30 Poems in 30 Days

[Eluard]

1-28

. . .

 

[TheRainMan]

11-4

.....

 

[vampiredust]

25

Anger

I kept my anger
in my jeans yesterday. Let it
fester amongst day-old
packets of Wrigley's gum,
old receipts and a nest of keys.
Lazy that I am, I never
thought about released it
out of my bedroom window.
What would I have seen
if have done that? Nothing
cold or blue, because anger
is not. Neither red, it lacks
passion and fire. Yellow
is its colour, a mixture of
brightness and hate.
I would have given anything
to be painted that colour
sometimes, to feel its stink
burning my skin. But
all I have now is grey,
its opposite. And everything
stands still, waiting
for directions.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

untitled

She seems
to reach toward the ropes
the red brocade
smooth across her palm,
long limbs made longer
by the stretch.

Burgundy
is excellent against white
you think, as the bridge
of her spine
sways, suspended.

Wings of bone spread
under your thumbs,
your tongue opens
a salt blossom

she cannot move
but sweetly, she tries
and tries.

 

[Tzara]

28

W. K. Clifford

What's weird is that I've seen his grave.
Well, probably. I've been in rain
to Highgate, paying my respects
to shoot Karl Marx's place of rest.

Near Spencer is Don Clifford's grave.
Ms. Evans-Cross is near to there.
There Billy Clifford is so laid.
It's odd. He was geometer.

But dead he is, and there he lies,
James hacked at his heartfelt surmise:
Belief's pragmatic, theory-wise.
How Clifford spins! In grave, as life.



Subject cribbed off Eluard, but badly. I am depressed today.

 

[manipulatrix]

16

...........

 

[Tzara]

29

even the grass is dead
over my grave today

 

[TheRainMan]

11-5

.....

 

[vampiredust]

26

Noticeboard

We keep our shame tacked
onto places where the world
likes to stop and stare
at our failings. Case in point:
that noticeboard at school
where secrets are glued on
with gum. People's eyes
notice the stitching falling
apart in each word, hear
the slamming of a door
in a world not meant to be
seen. And when we leave
the scene, stare at a bird
we have not seen before
and wonder why it sings
so differently.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-24

Compassion

Were you here
and willing to offer me the chance to fix
whatever sadness you carry,
I'd take you to the museum.
Perhaps we'd admire the Brancusi
and the cricket cages
but there would be a purpose in my path.
I'd steer you gently past
the cases in which Shiva and Shakti
coil in repetitive bronze
on the higher shelves, so the children
won't see them.
We'd stop to eat candy
in honor of dancing Ganesha
god with a sweet tooth, bursting from stone.
Soon, at the end of the gallery,
you'd see Her , my mother,
who catches the tears of the world
in her jar, keeps them as treasures.
Here, she waits in repose, in her
masculine form
with woman's face
and heart,
not silent, but humming
of eternal mercy
of divine compassion. If I cannot carry it,
cannot understand your grief
perhaps this universal heart
already ancient a thousand years ago
can ease you. I will sit
next to you under her gaze
and let your sorrow
and her sympathy
baptise us both.

 

[Eluard]

1-29

. . .

 

[manipulatrix]

17

.........

 

[Tzara]

30

Will Work for Mood

Black is not the color of my mood. Black
is too chic and slimming and goes too well
with everything. Today my mood is fat.
It's garish. Today loud horizontal stripes
in a cheap runny blue on pilled Orlon
that fit too short and too tight is my mood.
Today my mood still has a price tag dangling
from one crooked seam that I have to leave on
because I want to take this mood back
and exchange it for some plastic flip-flops
or a titanium nose ring. I don't like this mood,
but it's the only damn mood I've got that's clean
so I can't just wad it up and throw the thing away.
Any spare change, mister? I really need a new mood.

 

[vampiredust]

27

Storm

The storm outside plundered
our fear, moulded it for fun.
We watched these puppets
dance on our windowsills,

their shadows leaking through
the gaps of our shutters.
We had no storm cellar, no
bolt hole to call for rescue.

