all of a sudden passion suddenly

[Angeline]

One window
in a brown frame,
one candle and a pachouli
incense stick half-burnt
on the sill.

Inside
everything is contained
words stacked on disks
warmth preserved in walls,
a woman in a sweater
holds thoughts
behind her skin,
wraps them in threads
around her bones,
weaves benches
and Saturday morning
bike rides, the funeral
black heels picking
over icy sidewalks,
the cracks and a sluggish
river on a winter white
wedding day.

Inside
life is constructed
around cans of soup,
dishes and a hairbrush
or spun on filaments
of memory carried
in a fragile web.

Outside
wind whips snowdrifts
on the deck, lifts them
like foggy ghosts
that explode to ice dust
and blow away. The table
is unrecognizable
as anything but a cube,
and one chair extends
a frozen arm crooked
at the elbow in laissez
faire stoicism.

Four crows
were wrought
on pine branches
like iron weathervanes.
I'm still here
on my side of the glass
but when the doves burst
from under the barn,
the crows came alive
and flew.

 

[Maria2394]

8 A.M. apache skies

they woke us with thunder rattling
panes, stomping frozen ground
from above. Their rotors became spears
and their horses were many. Comfort
in cotton over eyes, ears astounded,
stomping thunder, stomping thunder
from above and arrows became sound
alive and piercing dreams
which were not of war or noise.
Stomping thunder,stomping thunder
armed and legs unwounded,
unwound, unwound, unwound
tomm tomm, tomm tomm, bomb
bomb
bomb

 

[annaswirls]

double socked
double scarfed
layered legs and all

still too damn cold

what happened to my feral blood
running hot pumping hard
all the way down the hills

 

[annaswirls]

every time you open those blues
it is still there it is still there
what else were you expecting

tap dance round til metal worn
still
there

fake to the left
jab with the right
target leans
and back up
bop em bonzo
weebles whatever

still
there

what did you expect.

 

[Maria2394]

home is like

home is like
a temporary tattoo, even when it's gone
you look at your arm, you remember
it was thgere, in that one spot near
the patch of little freckles on your left
arm, remember next time you sleep
beneath an overpass, and wake to
pidgeon poop in your face, matted
in your hair, it may be temporary
but it's no less there

sixteen years old, baby face slim
waist, no food four days, hunger
was a rumour, whispered by hobos
met at the train tracks when you wree ten years old
and that one guy, the soldier man,
dressed in tatters, eating potted meat we stole
from momma s kitchen, and he said he didnt want it
but he ate it anyway, and I watched him walking down those tracks
and the day I ran away, he walked with me down Interstate
26, but only in my memories.

and sleeping in a park, or beneath that underpass, I imagines him holding me, stale beer breath and his clothes
smelled like death, but tdamn that bun was warm
but he never warned me about what pidgeons do
when they roost, its like they perch there
waiting for you, or soemthing
that last ride into Orlando was a pick up truck
fisherman and some old catfish stinking in the back
I slept for 200 miles he said before
he dropped me off, becareful, there are pervs
out here, lucky for you Im not one.
and it was threemore days without a bath
when I finally found a place to stay.

home was like a temproary tattoo, washable
indelible on a memory, scarred
burnt in, yet gone, good thing pidgeons can fly
and sleep when they want to-
no place on a pidgeon
for any type of tattoo

 

[Angeline]

On Washington Street
past the porch, and the white
door with etched oval glass,
we dined in a room papered
with day-glo posters
for an Electric Factory concert.
100 winking Ben Franklins
flipped the peace V in unity.

This was before the 7-Up butterfly
was nailed to kitchen walls.
This was the night I opened
your refrigerator door to find a bottle
with a sock in it, an onion plant
and, inexplicably, my purse,
which was very cold.

But those were the 60s
(or 70s) for you.
These damn years keep flying.
It was just one of those
20th-century years that, like me,
are washing off with the tide,
just years, just one of those things.

My plan is to go down swingin
like Ma Rainey or maybe Dylan Thomas
or even Sonny Liston, so I want you
to remember this night when you sat
on the bed and played E major and minor
until I couldn't stand it anymore.
This was the night Leslie called and said
How are the dots where you are?,
and MaryLynn said Doesn't lime soda
taste green?

and I understood them both
because those were whenever
those years were for you,
or more precisely for me.

