30 Poems in 30 Days

[ShyErraticTable]

3

Discourse on Method

Descartes knew doubt, as is well known,
but you have never given cause.
Your love's so obviously shown
Descartes would doubt his doubt was known.
No doubt our love has simply grown
without logic, without laws.
Descartes knew doubt, as is well known,
but you, my love, are never cause.

 

[beautyandwine]

one whole week!

2-7

Trust

This is precious;
I'll hold it in my palms gently
like a lightening bug
and try not to squash it
when I get too excited.

Such simple joy
to bare a quivering heart;
these wings stretch awkwardly.

I'm trying to hold
this wonderful secret
but it tickles!
It wants to burst forth and take flight,
brightness on a dark eve.

(c) TDP 2007

 

[Sara Crewe]

5-3

.....

 

[Unbridled_Passion]

1:4

blindfolded, walking
through the night
wondering, waiting
where are we going?

stopping, blindfold removed
behold, such a beautiful sight!

fireflies flickering
moonbeams filtering through treetops
a midnight picnic
so romantic

 

[beautyandwine]

2-8 (I tend to write around midnight).

Memories of Firsts

I closed my eyes
and sung along to the lyrics I knew
tapping bare toes
on a scratchy green comfortor
three hours away from home,
admiring the way the curls fell
and danced on your shoulders,
wishing I could be that cradled guitar
as your voice caressed the air.

Later we sit together indian-style,
your fingers brushing my cheek
as we laugh at bad cartoons
and reminisce.
Come time to leave, hands meet and
eyes search and linger,
flickering up once more
before you lean in
and stop time.

 

[champagne1982]

2007-1-3 (in with an hour to spare... Phew )

Rock and Roll

So, here I sit with my toes a-tappin'
and no, darlin', it ain't just clappin'
when your hands come together
with the beat along with those songs
of do wop diddy and oh my! Aint
she pretty 'nuff to eat? And ya ya ya
mister, I'm sure you know about Peggy
Sue and I just know your girl is leggy
and blonde with a poodle skirt
and crinoline that puts a bounce
in that pony tail flounce; when dancin'
on a moonlit night is absolutely romancin'.
Who said the 'fifties were sedate?

 

[Lauren Hynde]

1:1

Muses

I summon the muses, the women, the lovers.
From silence I summon little-death-rattles of sound as it speaks,
as it captures the essence of chromatic, atonal, pentatonic songs.
I demand for a refuge to stash in my volumes, my memories,
sonorities, textbooks, aggressions, world-view philosophies, bones.

I am torn, as the night settles in, between drinkers of fire,
of acid, of blood,
of lazy arousals in mornings of cold.

There are differences of texts, of souls, of paths,
of long readings and shouts.

To luck, leave no place.

In the twilight, I linger on shapes, on clothes, on skins.
On lips that warm up the tenderness.

There are passionate dresses and lipsticks
that inflame faces in search of blood-lacquered lips.

I prefer your eyes. They are the path I choose.

The fire.

 

[ShyErraticTable]

4

Taper

Our love was like a candle as it burned—
at first, an even steady flame that yearned
to consume the wick. There was no sputtered
nervousness about the warmth, no muttered
accusations, jealous looks. But it turned

wavering, drowned in long drips of wax, spurned
the needed trimming of the flame, which earned
it mere untended care. The flame guttered.
So love was like a candle and it burned,

and our thin hearts put out poor heat and churned
with anxiety and pain, as if worms
had planted larvae in our bones. Uttered
oaths we prayed, but speech was merely stuttered
ashy smoke. Our love flared out, and we learned
how love ends like a candle that's been burnt.

 

[Sara Crewe]

5-4

.....

 

[champagne1982]

2007-1-4

Leave Your Crutches By The Door

If the magnets shake your sternum loose,
there was something terribly wrong anyway.

Hop up here, hips here. Oops! Move back
a smidgen please. That's great.

Headphones? Rock? Good choice.

Four minutes for the first one.

Wails and hammering... That was Alanis
Morissette singing her anxiety...

Three and a half for this next scan.

Rattle and rumble a steady
hum in both ears and breast. BANG!
And again
the disembodied voice,

Are you okay in there?

Wave and thumbs up.

Good, two more.

Seven interminable minutes each. The thud and smash leaves relief in its wake that this is non-invasive.

Any chance you could say this was a better
result than that ominous popping sound
last week led me to believe?

Raised eyebrow,

Without losing my job?

Pfft.

 

[ShyErraticTable]

5

Leah's Ring

One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter for a monkey.
—The Merchant of Venice, III i

He had that ring of her before they wed.
Their loose daughter stole it, sped away.
Out of the country with her love, she fled.
He had that ring of her before they wed.
It was of special value. Leah's dead.
Was bartered for a pet, and daughter's play.
She gave that ring to him, before they wed.
The daughter stole it when she went astray.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

1:2

Suddenly, the Japanese moon
draws across the window
the three hills of a haikai
and you can then see
that its light, the circle
cut in half
by the concrete horizon,
is enough to oxidise the air
almost pink
and you can then see,
at dusk, how the summer
writes cities more legible,
though brief, over
foundations that float
around the nocturnal reader,
and are perhaps the image
of the half-circle that is missing
from the moon, on the horizon.

