30 Poems in 30 Days

[Tzara]

25

Sprechstimme

Her voice coolly lurches
from note to note in minor key,
abruptly as a rockfall.
She is not whine. She is not scream.
She is Teutonic, after all,

and I am fool—naïveté.
I'm simple. Call me Pjerrot.
For Columbine, I just am tool:
I drink our moon. I sleeplessly
behead our dreamy double fugue.

 

[manipulatrix]

12

*****

 

[wildsweetone]

29.

...

The desk carries the weight
of the computer,
forearms when I'm thinking,
and files filled with paper poems
yet to be spread across hearts
in waiting.
Sharp pencils ready for use
stand stiffly at attention
in a pot of circles.
And at the end, a clock
whose ticks I tap keys in time to,
a clock that never runs down.

 

[vampiredust]

22

Tube

Puddles of underground rain
line the tunnels to a premade
heaven. The white tiles
have disappeared, the busker
gospels faded into nothingness.

Passengers say nothing
to one another as they descend
escalators, listening
to whispering devils podcasting
sermons. Trainers tread

this familiar path of faith,
exposed wrists wait for the familiar
stigmata. The last survivors
of the previous journeys
wait inside the station walls,
weeping.

 

[TheRainMan]

11-1

.....

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-20

On being asked to teach Frost's “Stopping by Woods
on a Snowy Evening” to inner-city 9th graders.


Wise angry boy, waiting by the light, cautiously
as salt trucks roar through sulphur air
you stand in a circle of yellow
light in this siren city, never asleep.
How can you imagine
stopping in the dark to note a silence
or the still snowlight that lies
in turquoise strips
between the black and random trees?

It is all corners where you live, and filaments
burn night and day. There is no moon,
no horse, no quiet
even after fresh snow, even in what passes for darkness
the wavewash of traffic
marks your solitude
not that you can ever really be
alone.

 

[Eluard]

1-25

. . .

 

[wildsweetone]

30.


The Dawn of Darkness

On this day of all days
I should stride into the ocean
let it wash up my body
in a final cleansing,
a last white washing
that will see all my sins
seep back into the sea,
fall between the cracks
and soak deep into the earth's core
where my birthing began.

On this day of all days
I should say goodbye
to the mists that threaten
to conceal my existence,
that warp my outstretched arms
ignoring my light, my warmth
my dedication to day.
Would I be missed,
or would you welcome
the extra hours of dark?

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-25

Migraine

The heat, the sun and maybe lack of sleep
have joined forces and become a dark magician
who slid a blade through my head
when I wasn’t looking. All day I have waited
for the prestige, for him to pull it out
or make it disappear but there is only pain
and the sick feeling that comes with knowing
it will only go away when the lights go down
and everyone closes their eyes.

 

[manipulatrix]

13

.....

 

[vampiredust]

23

Emptying

I emptied my pockets
when I was younger, removing
all traces of faith that I kept
there. I watched the incoming
wind price each item: my crucifix,
stigmata, bones of obscure saints.

It wasn't until I was older
that an exiled rain brought back
a trinket traded with the wind:
a piece of Saint Peter's
knucklebone dropped on my
doorstep. I kept it in a jar
of vinegar and made it a shrine

of broken planks, thorns
and nails. Some days I swear
I could hear it whispering,
asking why it couldn't have
come back to earth as water,
pure cleansing water.

 

[Eluard]

1-26

. . .

 

[TheRainMan]

11-2

.....

 

[Tzara]

26

Precipitation

Ugly words well up
in her mouth, floating—
spoiled eggs
in a polluted spring.

When they finally spill out,
the weather's changed.
They're hard as hailstones
and as cold.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-21

Wrathful Deity

You will know her by her angry countenance, they teach,
by her haughty manner, by the fact
that she eats meat, frequents charnel grounds
and loves to hear news of death in battle. She is
exceedingly arrogant. Her features are imperfect,
she revels in her own ferocity;
she cannot be prevented from speaking the truth.
She has been seen dancing
in midair above the local lake,
her blades slicing through red clouds
boiling, like her mad mouth.
You've seen her, multiply armed
raging and wild about the dishes and cats, the disasters
of the household, trampling the skulls of her everyday.
Yogis are taught to recognize her
as the Dakini, when she
throws the wineglass, bursts into fierce tears.
Though she may not know Herself,
make obeisance to her divinity and wait
for the rage to come from purity.
She will never change her words
but their source will shift
and you can drink her wrath like a sacrament
from the skull cup into which
she pours herself,
into which she empties
her terrible need for you.

