all of a sudden passion suddenly

[vampiredust]

An Iraqi Birdsong

We built birdsong
out of blended crackers,
chopped up saltines,
old women's teeth, babies
lungs, dog fur, molasses,
sugar cane panpipes,
leather roofs, politicians
manifestos, asbesto lawsuits,
wasp cities. Put it all together

in a great big ball of twine,
rolling it down the steepest
hill in town. Cars on the school
run were flattered, dogs
lept in, old women had no

choice. Cats lept onto house
roofs. Clouds flicked them off
one by one. And then when it
traversed England, the ball
slowed as it reached
the Houses of Parliament.

A crowd were waiting
with their pins and knitting
needles. Our PM wanted
to swallow it whole
but he had already been
pricked, his skin marked out.

Birds flew out from collapsing
twine, making nests in his skin.
I thought I heard him sing
on Question Time the other night,
could have been a mockingbird,
mind you.

 

[vampiredust]

One Night Fuck

One night fuck. Left his
scarecrow body behind
as a trophy. Never saw
a murder of crows on
the pillow, building nests
from his insides. You
know whatever's left
will fall down, all the way
down.

 

[vampiredust]

Silence

1.

Nothing to hear, silence
hears nothing. Silence
nothing nothing. Hear
silence. Hear nothing.
Silence silence silence.

2.

Silence prays monk-like
in the furrows of trees.
Owls leave their wooden
caves. Hear nothing,
nothing nothing. Silence.

3.

Children dream of silence,
thing of nothing. Hear
their silence, silence,
silence. Nothing prays
inside. Only silence listens.

Listen to nothing, nothing,
nothing.

 

[vampiredust]

Poem

Rilke would have liked London
in the twenty first century.
Hearing the trains typhoon
songs on a platform at Victoria

might have made him think
that he could have perhaps reached
his fabled Duino, Orpheus driver
to stops drawn in hushed breath:

The Grand Canyon. Cumae.
Lake Averno. Lough Derg.
Even this underground, a network
of loosely connected wires,

people and places, canals
where souls are oyster cards
to the afterlife. He would have
known the ferryman by name.

Ten pints later in a Camden pub,
he's still not telling.

 

[Tathagata]

those other lives
we lead but don't realize
seep in as dreams
when half sleep releases duality and the whole of it all
floods your mind
you convulse awake
with thoughts of things forgotten
tasks to complete
and fades away
back into
nothingness
until slumber again
will transport you
back to that town
that girl
that home
where you feel
you've always been

 

[Tathagata]

In Basque towns
there is a saying inscribed above church tower clocks
" each hour wounds, the last one kills"
with each skipped heart beat
I think about having it
tattooed on my chest

 

[vampiredust]

Love

I bolted the doors to her heart
when I left. I hear them
banging whenever I pass her
house, almost expecting
the dandelions on her driveway
to smash my body open
and snatch the hammer kept
inside.

 

[wildsweetone]

thief

be careful how you sit
because i am in one of those moods
where a tack on the seat
is minimal compared to the damage
i'd like to do to you.

don't tell me who, or how, or why,
talk to my hand
i'm not interested.

and next time you steal
something that belongs to one of mine
remember this,

remember what it feels like
to breathe deeply,
to inhale fresh air deeply,
freely.
because if i find out the who,
you can rest assured
you'll know why
you were buried alive.

 

[4degrees]

its bites from the
inside out,
gnaws like these jaws
of mine would
were i inside o'you
oh, you.

i fill a hollow
with tons of black
igneous rock, and a
mountain grows from
thin air
thin air that gets
thick fast with pungent
passion and ripe fuck
this big hill of rock
is where i build you
like sandcastles but
not eroding or washing away
in white foam
i climb you and thrust
some symbolic flagpole
right into your center
then fall to my knees
because being such a fool
drains out all energies.

 

[ZeckBock]

This block of mine
cannot be moved.
I've tried and pried
and cursed and cried,
yet there it sits
black and unbudged.

Oh, why right now
when I feel the need
to press my fingers on
smooth white letters?

When I walk it flows
as if it knows
no pad or pen are near.
Hard, cold block parts
like water on the reed sea.

'Course when I sit
to tap, tap, tap
empty, glowing, white
enemy.

Ahh, here it comes...

 

[vampiredust]

There are 52 ways
of looking at a poem
according to Ruth Padel,
whose book is staring

at me this morning.
Ruth Padel is looking
at 52 ways of staring
at my poem. According

to my poem, Ruth Padel
is one of 52 ways to look
at your poem. I wonder
what the other 51 ways are.

 

[sellthecookie]

for too long
the dining room wall
is a shocking shade
of dirty footprints,
lizards' stomping ground,
with army boots
and puffed out chests, scattering
their calculated pellets of
feces with pinpoint secrecy.
it is the summer
of hunger and tight-lippedness.
im thinking of switching
to a much paler, more
obligatory blue.

 

[RhymeFairy]

I wonder if I will just dry up
and be one of those old crones
who whistles at men
while watching their shake.

Or does life have more to offer
than three kids consistently sick,
myself included. Working hours,
sleeping nights. No time to gather the wool

or sit in satin, just a bubble bath
with candles and watch the wax drip,
wishing for more ...