 

[Sara Crewe]

.....

 

[beautyandwine]

2-9

Beached

This day is cool and grey,
soft to the touch;
a vacant eye fruitlessly seeks
its final destination.

There are traces of
the last pathetic throes for the unattainable;
grasps and gasps for freedom
and succulent life.

Inside, maggots fester
and raw, red reality
stews, prepared
to collapse in the hot sand.

If kicked by some disrespectful child,
this thin rubbery skin threatens to split,
erupt the putrid stench, all-breath consuming,
as the facade falls,

And you will be left,
with the innards of this rotting sea
on your oceanfront property.

(c) TDP 2007

 

[champagne1982]

2007-1-5

Cliché

Don't limit your choices to a single
dish when you can dine at a buffet
there are as many choices
as there are trees in the forest
and one falls no one sees
since it didn't make a sound.

 

[ShyErraticTable]

6

Möbius Sonnet, on Finnegans Wake

a book that's filled with love and sex and puns.

See, there's a ladder, and a corpse, and more.
It's filled with neologisms galore.
The central motif: one broad river runs
all through this silly novel. Several score
of referents and allusions. No gore
that I remember. I forget. I'm dumb,
and not an English major, thank the Lord.
At end, your brain is spacey, very numb.

It's really Modernist, this book, because
it's written by James Joyce, a man who was
a genius, undergraduates are told.
His reputation, perhaps, was what sold
this novel. Maybe. Anyway, It's fun—

 

[champagne1982]

2007-1-6

Dog's Tongue (a companion to Cat's Paw)

Listen to a playful invitation
growled into somnolent lassitude.
Come swim, come swim. The lake
is quicksilver grey and waiting
for us to make a splash.
Eager tail wags gesturing to the cool
escape from city heat and grime.
Drooled ecstacy in a welcome home.
I haven't been this happy
since the last time I saw you!
Humid velvet heat in a joyful kiss,
the dogs' days of summer remind
us to gather on the beach.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

1:3

I

The poem
filters
each image
already distilled
by distance,
leaves it
clearer
although
inadequate
to the things
it tries to capture
from
the indifferent past.


II

Too bad
for things.

This
alcohol decanted
drop by drop
is drunk
and inebriates
a little
but
on the other hand
it purifies,
sharpens
the text's
lucidity,


III

returns
with more
intensity
the flames
no
but
that essence
almost vitreous
of shadow
and shine
they left
on your eyes.

Too good
for things.

 

[Sara Crewe]

5-6

.....

 

[Sara Crewe]

5-7

.....

 

[4degrees]

i can't remember what attempt this is,

so let's just call it 6-1 for the fun of it.

winter settles in, the cold
has only been here
for a month now
by a miracle of nature
the thaw has started
within; my blood flows again
turning from bleak blue
to that red
full of lifestuff as i
breathe you in
this long cold season
began last spring
hunger knotted my gut
auto-cannibalism felt like
the only answer
lest i starve, instead
i ate the stars, one by one
until they burned holes
ulcers on my soul
now healed, somehow
scars leave a maze of
waiting,
their ugliness looks painful
but they are numb
today i can forget
about the winter that
was nearly a full year long.

 

[ShyErraticTable]

7

Form Poet Blues

My baby, she done left me, and now I'm all alone.
My baby found a poet with some talent, not a clone.
No more triolets or sonnets. They'd be too blue in tone.

Not even couplets, 'cause in my cups, I'm not feeling very gay.
Nor even unrhymed tricets, can't write nothin' good today,
'cause I'm feelin' pretty bluesey, 'cause the booze has had its way.

If I could play a geetar, I'd be geetarin' up a storm
and I'd be singin', I'd be drinkin' from that bottle with the worm.
But I've nothin' but some silly rheumy lines that make me squirm.

My baby, she done left me, and now I'm all alone.
My baby found a poet with some talent, not a clone.
No more triolets or sonnets. They'd be too blue in tone.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

1:4

Steel in the forge of the dictionary,
words are made of asperities:
the first trace of their beauties
is the temper in verses necessary.

 

[champagne1982]

2007-1-7

January Tornado

spin me up a new one for another day
full of sexy hip sway swank
and capricious lust claimed comedy
spin me along the windy path
that curves and slips away
and twist me up all through the dark
until I beg for mercy and yield
to thrilling lip pressed kisses
spin me in dance and pray
a Dervish blessing to the wind.

 

[ShyErraticTable]

8

On the Monty Hall Problem:
Being a Sonnet for Thomas Bayes
in Envelope Form, with an Epilogue

Behind two doors there is a goat.
Behind one other is a blonde.
You pick door Three. I show you One
and ask, You want to change your vote?

This problem's not a simple one.
Each door was one-third chance at start.
That One is goat seems quite apart
from changing anything now, hmm?

If you think that, though, you are wrong,
and need to read your Reverend Bayes,
who showed how knowledge makes a change
and switching choice the stratagem
that gives by far the best of ways
to pick the blonde you can arrange.



Epilogue

If you trust neither head nor heart,
instead research the problem, then
you've two-thirds chance, which would be smart
to find a wife, not heaven-sent,
but one who's reasoned out instead.
So win! and take her straight to bed.