30 Poems in 30 Days

[4degrees]

14-11

there was a softness
then the feel of uncertain
uncharted far away lands;
she was asia-magenta with
silver here and there,
there too..
for one moment we tangled
i stayed so still, then we
attached again in other ways
placing my hand on the
jutting out hip bone,
spooning almost casual
i was transported to
an alien universe
and she was so beautiful

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-3

Two reasons to hate birds


Those who spend
nights chasing sleep
and getting left
behind
hear their charming sound
as the first anthem
of another failure.

Cheerful, oblivious
they indulge in
jarring, joyful song
regardless
of what is happening
under the tree.

 

[Sara Crewe]

10

I want it bare
bulb ugly with shadows
as my only make up
and the light swinging
like a cheap disco ball.
For words to hide
in the cracks of walls
like roaches in the light.
To boil language down
until we are without semantics
and everything is understood.
I want to feel the teeth
that hide in your mind
eat away civility
until we are raw and juices run
down my chin. Have gravity turn
sideways. Force the wall
into my back, feel my wrists cuffed
in skin and the world divided
into a three four rhythm
where the bass plays
so deep inside that our ribs
shake and like a sheet
of rain on a window pane
I bleed beneath my skin.

 

[Tzara]

10 (this one seems like a death march, frankly)

How Sharps Work Cartomancy

I've reached the point I want
to reshuffle cards,
sift them, cut the heavy deck,
and lay another Celtic cross.
Call it preogative. Call it denial.
My belief is that sheer randomness
can steer the deal. Not what I want?
I'll just keep cutting, dealing, mixing
cards. I will fucking make these cards,
these goddamn cards, show me a life

I want.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-3

.....

 

[Amanda_Mc]

The First Obscenity

1-1

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up.).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

 

[4degrees]

14-12

those days come around.
when i care so little for
words anymore
the written variety firstly
closely followed by those spoken
and also the ones fucked in deep
this mish mash of verbal
adipose still has a strong draw
somewhere within, its smell is
warm with au jus of my soul
i'm just not hungry for that
one again.

 

[Sara Crewe]

11

Bliss and Being Invisible

Red plums in a bowl
I gave her for her birthday.
Have one she says.
I know they’re your favourite
They’re not.
I eat one anyway and pretend
she’s paid attention
to my life but it’s hard
to swallow ignorance
with a casual smile.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-4

.....

 

[Tzara]

11

on some days, like this one,
the words are simply comatose
and we may wonder why
we waste the glucose on them,
that IV planted in their arm

I guess we hope that they
will suddenly sit up again
and talk about
that one great light they saw
in dreams both mute and still

or how they floated above
us in the room, beatific,
while we visited and mourned
their sad still text, pale
against the death-white page

we poets are not neurologists
we are more ministers
or priests who preach and coax
the faithful to believe, to believe,
our soul is ever/lasting/life

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-4

Food

When you took residence in me
it was you, not I, who ate the meals.
My appetite was yours; you ruled
its range and interest, raised it to a peak,
Brought me to midnight bread and morning milk.
My belly formed around you and I ate
what you desired, and those we loved
loved joining in those random feasts,
our hunger and our waking joyfully enslaved.

And at your death, the urge to eat was gone.
No taste and no desire, no appetite
except to have you in my arms
and offer you your root and feast,
my body as the mother. And instead,
now full and empty, I gnaw a single hunger,
never sated, my only desire impossible.
So now, eating myself alive

I am your feast after all, though you
receive no nourishment. I am
a walking famine,
a feast without a guest.

 

[Tzara]

12

Confession

The parables in my church
are of finches with odd beaks
of twins in spaceships, clocks
that run at different speeds
in low- and high-rent cubicles.

Our ikons tend to be
Hermetic strings of symbols,
mere graphs and lines.
We Believers treasure these,
place them our sacred texts,
and turn to them for comfort

in our times of greatest need.
Our God is our belief
that though He's often wrong,
He always is correctable
with proper discipline and love.

 

[TheRainMan]

. . . wrong thread.

 

[4degrees]

14-13

weaving my way around
a pretty word, seeing it
from unobtuse angles
and the underside too
the one not seen by most;
this word is only whispered
in dim lighting, like
a closet. to identify it
is like having a sixth sense
evaporates upon contact
like the smoke rings i exhale
i put my finger through them
before they disappear.

 

[Sara Crewe]

12

When the beach drains
at dusk I am drawn
to its simple lines
of sand, sea and sky.
They remind me
of a newly opened box
of ice cream. Perfectly flat
with no mixing of the colours
that feed both eyes and mouth.

