30 Poems in 30 Days

[4degrees]

19-26

poems evade me
more than the usual;

i think of so many
romantacised fantasized
visually stunning phrases
the kind that make
ears drip with
a lusty honey
while burning from behind
heat creeping across
the back of a neck, between shoulders
down a spine
and i could write one
just like it, just right now
if only you were mine.

 

[hmmnmm]

1-15

the dream is hazy and crazy as they mostly are
images, phrases, and oddities fade even now
if i recall the location seemed to be iceland
which was really inconsequential since the setting
was indoors, a coffee shop sort of establishment
someone, I think the chick who wore management attire
chastised me for something, there were sheets of paper,
of course in the dream the writing on the papers expressed
nothing recognizable to one in real life awake
Oh, and it seems I was back in line, for an espresso
refill, the cup big, oh, and something about my flippancy
I don't know what I expected to find on her papers,
for my intent was not at all of a nosy nature
perhaps her point was, just because her papers were within
reach, it was rudeness on my part to assume I was free
to fondle and finger them, whilst waiting for a refill

 

[Remec]

2-27

There once was a man who was glum,
he had forgotten the Coke for his rum,
"What do you think
I should add to my drink,
that won't make it taste like my thumb?"
----


(hey, silly works too, right?)

 

[4degrees]

19-27

my poem is so hard
come by, tonight
in this alone place
awaiting another
night next to you
with miles between us
as we lay silent

 

[Angeline]

2-6

Our summer romance
never came. You wrestled
the air conditioner into the window.
We wore sweaters, slept
under the quilt in stubborn denial.
The landlady thinks we're crazy
but we pay the rent on time.

In October we are vindicated
by patchwork trees crisp
against the ocean sky
where leaves surf in drifts
orange, olive, brown,
the last silk of green fallen
to the Stillwater.

I daydream of Atalanta maybe
too boyish for a girl too girlish
for a boy and chasing apples
and marriage so late in the year.

The little Macouns are more
alive now in my autumn
allspice, molasses, cinnamon
baking up cold promises.

 

[hmmnmm]

1-16

another in the dream or it may have been
the chick attired managerially
allowed insider info that she was a cola
drinker, the significance of which eluded
me, until she explained without explicits
and I learned via mind waves as dreams do oft
allow, that the significance regarded
flavors one's taste buds may savor, meaning
she seeped coke, and any taster familiar
with colas could easily verify her flavor
was as coke, not powder coke, but the sweet
beverage, coke. More like a cola syrup.
Fizz-free, she. The dream ended before I could hope
for a taste test invitational verification.
However, when I began caffeinated
preparations, a dawn blinked. I recalled the night
of happy hand sniffs 'neath the stars, the dipper
that had come, lost for adequate words, never mind
poetically metered. But... there, in the frig: Fresca

 

[hmmnmm]

1-17

Dirt road voices, accents loose,
clash in city halls.
Orangutans leer, fondle marble
public figures’ privates
spewing spent chump change.
Acoustic arts reverberate,
phrases shout, repeat,
repeats fade, echo
fake. Lips drip, ears ring,
deadened brains crash.

 

[WickedEve]

1-18

sweeper


he was past
and ripper, jack-off
to moribund, sex flesh.
he has been serial

and surgical, reincarnating
into another life, street cleaner,
once again.

 

[Remec]

2-28

Good girls don't
is what she sang
under her breath as
she made her way

towards meeting me
and doing it anyways
in the lazy weekends
we had before school

began once more. Like
another song said, we
weren't in love, something
that never quite rang true

no matter how many
times we said it, or
thought it, or tried to
prove it by leaving as

quickly as possible. No
cuddling, no aftersex
kisses or endearments,
beyond a look or a touch.

Which, sometimes, is all
we really needed from
each other. To see or feel
that someone cared.
----

 

[strangedaze]

1 - 1

Waiting
Checking
Pacing
Wondering
Where are you?
Filling Time
Meaningless tasks
Folding
Washing
Fixing
Replacing
Shopping
Preparing
Eating
Busy Work
Wondering
Who are you with?
Pondering
Wasting Time
Feeling Gaps
The space between words
Moments between hours
Pauses between breaths
Urges
Needing
Sensing
Recalling
Remembering
Envisioning
Entwining
Knowing
Wondering
When will you call?

