30 Poems in 30 Days

[wildsweetone]

17

it sits above the road on a hill,
an All Hallow's dream home
with its once white weather boards
and red corrugated tin roof
that lets in the stars
and the rain. i wonder
who lived there, a lonely spinster,
or a family with children who bounced
on their beds and raced
around the rooms. i wonder why
it sits empty, this house, a clump
of barren bones and boards
that once kept love and laughter
within its walls. now the lace curtains
hide the inside from outsiders, keep
away the ghosts and their cries
from passersby. the garden
holds no cheer, no false promises
of beauty to divert the eyes.
the house paint seems to pause in its peel,
listens to the silent sounds within
and to the race of the sun
beyond its barbed fence boundary.

 

[wildsweetone]

18

limbo time is back
you are halfway here
and halfway there,
the jam between two slices of bread,
the jelly in a doughnut
that always seems to disappear
just when you're getting the hang of dangling,
the hang of licking it out with your tongue tip.
it does no good to listen to music.
there's no sympathetic ear
to hear your jitters, to commiserate
or compensate for you
running between the drops of a rainbow.
you just run, and slide into the centre
pages of a diary where there is a bridge
over the black river
that floods forever.

 

[wildsweetone]

19

it is the end of an era.
a passing from stepping in footprints
to walking on virgin sand,
from guiding the young
to steadying the old,
a closing of one book
to an opening of another
with pages unread,
unwritten,
yet to be lived.

 

[wildsweetone]

20

I see him now and then, walking
along the edge of the road
collecting empty tin cans, awkwardly.
He leans heavily on his cane, disability bends
his back stiff as if the collection of one can
takes more strength than kneeling
to pray.

fist crushed tins on the roadside bank
glare bright under the midday sun.
not even the magpies collect them.

i caught myself wishing
they were not there,
that our clean and green image
included every single verge,
every single wood plank fence.

and then i realised that if it did,
this man's pockets
would be dollars lighter, his time
would be slower moving, his interest
might well remain within the four walls
of his hospice.

 

[wildsweetone]

21

once were ocean surfers

in through the not closed window
enters the sunday drivers
with tanned right forearms
on their car door frames,
their stereos committing that thundering pulsing
rape of the countryside, their smoke
not screening the deluge of graceless rage
that stabs the field grass and stands
like misplaced stone markers
on the edge of the road. Crossings
for Spring ducklings are lined up
in the cross hairs of window wipers
and dash. Sniping remarks
and blatant rude gestures
scuttle the birds, the drivers are blind
to their fright. their city thoughts
reside in my not closed eyes.

 

[wildsweetone]

22

work thoughts

#
flowing into the sunrise
- a metal river




#
seething with life
a molten flow
follows the course
of the valley,
one tributary of four
pouring forth
to swell the king tide.




#
sunset beckons -
the sun takes back
today's gold rays

 

[DeepAsleep]

1

1.

I often lose track of whether I'm writing
about you
or God.
You're both grace,
you're both gone. It's funny,
I leave you both the same messages:
"Hey. It's me. Look, I know
I've been distant, lately, but shit's been rough, just
call me back,
ok?" And
you both know I'm selfish, but listen:
I scored a free ticket to a concert and
I went, wrestling
with my ideas about pop music,
but wanting, just for a night,
not to feel like my world ended
at the front door.
As one part of ten thousand,
I called out, "I wish you were here."
and the fleeting pop-sadness of so many
voices said that, here,
in the dirty sweat and the strained vocal chords
here in the heat, here with sun burnt arms,
with tears cutting clean tracks in the days dust,
that none of us knew the difference between you
and God.

2. In which a failed relationship is likened to Hamlet, with all appropriate melodrama.

Ophelia, I feel that
I've failed you,
face down in a lake.

The crown you could have worn
if I'd been less obsessed,
would not have been October tears
winding through your hair,
soft, brown and dead.

I was never anyone's knight but my own
and you've done this to save yourself
from saving me.