I am still. A predator
but I do not wait
to kill. I wait for the world
to go away, for the noise
to suffocate itself and allow
peace to surface on my skin
like air bubbles in the waiter.
The waves are gone.
and in their absence
the world seems delicate. A violet
curtain, a sheet of green
and a bed of white.
This is my room and here I sleep.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-5

Someone Else's Party

I bite
my lips
for luck.

My grail
is a plastic
wineglass.
My hands
land like birds.

No one
is staring
at me.

My smile
is a cloud of ink.
By the time
it diffuses
I have escaped.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-5

.....

 

[Tzara]

13

Determinism

You all know how Prometheus
pissed on Zeus,
stealing fire and meat and fat
for his poor clay toys,

birthed Athena
whacking his king in the head
with a sharp stone. You
motherfucker! Zeus probably thought,
in time, anyway, and finally
chained his sorry ass
in the Cockatoos or something,
some badass rocky place,
and sent a vulture to scrap and tear
at his unrepentant liver
every day. Ooh, our poor Titan!
all the colored girls sang.

Right. So like, how about me?
I'm the eagle—that's right—E-A-G-L-E,
you dumb bastards, sent each day
like plodding clockwork
to rip at my unsavory meal.
Call me Ethon, or Kaukasios,
or just call me vulture, as you have.
It won't much matter over time.
Just don't call me evil. It's
not my job. It is my fate.

I am tired of the taste,
the writhing table where I dine.
I lust for dead mice or fish or even
for a hungry day, fasting on a crag
and dreaming of heron's eggs. But
the fucking King of Gods says to me
His liver, everyday, for all eternity.
There has got to be a better way.

But better isn't always better,
or at least much so.
My better's Heracles, you know.

Go read our myth. I always end up dead.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-6

Manticore

Resist me, do not believe in me.
I am an impossibility
a flood on the 34th floor
an arctic mushroom, a leaf
in a meteorite. I am
unlikely. I am the exception
to your rules. I was conceived
in the dream of a god;
I can be divided by zero.
I rhyme with silver.
What I tell you
of earth and heart and thread
of death and art
cannot be true
and when I say love
love you
I am surely
wrong. I am a passenger
pigeon, nesting on your doorstep.
I am generations long,
I am fluent
in root languages,
I crossed the Pacific
in a papyrus boat,
I cannot be held in the hand.
Resist me; I cannot
possibly exist.

 

[4degrees]

14-14

you stopped reading, so
i stopped writing
a flame that shrinks
becoming tiny still
burns when i do that
mental feel-up
you kept me from detonation
for so long
just wanting to blow my
world wide open
bits of shrapnel imbedded
deep inside everything for miles
the only way to be assured
that i am still in you
that old claim still haunts me
all the intent and such
no matter how i try
to replace, rehab my ruined self
i am still shaped custom
for you alone.

 

[Sara Crewe]

13

He sleeps around the corner
in an alcove painted with a galaxy.
Purple on black, royal colours
that are alien among the grey
business suits worn
by all the other buildings downtown.
I noticed the mural before my eyes
moved to his body stretched out
on the sidewalk in a cursive
signature for his canvass. He is
illegible to me and lives
in another language
that I cannot hear
beneath my layers of comfort.

Between his cement dreams
I like to think he enjoys
the irony in painting
himself a curved ceiling of stars
when every night he sleeps
under the sky. I hope
one day his beatitude comes home
and that his art will continue
to hold him while he waits.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-5

.....

 

[unpredictablebijou]

3-7

Learning Chinese
a found poem

Outer Structures
Pubis and Mons: Yinmao, Black Rose, Hill of Sedge, Fragrant Grass
Outer lips: Jade Gate
Inner lips: Red Pearls, Wheat Buds
Lower meeting point: Jade Veins
Upper meeting point: Lute Strings
Clitoris
Hood: Dark Garden, God Field, Grain Seed
Crown: Hoju (“magical jewel of the dharma”)
Shaft: Golden Tongue, Golden Terrace, Jade Terrace, Little Boat
Vagina
Vestibule: Heavenly Court, Secluded Valley, Examination Hall
Corridor: Gate of Jewels, Jade Garden
Urethral sponge: Mixed Rock, Sun Terrace, Infant Girl
Taoist Eight Valleys (in cm)
2: Lute String
5: Water-Chestnut Teeth
8: Little Stream
10: Black Pearl
12: Valley Proper
15: Deep Chamber
18: Inner Door
20: North Pole
Uterus
Cinnabar Cave, Jewel Enclosure, Red Chamber
Sexual Fluids
Tide of Yin

 

[4degrees]

14-15

your sister?
no, my friend.
ahh, very nice.
even in an unsuspecting
middle eastern style
laundromat, she causes
a commotion.
even if no one else were there,
she still would.
yow.

 

[manipulatrix]

2-6

.....