30 Poems in 30 Days

[4degrees]

14-5

fractal fixation
the churning colors hypnotic
one into the thickness of
old smoke, everyone turns gray
in a most beautiful way
wearing buiral garments constructed
for kings. a king in this
hollow world, painting nothingness
with random acrylic moods
loving every breath while
swallowing sadness, keeping a balance
keeping it all real
in colorblind madness
and madly loving as well.

 

[Sara Crewe]

5

No one can go around the box car
that rode the one-way tracks.
You must walk through it.
Turn the air conditioning off
and endure the heat of a hundred
other prisoners. Lean your cheek
against the iron bars and feel
the cold confusion of falling
through darkness to an ever sinking
bottom that only stops in hell.

I can put myself on the train
but even in my mind I will not
bring my children with me.
I will not put their faces in lines
that choose who lives or dies alive
and I brush away the fallen snow
of skin when it burns my reality.

When I leave images ghost around me
in a fog of awareness. I hear whispers
and screams of things we want to forget
but need to remember. I want to judge
the onlookers of sixty years ago and vow
never again
but before I can say the words
I see my complacency
smirking at me from the corner
of my comfortable life. Never
has already been broken.
I am the student with eyes down
hoping the teacher will ask another.
Passive until they come for me.
That smile mocks my theoretical courage
and forces me to admit my current inaction
says that genocide is fine
as long as there is an ocean
between it and me. That I don’t have the right
to picture myself as a survivor
until I see myself among the guilty ones.

 

[Tzara]

5

Hindenburg Love

She was a girl who floated her dirigible love
for me out into the lightning-filled sky
of my youth. Above the swirling winds
of testosterone and acne she drifted, keeping
me in her camera sight, though far, far below.
I guess she felt safe up there, waiting
for the weather to finally clear, but
when at last she tried to moor her craft
she found her dreams were filled with hydrogen
and they proved too flammable to last.




OK, here's the second version:




My Hindenburg Romance,
Fourth Period German, 1970

Lisa floated her dirigible love
for me out into the lightning-filled sky
of my youth. Above the swirling winds
of testosterone and acne she drifted,
tracking me in her camera sight, below.

I guess she felt safe up there, waiting
for the weather to finally clear, but
when at last she tried to moor her craft
she found her dreams were filled with hydrogen
and they proved too flammable to last.

 

[4degrees]

14-6

somewhere someone
gasps a final one
and dies alone from
dehydration.
and intolerable heat.
its probably happening right here,
not far, as i speak.
or type, if you want it technical
and who doesn't these days,
such sticklers for detail.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

2-4

Nemesis

If you want to go there,
if you insist,
then we can go:
I will still write stories about you
as I always have,
but from now on
they won't
be fair.

 

[annaswirls]

00

00000

 

[unpredictablebijou]

2-5

Red Bisque


3 C pomegranate juice
3 C honey
3 C claret
3 tbs blackstrap molasses
An image of a hand
9 inch square piece of silk
A small sugar skull
A fish
A prime number
Bride and groom wedding cake ornament
1/2 lb. raw meat
a cord with three tight knots
2 tsp. pokeberry ink
an instrument of force
2 oz. dark chocolate
a blood orange

Blend. Simmer. Allow to sit, covered,
for nine days, in a cool dark place.
Serves two.

 

[Sara Crewe]

6

Reverse Psychology

I see an ink blot
instead of an evergreen
backlit against the paper
sky and I wonder
what my distortion says
about reality or my state
of mind. But just as the wind
calls me crazy, the sun sets
and I see it's still just a tree
and I am alone with my sanity
and we have nothing to say.

 

[Tzara]

6 is the loneliest number. Well, sorry. One is. Nevermind.

Counseling a Friend Who Has Received
Some Mash Poems from Her Lover

His poems are not all fault, I hope.
They merely are some silly trope
where hearts are not unwound. In fact,
they're often meant to, well, attract

sex opposite and make them feel
quite apposite. Hell, make them squeal
with delight on recognizing
how one's love is visualizing

sex (of course) or more than likely
marriage. Weddings. God. By crikey,
his poems are full of love to you.
Accept this, sweet. Do not be blue.

 

[4degrees]

14-7

bending in double
twisted to the extent
in order to look at
truth in all its roughness
never will be enough time
to express this fact
one like a grinder
that leaves raw wounds
fresh every day
for 860 days in a row.

 

[annaswirls]

00

00000

 

[Tzara]

7

Noumenon

By now, there should be nothing
to remember. After all,
we were then her children's age,
so it was long ago. Still
at certain times I see her face
or feel her long curve of spine
in my fingertips, late at night,
as if ants were crawling on my skin.
Odd, how I never hear her voice.

