30 Poems in 30 Days

[vampiredust]

18

And if the rain does not fall...

The papers promised us rain:
a troupe of starched grey cloud
slowly doing the heave-ho
across the sun.

We were advised to stay
indoors, in case of flooding.
Nobody, might I add,
should watch the scene,

lest it start appearing
in our dreams. It was sunny
that day and we caught
a glimpse of the exiles

wandering away. Our feet
edged slowly away,
not asking what it meant,
content to stay in our zone.

 

[Eluard]

1-21

. . .

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-16

Kyrie

In Indo-European,
the root
is ku-
a hollow, a swelling
an empty space defined
by what it contains
or a collection, a hoard.

What accumulates
in an empty space
but hunger to be filled
and defined.
From the space that is ku-
comes a church, kirk, containing
Nothing that is
Everything. The cumulus
mounts, enceinte,
a cavern filled with air
where water and heat thrust in
and birth a storm.
ku- is a cave,
cucullate, a shelter
and within it, hidden,
the covert, the cunt:
those hallowed spaces
shaped
by what they
con-
tain.

 

[wildsweetone]

26.


Unsettled

I'm looking to control
the uncontrollable,
to wipe the smirking stars
from the sky,
to smear new rivers
across a swollen land
that can not take more rain,
to pull your heart
and mine free from our chests,
to rub them together
and let them settle their differences
before their beating ceases.

 

[Tzara]

21

Handle of the Divine

Her hands spread
over the dark wood of the table.
I count to ten. Always
nailed to her is my attention.

Her lisp is the swish of cards
dealt rapidly—tossed onto velvet.
Two cards each.
I no longer have any chips.

The Tower is inverted
in my lap. I sit pat. I count
to seven, now. Her smile
bites my flesh, and when

I reach eleven, there
my World is crossed. I rasp
through strained teeth, displeased.
I crumble crystalled salt

idly on the floor, and sleep. And sleep.
I have never been irrational. These
perfect digits are mere pasteboard things,
number dragged through memory.

 

[manipulatrix]

9

.....

 

[Eluard]

1-22

. . .

 

[vampiredust]

19

Tiger

I would have been born a tiger
if the roulette wheel had hit black;
learnt to prowl amongst foot-high
grasses and catch my breath
under giraffe canopies. But it hit
red and my parents produced
a cheetah instead, forever chasing
that sound of regret ringing
in the back of the skull.

 

[Tzara]

22

Synæsthesia

If you wrote Cyrillic, I wouldn't feel its touch.
Icelandic would leave me cold. Even French
would never work—your stroke would slow
on my labored comprehension. But when you write

in plain, straightforward English, Hurry home tonight.
Don't stop for groceries. I really want to fuck. It's like
your hand reaches through the screen to grab my cock.
I see thickness in your voice, your scent, your want.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-17

Lotus

A beauty, perhaps in the vision as well
but beauty in function, embracing the rod
and blooming with pleasure at anything passing for hunger

a bell, a shape more defined by sound
than by sight, the depth of a trumpet
flower, the tingling moan as it rings

and often in dark and in mystery is it opened, this box
not with the eyes, not to look into,
but to search the invisible, let the vision

rest, relax its grip on the mind and let
the other senses have their say,
their feast, for a change, their way.

So the hand may control the body;
two bodies at once in its command
two minds focused on a single fingertip

and the ears may finally learn to listen
to truth and sighs and subtle breath
in drawing music from the bell at gentle depth

and taste and scent may find their way
to kingship for a time, the tongue a mind
that sweetens and enlarges every taste

all this I know too well, but not the rod
which in my mind must be the strangest and
the sweetest, most complete in rulership

Think, don't think, enter the cave
and give it the blessing of your hunger
without thought for sight or sanity.

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-22

The Duality of Men, Women and Stainless Steel Tables

I could feel it coming like a train still miles away
but already talking to my body through the tracks
or like the shift in the sand when the ocean draws up
like a grizzly bear and then attacks with a wall of water.
You don’t think about stopping that kind of power.
You either step aside or ride it out. That summer
it might have been the heat. Industrial ovens
built into the bricks like dragon caves breathed
fire through the bakery whenever anyone dared
to open them. Maybe they melted the pretence
of a sex-free backroom or it could have been our bare skin
always so close while naked hands kneaded the soft
and sticky dough. In the end it was stronger
than anything man-made or found in the sea
and it didn’t matter how it had covered us or why.
It was there, I was starving and I never step aside.

 

[wildsweetone]

27.

...

Even the leaves have left
the cherry tree.
There are buds now,
thin, malnourished buds
and I wait for their swell,
that first sign of Spring
to slip into the garden.
I wait for Spring
to dispel the dull blue
lingering layer of Winter.
Just a hint of Spring
to show the seasons
keep churning.

 

[manipulatrix]

10

.....

 

[Eluard]

1-23

. . .