Somebody has to remember
old Popovich upstairs fighting
the Battle of Hamburger Hill alone
or, more precisely, with a bottle,
while downstairs The Grateful Dead
played China Cat Sunflower
on John Roth's two-reel.

Somebody has to remember
the tapestry with three blue
robin's eggs in a nest, and the way
your black hair curled at your pale face
and how you curled that night
around your guitar.

 

[Angeline]

I dreamt of a mouse
that was tiny, gray
and agile circling
a snowy porch.

I walked past it
into the house
and picked up
a six-pointed starfish
whose name
is Maury.

Someone said
Make room for Maury,
will ya?

so I moved a glass bowl
filled with pink peonies
that smelt like July
and centered
the antimassacar
on the dark wood.
I put Maury right there

before I
went back to sleep.

 

[*Catbabe*]

To See

Your eyes skip
across my smile, assuming
a calm façade holds
no depth and dismissing
the possibility I could bring you
places you will never see
floating in the shallows.

For now, I swim in safety
beneath the surface of me,
waiting for you to come
closer to the edge and reach
deeper, sliding fingers

through the wet, finding
me as nature’s forces pull
you under, past the waves
that distort reality with reflection,
immersing you

in a vision sea.

 

[Poetic Collaboration]

I'm glad
you had fun in the snow
but when the evening swept
your needs to bed
she left a midnight glow
right here,
far west of dreaming
shadows.

I'll whisper hints
of secrets I think you should know
dreams' haunting images filled me as I slept
my body and my head
lewdly spread and opened up to show
you within
my wanton canyon, steaming
lust flows.

 

[Maria2394]

staples under skin and holding
flesh, back and straining against
the pull away from self and pain
expelled in waves
of anguish, of disturb and distress

what is skin but a shield
protecting my soul
from hell-gazing eyes-

that you should be attached
to your own self
is punishment enough

 

[flyguy69]

Black Ice

A gripless world
stretches sight to the pale
horizon, pulls eyes
thin over lake-ice skin.

3 inches: safe for walking

Secrets swim underfoot, spiny
jaws and lips suspend
in shadow, wordless. Open,
then close. Open, then pulled
close like coats against
a deceitful wind.

4 inches: safe for shacks

Compass claws for north, slips
on non-magnetic white
and spins in ever-widening
circles. Bearings drift
to corners, shift
triangular and leave gaps.

6 inches: safe for vehicles

Downward press, the unrequited
weight that tests the promise
of gravity. Creak and groan
beneath a load that wanted
the crack, the slow fall
into secret dark.

 

[Maria2394]

anti-freeze

evidence of crystals forming
blatantly black, with skid and detour
across shoulders ashiver, hold me
as pines hold needles close before
approaching storms, and poplars' leaves
turn up and face the wind
their downsides shiny, pale and smooth

leaves cannot fear the ice and wind,
they wait for caresses such as yours
from so far up and around, a long wait
yet you circumvent snake mounds
and rivers, to wish me your whispers
and kisses

you've seen my realness, and now
I want to warm your ice..
it is the least a good southern girl can do

for E, who sees my realness and talks to me anyway

 

[WickedEve]

erogami

after last of the sashimi,
suggestions soar
to my palm.
his crane unfolds.

fade to mirrors,
privacy--a hinoki
space,

where water splashes
like tears, sweet and
without sorrow.

satin slides to ankles,
grasped and corners down,
creases are a butterfly. we fly

back to him,
with serene shakuhachi
accompaniment.

"sake?"

"yes, sake."

swallowtail flutters
beneath our table,
never alighting. instead,

folds of satin
settle on his dish,
blatant and blue.

i sip rice wine
in coral lacquer,
while his fingers,
conspicuous cool,
unbend my damp wings.

he inhales.
i know the scent is his.
even my skin
is scented with him.

