30 Poems in 30 Days

[butters]

cheating - using the all of a sudden passionately one here as


eight


he lights her mind
electric lights chasing
chasing
like the lights that dance atop tsunamis
a matter of matter
in motion
or a mind
mindful of electronic fields
till it rides her - a surfer -
hair standing on end
waiting for her wave to break

 

[PandoraGlitters]

wish might
kiss night
hold tight
locket love

lock me in
outside cold
space expands

contract around
this tight fist
bumping out
pressing inoutinout
traffic of blood
below and above

might wish
wish might

knock like a bad engine
knock like a Saturday Witness
knock like cops in the day
before they just broke
the door

all you need is a knock

I will let you in

 

[Micahb2]

Occupy

Ten. Choose 2. There are 45
ways to choose two different pieces
of candy out of 10.

Ten choose 2. Let's be "You" and "I"
in the first choosing. Next we can pick
"Bluebottle" and "Dragonfly";

After that we can choose between
"Picasso" and "Braque." Or, I can be
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" and you can be "...Again."

At night, those masks are at the foot of the bed, on the
pile of ribbons, the curtains still, Then one of Us will lay across
a milk white plain pouring down silver.

 

[RedButterflySlut]

Eight: First Love

As a young teen I had my fortune told,
The psychic man held my hand and said,
Beware of boys with deep, green eyes.

Years went by, I became a skeptic.

It was nighttime when I met him,
He was drunk and rough.
Oh, how I loathed his presence,
For four years he chased-
A determined satyr to my nymph,
I never learned how to turn into a reed.

My legs grew tired, his seduction went on,
In a poor moment of logic I gave my body,
He gave me desperate nights of passion.
The morning light made his green eyes glimmer,
Deep, like the forest after long hard rain.
Only my body, nothing more I swore,
But the chase wasn't done,
And I still don't know how to become a reed.

His deep green eyes haunted me
Maybe I had misjudged his playboy ways,
Confusion put cracks into my ice-cold walls
With perseverance he melted them away.
Without my consent I fell,
Deep and far and fast,
There was no coming back.

He didn't feel the same,
Only saw me as another girl to claim.

 

[RedButterflySlut]

Nine: Slut

In the darkened club
The butterfly collectors ooze pretentious slime,
Cover each passer by in green lies,
And oh, the lies he had for me.
I was too proud to stoop so low,
When he offered his number,
I asked him what for?
I'll never call it,
He slunk away in shame.
Time passed.

My heart got bitter,
I learned the meaning of being in love alone,
My pride shook, where was there to go but down?
The man I loved only loved my perversions.
One the butterfly collector called me again,
Tail between his legs,
Asked so tentatively if I'd play a little game,
Just a drink, he begged,
What did I have to lose? Just a few hours,
Maybe my body-
The man I loved wanted me to go further
So I did.

His kiss was too sweet
I told him to ride me like my lover did,
Hard, degrading, but not enough.
The butterfly collector of a hundred lovers feared me,
Out of place with my cold ways,
He could sense I was unimpressed
I told him to slap my face.
He did, his hesitance wouldn't subside,
But my self-punishment didn't work with him.
I had outgrown the wickedest wolf the club had to offer.

 

[Micahb2]

You

The columns that I stood up in that water
With these powdered hands will last

Until your face, in that mirror, on those waves
is finally seen for what it is.

A deft jingling of a set of keys in the entrance of the hotel.
A widening circle of white foam.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Sixteen

for mama

Oklahoma red ground
your soles wherever
landed or path

pieced section by section
county by county
from maps unfolded
countlessly until
raw lines intersected
every four by eight inches

habitually your thumbs swept
for porosity for the mouth
that swallowed whole the ancient garden
south of 35° N

your dreaming eyes scanned traps
that week's cuttings for good news

your sleeping pulse raced
the cost of casings
yet every morning you packed
peanut butter and jelly
watered the juniper
and laughed as if you meant it
at oilmen jokes

"Don't tell my mama I work
in the oil patch; she thinks
I play piano in a whorehouse."

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Seventeen

Wasp

the words you have written
succumb to chewing
softening in my mandible

in one language I am bee
in another wasp

in both languages I
jaw your language until
it becomes clay

we have made
a house

 

[butters]

nine



to peer into the pool
dip
notice how the light changes things
changes thoughts
is distraction enough
from finding the poem
waiting to be summoned
from a silty bed

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Eighteen

Fatigue sighs from my shoes
even before I am fully in.
Calendar screws up
its face at me (June even
sticks out its tongue!)
but there are friendlier
frames. In back I find it
tucked under mom and dad.

We emerge in a thin
Woolworth Photo Booth
Strip. I sat on your lap.

Vogue. Vogue. Vogue. Vogue.

Here I sigh as I sighed before.
If I were Mata Hari.
If you were Ingrid Bergman.

This is the one I cut for the locket
One side for Mata, the other for Ingrid.
They are hung from my neck
like hiccups. My throat opens
for the cure: when we talk it is always
lemon and bitters. I borrow
the face of May but I can breathe.

 

[Micahb2]

What understatement. Pennants are scattered all over the
face of the cliff.
I arrived days ago. Slipped in through a back way.
Past windows busting out with light.

The string of lights along the boulevard are audience-free.
I skip free, too.

Who will shoot first?
You can. I am bloodless.
When you hear the knock on the door
and I hear the trigger cock,

We will be in the same place as countless others.
How many grains, verbs will be sorted until we release
the locks, wash the levees clean?

 

[Micahb2]

The letter was nailed to the door when I got home.