 

[4degrees]

19-28

thirty poems means nothing
trust is relative
my list of don't haves
is long and good

fall sweeps the city
in a blaze of hot color
every step crunches
smoke tinges nostrils
with a sweet sting
unlike spring-
this time i smile
while all things sleep
or die

 

[Angeline]

2-7 Three Tanka

~not sure if they work, but thanks to Equinoxe and Senna Jawa for the lessons~

1
A blizzard of paper
Where my teardrops are rain
The curtains are shut.
Tonight I collect every photo
Alone you are still lost.

2
I awaken early.
The Sun is still the Moon.
A black dress hangs
Crepe settles over the mirror,
Clouds settle over the morning.

3
Everyone is smiling,
Father toasts abundance.
We pass platters of food.
How can we swallow
Such emptiness?

 

[AChild]

5-1

phone afraid

pit full of lonely voices

the person that I want to be
can charm robes off zealots
-still looking up at that goal

the teeth grow with the length
out of touch
magnets drawn to vein
flush skin brings out the guilty
-----------
of this regret I can not be easy
no letters stack behind the Child
like mountains made of sand
to test the sands of time

Stories exist in the matter
living things with no likes
in the darkness they chase me
screaming "let me go"

to spill ink
to describe them
disappears joints and skin
horror mounts with the telling
being not complete or not exact

the ones that get all done
never vanish,
one claw remains
built to twitch
and
scrape the grey meat

 

[Remec]

2-29 Halloween Musings

waiting for dusk never
seemed to take so
long, I'm not sure Time
ever passes so slowly--
not counting the space
between bedtime and
Christmas morning--

but we ate a light dinner
and added some finishing
touches--a dab more faux
beard, a smidgen of extra
Karo blood or green fleshtone
to what had already been
disturbed by walking about
the house, or killing time on
the porch--pillowcase in hand

until Mom said we could go,
and off we went through the
neighborhood, trodding our
way amid dewy grass, up and
down driveways both paved
and gravel-lined to ring bells
or knock on doors shouting
the usual challenge and hoping
none of us would end up saying
the saddest words of the holiday,

"I got a rock."
-----

 

[hmmnmm]

1-18

Forced by mores
to grapple vascular
instincts amoral,
trainers adept, milk
muscular impulses.

 

[AChild]

sorry 4-2

as if any one was watching
the faithful are the guilty look ones.
---------------
Do you eat to live or do you live to eat?

Do you work for sex or does sex work for you?
---------------
Forgetting there are sides of me
with in my head the blood pools
bursting with new colors,
each a voice speaking human names

every time I get close to those
dialects
my spit gets hard

drooling clumsy
raveling the worst of me away
pure is the soft home spot

tangled in my mixed world
head space bubbling over
spilling mechanisms
into play through work

a simple machine
ink thinking
pulse me up a fifth artery
when in the afternoon sun
I'll leave black dew trails
on leaves of grass

dismissal of my inner world
leads to chaos, levels boo murder
heart beats influx till strain winkles
on the curves

I must bloom for the colors
and pimp out the painted hallways

 

[4degrees]

19-29

loud words, spoke from
the soul-holder
with such unrestrAined passion
fearless about future pain
these compulsive truths
lead unto, again and yet
again
and yet undoubtedly,
when that strong feeling
is anchord in his lower belly
it happens all again
one day one will toss
away the veil
stop with the denial
and hear these things said
about love and devotion
but somewhere sometime
the feel of toenails digging
into a damaged spine
drawing blood with every step,
was rejected
she was here in this place
enough to easily see
that a man of intention
with weeks of words
embracing each defect
wants to only bring smiles
wrapped in ribbons
now giving up seems the
only choice
surely it would be seen
by now, if she
wanted love like that.

 

[Angeline]

2-8 Patriotism

We don't dare compete
with suffering. When we close
the curtain we pretend
not to see the green
flower trapped in frost.
We bury our humiliation
in nakedness and cover
our faces in victory. We wave
flags frozen on the edge
of consciousness and cheer
our incurious hubris
in rebel yells to the edge
of extinction.

