30 Poems in 30 Days

[AChild]

1-28

traffic
in the sun

schools out jams
on the radio

everything is sun shine
dancing in the heat wave

 

[vampiredust]

8-20

Barter

Josef always had a problem
with shekels. Miriam recalls
that during the yom kippur
war he preferred bartering

with anything than handling
coins or banknotes. Bread,
rougher than an old rabbi's
teeth, spent bullets, salt.

His father thought it odd
and told him to wander
in the desert, thinking its air
would cure him. Certainly,

it stopped for a while.
His sons grew strong. He
bore a daughter. Nobody
bothered to check inside

of his frail chest. Objects
jangled like keys in a cavity
he had scooped out years
ago. He had been bartering.

 

[champagne1982]

2007-2-3

Raise My Hand

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

If I could have but a moment
of time to sit and comprehend
blue-skinned sirens on a chilly
moon and why our God doesn't care;

I'd spend it with you and play
Heller's Catch 22. We must
be crazy to want to fly
and of course, we're normal
to want to finish the job
and just go home.

Billy Pilgrim did- to my delight
and satisfied his hunger
with a box of Wheaties,
and sex. Don't forget the sex.
Even the celibate think on it.

All those memories of a moment
when your captors held you up
as a human sheild and you lived
on, despite the efforts
of a stranger wanting to kill you.

Damn him, God wins and you -
wise and irreverant you -
depart and leave us the thought -
"We could have saved the Earth
but we were too damned cheap."

In salute to Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 - April 12, 2007)

 

[4degrees]

10-19

the sky is glass
a billion gleaming shards
wink through the tinted window
when it rains, it pours
sending crystalized stars
like true arrows
straight through a hardened heart
taxidermy for dummies and
scarring 101 are
not a lot of credit hours.

 

[wildsweetone]

22

Secret Lovers

They dance, avoid each other publically
to the point of near ignorance.
With tongues temporarily stilled,
minds dart forward to clear the dark,
blasting away bats
caught in cobwebs.

They circle in the black,
the combatants,
eyes tuned to the other,
wary and waiting for a first move,
that tentative closer step.

They hold back
and anticipation burns sweet.

 

[darkerdreamer]

Sometimes I think
I'd like to fuck you with a butterfly knife,
create all new wounds to love.
Now that is a real violation,
isn't it?

 

[AChild]

1-29

November 11, 1922 - April 12, 2007

I have a tattered copy of Slaughter House Five
it's read when I feel sick
Kurt died but is being born some other time
I hope to meet him sometime on the road
when he has the K. Trout coat on
maybe we could get drunk and piss on
bar napkin poems
So it goes. HI HO.

 

[vampiredust]

21

Woke up twenty minutes ago
without any ideas. Perhaps

I'll write about slipping off
a salmon's overcoat, knife

blade easing off that marbled
skin fresh from an Atlantic

marathon. Or maybe I won't.
My friend is feeling depressed

today. Perhaps I should just
let that fish go and catch

something else. My lines can
handle the weight. They always

can handle the weight.

 

[darkerdreamer]

3-23

He leaned back on that barstool,
tipping till it nearly fell over.
He spouted a tale for every inattentive
ear to hear, should a stray syllable fall
into its drum.

It seemed for most to be
just another humdrum story
of unrequited love;
but the lone barkeep--
who had heard this tale
more than once before--
finally saw that greater picture
that he had missed during every other recital.

The keystone portion of the yarn
wasn't about the love struck boy or girl.
Nor the story, time or place,
it was hidden within the narrator himself.

Perhaps, to the bartender,
the story only gained its grandeur
when punctuated by the fact
that the author spent endless nights
repeating it at the tavern.

 

[champagne1982]

2007-2-4

Lucian of Samosata's Vision

Did you know people on the moon
put their eyes away
so they won't have to see
until there's something to look at?

I want eyes like that. My blinders
don't stop my eyesight,
they just make me turn my head
and often, I'm disappointed
with what I see.

Rose coloured glasses
are not a solution.
I dislike the colour pink.

But, to put away my eyes
until I want to look;
this could have merit.
_____________________

ETA: For an insight on where I got this information check out Lucian's A True Story.

 

[AChild]

1-30

woke up on the horizon
everybody waiting for me to rise
look in my ray bag
finding a poem for each phase of the
moon
How the fuck did that happen?
thirsty I grab an ink well
"i aint seen nothing yet"

 

[4degrees]

10-20

intermutation hitching
these two parts
together like chain links
coated in tar
the tang of something
dead, a fulsome noseful
seeps into a scar
stinging like salt
make the most of this
officious offering, take
this extended stay
remain here today
continue to be
the out for me,
the passe partout
the skeleton key.