Crawling into our caves
of blankets, we made a stand;
fought tooth and nail against
the toothless. Some fell

with the slashes of our swords,
others slid into our bed
and attached alabaster strings
to our bodies, eager to watch
us dance as we had always done.

 

[Eluard]

1-30

. . .

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-25

Drink, Then

I have allowed it to soak into me:
the low drone of absences and moods
the silences and illness, the way
we sleepwalk, disconnected
during a waning moon
or a week of clouds.
Water-sign, I have no shape
until there are stones, or banks of sand
to curve the stream.
Water is patient, wearing its way through
mountains to carve canyons
but our course takes oceans and years to run
and the random stone
tossed into my path
always splits me
and turns my landing to an uprise.
The patient is the one with the disease,
he used to say to me,
but if I love you
I carry your belly within my own.
I do not have to do this
It is because I want to
because I'm strong enough.
If I refuse to acknowledge
distance between us
then I become you, and my thoughts
soak into you like drops of ink
into a clear glass of water.
The soul is dyed with the color of its thoughts
he says to me,
and I say yes, then,
let me diffuse
between our skin:
a study in pinks and purples
the shades of a rose
well watered.

 

[TheRainMan]

11-6

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

11-7

.....

 

[vampiredust]

28

Plural

We live in different universes
everytime an event happens
that changes us a little. I've
seen it. Sitting in the kitchen
after a tragedy, I've watched
stars switch places with each
other. The cows feed in other
places. And then, after a brief
recess, we return back to our
own world. Our pockets are full
of the things from that journey,
our bones tilted at odd angles.
We keep staring at clocks,
wondering why they don't move
faster, the way we're used to.

 

[darkerdreamer]

7ish-1

Curb Me

I see you in constellations,
you manhandle Orion's Belt
into a celestial leash
holding me fast from the skies.

You tie me to a shooting star,
much as you'd tie up a dog
to the bike racks in front of the cafe,
I dig my heels into the grass as
it drags me along, hyper speed.

I see you in constellations,
you mistake the bow and arrow
of Sagittarius for that of Cupid,
they pierce just the same,
I still leak stardust to prove it.

You built me a doghouse on the sun,
but this mutt is nocturnal.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

1-26

To Ingmar

You know the truth now, as you have always suspected it:
Death cheats. Death hears your confession
disguised as a priest, and knows your moves before you make them.

You have now met your first and final fascination:
the hooded force in opposition to the flesh,
your lover and your father since the dream of childhood
taught you that you saw a different world than those
who tried to train you to the concrete culture's trance.

Their dreams were strange, and whether you preferred your own,
you had them anyway, and undeniably enough
that it was pain to you when they would point and shout
that hooded death did not stand there, where you saw it.

Now the contrast of the flesh and stone in scenes
where life moves at a bright, hallucinatory crawl
are icons of your public mind. Your faces, landscapes
rocky with longing, a desert in which the only cure
is to place the hand against a sallow marble cheek
and warm it back to life.

White against black, those faces ringed by lasting night
like moons, in planetary motion, rise and set;
they move like hour-hands across your stony ground.

 

[vampiredust]

29

7.30 a.m

At seven thirty a.m, we're sick
of venus playing her same old
film, of listening to the dustmen's
howitzer call, of the dog playing
games of imaginary fetch.

This hour of waking is a slope
too steep for us to climb,
so we wait for ropes of hands
to be thrown into our bed
buttered with sunlight.

And then, when no fingers
or thumbs materialise,
we stay still and melt
it one another. Your lips
fly the white flag,

signalling our defeat
to the hour. My hands
knock at your breasts
and hips, eager for refuge
against its clambering
fingers.

 

[Eluard]

1-31

. . .

 

[darkerdreamer]

7-2

Burn bright, amber and blue
as candle's flame. Liquid wax,
your fountain of life.

 

[TheRainMan]

11-8

.....