 

[4degrees]

19-30

like bad movies
like love that fades to
boredrom then indifference
like night after night of
murdered words posing as prose
i just wish to make my exit
mostly unnoticed,
like the entrance 30 days ago
until the next time
life sticks needles in my head
and pries poems from
a place where there are none.

 

[hmmnmm]

1-19

You know how it is when strangeness takes control
of your life but it happens so fast and it carries
you for a ride so continual you get no chance
to stop, take your mind out of the situation,
and digest, really digest what’s happening?

When you do get it,
it being the chance,
you wish you had not because
reality is just too much
rationality to begin to tolerate,
because you can’t detach, not really.
Not cleanly, not completely.

Objectivity
blown to bits,
flown the coop,
and impossible
to be free to choose
that option ever again.

Nothing quite so strange
ever happened to me, at least
not that I’ve had the guts
to step back, look at, detached, at least
not that I consciously know of.

But I think there’s gotta be some great prose
or poetic or poetic prose
potential in the idea.
Purely fictional
a masturbatory fantasy.
Gotta be.

 

[Remec]

2-30 Storm's Wake

sun-faded
remnants,

bob in the jetties
left behind,

wind-torn,
rain-soaked
pieces of separating
paper, broken
ink--lost memories,

misplaced dreams,
dislodged
futures
-----

 

[Angeline]

2=9

What is a poem
but my invention
of the universe, invitation
to a vision I inhabit,
frailties I sweep behind my lashes.

What are these words
but redirection of your focus
to a backyard, to a willow
of languid fables slipping surely
not a window on my rage
if you fail to understand
that tree was my only
tangible memory of her
shadow in the lamplight
as she bent to a book.

What is it
that a poem does
but scatter syllables left to right,
breadcrumbs out of the forest
or a stony path into the labyrinth
of my narratives, a recapitulation
for me for you a vaguely familiar
tale full of sound and fury
and you know how that one ends.

 

[AChild]

4-3

Kurt is inspiration
master of the quick change
he spans the universe
and whispers it to me like
blood vessels
plaque and all
------
plaque and all

is here by copyrighted
for t-shirts, tattoos, and erotic
drive in cinema only
as a testament to my franchise
I'll never again brush my teeth
-------
wisdom leaking
the average hole whole
slipping dark regrets
down the time line
wishing on the clock like a star
crawling ways to heaven through idea
lighting for the knowledge
pain
cause knowledge is the growing of new skin
blush for fucks sake for the same reason
light, in the most powerful shiver
the wind is with this one
the timing which is everything deepens
on the peer spective of the the crowd

the talented few stay back
with average soars to meet the
vacuum in content
why aren't there more
Artful Dogers

let me fell your world
through a bridge that
begins with me and ends with
you

you have to be willing to think
that I am out there in the cold
a choir with no preacher
or at least told the story in a different way
to catch and tame my wild ear

 

[hmmnmm]

Paws knew
she had no chance
her late
season yellow
laces
stripped her limbs bare
shivered

October cool
blew her yellow
laces aslant
one fell
angled steeply

Her lace
was used, was spent
useless
vulnerable
taken
and forsaken


(oops: 1-20)

 

[Angeline]

2-10 America The Beautiful Terzanelle

November's spectacle unfurls, behold the clacking train.
Irrevocable, inevitable this politic of vise
to squeeze a nation bloody, to its knees, rapt in pain

of feverish newscycles, a Babel of market price.
Now we are unmasked, nothing hides the naked face.
Irrevocable, inevitable this politic of vice

and innuendo, the crescendo of a mob agog at race,
a mad common denominator, jingoistic pride.
Now we are unmasked, nothing hides the naked face,

still I cannot look away, I am your broken bride
America the beautiful wreck of squandered hope,
a mad common denominator, jingoistic pride

where strange fruit bloomed, now pray for flowers on the slope
of years to come. Only cynical romantics seek to dream
America the beautiful wreck of squandered hope.

Summer's over. Put away the fireworks and flags, ice cream.
November's spectacle unfurls, behold the clacking train
of years to come. Only cynical romantics seek to dream,
to squeeze a nation bloody, to its knees, rapt in pain.