3. A different girl, a different time

She says,
"If we made a baby, we,
(you and I and possibility)
we could leave this town
and we'd have nine months to get
"anywhere, but here"
out of our system.
Can't you see it?
A convertible and two mouths
thrown up to bite the sky?"

All I could say was no,
but it wasn't me
who walked away.

 

[wildsweetone]

23

it is so different,
a house on the beach
bathed in a peach sunset,
peace, different to the stark white
stiff hospital bed
where you waited for Doctors
to tell you you would be okay
or you would not, waited
for test results to be returned
from tubes taken and given
that might limit your days.
it is so different,
to sit back
and let the world buzz
while monarchs migrate
and manti birth
in your garden kissed
with His blessing.
it is so different, so much better,
and so right.

 

[DeepAsleep]

2.

it had been at least two years
since London Bridge fell the fuck finally
down, and it would be another two
(or three) before
I started ignoring liars
in favor of threatening their pants
with fire

and it was summer, somewhere
between may's long division and august's
American History,
between a brand-new huffy &
Wile E. Coyote, ACME plans to dig
THE
COOLEST
FORT
EVER
in the side of the hill next to my house.

Three months spelled out forever,
like eternity marched in rows of sunny days
& I measured the distance between here and infinity
by counting the number of banana freezie pops
I had to eat in order to get a new box
(so I could start on the blue ones, again.)

I picked mulberries so I wouldn't have to go back
inside & little league taught me
not to close my eyes when fear played
the shivered xylophone on my spine.

The 4th of July was my summer mountain.
I raced up the side as fast as a
new bike could take me,
rocking the handlebars back and forth
like steep summer hills were the reason
I had to wait so long for one night
when i could point at the sky and say,
"This is how I feel, look,
this is my heart beating,
you can see it, tonight."

I could still see August and school nights clearly
on the far side of forever,
past that first kiss & the way she tasted,
past the days spent unbraiding firecrackers
until the silver tips of my fingers could've
snapped sparks from hot summer concrete.

summer takes months to climb -
looking down the side, at the lawns you'll mow
and the fireflies you'll trap
(fireworks in glass jars)
we sometimes find that heaven is finite

mountains don't rise up in June, anymore,
but I've still got a pocketful of mulberries &
a freezer full of freezypops
that taste like a color, not a fruit.
as long as I know a girl
who will lean over my handlebars and
kiss me on a dare
it'll always be summer,
somewhere.

 

[wildsweetone]

24


i followed a path that curved
around a curing pond,
led into The Hub, a hive
of cafes and student computers,
through a glass walkway,
and out the other side
where word-laden shelves still wait
for my glance. I followed
a path that led me
where never I had been before,
and a monarch followed me.

 

[Liar]

1

Ok, might as well try this again. This one from the passion thread...


Growing up on a plain

We used to picture ridges hovering
on the horizon, snaked wall
monuments on the edge of vision,
anything to stop us sliding off
the curved earth.

We used to lean forward tip-toed
to feign angle against the road
and walk huddled, to hide
from empty miles behind
wheat stems, to cower
from nosy crows,
and give weather bereft
of the element of surprise
a fighting chance.

We used to lay silent
side by side in the perfect center
of everything, and wait for someone
to screw the lid off
the sky.

 

[DeepAsleep]

3.

ain't it a love story?


she always reeked of fear,
the stale sweat of last night’s
beer, cigarettes,
sharp winter wind,
the irregular dab of perfume.
more than her footsteps,
her crow’s voice,
the smell gave her away.
car doors opening couldn’t kill a
nine year old’s awkward sleep,
but the rush of wind created by
the sudden slam
carried the cold reek of her into
every dream that was always
two shy steps away from fingers
too short to hold on, in the first place.

“Here, hold my beer.”

Ain’t it a love story?

the first fist is the hardest,
the second is just,
the third, merely,
the last;
they’re all the last,
and she gives me a warm A&W,
tells me what to say to the cops and stays out
all the next night, anyway.

it is a tender deceit,
to be young-
powerless to keep her
from being your whole world.
mother stretches six letters
into a definition that ought to
encompass more than senselessness.

yet, here there is nothing.
rationality owes nothing to mothers,
or drunks.

