pinned.
Her corrugated sleeves itch
in the spotlight but her hands
remain still. When questions are
exhausted she visibly subsides,
the future doctors politely applaud
and she cries on the bus home.

 

[Tzara]

20

Ghazal

Impatient, I await what she’ll become in the night.
Old friend or new lover? Will she succumb in the night?

How slowly time passes, the clock’s ticking so painful
Without knowing for certain that she’ll come in the night.

Perhaps she’s a phantasm, just a flick of desire.
I wonder—could I dream just anyone in the night?

I strive to remember what I said our last parting,
And I hear Am I a man you would shun in the night?

The snick of a door latch. My anxieties lifted—
On soft pedal of footfall comes my One in the night.

Her grace is a melody plucked lightly, delightful.
Her limbs a lithe instrument I will strum in the night.

The hazed dazzle of moonlight. Its aura envelopes
Her quite dizzying body—fine cloth spun in the night.

Intrigue or delirium? Who can tell? Such beauty
No poet’s verses can total, can sum in the night.

Our joining is journey, one both leisured and gentle,
One long ocean excursion here begun in the night.

Now winter has ended. The evenings drift warmer.
At first kiss from my lover, I’m struck dumb in the night.

 

[Angeline]

15 5/14/13

Origami

I spoke of swans
companionable cozy
curled together smooth
skimming side by side,
swimming in a dream
of never leaving.

That was the point
of long folds bent under,
an implication of wings
without flight. You saw
creases, triangulation
a return to the page.

I tried to sketch
the appeal of soft
submission, feathery
compromise paddling
in pairs. That wasn't clear
cut so you sliced off
my excess.

I unfolded myself to you,
but my hands were gone
my feet torn. There was
a hole where my mouth
used to be.

I looked up.
The sky had changed. Maybe
I am really a paper airplane.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

20 - Mistah Morton

He be a dandy
man about town, settin' trends
in dress but not the sportin' life.
His eye blind to sexual stumbles
a fashion faux-pas curls his hair
even more'n it's frizzed already.

He'll change his suit three,
mebbe four, times a day just to
stroll and snap girls' heads.
"Lawd, mistuh how many suits you got?"
He ain't above winnin' one
with his sassy diamond grin
an' taking her back to his room
for pleasure, sharin' his legendary
"jelly-roll".

He done told us more'n once
that jazz is his to claim
an' we don't doubt it so
sure is Jelly and sweet his tunes.
Not a one plays like him,
tunes that make the body sway
and even plain girls pretty.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[hmmnmm]

refueling

refueling

one of these days,
maybe not too many
or not a number of days
but the next amount,
anyway, next time
someone asks what it is
I am thinking about
I hope I remember to reply,
“I’m a guy. What do you think
I’m thinking about?”

Or if it happens
to not be the obvious,
I was recently there,
just pulled off. Rest area.
Pretending to ponder
philosophy. Parked
at the station of refuel.

If pressed for details,
well now that's when handy pen
comes in and ink, ink a'plenty,
that glides silkily
because that’s another question
- what’s it mean? What’s it about?
I’m a guy. Take a wild guess
what it’s about. Or if not
plainly about, it may be
between or an exercise
in turning the other cheek,
turning eggs over-easy
but spatula fumble,

eggs shall be scrambled,
maybe grate cheese,
a hasty grate
and when back in the saddle,
tooling the highway,

rain, yeah, midnight rain,
gave that sheen yeah, like,
if it’s a road the wheels
never rolled, gears never did grind,

and traction never here yet veered
or slid off the shoulder
and the map was left
at a black and white
refuel station

and the dots and lines
and even metropolitan
spaces just show ways
- indicate states one happens to be,

but hell, if the refuel station
serves coffee, offers room
for the wanderer…

 

[bogusagain]

what is it about days like this
when a woman's breasts sit higher
her buttocks become more prominent
her legs grow longer

what is it about days like this
when a chance glance becomes provocative
an innocent smile becomes risque
a friendly hello becomes pornographic

what is it about days like this
when the ogre in me stirs
like a bear waking from hibernation
famished and in need of nourishment

what is it about days like this
when I have the urge to stalk, cat-like
through the urban undergrowth
ready to pounce on passing prey

what is it about days like this
when we sit here in the sun, drink in hand
you are so distant and far away but you will not go
and leave me to my passing fantasies

 

[Angeline]

16 5/18/13

I am placing my same title challenge poem here as well because it is the poem I worked on this week.


Nano Clams And Other Molluscs
(A Glosa)

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings."
-Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter

The time has come," the Walrus said
to wash into the brine,
cast away earthly delights,
fleshy limbs and spine
and live among the quiet deeps.
Yes. It might be fine

to talk of many things
but think on losing speech!
On touch undone, nacreous, beslimed,
all words beyond my reach,
and even reach beyond my ken?
We declaimed on the beach

of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
of meadows and of foam
that courses here so close by us
and so far from my home.
"His house has many mansions,"
so the walrus did intone

Of cabbages and kings
of life below a reef
a mantle there but not a hearth
a foot, a head, no teeth,
grit that may in time bear pearl,
the watery relief

and why the sea is boiling hot
or why the sky is green,
the several ways the ocean wins,
the triumph of saline.
Oh his persuasion wearied me.
I longed to be made clean.

Hence I've come to slow and drift
to sink, see what it brings,
sense light filter through the murk,
know when a dolphin sings,
never worry past the sand
and whether pigs have wings.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

21 - Mollusc challenge poem

In shallow pools,
low tide exposed,
on rocks in gardens
seaweed sowed lurk
molluscs
often overlooked
for speedier folk like
shrimp or crab
escaping sideways,
weapon ready just in case.
Clustered tiny mussel-squatters
shouldering on an empty shell
that suddenly declares another lodger
scrambling, claws first, into view.
Whelks and winkles, clammy cousins
bearing very different armour,
bustle slowly barnacle-bound.
A nano-ocean, crèche for young,
exposed and seeking safety.
Wade warily, don't mess with the
molluscs.​

 

[greenmountaineer]

21

Stream of Consciousness


Note to self

lunch tomorrow

Susan Jane 11:30

have to hurry

no dessert

Walmart Superstore meat or fish?

Trader Joe's coffee beans

BJ's Wholesale fruits on sale

get one free

funny name that BJ's is

home by three soccer practice

Heather's done 5:00 o'clock

5:15 she may have said

doesn't matter watch her play

frozen dinners pot roast Harry

chicken fingers for the girls

Heather write permission slip

note for Kathy sick today

8th grade class trip to the city

diorama cavemen painting

bulls in southern France I think

Casablanca Channel 3

can't stay up late anyway

note to self

buy some paint

Heather's room

don't slight Kathy

hell to pay

God I'm tired

have to turn the washer on

"Ooh Baby Baby you feel so big"

pink I think they both like pink

Harry needs to lose some weight

time for News at Eleven