 

[Sara Crewe]

7

I am tired of being
together so I promise
to hold still while you take
me apart. I won’t cry
unless you want me to
or complain that I can’t move.
I want to keep my mind
but I don’t want it full
of decisions. Move the focus
out of my skull and spread
my thoughts over my skin, warming
the surface and then sinking
in a cycle that drains
me until I am only in this moment
and all that matters is that it never ends.
Make this room a window
to the night and me your mannequin
but leave me with eyes
that dilate in the light
so I can close them
against the dawn and the return
of my one pose and the unanswered
knocks against my plastic skin.

 

[4degrees]

14-8

reverse frankenstein;
the mind of a monster in the
body of a god
teaching him everything
that subconciousness
robbed.

 

[annaswirls]

00

.....

 

[Tzara]

8

Dyschromatopsia

It's not my cones or rods.
They always fire,
repeatedly. It's
how quite I cannot see
the flavor of your love
on some Ishihara plate
that like a squamous Petri dish
displays the number 41.

One finger smears this number,
culture. My tongue's tip
lyses on.

 

[4degrees]

14-9

tonight i tear rice paper
contemplating plumbing and pests
momentary escapism
obsessive or not
is my reprieve;
thoughts that never leave.

 

[Sara Crewe]

8

All puzzles seem easy
after you see the answers
so I thought I would fill in some
of my blanks and change
my name from complicated
with the understanding
that I will never be simple.

I admit to a contrary nature
that wants the silence
of winter with the birdsong
of spring. I am a glacier
wrapped around the sun
refracted by day and black
by night. A balloon
who follows the wind
unaware of tension
on my string until I’m afraid
and turn back
to see my beginning
resting in your hand.

I want you to ask
if the ropes are too tight
while you cinch them tighter.
To wonder about my day
and then tell me how
the night will be, know
how to run your fingers
along my edges
without every getting cut
and slap my skin between strokes.

I want you to accept
my history while you dance
with my evolution, knowing
what I want but giving
only what I need.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-1

*****

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-1 This isn't my first rodeo

The first time
you tasted a pussy
you were seventeen years old.
You said one night
you wanted to try
and so she let you. She felt
your mouth, sweetly
a cat tasting cream.
You breathed
deeply.

Afterward, you would only say, crookedly
I don't know. I have to
think about it. You looked
bewildered. She let you go home.
She worried all night.

The next day, you told her,
I want to do it
again. Soon. Tonight. That night
when your tongue touched down
you moaned, 'Like sunshine.
You taste
like sunshine' and you came
instantly
pulsing, with a gasp
but you didn't notice. Your face
fell into the light
you breathed summer
and drank in
that bright solar flare.

 

[Sara Crewe]

9

There is something rotten
but it has oozed past borders.
Watch the maggots dance
at 500 degrees before they die
in burnt smiles. Don’t buy
the paper con with its fancy seal
even if it’s framed. Knowledge
often masquerades as intelligence
but remember who dresses you
in the morning and for whom you stand
naked in the night. Eat the apple
and throw the core at the teacher
if he assumes your stupid
for not giving a shit about a lecture
that resonates like opera
in a cardboard box and could be précised
down to, God I’m fucking brilliant.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.
Even the crows are sometimes quiet.
A treadmill in a box will not move
you far but time still runs away.
It’s hard to catch anything that flies
and I can hear the bat
in the basement laughing at me
while he says water the snake
before the birds. Swear at the dying
pumpkins and scream at the weeping
willow for crying like it’s already fall.
Footnotes never explain reality
so today I wrote mine in the sand.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-2

.........

 

[Tzara]

9, as if 6 were...

Complainte pour Ste. Catherine

I'm supposed to write a poem today
but I would rather not. I'd rather
read some poems or shred them or
leave the whole fucking thing alone,
on the back shelf of my fast-food life.

I know. Too many corollaries. I'll grow fat
from them. I'll end up placed
on the South Beat Diet, reading, oh,
Corso and Ginsberg or even hiking (shit!)
with Wildman Snyder through mountains

I just don't want to know. Let me be
simple, be poem's milkman, leaving cream
oozing from retro bottles
left on porches in morning sun. Let me
be idle, swale, happy, holding. Ground.

 

[4degrees]

14-10

a night not for poetics,
not yet, because of the
brunette on my bed
maybe inspiration will
come the morning after.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-2

I know something about her.

She reminds you of pearls
and uncoiling new leaves.
Where she walks, snakes
make love in her footsteps
She invented kissing with the tongue
She was the first to eat oysters.
She is a chemist, a scholar, a healer.
Her sigils are the orchid and the gold
skinned mango, the ribboned garter
and the ruby chalice. The mouths of streams
are her temples, and hidden glades
soft with moss. She is worshiped in seven
colors and at her temple
there are seven veils. She will
remove them, one by one
if you ask her to.
I know something about Her.
You know something
about Her too. Everyone does.
It should sound so familiar.
It should be on the tip of your tongue.