all of a sudden passion suddenly

[clutching_calliope]

Another REM Song

.....

 

[clutching_calliope]

Man of Thorns

......

 

[flyguy69]

Welcome West High Class of 1986

::::::

 

[vampiredust]

Wintering

I watch mother stack away
rolled up tongues in the airing
cupboard. Some have started
to unravel before their sleep

and resemble shrivelled up
wasp's nests, whilst others flop
down. Tired, uneasy. They
are fish swimming in formaldehyde

tonight. And tomorrow. And
the day after. When she closes
the door, seconds crawl back.
Only uncurling in Spring.

 

[vampiredust]

I

I buried your poems in snow
I did not want to see stars
chasing after syllables
so I put them in a place

where they could not scoop
them out with their claws
and matted fur
where they could not chase

after electric poetry
carried along power lines
stretched like pantyhose
across the landscape

where they could not dive
into books and drag out
yellowed wings and wrinkled
spines

where they could not see
themselves melting
and I along with them

 

[cherries_on_snow]

He asks to see my notebook
and I hand it over, the little spiral I carry
on the train to scrawl in.

I'm afraid he'll read rough
sketches of me and even more
afraid he'll read those
of him.

Instead he asks
which one of these do you like least?
and walks toward the spider.
I laugh with relief at his teasing.

 

[cherries_on_snow]

If you are clever
the world will make use of you
making and protecting
other men's riches.

If you are beautiful
the world will make use of you
tindering the testes
of the lonely.

If you are humble
the world will make use of you
as foil and confidant
of many.

There is a catch.
If you resist these endings
(happy or not, dep. on beholder)
you will be left clinging
to the sides of the barrell
so long as you are quiet.

 

[Maria2394]

watching the body builder eat

he always has fruit at first break
I love to watch his lips
choose just the right place
to bite, does he imagine
the softness of the peach
a lover or merely a piece
of food for consumption,
I can only wonder

his cold oats at lunch baffle me
and how he likes tuna
straight from the can,
this man makes me worry
that maybe I havent had
a real man, yet

 

[Tzara]

Ethology

It's always upstream
where I need to go, against
a fresh cold current,
through your shallows, over
rocks. I'm always tired

but cannot stop lest
I lose my hard-won place
in your changeable esteem.
The worst is that
there may not be an end,

a destination, goal. Just
a trickle of affection,
a silent meadow. But
the task is wired in
my shrunken piscine brain,

and so I twitch and swim.

 

[Tzara]

Hips

Because, I guess, my genes
hunger for fruit
in your pelvic basket
is why they attract my seed.

 

[vampiredust]

Brainstorming

Let's play with something:
A ouija board. A bowl of fruit.
Spin images in your skull
until fingertips drip lightning.

Create spiderwebs out of ink
and neurons. Waste nothing.
Time is watching. Avoid eye
contact.

Start sketching images blindly,
let the hand run as it fumbles
through an open zoo in your
mind.

Don't be afraid as the animals
start running. Get it down,
get it all down.

This is great material

 

[vampiredust]

Goodnight, my lover

I want to see night
expelled, every shadow
stripped bare

(even those standing taller
than a telephone pole)

I want to see clouds
ending their daily waltz
over fields of cows

(even those being piped
out of chimney pots)

I want to see only you.
Not your nothingness,
darting in and out

of my dreams - a fox
blurring love and hate.

 

[annaswirls]

every time you let out one of those sighs
usually when my presence requires a pause I ask
what was that sigh about?
what sigh
you sighed, not a little one
its nothing it is always nothing
and I Want you to say is this, this

 

[annaswirls]

I called Nana myself, because no one was aying anything
besides my father's note telling me how all of her card playing friends
were dead now and no moore quilting, Sadie has Altzeihimers and never remembers to go
chow chow of course, stopped years ago
they are taking her to a half day adult care recreation center
to make new friends to bury
this the worst curse of old age, watching everyone die first your parents generation
then yours and worse of course, your children's layer stippled with holes

but no one was saying anything besides come up, why dont you come up for a visit
what can we do to help you make the trip
and all with the cover of the new baby girl and
Nana said it reminded her of how I drove down that drive way with my parents
sobbing in the backseat on the way to college in DC
this time sobbing in the front seat taking half the country between us and I called her to see for myself
there was hardly any breath
she lost 5 more pounds
and what would I have her say now
it is too late
couldI ever ask her
is there something you still want to do?
to tell us?
do I prepare my eulogy
she has no more breath
why didnt they tell me?
they did this before
when Bax lie dying in the Pediatric ICU
tieght tubes conencted breath pressed in by thenumbers
just say it just say it
we are all dying we are all dying
lets practice saying it to each other so it is easier when the time comes
Mom, I am dying.
Jennifer, I am dying.
Your baby is dying.
See, it is not so hard.
Meet me at the farm.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Sailor's Delight

......

 

[clutching_calliope]

The Remainder

.....

 

[vampiredust]

Aileron Dress

Wind snatches sleepers
on a railway line

some flap, forming a giant
aileron dress

others flop back down -
displaced refugees

lost and broken up

 

[vampiredust]

Cornfields

Diving in and out of stalks
taller than telephone poles,
we would find the exit.
Perhaps it had been buried

deliberately, knowing children
like to play amongst grassy
spines. Some pretend to be
cowboys and Indians

whilst others watch,
listening to the earth's rythm
tapping its way through veins
and onto charcoal landscapes.

 

[Tzara]

Augury

And another day to gather
intelligence, your notes and verse,
print it all and start to sift

for hidden messages,
thoroughly as an NSA agent
reads the foreign press. I check

the sense, I vary syntax, count
word and letter frequencies,
your use of punctuation marks—

but it's all chaste as a scalpel
fresh from the autoclave. So
instead I burn the paper

copies in an earthenware
dish and stir the ashes,
searching for the message

I am desparate to find.
Stir and chant. Stir, obsess.

 

[clutching_calliope]

.....

 

[Tzara]

I really loved this, T. Ever see A Beautiful Mind?

Thanks, O daughter of Memory.

Yes, actually. Read the book, too.

I was actually thinking about steganography, though.

 

[vampiredust]

Battlefield radio, Palestine

Static crawls through rock
and skulls, a periscope
without a body or eyes.

It is empty there. Voices
have dissapeared, slithered
down drains, flown away,

emptied themselves into
buckets. Only the air remains,
blowing a forgotten tune

across the landscape.
Gather your perishables. Think.
But do not start again.

That is never allowed here

 

[cherries_on_snow]

pull the nouns and their
attendant adjectives
from my sleeping throat
and the verbs from my
journal. It won't matter.

I'll shuck and jive
about your shuck
and jive and say damn girl
because your bitterness
is not my hell.

 

[vampiredust]

Shopping for shoes

Wandering past shoes stuffed
with wooden horse skulls
(the minature kind, of course)

mother points out a pair
with a plastic orange sunflower
glued on its front. I hate it.

I imagined they plucked them
from a trough labelled FAULTY,
their creators not knowing

what an actual sunflower is:
Imagine shrunken suns with paper
crowns around their rims.

Now let it burn -
that is your sunflower.

 

[cherries_on_snow]

Orlando

They lauded his biceped
control, praised his diction
admired his form
when the poet was a he.

These same poets cry
plastic and empty
when the hand
that pens the words no longer
a man.

Smelles like teen hypocrisy.