all of a sudden passion suddenly

[OT]

This reminds me of those coffee can and string phones.

safe in his tree fort
home of the he-man-woman-haters club
he pretends not to watch giggling girls gossip
over tin can string phones

 

[tungtied2u]

Which reality

He walked unsuspected for 30 years
Smiled a warm smile
Laughed at jokes
Fished with friends
As they shared beers and stories

He wouldn't hurt a fly
Could barely killa fish
His friends said

Eighteen years married
Adored her
Ate mangos as they sat
On their deck in the Keys
Knocking back daiquiris

That was the dream
The illusion of normality
Some where deep inside
Long ago in his past
He shared his psyche
With a demon
Wily and patient

He'd surfaced once
Thirty years ago
Wielding a gun
Killed his mother
Shot his father
Only a jam saved his sister

He was committed
The demon submerged
To await another day
Cured, he was released
Returned to normal life

Inside, the beast slept
One ear cocked
Alert for the snap that
Would call him to action

What flipped the switch
Will never be known
But the beast prowled once again
Attacked in savage strokes
And nomw three more are dead
The only saving grace
At least the beast is one.

 

[annaswirls]

sucker

the courier said


"wash
your neck bleach teeth
white arrive thursday's moon"

perched round stool

watch vanity
mirror

you approach from behind
without need for direction

jawbone handle finger gentle
hot rags cool in basin
as teeth pierce

a moment

fountain pen dips
pull and filled

another month of blood poems



leaving brown stained manuscript
paged by many fingers
open window blows back your scent
and theirs

it fills
nothinng



courier waits under full moon
I study his neck

and prepare another message

 

[Angeline]

Lunch time muse. Watching
the day in the sideview mirror,
unfolding clouds wisped streaky
in langor at midday across
the intense smoke of skies,
half-closing my eyes, listening

to blues played cool as the day
in thin-fingered riffs, 88
exponentially timed ups
and downs counted in space
that falls between trees, the first
drift of leaves turning brown
as drums brush their rhythm

against memory's night. Your eyes
changing like autumn, green-brown,
gold rimmed like Sun going down,
widening at the breadth of a whisper,
your eyes caught on dream, caught
between need and soothe. Music

plays, blues roll oceans of season
and sky caught in play of midday
or spread on the midnight of sighs
that begin and end in song.

 

[annaswirls]

she told me

"use it"

what

"use the memories"

for what?

"for poems, bonehead"

I am so tired
of poems

they begin to die
the moment they are made
into alpha numerical
flat
representations

and they just
keep
dying
and
dying

I am so tired
of
poems.

sad advertisements
to a join the soul
in all its dying

 

[annaswirls]

they said they said to her
in 8 hours your son
will have have his head
cut from his body

they said
there is nothing you can do about it


they said
they said

your father is dead
your mother is imprisoned
have you seen what they
do to prisoners
have you heard

they said
there is nothing you can do about it



and what would I do
what would I be driven to do
for my mother
for my son

for my mother for my son

who just
want
to
come
home

 

[annaswirls]

downstairs

I heard the phone ring downstairs
and I could not accept
another human being
was connected to me

triying to connenct to me
their hand holding plastic to theor

mouth


ear

thinking of what they might say
to


me


I could not accept someone was trying
to connect


and I let it ring
inanimate
sounds
through my empty house

until the ringing stopped

and I was upstairs

 

[tungtied2u]

Beauty and poetry

You fucking bastard
What were you thinking
as you sliced and diced my cousins
And all the others
Before them

Drove the knife in and with sadistic intent
claimed their hearts as your own
Wsa it not enough to end their beauty
The love of life that somehow eluded you

You should have silenced the rage within you first
It took the savge slaughter of the ones
you loved the most
to make you see your search for peace
was one of futility
Give you clarity enough to end
the hunt yourself
Spare the pain for future familes

 

[flyguy69]

Coffee in Wartime

Fresh and hot
An Italian roast, black and thick with security
slips down her throat as homemade
shrapnel tears a 15-year-old chest apart

and delivers boy and soldier and shopper
together to martyrdom, uncertainty
certain at last.
Brown foam tickles her lips
as she dips her head and sips
acid balanced autodrip luxury, ducking

laser beams that translate
a nearby rooftop
into gps target coordinates.
Finger twitch on a switch
by a high school hero gives
a smart bomb its diploma, sets
it free to do its job.
Blood-red roof tile scatters

like a flock of pigeons, banks
and flutters to the iron-stained street
around her; RPG threat neutralized, delivered
to the God on call that day.

