all of a sudden passion suddenly

[PandoraGlitters]

Conversations with a Star

Desert's heat whispers smoothly
over the partition of night and day
until it is only onion skin.
Breathing around its lid, hope
opens us, roughening what sand's
worn smooth, lifting lungs against
their cages. Veiled brilliance seeps,
lavishes weather over skin,
finds purchase in pores
until light feeds night blooms
through the neck's thick dropper
and we wash
and we wash
over the tipped sky's ship
embracing in our sleep
the endless shore.

 

[4degrees]

awake
in the wake of absence
your warm breath relocated
allowing longing to set in
a zone, comfort established
shared frequency and
slight lines connect
the two mentally
the bed is never small enough
for one, but tonight
will stretch and turn
and make your space my own
rain on glass, coolness
sneaking around
the lack of insulation
leaves everything bare
aware
this thing is getting bigger
by the night.

 

[vampiredust]

North Decatur DMV, Las Vegas

Customers queueing for check-in
sweat in the jet-fuel atmosphere.
No air conditioning will stop some
from crash landing. And then we
wait, watching other people

in the makeshift departure lounge
check their forms for signs of leaking
fuel, mistakes that could cause
an emergency. Some will fly on a

bureaucrats' steady fuselage, others
will hitch up their aileron skirts
and glide on the gulfstream to places
where there is no landing strip.

I pray that is me.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Anodynes

there are two sides to your mouth but they are not
enough for the streams that carry your words
to waiting baskets

because a wasp seeks mates
among orchids
the hyperbole of form of open clasp
draws the saw buzzed head
in to that which cannot give
but takes your dance
pollinates and spreads only its own mirrors

there is no alchemy just masturbation
and renewal
the cocaine of lust
dusts the feet
of the lover who wanders
daughterless
from bloom to bloom

 

[vampiredust]

Flags

Flags salute the moon paddling
across the verbless night. Patriots
all of them, they ignore the men
and women barking like dogs

in Washington and choose
to stare out into the harmless
void placed in front of their eyes.
Tomorrow they will salute a Chevy

or Buick pulling up for gas. Day after
that, a man with an eagle tattoo.
Good 'ol American men. Good 'ol
patriots the lot of them.

They might think of one of their
brothers being burnt in an act
of defiance somewhere and weep.
Watching the stars die

might make them think outside
the plastic packaging they
sleep in, unaware of the label
that reads MADE IN CHINA

 

[vampiredust]

Mother's Day, Las Vegas

I was the only person in the restaurant
trying to read the manuscript concealed
in my mother-in-law's breath. Everyone
else was busy downing mudshakes
or brushing up on their sincerity.
The answers I gave to her questions
(mostly about England) were little
archeologists brushes, sweeping away
those lines written down and rehearsed
every year since my wife was born.
They were her insulation against fire,
and when I had finally peeled back
the last of the text I could see the words
break glass in case of emergency,
the axe's steel beak squawking, eager
to smash the emergency exit and let her
escape into the desert outside.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

feed a fever

this is how danger comes in
through the front door riding a sunbeam
a long flirting glance only
to storm in the living room washing over
the sofa with hushed
hurricane breathing
all at once
blood and air rushing apocalypse
into my lungs, fingers a tight stroke
of balloon squeal attraction once
more and I wonder how we will ever
survive its static, hair high
as its wave breaks
its great curl
smashing the bottle
the one that ferried
all of the letters I wrote
when I thought I would know better
than to drown in this heat
sickness we call love

 

[vampiredust]

Mess

The dustbin in the corner
of the bedroom is overflowing
with brands. Starburst,
Pringles, Capri-Sun. Empty
bottles of Becks and Peroni
lager stick their minaret-heads
above the canopy of rubbish
for sunlight. A single serving
of Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia
stands on a undefined piece
of cardboard. It stares
at the 21st century mess
and weeps, the way we all used
to when confronted with problems
of our own making.

 

[vampiredust]

Rabbits

The Mexican immigrants waiting
at the entrance to the services
on Encinitas Boulevard, Encinitas
stood like rabbits guarding

a newly discovered patch
of alfalfa; sweating as they circled
the area, eager for resources
to set up a permanent outpost.

I never noticed the marks around
the oldest's wrists until after I had left,
testament to a barbed-wire youth.
And those dried lips, eager

to tell the others about the blood
trickling from their splitting ears,
attracting eagles preparing to fly
somewhere in the distance.

 

[vampiredust]

To the wanker playing loud music until 11 am

I could use a big-swinging-dick
word like dickhead or motherfucker
to describe you to the world
you don't think exists. Politeness,

even in poetry, should take
precedent. So I will say
that if you are noisy again,
my pen will cut off your balls

and hang you upside down
like a freshly gutted pig.
The dripping of blood
will be your music. The apple

falling into your wife's mouth...

 

[vampiredust]

Pacman Salad

The pacman slices of peach
were the first to go,
followed by the cherries.

