all of a sudden passion suddenly

[Guest]

It's essential

Bala a Versailles—
she put it on
no questions asked
served as a surrogate

I tucked in
wrapped around
breathed sweet spices
orange flowers

Dreamed

"Still wet from the shower
hint of baby powder"

Perfume touches me
burns off
much too quick

Instead

move through oil
it's essential
for fragrance to carry
in a ménage`a deux

 

[Guest]

Order of Operations

her x lovers ² + (me - me)³
       family + friends

Parenthesis first
exponets
multiple, divide
add and subtract
from left to right

All of which, equals nothing

 

[perks]

I want to swim in that pool
it's sitting there all alone
unused,
taunting me with its cool ripples

crack of dawn
is when I saw it
expecting to dive in
suited up and determined

closed
again, the sign said
and as the storm clouds
gathered within me
it seemed a pretty good idea

now
I'm naked again
but the morning is still
going swimmingly
even without that pool

 

[Angeline]

Death tolls finale
one window shuts
maybe the curtain closes
too thick to see spirits
surround themselves
with dimension settle
into whatever passes for comfort
not sensual no lilacs or caramel
no kisses cool or fevered
no need to twine limbs or breathe
the earth tang of humanity
in furtive sniff or encompassing gulf
to know goodness
because that concept is human

All this is human
all these words thoughts
feelings no more than tentative
explorations of could or might be
no more than the whirr and click
of flesh machines incomplete
firing of chemicals incapable
of imagining peace beyond comfort
because that concept too is human

just like god or redemption
which after all the huff
and struggle of existence
are about life not death

 

[Mia Moore]

deeper than the truth

they buried that soldier boy last Friday
in a pleasant enough graveyard
by the old Baptist church and just
a few yards from the preschool playground

when the tents are gone and flowers removed
by caretakers, family and friends
he might just have a view,
of the old country cupboard where he
and his buddies bough glass bottled cokes and rubbers
before they were old enough to fight or vote

when I drive past the church I think of him
and I wondered just yesterday if he could see
a bit to the left, from beneath the soil
the shell station a half mile down

the price of gas is falling....
but the young men are falling faster

 

[Mia Moore]

Arthurtown

You know where the old Farmer's Market is
on Bluff Road, past the stadium, see?
those rich folks buy train cars to party in
during Gamecock Football Season

Go beyond that place, a mile, maybe 2
look to your right, I have been there
concrete blocks stacked two by four by two
and more than just money is exchanged there
at the Quik Stop & Mor

I love to sit in the car and listen
to stories woven by the old black men
with no jobs except day labor when it suited them
and the beer flowed like urine flowed into the alley
behind them and the stories flew like spittle
from their sunburned cracking lips

and there are no good sized cigarette butts left
discarded in that particular parking lot
what do we know? we don't live there
we don't see the money flow like sugar
through a sieve on game-day

I have partied with those rich folks
listened to their stories, how they partied
hpw they spent, how they threw their kids
and cash away- ( laghter, they have plenty)

but I prefer the old Quik Stop & Mor
the grim and grin of reality plastered
across their want worn faces, but they
have real lives, and speak of family
and torment of past when their granpa's
were slaves

but they don't speak of regret
as they stash their nickel bags
when the police drive through, just to say
ya'll being good? yep, yep, I heard that
it's a hard life, and they all laugh
and roll another one, shoot dice for pennies
and watch a new caboose heading their way

I know they laugh at those rich folks
throwing what they call their lives, away
gotta get the party started, afterall
game day is just a couple months away

 

[Angeline]

At the funeral home
grandma threw herself on your coffin.
Maybe you weren't named right.
Death was confused, should have come
for her, for any of the old ones.
She pounded her head on the brass,
sobbing. The men had to pull her off,
and I felt nothing.

That morning
Aunt Florence dressed me as if
I were a child, rolling on nylons,
dropping the black sheath over me,
asking what shoes I would wear
as if what a shoe was or why
one foot moves with the other
has any relationship to a world
with a dead sister.

It was cold in the synagogue,
I think, and the Rabbi said we
are all children of Israel, but Daddy
paid him after the burial and he left
for the train to New York.

I felt nothing anyway.
My mouth fumbled over Kaddish,
like a bad actor I forgot my lines.
Someone hugged me from behind
when they tore my black armband.
They said I cried then, just the once,
but the blessing of not feeling
is a gift in hardship, and now
when I finger that frayed
black grosgrain I still feel
nothing.

 

[Opal pearl]

Marrying Me

One single smile
you gave me
that day.
It is still there,
for my life
and more,
one single smile
and so safe i feel,
forever.