 

[sellthecookie]

not a poem really

not a poem really

Once upon a time,
an old man shouted
in broad midnight,
Repent! Laugh! Sing! Dance! Fall
in Love!
The End is near! The End is Near!


-The End

 

[vampiredust]

Zoo on the Tube

In the erotic London
heat I hold onto female
branches hanging from
the tube ceiling.
Connecting myself to a
network of pheromones,
I plug in and play. Radios
chatter excitedly with
every signal I send out
in breath. iPods freeze.
Animals trapped in bodies
wait for my signal. I let
them rush over and lap
at my watering hole.

 

[4degrees]

one day
a streaming reel
of thoughtless prosey
things will appear
on paper, somewhere
it will be a vivid account
of seven hundred days
that have began and ended again
with you
like napalm fuck, you stick to me
and burn, my skin peels back
and my bones smoke
filling the air with some
gray passion cloud
one that smells like sandalwood
one that is so thick
i can't see out
and i don't want to,
ever.

 

[vampiredust]

O So Fucking Pointless

Pointless day,
pointless fucking day.
Everything has its price
tag hanging out. Breasts
press against soaked shirts
like overdone fried eggs.
Sunflower glasses display
their owners' credit lines.
Fake asses growl, Mustangs
uncomfortable in the new
concrete prairie. Even
kids, even the fucking kids
scooting along in Dolce
& Gabbana have tags.
Every hour, an auctioneer
hits his hammer down.
I want in my tongue
says, swinging compass-like
as a pair of summer blondes
pass. A line of spit
on the pavement shows others
the way to salvation.

 

[sellthecookie]

speak neat my teacher-nun said, enunciate neat and glossy like pages where size-zero models teeter in high heels, in perpetual pout, in forever sleek, in eternal wait for the perfect man with the hairy chest and bulging front while i gawk endless with frozen fingers and assets turned liability of one doomed anonymous and messy as a telephone directory, no, not a word from me.

 

[Luv2PleasureF]

Arms wrapped tightly around you,
Passion.
Comfort.
Ease.
Serenity. Yes, that's it - serenity.

Happiness too, and excitement,
Warmth, joy, bliss.
Why can't I spend the rest of my days enveloped
In that feeling?

I miss you.

All along, every day, since first we met, I miss you.

Why has it always felt that everything will be OK
When I take you in my arms and hold you close?

Why is there turmoil when we're apart?

Why does my heart ache, my mind drifting to thoughts of you?
I have to laugh and say DUH
The real mystery would be if a day went by
That I didn't have thoughts of you.

Your heart so pure, so kind, so lovely,
Your smile, that could melt a snowy day,
Eyes like glistening stars, bright and clear,
The face of an Angel, my Angel, my Beloved.

No, No, NO!
Hide it away, don't hurt her, protect her from harm,
Pray for her happiness from afar,
Shed a tear, don't call, hold the pain tight to spare hers...

And continue dreaming of holding her tight, and never letting go.

 

[champagne1982]

It's raining today, bitter lips
all twisted up, a resentful
moue, that I can't see the sun.

I'll miss the silvered moonshine
that drips from a May night
sky; the way stars slip down
in silken falls; lingerie puddled

on the floor as the moon
hides behind fine draperies
of clouds and weather; mistress'
tears that fall where they may,

that even in the moonlight sparkle,
still wet her cheeks and smile
once her lover shows his face.

 

[4degrees]

ciphon this endless juncture
from my system, its sickening
a neurotoxin taking a toll
much too large to pay
spun up in a tight web
smothered in a shell
i can never get away

all i'll do upon release
is beg again to stay.

 

[vampiredust]

Signs

Retired ditch diggers crucify
blackbirds, stretching out
wings on crosses made from
plywood stitched together

with former lovers bra straps.
Silent policemen take photos
of the ideology. A local
cavalryman smiles, bribed.

God told me so. Nobody told me
why all this was happening.
I just walked along, picking it up.
If poetry is the tracing paper

of the subconcious, then these
must be tracks we like to forget.

 

[sellthecookie]

recipe on tv

i will bake you a cake
fashioned after the stonehenge--
as still, as grand, as mum as ever.
bafflingly layered with guilt and nuts,
with blueberry soup burbling
inside, and icings breakable
under our fingertips. &
on top, gentlemanly manned by
two of us, ancient in tux
we can't fill in well,
undone flour on our faces,
not quite self-rising.

 

[vampiredust]

Cipher

The cipher hanging in the air
at South Kensington tube
station seems unwilling to decipher
itself. Perhaps if I study

the paraphanalia dotted around
the station's Victorian foundations:
dinosaur hooves for arches, tangerine
sinews stapled to tobacco brick

walls, turtle scale tiles, I might
get the gist of whatever
communicates to passengers
on a daily basis. Perhaps this is what

the afterlife is really about, looking
at the silent tracks made by foxes
crawling through the rubbish of our minds,
sniffing at that we knowingly discard.

 

[Tathagata]

the eternal sadness that is
falling in love
when you surrender all free will
in the pursuit of something beyond yourself
with each sip of ecstasy
there is the small death
the poison of
unmet expectations
a bitter wine
that works its will
and the leaving
breaks your heart
only
anesthetized ashes remain
that beg for the phoenix of a kiss
under mystical moonlight
to raise again the freedom
of abandonment
of self
what fools these mortals be