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-26

When I wore patent leather shoes
and velvet dresses my parents tied my faith
like a red balloon around my wrist.
I liked it there. Who wouldn’t want Jesus
and Mary following them to school
like holy bodyguards? Now I never wear velvet
and I am glad my father did not live to see
me open my hand and watch that red
balloon float away. A star of colour
against the undefined grey. When I see
it at night I feel loss but I will not follow.

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-27

She walks down Main Street with the stride
of a corporate lawyer in New York
but when she reaches the end
her only appointment will be to turn
around and go back to the beginning.
She fills her days with conversations
aimed at no one or anyone and talks
about memories she borrowed out of the papers
she uses to slow the night chill. On her walks
she looks for the family she never had
and people laugh when she yells about the little people
who steal her pictures. When she is calm
again she promises to show the photos
of her kids tomorrow but she has changed
their names again. She remembers today
is Wednesday and that is was supposed to rain.
She waves her umbrella at the sky, angry
that it seems to have forgotten to rain.
People sit on patios sipping slushy drinks
when it’s sunny and yell get a job to impress
their drunk friends. Without the rain
no one will let her come inside. Without the cold
no one will see her. When the weather is nice
she is just an empty cup tossed to the side
of the road. She hates the sun
for giving people an excuse to cover their eyes.

 

[manipulatrix]

14

*****

 

[vampiredust]

24

Case Study

Found Poem

Heather left university in 2003.
Shortly before graduation, she
sought permission to learn new
things every day. Copyright law
determined the extent of her
originality, patents blocked
attempts to think. The variety
of her life is limited to juggling
lots of tasks. Prioritising is key.
God rolls his dice daily. Think
ahead. Always think ahead.

 

[Eluard]

1-27

. . .

 

[Tzara]

27

Faith

It is what I owe my God—
my thanks for His great gift, my voice,
its high and sweet transparent tone.

This is my small tithe to Him.
How I honor now my mother and my father,
honor both our Father and our Mother.

I want not to be afraid. It will be quick.
The bath is warm and I
am well-attended. I'll drink wine.

Farinelli did not cry, they said.
Nor will I, nor shall I even bleed.
For once it's done, He will care for me.

 

[TheRainMan]

11-3

.....

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-22

Oppositions

(strophe)
on the one hand, the stranger
is on a train, a darkened space and
nothing
touches but flesh
and the base, the hot red
animal brain. On the one hand, the meeting
of hands with slick skin, of breath like fire
is all very simple
perfectly contained, and what we want:
the heart and mind disengaged for
the rulership of mouth and belly:
the red, purely the red.

(antistrophe)
On the other hand, we desire the God
initiator, priest, who
fully clothed and still
at a distance can heat the ground
roots to crown.
This masked visitor, solely divine
makes an altar of the flesh
and worships the holy within
ethereal, beyond the body,
except that it moves the goddess
except as a chalice of spices
except as the grail, sanctified for drinking.

(epode)
In you they unite, these
holy opposites, the sacred and profane:
the subtle and somber god
aflame with distant devotions
and the simple animal
thought, focused down on square inches, on skin,
the nerves and nothing more.
You join these endpoints with a line
of namelessness, a holy
anonymity: an echo of every pairing. Who am I
whose specific name and life have disappeared
under bright wings or dark blood?
The lover wears a ring, and is one.
Owns every name, debauch to divine,
is all this one, and all the same.

 

[manipulatrix]

15

.....

 

[Sara Crewe]

7-28 ( In case I don't get a chance to write anything else today)

When we were young we believed
the world could be caught in a bottle
as long as we poked air holes in the lid.
We moved the rainbow from the sky
onto canvass and traded nightlights for fireflies.
But there was that standing back moment
when you looked at your painting
or the moving lights in the jar and realized
they had become less in your attempt to measure
and contain them. With age the lessons learned in mason jars
become clearer as our treasures are less defined
and not found in the woods but stuck inside our heads,
our hands and the sighs of our skin. We see that a prison
is still a prison even if the walls are clear or bone-deep.
We need the tipping point when they spill free
and love and sex stop being somebody else’s pleasure
and everything becomes erotic. Tonight
it was your tongue finding the marshmallow
on your lip and the way you said my name against my ear.
Tomorrow it could be anything.