Ain’t it a love story?

it’s the waiting that makes you crazy,
silence sharpening towards frantic clarity,
no one talks about the waiting,
hours in cars, bars, the living room,
ticking seconds leaving long tracks in the dirt
behind the little hand,
silence outpacing every thought
coming faster than the next and
what if, what if, what if,
what if she doesn’t come home,
and god I’m so tired, what if what if

what if she comes home?

how many hours until the screaming
stops, how much music through
how many sets of headphones
before an uninterrupted night’s sleep
shows up like the football Lucy
held for Charlie Brown?

How many times can it be your fault
how many promises of murder in your sleep
how many nights gone at the bar
how many fucks in the living room
how many dirty little chores
(-put this in his gastank, that fuck
that queer, that bastard, how dare he
leave me alone,
teach him, put a note on his car,
that mincy faggot, that asshole,
how dare he, how dare he
how dare he) leave me
alone, (you saw what he did,
saw him poison me, saw it, you said you saw it
i know he’s buttfucking that Jerry,
they’ve always been faggots, how dare he,
break his window, baby, do what
your mother says how dare he
leave me alone)

Ain’t my hands dirty, for you?
if you're alone, I don’t want you
close to me, don’t be
my ma,

she gets this way,
i’ll stay at your house, next time,
she don’t like it when I stay
out late, I’ll do better
next time, I can’t,
I’m sorry, christ,
ain’t it a love story?

 

[wildsweetone]

25

i want to scrapbook you
but can not figure out
how to place your warm heart
between the pages of a book.

i do not want to leave it open,
a coffee table book, there,
for all to flip through
in bored moments. you

didn't bore me, you loved me
layered me with spring blossoms,
with strong summer leaves,
with the broken bark

that crumbles as autumn arrives.
i look for you in winter, remembering
how you managed to delight
those shadowy corners

with your touch, your smile.
these days, your soul
looks back at me, reminds
me that grace comes in silence,

and in tiny raindrops. it comes
in wind, we watch it move
between trees, brush them aside

as it passes. Grace comes too
in the blessing of a child's smile
an innocence that once we wore.

i want to scrapbook you, but
now understand that you lay
between the gentled waves
that helped smooth the valleys
on my palms.

 

[Liar]

2

You stepped out of a back seat dense with torched words and charred music bending sensitive speakers out of shape, burst into my three feet safety zone and demanded the restraining order revoked, wedged your presence into my balance, as if you had that right once more. You wore a purple, white and charcoal map to the stars under a transparent robe of cutting edge will and four letter words, you spoke of wondrous, dangerous things in an alien accent, and an almost shy pink tongue wet your wicked grin, pretending it was mine. A well rehearsed beacon of barely contained want, a smoke-and-mirrors show for less perceptive days.

But there's no stopping your left foot from tapping a bee dance story far removed from the sweet venom pouring out of your mouth.

Whether you'll stab me with an open palm or slap me with a stainless blade this time, there's kevlar and iodine just beneath the deceptive soft tissue, and it's been years since I remembered how to bleed those pretty puddles that you used to jump in with such innocent glee.

Come inside and scream your senses smooth again, I can be your sparring dummy, play your voodoo cushion if it does the job. Just don't think you're fooling anyone, you wrote the manual and taught me so well, every nuance of your sickly sweet melody, every sliver of breath you wrapped your beauty in to avoid being human. But you always were, and still, and you'll wake up tomorrow, the taste of scotch and sweat still clinging, stretch sore limbs to the ceiling, and soak up the dawn.

Then leave me where I lay, cut and bruised, but never broken, to wait another year.

 

[DeepAsleep]

4.

Last night, I went on a date,
complicated by the fact that I don't date,
very much, and get completely knackered trying
to invent conversation that I think ought to be witty
and wind up sounding like I'm trying to come up with
shitty t-shirts:

"How many vegetables had to die for your stupid salad?"