 

[wildsweetone]

23

History Doubled

The sea reflects
the landscape
as if it were too beautiful to pass by
without that second glance.
The mirror,
without cracks or aged silver,
shows me streets where I walked,
windows in white buildings
where I looked out,
squinting to discern the difference
between the sea and sky
that have melded fast.
It shows me an un-rippled reflection,
a photograph upturned,
a dare to return, to walk
and wrap myself in the history
doubled for my pleasure.

 

[vampiredust]

7-22

42 going on 12

Sara tells me her husband is 42
going on 12. I think of him doing

all those things twelve year olds
do: playing in arcades, eating

at burger bars, whistling at girls
from sidewalks and bridges

before swimming in a local lake.
And then, when he gets dressed,

wandering why his clothes are too
big and his body is always so small.

 

[champagne1982]

2007-2-5

Lunch On The Grass

And there she sits pensive,
alluring and more interested
in Manet, who paints
just over there, than what
stirs in M'sieu's
pantalons and why the crop
is gripped so securely
at his side.

Why aren't they all giggling?

 

[4degrees]

10-21

isolation Vs. overexposure
in my mind, the
dreamfuck wins out
3d is never real
to me, what i feel
is only a symptom of
how i miss you.

 

[darkerdreamer]

3-24

Twenty-Four

two constant digits,
consistent in their repetition in my life.
twenty-four, a birthright and birth date.
twenty-four at midnight exactly,
the only hour of progress.

twenty-four failings,
i count each digit on a digit
in turn.
i run out of fingers and toes at twenty,
but i know there are still four.
they wait to surface,
hoping i spawn further thumbs on which to be tallied.

 

[wildsweetone]

24

Dining Room Table

Stand it on end, it's taller than a man.

It was demolition wood, rimu,
from the Horotiu freezing works.

It stood where cows brushed against it
in their green walk.

If I put an ear against the top,
I might hear their mourning moans,
might feel their loss in the timbre.

We are not vegetarians
and when I serve a roast,
I fear the wood grain will rise up
and protest.

 

[AChild]

2-1

a. child couldn't cry for roses
they would never fall
spring would find a way to be
the snake that
eats its tail

no, I couldn't cry for roses
I love the smell of water in the air
the splish of world wetting

reach instead for a story
a whisper wind of someone
else
dervish with it and
see another world

 

[vampiredust]

7-23

Parting The Waters

Scott, a wandering photographer
from somewhere between New
York and Tel Aviv, scopes out
the horizon with his pair of Nikon
binoculars. Gunships drone.

An elderly fortune teller stroke
part time Rabbi (as if the two
could ever be compatible, puh-lease)
told him through a hole
in the Wailing Wall a vision

of a place where Moses
once took a leak in the desert.
He'd left behind a sandal and if someone
found it, well, you can imagine.
It was supposed to be near

Mount Hebron. Digging at a spot
determined by boredom, he found
nothing but an old piranha skeleton,
shards of broken crystal balls
and melted down lead ingots.

Later that night, an old man parted
the river of his wallet. Scott declared
the event in the morning as a sign.
Scorpions waited on the other side
of the mountain. Donkeys laughed.

Fate always lies, his father told him.
The man had prosthetic lips. It was difficult
for him to know whether he was telling
the truth.

 

[darkerdreamer]

3-25

Sunday, 6:00AM

breakfast diners
and broken concrete,
houses of worship.
in these nameless
two-dollars-a-plate kitchens
the downtrodden pray
to spotted eating utensils,
and ancient off-white collection plates
carry omelets.
windows, yellowed over time
from countless cigarettes
are our stained glass imagery.
this suit is frayed,
tie is stained,
shoes are scuffed,
face is scruffed:
Sunday's finest.

 

[loserstyx]

4-1

Another Roadside Left Revisited
I did it, I went back to them
Where mentholated goodness overpowers the harshness
And the smell reminds me of friends no longer visited
Of life in happiness, without the strife of today
Like a night of angry sex with someone you used to love

Left to wake unsatisfied, chaffed, and raw

 

[champagne1982]

2007-2-6

Pumpkin Tart

You are a tasty bit of work;
your skin, the pastry shell
that wraps all the good
into a delicious package.

Too fine to be an apple
strudel but yet, too sweet
to remain a savoury, without
sugar or vanilla cream.

Instead, you are the perfect
food to nourish me. To turn
my tastebuds on beyond simple
sighs. They moan in ecstacy,

to feel your flavours tease
the sugar tip of my tongue
and wrap around where salty
tanginess never turns bitter.

 

[4degrees]

10-22

sleeping to a disney
i find my moment
of reprieve, believe me
they feel to few
and far between these
unpoetic days
and lonesome nights
this life, this try again
at something more
or right, has the power
to dub me powerless
over and again, which
is just perfect
right?
yep.

 

[AChild]

2-2

Moving pictures share the story
but take away the telling

tonight I saw beauty

time elapsed mushrooms grow
earths little cock servers as
hats for Ms. Toad

insects who eat the wrong
mush die mad trying to reach the canopy
stick bugs swissed with fungus
purple star on black satin paper