 

[Guest]

Disposable Muse

Red lip press, stained
a Starbuck's napkin

Call me
555-2357

With the last line written
it is imagined, she smiled
long after the imprint

then I tuck her in an empty cup
and throw her away

 

[annaswirls]

dont try and crack the code
paint yourself into my corner fulley clothed
exray shots flashing shadows of
what soaks in
amd what is just passing through


sorft tissue translucence
smack ass silicone snap crackle
pop the breakfast of the distracted

pretend you are not a sexual creature
just listen to the
hypnotic rice that also lectures
low birth weight and
death pulled over by heavy machinery

turn eyes away from ploloroid pink oozes from the back

pat my head say good girljust lick it down nod and smile

 

[annaswirls]

just a little fun, stretching my wings

look! look! it's enola gay
painted and polished
and up on display!

black numbers painted on white
who needs radiation
we got plenty of light

look! oh look! it's enola gay
safe behind glass
and posing for pay

la dee da dee dum come and see
la dee da da dee dum she's posin for me

shame shame shame on thee
you miscalculated terminal velocity
plexi glass plexi glass, see?
it's what divides the she from thee

 

[eagleyez]

The photographers
eye,
shuddered and
snapped
and colored
and blacked
and white.

A long quiet
walk uphill
as the dusk
challenges
vision-

Feet
take over,
a red barn
appears gray.

 

[minsue]

Please

Hear me, please.

Don't do this, please.

Don't leave me here

without a word

a nod

anything

to show you hear me.

There's nothing left

for me to say

except

please.

 

[DeepAsleep]

Here's a disinterested day,
sleep and some food and some
cigarettes and some peace
and some quiet,
if peace and quiet means
staring at the wall without stimuli

And then some shopping,
some rice, some noodles,
some diced tomatoes,
some juice.

Then some more peace
some more quiet
some more cigarettes and
some more food,
and then some more sleep.

And somewhere in between,
some of this,
a grey little poem with only
one splash of color,
"some diced tomatoes."

Oh, to be young and unemployed.

 

[The_Fool]

It starts with glittering sheaths
On desolate dark branches
Brilliant white haze on darkness

Accumulating sheen
Drags down the proudest tree
To bow before the storm

Cruel cold winter wind
Savages the desolate night
Till hazy morning displays

Broken branches piled round and round
Trees torn, twisted, uprooted.
Fallout from the winter glaze

Melancholy winter deep
Suffers from the savagery
Adding pain to the shiver

 

[BlueskyBeauty]

shine hides
concealed with tarnished thoughts
deceiving eyes that sneak a closer peek
of fading smiles shaded by a memory.

dust and dirt that bury hope
ashes cover your "patience brings roses"
as secrets tidy in a dreamy shoe box slumber

living now convenience
vows broken
just a token of what never died
though still denied
forever is forever
but polish cloth remains untouched
I'll live the lie
tomorrow's truth
in hopes I'll grow into the shoes I wore
before sorrow taught desception.

 

[The Mutt]

What was it?
That promisory note you got
in the game of Life...
Was it Life?
Not Monopoly...

You know,
that one you played with the little cars
that you filled with pegs
pink and blue
and the poorhouse loomed around the next curve...

And you giggled into the night
over how silly it was
when you could just
stop playing
and switch to
Risk.

 

[annaswirls]

everyone loves you
imagines your body move
like the lines that dance them into blurred obedience

spin swoon swagger and drool
just nauseates me with motion sickness

need a motrin advil what is it you dake
drixoral? no


m
m
m or is it d?
I took it before the first flight
to west coast with nana
who drank a beer at pizza hut
and snored herself asleep
the whole sofa vibrated



me, I always preferred the roller coaster over
the constant spin of hells bucket
with the bottom waiting to drop out
praying the spin does not stop
gravity always wins

 

[annaswirls]

crisp envelopes
make sure they are unblemished
without a single extra space
to offend the millionaires


who may notice
an extra space
between state and postal code




and the servents and masters who jump
listen
and jump again
just for show

 

[annaswirls]

ridin the seam of my double tight jeans
with my big girl music poundin bass
squuzin thigh and rockin that ridge
its good to be a girl
on a monday night ride
eyes focused on the road
lookin for a little on the side

I remind him of his mother
back when he was young
come on baby knock me down
knock me over send me home