She doesn't laugh, and I'm caught somewhere between
thinking that bombing this badly on a date is
HILARIOUS
and being as uncomfortable as
Strom Thurmond at an Ani DiFranco concert.

Part of me wants to change shirts to:

"I fuck on the first date"

But, while I always want to see what's at the bottom of the cliff
i'm not always interested in walking,
& I've bruised my face against too much pavement
trying to leap tall buildings from the top,
not the ground and
this backwards superman shit
has got to stop,

so I try to loosen up.
I drink a beer

or two

ok, seven:

"Where is your God, now?"

She wants to talk about her favorite football team
and I can't stop snickering every time she opens her mouth
because I thought that was my line, we've switched
teams, here, it's all knocked up, it's all weird, see I had it in mind to
reply to her with a firm yes when she brought up
equal treatment because:

"This is What A Feminist
Who Fucks on the First Date
Looks Like"

but she's talking about building decks and
the only steady thing about me is the way
I'm drinking & I'm desperately beckoning the
waitess for the check and she wants to know if
I want to get
tattoos.

Yes,

yes, I want tattoos,
I want a map of Easter island
on my back and a thug life tattoo on my stomach and
barbed wire around my penis because when I got a
boner it would stretch into a picket fence and that's fucking funny
and something wholesome on my thigh (Like a rose, or some shit) and if I were an actual canvas, no artist would
touch me because I'm too hairy and

she still doesn't think I'm funny.

 

[wildsweetone]

26

sometimes i think you want me to be a bitch
to wear red and grind black heels into your hand
when you prostrate yourself on the concrete.
i think you want me to delve deeper, to carve open
my veins so that you can see for yourself
the red i bleed. i am no different to you
except that i bleed longer, it stands to reason
that i must. you have not been lower
than the ground. i was swallowed,
forgot the blue of the sky was not the same
as the shawl on my shoulders. i watched
the roots of flowers crawl upwards,
watched worms as they tunnelled
in their direct route through me, cored
holes in what was left of my shrivelled heart,
my knocked about soul that will no longer stand
to be stamped out. you might want the bitch
but i am not looking to wear black.

 

[DeepAsleep]

5

people won't tell you:
"he'll never bring you a fistful of sex organs,"
but they'll tell you i've fucked, like
their hearts weren't cruel-injected
boredom engines pumping xenon
into their steel belted mouths;
i don't want to buy you flowers.

i want to find you,
wildflower and smiling,
end my days roadmapping the stretchmarks
i imagine hiding in the hooks of your hips,
lie only to the people who tell you
passion is a cliche' that is boring
when used in a proper sentence;
i don't need a mother.

i am not hunting for a wife,
i want someone to hold my hand
while i do it myself
and i'm afraid it's you, afraid it's not, that
you'll bloom and i'll miss it
and no one will tell you what it smelled like
when you finally smiled;
i'll never buy you a collection of dying.

i am a fistful of rumor.
i have not gone to wildseed and sky,
but i once loved Passion. i love you, again,
i'll bloom beside you.
loan me your seeds,
i'll plant them back to you.

 

[Liar]

3

Jackson Pollock makes an omelette

Two parallell strips
of bacon on the left,

three onion rings
intersecting
to the right,

and a perfect corona
of evenly spaced mushrooms
along the edge.

Cause dammit, there's a place
and a time

for everything.

 

[wildsweetone]

27

i watch you return,
need no powdered plant root
to open my eyes to your beauty
to the cool touch of your caress
on my cheek. the soft breeze
of your breath on my earlobe
is my drug. i wear you as my wreath,
my necklace of winter, my reminder
that rest is not eternal.

 

[DeepAsleep]

6.

This might be a test.
Please sharpen your pencils
in the eyesockets of your weaker classmates.
DO NOT
pick up your testing booklets until
you have finished destroying your will
to change. When you are clean and standard,
you may begin.

Pencils up.

Jeremy has 10 condoms and no sense of who he is.
What does he have left if you subtract the spoon-fed
model of propriety he's been presented all of his life?