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-18

Middle Ground

Turn

I drown myself in dreams of incantation
sung in a pillowed howl of ecstasy
the incense coiling round our joined perfection
born of a scholar's virtuosity

Shining with civet and jasmine, I ride
Velvet-draped altars, all opium-eyed.
​

Counter turn

Brought bumping down to earth I get the message
far from the perfect lover of the ancients
Disheveled recluse unconcerned with beauty
Brutal reality, all too well-lit

So much is useless and so much is wrong
How far away to have waited so long.
​

Stand

Then be malleable for me; I can accept
that you are not the alabaster priest
If I can live with humans, not with gods
If we can reach a middle ground, at least:

Recognize me and I'll recognize you.​

 

[vampiredust]

20

Electricity

My neighbour, whose
husband has been dead
for thirty years, gazes
at her TV's reflection.
Wrapping herself in its
electric glow, she feels
its heat. She hears his
voice buried underneath
the voltage and wires.
He sings to her and each
word resonates; a tuning
fork that has found its
perfect pitch.

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-23

They will remember today in the limestone
layers of grey covering the sky, the ground
and faces. Stone expressions admit
that things will never be the same
and they hold the tired silence
like a nervous bride with her bouquet.
The absence of colour comes from strain
and worry that one noise or wrong move
and all the pieces will fly apart. No one wants
to be the pebble in the engine
that makes it harder for the rest to fly.

When we walk through carved doors
taps plays on the steps of St. Mary’s
and only the mourning dove feels worthy
to sing with the bugle as we say goodbye
to one and watch him join the never ending
black parade stretched out behind us all.

 

[Tzara]

23

"Sonnet" in Which I Rail at Fate
and at Ms. Crewe, Who Got Me into This,
Finely Crafted in Onegin Stanza Form

Here writ in form Eugene Onegin
my daily poem for today:
for inspiration I am begging
to crib off Pushkin once. OK?
His metrics are a spot of bother.
His rhyme is feminine and other.
And with this line, I'm halfway through
this twisty verse form, Sara Crewe!
Still, I should say something insightful
in this day's poem, anyway.
But poets sometimes merely play
with imitations simply frightful.
And now I'm done. It has been hell.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll write well.

 

[wildsweetone]

28.

...

I'd take it straight,
the gin without tonic or lemon,
gulp the first mouthful
sip the rest
and listen to the blessing
the drunks share
behind brown paper bags
and fingerless gloves.
I'd watch their stumble,
red noses glued to clear plastic,
smell their vomit on the wind
and turn back to the bar
imagining ignorance.

 

[manipulatrix]

11

*****

 

[vampiredust]

21

River

The abandoned river,
where I remember
that October you came
to visit me. Walking
along its sagging beach,
you told me our love
never happened.
Finding campfire ashes
past the dismembered
hands of old pines,
we smeared our names
into the silt. I am
not sure if you felt
anything when it collapsed,
the rubble of names
eager to abandon hope
as it sank.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-19

Thyrsus

Hard and soft in their most noble aspects
combine, and tasted by the skin,
become the maenad's feast.
Sweet on my tongue, the pulse under the flesh,
sweet the song I can invoke, the dance
and chant of open throats, as we drink
this bacchic wine. Life-giver, god of joy,
held, carried or stroked across the teeth,
this plum atop the shaft marks my procession.
Sweet the hands wrapped in my wild hair,
the rhythm, the rise
of voice and heat. Sweet the feel
of thickening, the urgent
movements of the spine, sweet
the surrender, from hard demand
brought round to soulful worship, in thrall
to the rippled blessings of my tongue.

 

[Tzara]

24

The Polish of a Constant Touch

It is the oil
filmed on my fingertips, the dirt
there trapped and held.
Do not touch the art,

the signs read. Preserve
unblemished the surface sheen,
the marble, the smoothed steel, for others
to appreciate as you have.
Art is fragile.

But I am blind
and touch is my remembering.
I always wash and dry my hands—
even under my nails I am clean.
The truth is that I do not want
to share this art,

not share it any way.

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-24

Only Human

While pulling clover from garden beds I see
a monarch caterpillar chewing milkweed leaves.
I like that we are big and small but still symbiotic.
I leave his breakfast plant alone, he does not eat
my roses and when he’s born again he performs
daily air shows until he flies south. My daughter
tells me he has seven times more muscles
than we do. I watch them pull his train of black
and yellow cars but question the wisdom
of eating your tracks. I guess it works
if there’s a chrysalis at the end of the line.
Will he come back after his winter in Mexico?
Maybe, I say. I no longer pat her on the head
with yes but I am not ready to slap
her in the face with no. And in the end
I don’t know. I am not a butterfly
but we share a frailty of existence
that leave me sorry for my part in eating our world
and for egocentric sins
like calling their bread of life a weed.
She asks why I look sad. It must have been a bee.
I am not ready to admit that when reality bites
it's easy to become allergic to your own skin.

 

[Eluard]

1-24

. . .