Espresso hiss hides the cries
of boys that fight
monsters in their dreams,
and become them in the light
or die trying. She blows
on the surface to cool the emotion, wipes
blood-red lip prints
from the plastic lid, then folds
the war in half. She scoops car keys
into her purse and retreats
to sale-priced diapers, roast chicken
for dinner.

 

[Guest]

...

"?tahw era eW"

lick it clean
blood wells
soft flesh
splinter punctures
Pick it up

scatter
shards break
white tiles dark
amber liquor turns
Glass smashes

hits the floor
slips and falls
of tequila
three-fingers
Brandy snifter

"Pregnant!"

 

[Guest]

...

Don't make the mistake
thinking obscured arty poses
are enough to manipulate

There is more to see
than a teasing smile
and flirty baby blues

What's not there
is much more telling
than what is

Remember
men are visual animals
with well practiced eyes

always undressing
looking beneath clothes
with imagination to fill holes

 

[Guest]

Nodding off with heart in hand
everyone sleeps
while I stay awake

Lying in the dark

Thinking

If I died in a dream
would it be true?

What effect of reality
would be on fantasy
if it were so?

Would I know that I was gone?

REM floats from one dream into another
Will I be in the dirt still dreaming?


(Warning:

Insomniac thoughts
tend to rest on questions
best left unanswered

Take two (2) to kick
Sandman in the ass)

 

[Liar]

gone
like so many intentions
shot stray
by yet another ricochet
bullet typeface headline
in the wake of any real
interrest

oh yes it's gone
and we sing the blues
wrapped in plastic
colorful, microwaved
mass market grief
solemn and sincere
for the fuck of it

and hey,
it's oh so stylish
black is the new black,
innit?

 

[WickedEve]

Crush

I am other,
tangler in the web.

crawl low
corner scurry
shadow shadow

Must you be tied,
knotted twixt her ends?

To drain her would be delightful
in my most frightful dreams,
but I am spider in your palm.

close your hand
i'm ready

 

[WickedEve]

Do you recall Donna Marie,
Lady Shenandoah, kudzu green,
past great lake, not over the sea?

Summer day since she was seen,
you saw her last in May or June,
Lady Shenandoah among all green.

She is forgotten but not the moon.
How can that be, my traveling man?
You were with her in May or June.

Against her skin with golden band,
you tarnished vows below that crescent.
How could you, my far traveled man?

She loved you without my consent
and around your deceitful finger,
twisted the ring below that crescent.

Down there where the kudzu linger,
remember your Donna Marie,
wrapped around your deceitful finger,
past great lake, not over the sea.

 

[Guest]

The sky is pepper and salt;
the air is too.

The dense fog lies
like a woolen blanket,
soaking up the sun,
swallowing everything
that is "feel good" blue.

White oak trees still
have their leaves,
but they are turning yellow,
all except for one.

That tree is dead on top
with brown branches;
witch's fingers
reaching through mini-blinds
to cast a spell.

An overcast mood to match
a gray day jinx.

 

[darkmaas]

My trip to Boston

after the ceremony
I dared to eat a peach
my beard was sticky
and I wandered
interrupting
nuptial conversation
searching
for a place to put that stone

the party moved up to New Hampshire
where it seems the lakes
are all called ponds
“live free or die “
of boredom naked
in the neighbour’s hot tub
a stone’s throw from the shore

it used to be that if you closed your eyes
you could hear the moon
rise o’er the hiss of pines
but things are better now
we flit from screen to screen
a bon mot here
a fragment there
literature of ten words or less
drenched in innuendo
who needs the scent of wood smoke
or pine gum on your feet
and the crazy laugh
that echoes ‘cross the pond?

 

[Angeline]

Bach's architecture
soars sharp faceted
with crystalline precision
its progression shatters
notes of the Courante
along an abscissa
observing statistical
pitch like and unlike

Schoenberg's atonal
variations relative
to time and the curve
of culture marching
unmatched like misfit
tectonic plates erupting
in symphonic upheaval

but I'll take Thelonius
triangulated beard
to boot and unfit
to anything but the elegant
sawtooth crunch
of cityscape significant
and round as the moon
clashing blue

 

[tungtied2u]

glasses fallen
climg to keyboards edge
such beauty and clarity
expressions of sounds jeard
reverberating
touching the essence of existence
and as the soul sings and searches
f or meaning ina world
where any sense of sense is lost
dulcet tones calm calamity
sooth
soften life's harsh blows

 

[Angeline]

548 poems under just one name.
I'm not even sure I remember all
your names here and scattered
across the ether of the digiverse,

your words suceeding you, scattered
to the winds of Wisconsin and the world
is less without your voice. Your poems
whisper and giggle, echo you still

I only wanted that Eric Dolphy poem
or was it Rahsaan Roland Kirk? All
those nights of jazz talk. I can't
remember 548 poems worth of talk.