"See the Sky about the Rain.
Regards,
Perish"

Concrete bats back at the low-hanging clouds.
The radio ticks off more sepia. Here, it's obvious

My love burns 12 paths at the same time. I am a crossroad
of baked stones and direction. I will close this house up,
turn the piano back, get back to you all at the same time.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

half a stone over 9
today I bike down
to whole numbers

pump the tire
forget Paris every time
you see a croissant
butter is not a memory
just a negligee of fat

your mouth should water
for me sans spread
we can glisten without
butter or even sunflower oil
just kiss me longer
not done yet

 

[Micahb2]

Common Place

I just thought, before boarding
that back in the hills
You mentioned your sister.
The rind of an orange was
On the table in front of you.

I was rolling a pinenut between my fingers
Listening. I tried to remember what
You said about her.

Instead, I was thinking of citrus and the
wooden deck of the room I was staying in.
What beauty and you didn't even blink.

 

[Micahb2]

Spectral

Your voice is a fine web.
"A rigging on a ship?"
So far from a coast
Lighthouses are still searching.
"That's okay."
The war outside
Is nothing compared to
"-The blue veins in my white hands?"
The clock ticking back.

 

[butters]

ten


each curve of line that never should lie straight
each swell of blood-pumped muscle catching light
each lift of head, of tail, and burnished mane
proclaims a haughty sense of reined-in power
a pent-up well of thorougbred on the move
as sun bright-sparks from dancing oil-lit hooves

the bold and focused eyes, the fluid ears
embrace each flying pennant and each cheer
this flesh, this skin, that takes the flying whip
still shivers should a dark fly land on it

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Twenty

Minute Maid minutes in the glass
knocked back twenty at least and at this
rate we could be in the nineties
by next week. It isn't the lemon

I miss nor the sugar. It is the wood porch
and leafy tree bright to blind in the lower
left hand corner which is where
I keep glancing because just
out of habit I look to the blind side

first. I am the woman who found panties
in the drawer. I am the woman
who reloaded the vanished download
despite the ensuing nightmares because
even if it might ruin everything

I would rather know. Always I would
rather know that thing I will someday know
so the elixir will take. I will drink deep
and look steadily into your warm brown eyes
and I will not flinch this time so please
tell me everything.

 

[Micahb2]

Under Way

Look, I waved my hand.
Traffic whistles by
I try not to look over my shoulder.
I clap for my team.

In the middle of the night.
That ink black night,
I ring a phone
in a hallway
That hollows out silence.
I count on this.
I call back.

 

[butters]

eleven


the clouds pile in
and i need a little traction
gotta crawl me outta bed
gotta get a little action
gonna write me down some words
gonna hope they wanna stick
before the grey screen stares
before the red light blinks

and it's raining hard again
washing mirrors of the mind
washing all the words away
in a poem i can't find
and somewhere there's a sun
and it's shining high and bright
but here beneath the clouds
just another long grey night

 

[davenobody]

ooops

 

[davenobody]

pumpkin blumpkin

I was sitting on the shitter,
playing with my spitter
when a knock came at the bathroom door
I yelled, "occupied", and could have nearly died when the door swung open any way

It was my girlfriend "Jo", who most of you probably know and she was grinning from ear to ear
She said, "I knew what you are doing
and it got my juices stewing, "how'd you like a little toilet head"?

I said, "yes please" as she sank down to her knees
and dove right in between my legs
She sucks likes a pro and before long I was ready to blow
but I was sitting there for a reason

At the same moment on that commode, I shoot and dumped a huge load
"Jo" was not very pleased
I said, Don't be mad pumpkin, you just gave your first "Blumpkin"
She didnt speak to me for a week

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Twenty One: Pie Chart vs. Mud Pie

picture a Venn Diagram
you know the two overlapping circles
graphic organizer for comparing
and contrasting

the left circle has the subheading
Mud Pie and the right has the sub
heading {my boss}'s Poorly Informed
Pie Chart and in the overlapping part
there is the subheading
same

right away you note most
density is there in same
for written there are

*imaginary ingredients
*perception is everything
*shaped like a pie
*made in a moment of whimsy
*teddy bear helped make it

written in the Mud Pie circle
*Teddy wanted seconds
*was fun to make

written in the Pie Chart circle
*lots of colors
*includes key
*lock is unidentified

{your boss here}

 

[Micahb2]

I have suffered through a pair of hands
that heckled passers-by, folded
in on themselves in
Oh, how ironic!
Irony.

Then passing through the front of the bank
They declared themselves
"Love."

That is how I become enmeshed.
I wanted to lend a hand.

They flittered about my mouth
brushing away, I am sure
imaginary crumbs. Safe deposit boxes
pulled in their tails. I went escrow.

After suffering through that, I watched Love
push through the revolving door and
out into the street where it was squashed in
a hail of safes.

This is when Chagrin stepped forward and said
"This is a hold up."

 

[Micahb2]

I want you to take this with you.
I want This to take you with it.
I want you to this Take.

It wasn't a dream, nor a flood.
I was slapping at the river
Raising the biggest catfish
I wanted them to hear me sing!

They peered from their watery pews.
I didn't care I was disturbing them.
I was in their line of sight. That's
all I wanted.

To be Here all at once. Forever and ever.
The mirror dust free.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Chapstick shared in a kiss of
unfurled tootsie roll. In whose
kitchen was your humanity
taught? From whom the impulse to chase
that silver ball between
flashing lights and
pin it still? Send it to heaven?

Tonight in my bedroom
the small orange trench coat
fits perfectly so long
as there is nothing underneath
but spare buttons. You'll see.