That made us bring up
ghosts in the morning.

I would have written
how it was sweet
like childhood, were it not
for the metallic aftertaste

lurking on our tongues
and the sound of quarters
ringing afterwards,
followed by the words

game over flashing
like an SOS for our childhood
dreams.

 

[normal jean]

...................

 

[normal jean]

..................

 

[vampiredust]

Thank you, my dear. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

[vampiredust]

Songs

Night arched its back
over the bungalow
as Rose concluded
her talk on achieving

different states
of meditation. The stars
on the American flag
up front unstitching

themselves for the vista
and the status of Buddha,
Jesus and Shiva marching
with bronze-heavy

footsteps to songs
being deciphered by ants
and beetles dancing
to some unknown tune

on the grey and alien
sidewalk.

 

[vampiredust]

Sunday Afternoon at the Swapmeet

God can be bought for the dollar
entrance fee the lurid Fantastik!
mural declares, its Seventies
colouring fading from memories

of recession, strikes and rioting.
The woman hushed in the booth
hands us our tickets to salvation
and we march onward. Popcorn

and cheap perfume are angels
guarding the inner sanctum here,
not the rent-a-cops snarling
like dogs at visitors browsing

Farah Fawcett wigs and Aretha
Franklin CD's. Several units
have shut in one corner, souls
returned to earth to perform

more miracles. The US Army
has set up a recruiting booth
here, the feint smell of fire
lingering when people pass.

 

[normal jean]

subjectives

Where do I begin? When? How?
Where I began, those nine months
waiting, growing, developing
poetry in my mother's womb

Why does it now come as a shock
that my life is not what she wanted
it to be. I am not wealthy, famous,
not even close to being happy

yet I muddle on. A sprout here
a seedling there, they take shape
into themselves as God saw fit,
am I any different, even in this current
faulted form?

I am not even what I wanted to be,
parents hopes aside, I struggle to care
even now, here, wishing I were
somewhere, a place where happiness

cannot be defined by any measure
of fame or failure. I do exist, I do think
is it safe to assume, therefore I am?
I am....not.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

NJ, this one really touched me. Nicely done.

Where do I begin? When? How?
Where I began, those nine months
waiting, growing, developing
poetry in my mother's womb

Why does it now come as a shock
that my life is not what she wanted
it to be. I am not wealthy, famous,
not even close to being happy

yet I muddle on. A sprout here
a seedling there, they take shape
into themselves as God saw fit,
am I any different, even in this current
faulted form?

I am not even what I wanted to be,
parents hopes aside, I struggle to care
even now, here, wishing I were
somewhere, a place where happiness

cannot be defined by any measure
of fame or failure. I do exist, I do think
is it safe to assume, therefore I am?
I am....not.

 

[4degrees]

there is a poem here,
somewhere
it grows out my fingers
like budding leaves on branches
my mind swirls
a dervish of pleasentries
forthcoming from the root
that is you
all things intense
and perspective is the preset
for the length that my
bass boost will thump
and rattle my insides-
i'm sceneless,
with meaning and depth
and some assumed prettyness
and songs of mine have
been abrupt-it is what
i choose to make it
my latest teacher,
stay awhile and see
incomparable times of
possibilities.

 

[Eluard]

An accompaniment

Leaning on the balcony rail
the sea a black-grey, peacock-tail mask
over your eyes.
A presence is spelled-in behind you,
grows inside you
a mirror of the sea before you.

It lifts the hem of your skirt
higher than the clouds
higher than God's theromorphic mirage.
God is full of the names of you
and the mystery of your
disappearance from the world —
but he will not tell.

Tell, tell, with you legs,
with your hair, with your lips, with your
breasts made to fight against the sea.
A beauty comes alive
and the world draws nearer
than you are prepared to say.

You are blood of the past
and arisen into my hands my eyes
my command separating your
restless seas.




. . .

 

[vampiredust]

The heatwave came early that year

We lay in the bed like cans of spam,
listening to the air conditioner's
stutter and the ram-raiding sirens
from distant police cars. The trickle
of the house's dripping colour
could be heard once the heat dropped,
ending with an almost silent splosh!
My own noise - that of my shrink
wrapped desire unfolding - was not heard
that night and I turned over and over;
a spongy slab of meat waiting to be hung
up and eaten.

 

[annaswirls]

he says he hates poems
about the mississsippi river and who can blame him
we all have to hate something I suppose
I hate the two inches of tile behind the toilet
and thinking about what
happens
next
when they are too big to carry

 

[normal jean]

My time has come and
the faceless one
has unrolled
the long black carpet
that leads to the place
where day meets night
and they dance.

 

[normal jean]

I am blue, no arguments
here, everything is blue
or green, does it not surprise
you when you realize
that there is no color?
Only our perceptions
of light as is splits
conquers and divides
then merges and becomes
before our eyes.

 

[normal jean]

Mohs knows

.................