You said Squirrels Playing Saxophones
is a love poem. I laughed because who
else would say such a thing or hold out
the phone and tell me to listen

to the sound of grass blowing, now
write that sound, write everything--
pancakes and spice, bunnies, brown trucks
and radon sisters. You said You'll never

kiss me anyway because I have
a bony nose, but I would kiss
a hundred toads with or without
bony noses to remember whether

it was Miles or Eric or Rahsaan
or my phone rang one more time,
and I heard I want a large pie
with mushooms and onions,

and it was you.

 

[Guest]

Troll for supper

I'd turn carnivorous for one meal,
forsake years of harassment
of my "fou" herbaceous roots

(What sort of Cajun am I
dining only on grits and greens?)

I'd join my brethren
in their noshing
of anything that has a heartbeat
and everything that is meat

just to have troll.

Although, I'm not sure
does the beast oink or moo?

It does make a diffence.

As would it be best served
dirty over rice?
or maybe hen and troll
would make a good gumbo?

Maybe I will have both
each dish with lots of
hooya cayenne to add spice
to such a boring ho-hum mix.

 

[annaswirls]

tooth cracks bitter
sticks sooth extract
shion to mix the rhyme
with alliteration
sans metaphor


invent your own

paste them together in
straight
even
lines that march march march
into sentiment
swirled into water like ash

you know I will drink you down
my medicine bitter all the way down
take you all
the
way
down
inside through pores
ducts
the motor in the background dissapears lake water
in ears

we are coming to the muted fog presence
sitting on chairs
she said
meet me in the
middle

bring a truck

we will make love together
pretend we are watched

pretend we are watching

pretending the three are one
because they are

lover this is what I trained you for
go on go on go on take me with you
unravelling all the way
down

 

[Maria2394]

the cows came, brown ones
black and white with soft pink
moist noses, pressed against
chain link and they watched us
bury my father. On a Thursday
last day of May, I put sunflowers in his coffin
and that gave me comfort,although I am certain,
he turned in his grave the moment we left
him with his mountain air and dark
beneath the soil.

Cool purple graced the backdrop
of the cemeraty, surrounded by cows,
they came to watch, and were silent
but they looked upon us
as if they knew, and I wondered if daddy
would soon be a cow, too.

His headstone waits to be delivered,
difficulty in climbing mountains prevents me
from visiting the cows,
and remembering that last sunset
when I could have touched him one last time,
but touch was cold, and impossible, he was gone
and left his shell, I never knew him, but
perhaps the cows did, and they whispered
warm-breath prayers, and I stood there
and watched them, waiting for us to leave.

So I left him on the hill,
beneath the teary sodden pasture, but returned
the day bfore the next new year
and put mama right beside him,
and the cows were still there,
waiting for me to leave, to take
my grief, elsewhere

 

[Maria2394]

he didnt much like flowers, but maple trees
were sacred in his heart, and he didnt much like hugs
not from daughters, especially not from sons

buut sometimes we went camping with him,
forest bound near Lake Lanier, sounds of wildcats
screaming, filling the midnight air

and then gunshots,
"I think I got something," jubilant yell
and celebration was grease fried taters
and Old Milwaukee beer

snow caresses, on childrens faces,
is what I remember about him,
he might have been kind, somewhere deep inside
but expressions of joy, from him
were rare

but then there were the trips to Florida,
mama hated the beach and maybe
thats why he took us there,
and I sat with hiim on the sand,
glowing from sun and delight
watching the sexy, tanned women
walk by

 

[Guest]

Java Vamp

After 8, she's always there.
The brew in her cup
stays hot
as low cafe lights
sets a mood as she waits

A silent—come here, I'm waiting
an invitation enough for anyone
wanting more than coffee

"Mind if I join you?"
Delivered with a charming smile;
(all a facade, as visions of her
are firmly planted on his smile.)

"Please…"
Pink tongue wets lips,
(thinking whatever he has in mind
is going to cost more than a latte.)