Please solve for identity.

Pencils down.

Misplace your conscience.

Pencils up.

Kathy has 5 fingers and 1 throat.
What is the sum of 1/5 of Kathy's fingers
and the only integer she can use to scream?

Please carve your answer into the back of
the student in front of you
and show all Kathy's work.

Pencils down.

Do you all have the same frame of reference?
Are your opinions anonymous?
are your dreams dead?




Pencils up.

Laynie can consume half her bodyweight in alcohol
before passing out. If Laynie weighs half as much
as her ability to make it through the night,
how much alcohol must she consume
to make avoidance a viable option?

pencils up
this is not a test.
pencils down
this
is not
a test
pencils up

If Tommy is speaking at the speed of, "Please"
and is only interested in dividing the knees
Jenny is using to prevent multiplication,
how many times must Tommy call Jenny a bitch
before she does something she will try to pretend
never happened?

pencils
UP.
If success, divided by determination, equals
how willing you are to sacrifice others
on an altar consecrated
with the blood of the rejected
how many human hearts does it take
to build a ladder to heaven in order to find
a better answer?

pencils
down.

 

[Liar]

4

Lumps

This coffee will stick
to the roof of my mouth,
cling candy greedy to my tongue.
Because somewhere between sugar lump

1 and 2,

I lose count,
ripped from the imperative task
of not overdosing the precious reagent

by sky blue nail polish on an acetone dried digit
that signs it's name in non existent dust
between our cups

and that lean voice,
carried in the sudden freak silence
of everyone forgetting to speak at once,
declaring

He likes it when I finger his ass.

As if it was a bloody choice
of breakfast cereal.

And even as I blink
between two heartbeats that try to occupy
the same spot in space and time,
and even as I think:

I wonder where that blue nail has been,
and if she files it down
before the plunge.

but say,

Jeez twinkie, that's too much information
for this lousy a latte.

my forgotten hand goes through
the same phantom motion,

lump
after lump
after lump.

 

[wildsweetone]

28

in the space between the last quarter
and the new moon, lays uncertainty

the moon did not cast shadows.
it did not appear
as i lay tossing and turning
wondering if the walls
were shifting in, or
if it was a simple matter
of meditation and prayer
that would shape a bent horizon
tilted in such a way that the sea
drained itself, poured out
the old sunsets and stilled
as the new laid paths across waves
yet to be navigated, yet to be gathered
in the silver arms of the moon.

 

[DeepAsleep]

7, and i'm outta gas for the week. oh, day of rest.

christopher walken's advice to a young man


Kid, you're going about it all wrong;
you're stumbling ar-
ound, like someone's going to
hand you an instruction booklet.

This
is life.
There is no
manual.
You don't even always get hope.

But if you're lucky,



there's a woman.

 

[Liar]

5

You can taste the impact
of Gadamer on Foccault,
feel the tingle of grounded theory
on your eyelashes, raise Cicero
from the grave and rattle him
a steel caged match against
Bush, Bono or the blogosphere.
You have a syringe shot
of Lao-tzu in your left arm,
and a smiley square patch
reciting Leviathan under
your tongue. You gauge the
discourse impact of a fifth
level correlating statement
and write essays on the
entymology of a sigh.

But you never learned to dive
and you never kissed that girl.
Days still slide you by,
you twist and turn to
snap fragments of life
out of the confusing swirl,
and stare until they fade
in your hands.

 

[wildsweetone]

29

they are stored in the gaps between words
that you say, hidden messages
that denote the bone-picked level
you have attained, the level that delineates
the abundance of catastrophic calamities
that rose as an incoming tide to smother you,
to drown you, but failed
as you've since shown with your orange jacket
and short blond-dyed hair, scratching
your way back to the top.
you've learnt how to smile,
how to accept you don't have to clamber
over each and every flesh clump
lining the path you need to walk. you pat backs
and keep a pleasant front,
an unassuming front
that holds the next ladder rung firmly in your sight.
well above theirs.