August challenge: Find a title

[bogusagain]

the wedding guests

pardon me for noticing
but age and motherhood
have swollen your breasts
no more the nineteen year old
whose prominant nipples
were a necessary attribute
to defining your sex
that and your downy peach

your gangly arachne limbs
would grapple your lovers
like a mantis its prey
consume them with gusto
before moving onto the next
all willing victims to your capture
sucked to a desiccated carcass
abandoned to wonder why

how many men in this room
experienced your androgenous charms
girl love turned boy love turned girl
their world expanded by your hunger
and I wonder if they see like me
the teenage you in your daughter
the reason we are here but you
the reason why we came

 

[KatieJones]

Poem inspired by Kim Addonizio’s, “Good Girl”

I was going to steal her title but I kept hearing Freddy singing while I was writing:

I want to Break Free

Before I would shake my world
to watch the fake snow flurry
but it didn’t take long
to realize that despite the fabricated
storms the scenery never changed
within the clear walls of my personal globe
and I no longer bought the party
line that I was best
kept inside a glycerin world
where everything shines
but nothing is free. Where I once pitied
the fifty something man racing
down the street in his new Ferrari
or the grey haired woman
dressed in leather stretched
across her new Ducati I now see
not a crisis but an escape
from the anesthesia of mediocrity
and the arbitrary rules that push
us to keep lip gloss one shade away
from slutty and hide the skin
that speaks to our wants
with an eloquence
impossible in words. When you own
exactly who you are or are willing
to be the breadth of insults
diminishes into nothingness
and often the only thing that keeps
us from dancing every day
with strangers
is the people who once held our hand
in the glycerin land.

 

[Tzara]

Oh my God, it's like Christmas here on the August challenge thread. bogusagain writes a really good poem about, well, I guess, spiders. And aging, and how complicated love, or even lust, is. Good poem, ba. Our lives are very different, but they always somehow seem to keep wanting to be the same.

And, hey!, a Katie Jones poem! Welcome back, Ms. Jones--you have been missed, at least by me.

Oh, and given the subject of your poem and that I am myself on the very verge of retirement and wanting to, I don't know, redefine myself as, as, well as something other than as a computer programmer (which I actually am not, but is close to what I do), I really want to buy a motorcycle.

Well, not. But that's the idea. A Ferrari might work, but I can't afford it.

I guess I want some kind of snow globe, where little flecks of white stone drift slowly down through glycerin onto an idealistic scene of happy life.

 

[KatieJones]

And, hey!, a Katie Jones poem! Welcome back, Ms. Jones--you have been missed, at least by me.

Oh, and given the subject of your poem and that I am myself on the very verge of retirement and wanting to, I don't know, redefine myself as, as, well as something other than as a computer programmer (which I actually am not, but is close to what I do), I really want to buy a motorcycle.

Well, not. But that's the idea. A Ferrari might work, but I can't afford it.

I guess I want some kind of snow globe, where little flecks of white stone drift slowly down through glycerin onto an idealistic scene of happy life.

Aw, well, thanks. I missed you and the poetry. Speaking of which, there are lots of great poems 'round here right now. I just spent an hour reading one good one after another.

Naw, you don't want the snow globe. Living in a snow globe is awful, glycerin gets in your eyes and you bang your head of the walls all day long 'cause you can't see them.

 

[KatieJones]

Closer
(Oddly enough borrowed from Nine Inch Nails)

It’s not hard to bring me closer
I’m actually so easy
that Trent and his nine inches
brought me there in the car
today just by saying penetrate
but naked
lying under you I am far away
and sex feels like a game
of Monopoly with my body
as one of the railroads
and when you want to ride
you pay the conductor
with one orgasm you cough up
quickly and never notice
the ride slows
when I am forced to wear that hat
because I didn't want to take you
past go- I wanted to go with you
or even better have you take me
there. As you collect
your two hundred dollars
I am stuck in jail contemplating
how the payment does not make me
a whore-a whore would have the luxury
of taking her money and walking away
I am more of a blow up doll
with some stupid name
like Sexy Sally
with instructions on my back
that say, ‘when taken out of box
insert your desires
in holes to provide adequate stimuli
for one orgasm. When finished place back
in box before you notice she looks
deflated.’ Push box back in closet
so Sally’s desires remain a secret
and you can pat yourself on the back
because it’s not like you
gave her nothing.