 

[Eleanora Day]

I traveled there, diving
into your continent, traversing
you like a bee on a petal, sipping
your secrets like a hummingbird,
tiny but buzzing into the nectar

believing that no one has known
these truths. The night you cried
in the kitchen your face hung
in my arms, painted like sorrow.
Who else knew these depths

of you nested within yourself,
in jets of black curled contrails
crept over flesh centered,
but loose in the skin, an unwilling
participant in a dream built

word by word crying save me
in a thousand tears, and each crystal
a snowflake agonized into a story.
I should have closed the book
left you there in your garden

with your beer and car keys,
but how could I? That plaintive
sound, you weeping like a child,
and your mouth twisted to a plea,
I don't do well alone and us.

 

[Randi Grail]

a poem that sucks

left it spoiled rotten
written on a roll of click clack reciept paper
a poem        -        sort of
ungraceful bic stain blue scribble
not quite worth the oxygen and carbs
spoiled in burning fuel to tension
and making that writing motion
immediately          a sour taste
it stuck to my fingertips
so impossible to resist
the impulse nagged
and I raised them to my tongue
to taste the dissonance of words
gone embarrasingly wrong
telling all              showing nothing
brown nosing every dead end rhyme
caressing every crazy cliché
spilling out a mockery of soul
not me    -    not you    -    not real
but still I couldn't help but feel
that yes I did I wrote I tried
it's not my fault
not entirely my blame
and since I gave it a shot,
no real shame
that the poem died
hello      sucky      poem,
thanks for letting me write
read and be repulsed
impeccability is for the immortal
and so bloody boring
anyway

 

[Angeline]

Who knows what I need?
Arms that wrap and stay.
Repose. One night without
somebody's crisis hammering
into my imagination. I need

a good read, to fall into a book,
a fiction world, and swim
through laughter, reinvent
families that don't die, but
go on picnics instead.

I need to write a good poem,
really good, precise but evocative,
so my words envelop you, reader,
like a bouquet of wildflowers,
make your senses drown in beauty.

I need some publisher to read
this poem and say MY GOD,
that woman sweats talent,
so I'll offer her a contract
and my country house, a place

where she can take the longest
green walk without becoming
winded, daydream, come home
and make perfect tea, and need
nothing, not even herself.

 

[champagne1982]

I felt it warm and wet as the path was drawn,
winding down the fragile folds you worried
your way into.

Destroy my hoard of composure
Pleas of please hammer your ears
along with the insides of my thighs
as your face strokes along the silken road.

You've discovered what's been waiting.
It's always been here
seething, like glimmering fingerlings,
caught in a fishing net.

Today I boil the calm surface
You've broken into my Aladdin's cavern
of precious baubles, the most valuable
caught in your teeth and teased by your tongue.

Take care of it.
This is what you've waked from slumber
and now you must sing it into a choral symphony.

 

[WickedEve]

Poet Placing An Ad

Since week's end will be glorious,
not a cloud in the sky
except for fair weather cumulus--

like ones that floated me in dreams
in those days of slumbering
beneath the sky--

I will be offering treasures
found gently tucked away
and curious antiquities in quaint condition--

my mother's diamond-studded lock of hair
still pressed between the pages
of her most intimate thoughts.

Please make your way to my lovely,
freshly cut lawn this beautiful Saturday morn
for an opportunity to acquire these gems
I so regretfully part with--

there will be no dandelions intruding
between green blades that will whisper
for your bare feet.

"Okay, how much?
One hundred and what?"

Yard Sale Saturday
Rain or Shine
Junk Must Go!

 

[Angeline]

Lullabye

Please find peace
please find release
in quiet exhalation
fluttered between curtain
billow, pursed lips, pillow

please

this is no time for reparation
only respite now
bowed from lash to cheek
in gentle expiation for the day
has ended, quietude prevails

please unleash the sails
of care and rock cradled
in dreams that soothe
and ride on smooth seas
slumber please to wash
upon the shores of dawn

 

[WickedEve]

Petal: Future Begins

Petal trades fair glimpses
for eighty percent charged
cell for her hybrid chopper.

Fair glimpses are long
leggy spreads and get-bent
to thump tread with her thumb.

Petal wears duster,
high-slit in back,
oilskin,

surplus thong
beneath,
and
only skin.

She eases slick strap
aside--her crack
good as any credit disc.

A thorned scar vines
from ankle to behind
her knee, rose tattooed
at the end of her faded stem--

juice jockey knows
this one is glimpse only.
Petal leaves
without pricking his heart.

Pale dust green twirls
in the spokes
as she spins evening road
in search of Thaddeus.

 

[SeattleRain]

edited to say

I cut that mother fucker select all
control x some things suck
so much sucking
that even the sponsors are amused
that such a thing could
suck
and keep on sucking
until there was nothinhg

left

to


suck

damn goddamn we got writers here writing H poems scribbled into a window magical fingers and minds laying them down like improv never could do that either always looking for some sort of script

a whisper from stage right
a metronome
clicking out the beat and the next time the
damn doctor asks if I have touble concentrating
or recovering words I will say


I took a hundred years of piano lessons

and cannot remember the goddamn words printed on that metronome

not forte no that is volume
staccato short
crescendo

I need speed
speed


baby says why is Mozart to goddamn sad
and I say baby
maybe he lost something he really loved

why mommy

that is just what happens

and he says

I bet he lost his dog


and all I can say is baby

I lost my latin and I really don't give a fuck

it is not worth a poem.


knowing full well I imagined the whole thing

except the dog
and mozart being sad


and the snake
oh wait that is from the part
what
was
deleted


where is jim? I miss him.