 

[ninianne]

moving day

after everything ends and our world is rolled up into
one hundred seventy-one boxes
three duffel bags
and that old suitcase in the attic

gathering dust for the past millennia
making us sneeze
and streaking our faces​

and we pack each mountain into its own
especially prepared container

wrapped up in newspaper and
bubble wrap and peanuts​

and there is the obligatory moment

as the seven seas disappear
into their original packaging
not quite fitting in
that curious way
things have
of expanding when we’re not looking​

when we’ll find that one thing we’ve been trying to find
ever since we moved here

it used to be in
the posh part of creation
but the neighborhood just
isn’t what we remember
from when we were
very young​

and we’ll look at it
and swear we won’t lose it again
and carefully mark the box

with a system that we
made up on the spot
but are sure to remember
when it’s time to unpack
maybe​

and then watch as the movers pack it away

along with the waste basket
that we meant to empty
and the perishable contents of the
polar ice caps​

and drive off
with our world in neatly ordered boxes
packed into their van

free of everything
our world reduced to duffels
and a dusty suitcase​

while we yawn and eat take-out
and pile into the car
to sail across the stars into morning

 

[Angeline]

Hate Crimes Against Bacon*

Dream with me
whispers the breathy entreaty,
swirling in denoument
on the love note.

Technically
it's an email that appears
in the supermarket hour
before the almond milk
but after the detergent.

You don't know him
or me nor can you imagine
that these days of errands
these coffee spoon sips
of passing conversation
car keys the six o'clock news

have anything to do
with your gossamer web
of Oberon and Titania,
starlit forest, magical
hammock in the swaying
branch or to be honest,
just that visible
hump of his desire pulsing
close enough for you
to consume.

Of course you can't.

Dream with me
is there precisely to negate
your own grocery list
your own practicable partnership
that I assume is as empty
and as full as mine.

The email after yours
cautions beware the halal butcher
with his furtive murderous heart.

Conspiracies abound!

But when we go to bed
we dream plenty. And then
we snore.






*Title of some blog entry I read on the New York Times site.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

A Girl's Guide

stop there
please before the plan
xed in red

stop for ice cream
for recycling piles
of magazines too pink
and too glossy to bear
dissection

slip the guard
over the bladed handle
for this sheath intended always
irregularity by the stack
stop there

by the open window where
wind can catch
every tender curl

 

[butters]

I really want to buy a motorcycle

something sleek
and red
and japanese
or maybe gold
with fat tyres and a throbbing engine
chrome exhaust
and an arse-hugging saddle
take in the world
my leathers and i

but i don't like petrol
nor rubber
don't have a passport
or a license to drive
so maybe i'll just drift -
wish to memory -
and enjoy being a passenger
face pressed to skin
thighs gripping tight
being taken for a ride






title taken directly from Tzara's own comment

 

[KatieJones]

A River Runs

She casts down the edge
of the board room table
with a slow uncrossing and crossing
of her legs and wonders if the slight
sheen of her stockings will catch
more than just the light. When instinct bites
he resists the pull
unsure the lure was intended
for him, eyes surfacing
to assess the meaning of a connection
he believes to be accidental.

Her lips admit nothing
and just for sport she lets him run
looks down at her phone, hiding
a smile and gently sucking the tip
of her pen while perusing blank papers.

Just when he thinks he’s free
she casts again but deeper
with a line of lace
and a flash of white thigh
setting the hook so tight in his flesh
it would hurt to look away.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Pride and Prejudice

Said hey Różycki, look at this!
"Polish Furniture For Pennies"

These rags they call mags ain't got no right,
said Jesus Christ, excuse my French Mrs. T,

and in my doctor's office no less
said hey Różycki, Ladies' Home Journal my ass!

This's the stuff Lec put up with
when the goddam Ruskies ran Gdansk.

What would His Holiness John Paul say?
Said I don't know Mrs. T,

said Witkowski's great uncle in Krakow
rollin' over in his grave about now.

Uncle Stan made good furniture too,
poor Aunt Cecylia, God rest her soul.

Lady with the baby says two parts olive oil,
one part lemon, and a clean dry flannel cloth.

Said yeah well what about that fish they call Polack.
Said betcha can't explain that to me.

 

[butters]

comments on poetry really suck

said the girl with the screwed-up mouth
making me think of lemons
and tansy
more bitter than its name implies

perhaps a little sugar
would sweeten the infusion
make the medicine easier to swallow
words more ... digestible






(title taken from the name of a thread, and no reflection of the poster of the same)

 

[butters]

everyday erotica

lilac bra strap that's slipped
cups summery shoulder
or bare knees and feet
and white summer cotton
pink-painted toes
wriggling in grass

or the stretch and the kneading
of smooth yeasty dough
the weight on the branch
of bushels of fruit
the bite and the smile
the glimpse of the hidden
the breeze reaching places
too rarely exposed

the twirl of the dance
the rain-beaded lashes
the peeling of wet jeans
the shower-pink skin
the ice in the glasses
melting in mouths
and the dimples and laughter
small curls of damp hair
the pulse in the throat




ok, i don't know where else to go with this so might return to cut it right back to about 6 lines. dunno. too much material to work with

 

[Tzara]

Jeez Louise! I go away for a few days and this thread lights up with brilliance.

I hope that isn't a comment on my presence.

Yow. Good poems, all. In fact, effing excellent poems. I've loved them all. Thanks to chip (X3), gm, Ms. Jones, Dora, and Angie (who--sorry, everyone--wins the Best Found Title award). Thanks also to ninianne and Katie for their earlier, super-duper poems I hadn't mentioned earlier.

Everyone who has contributed to this thread has written work I have really, really enjoyed. Thank you all. Your collective work is why I like this place.

I am so saving all these poems, people. Just warning y'all.

 

[Angeline]

Jeez Louise! I go away for a few days and this thread lights up with brilliance.

I hope that isn't a comment on my presence.

Yow. Good poems, all. In fact, effing excellent poems. I've loved them all. Thanks to chip (X3), gm, Ms. Jones, Dora, and Angie (who--sorry, everyone--wins the Best Found Title award). Thanks also to ninianne and Katie for their earlier, super-duper poems I hadn't mentioned earlier.

Everyone who has contributed to this thread has written work I have really, really enjoyed. Thank you all. Your collective work is why I like this place.

I am so saving all these poems, people. Just warning y'all.

I dunno Tzara--I think Free Pussy Riot is pretty effin awesome. Every time I read it I see a new way to interpret it. It's genius I tells ya.

And someone should give you an award for coming up with yet another barnburner of a challenge. Muse of the month, perhaps.

 

[Tzara]

I dunno Tzara--I think Free Pussy Riot is pretty effin awesome. Every time I read it I see a new way to interpret it. It's genius I tells ya.

It is a good title, though one I tend to interpret in one, very shortsightedly male way.

About politics! Politics!




Sigh. I am such mere pawn of le deuxième sexe....

 

[champagne1982]

I dunno Tzara--I think Free Pussy Riot is pretty effin awesome. Every time I read it I see a new way to interpret it. It's genius I tells ya.

And someone should give you an award for coming up with yet another barnburner of a challenge. Muse of the month, perhaps.

LOL! I am not super happy with the poem but it was inspired by a picture of the women behind glass in the court room being sentenced for the crime of interrupting a church service. Thank you, Ange. I consider that a great compliment and can't help wishing I'd invested more effort when I wrote it up.

And yep, it's sexual politics, for sure T-zed.

 

[Angeline]

LOL! I am not super happy with the poem but it was inspired by a picture of the women behind glass in the court room being sentenced for the crime of interrupting a church service. Thank you, Ange. I consider that a great compliment and can't help wishing I'd invested more effort when I wrote it up.

And yep, it's sexual politics, for sure T-zed.

It's an incredible story and I love that you expressed the hypocrisy of it in your poem, but the title has so many possibilities:

Should we free the pussy riot?

It's a pussy riot and it's free!

Wooeee free pussy: let's riot.

See what I mean?


(Tzara? Are you ok?)

 

[Tzara]

It's an incredible story and I love that you expressed the hypocrisy of it in your poem, but the title has so many possibilities:

Should we free the pussy riot?

It's a pussy riot and it's free!

Wooeee free pussy: let's riot.

See what I mean?


(Tzara? Are you ok?)

All of this riotous pussy has left me a bit dazed, though pleasantly so.

Unfortunately, I will recover.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Everyone who has contributed to this thread has written work I have really, really enjoyed. Thank you all. Your collective work is why I like this place.

I am so saving all these poems, people. Just warning y'all.

Good challenge, Tzara. Thank you for posing it.

One more day, too! So who knows?