 

[SeattleRain]

oh dear lord
it is Wednsday night
what did I used to to wednsday night


I think I practiced spelling february
masturbation
and wednsday


maybe I should start again

and tess
quote

what I have cut

lol



prefect


perfect!
for my humility
my hairshirt
ma sharona

goddamn pass the nipple
it is wednsday night

 

[Mia Moore]

reversing the peephole

Do not interfere with my fear,motherfucker
I salivate watching you
plot and plan, man with a mission
allow yourself to forget, baby
make it easy
so easy for me
to become the watcher

my backpack is rock-filled and I'm crawling across
the thin ice of your catastrophe
,insanity
is your facial forum
twisted and served on a platter

it doesn't matter, I almost have you
and let it be known, I cherish this game
of cat and cat and
mouse be damned!
it takes two with the strength of a lion
to play this game, and I just got started
playing with you

 

[Guest]

oh dear lord
it is Wednsday night
what did I used to to wednsday night


I think I practiced spelling february
masturbation
and wednsday


maybe I should start again

and tess
quote

what I have cut

lol



prefect


perfect!
for my humility
my hairshirt
ma sharona

goddamn pass the nipple
it is wednsday night

Wednesday has come and gone
until the next one
ironing piles up while
we master maturbating
Spell Thursday, spew febry
suck nipples and cut the crap.
In all humility quoting me
is flattering when it's something
I didn't say.
Sharona in a hair shirt
tickles my fancy.

 

[Maria2394]

grains of passion

he considered my offer to love him
a burden of unreason
placed by him upon my tiny shoulders

give me credit for wisdom Dear Sir
I knew what you were before
you found me and made me yours

this sack of grain, every fiber and bole
I nourish, watch it grow
and I can carry this marvelous load
you have cast upon me

do not save me from caring
and spill those grains unwillingly
on the ungrateful few, who in haste
rush past and tsk, tsk at the mess

on grateful knees, I worship you
with greedy lips, I suckle you
with a full heart I welcome you
back into my life

a/f sir, je t'aime

 

[Maria2394]

goodbye friends

Yayy, hurray, yippie ky yay
its been ten years, let the people go

wednesdays child is filled with woe
february, fill with snow

they both sucked, so let them go
seattle is cool, she knows too much

fuck the TV, gimme your touch

 

[Eleanora Day]

Bleak House

It was a bleak house.
I carried the keys,
kept a basket of small tasks,
occupying days, carrying years
through a fog of groceries,
checkbooks, dry cleaning.

It was a bleak house.
I chose the new washer,
folded sheets, fit myself
to their corners, held myself
through winters,
breathing my own warmth,
shaking off storms.

How could I explain that autumn
that brief fading beauty hurt so,
too colorful to watch all that
turning to dust, leaves falling,
crumbling like me.

How could I explain that spring
seared me with the tenderness
of its possibility, the way it ripens
into summer, lush, beyond my grasp,
too green for the barren twigs
of my fingers.

Somehow I bloom again.
Somehow I bloom
from small seeds lain dormant
in emptiness then suddenly
blown free, lifted perhaps
by some careless bird,
and dropped to this fertile soil
bearing words like new shoots,
believing in something again.

 

[Sappholovers]

The end of a candlelit bath

We've been in the bath so long
feet bottoms feel like
prunes dressed in corduroy

But your bosoms are
shiny apple skins
sleek and smooth

My candle still burns for you

 

[SeattleRain]

tickling
fancy pants fu ruffkles all down the back
it seems breasts grown and shrink around here somehow

I know mine do


and


Tuesdays child is full of face I heard once
home is where the dog is


no laundry tonight

chocolate pizza
chocolate pizza with chips on top
of whipped topping
for my baby

peanutbutter pizza
cream cheese and sugar
mmmmmmpeanut chips
m and m

sugar cookie pizza
cream cheese and whipped cream
damn
strawberries cut on top

thaqt one I might have to use at my own leasure
for my own pleasure
the party

will

still

go




on.


it is Thursday thank god I can spell that one.

 

[Eleanora Day]

Lay here in the half light that lingers
until darkness sweeps us away,
brushing life to vague forest shapes,
plume and angle. Lay here where time
drops from the sky like fading memory
shades our repose to solace.

There is no need for meaning.
We have departed with the shadows.
We are one life stilled, statuary, carved
feature by feature wrought together.
Your hand drapes my hip, our knees curl
tandem, your lips part my veiled nape.

Peace enters the inlet of dreamtime.
The breeze of distant rain sings,
the highway barely whooshes, like ashes
of origen blown past our senses,
our laments, so only the sussuration
of breath quivers here, everywhere silent.