Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[Eluard]

To a Visible Darkness



Part of a chthonic ritual, take something that is real
and subtract yourself from it;
Rise off its yellowed surface. Be someone’s mirage —
Always from a great distance.

What could be said of the long hours?

There is flame somewhere, in a room whose details
are imprecise (but there is also hunger for detail)
and from an opened window
there is a light wind that whips and shears the flame
(like an abasing Moslem)
but though I peer
I cannot see just what is burning.

 

[Angeline]

2-4 Goodbye Little Wing

You just walk in with your smile
and your love. Drop it all in my arms
like a coat, your gloves. You've arrived
at the party, the me. It's all good

for you. I can see that you're dying
to wrap me back up in your arms
in your life so we talk on the phone,
we chat in the chat, but we're not alone

and you're jealous again so you leave
and I think well that's that till you call.
You want and you love and you need
but you're breaking me down

as you're filling you up. You made a choice
when you left now you're back
with your butterflies, moonbeams,
bed me little wing as you take

everything. Tell me come to the city,
just talk. Everyone else is a sham
and I need to say no, let you go,
make it end. You need me and when
will I learn that you don't give a damn?

 

[unpredictablebijou]

w-4

The Eight Valleys

Lute String

Just past the doorway,
not even the tip
has fully entered.
Let one tone vibrate
until she trembles.

Water-Chestnut Teeth

The edge has slipped past
and the head is now
fully within her.
You hiss through your teeth,
she answers with sighs.

Little Stream

Nearly halfway in
thrust quickly, diving
like a swallow skims
above the water
till she sounds like birds.

Black Pearl

Four fingers' width deep,
halfway to her peak,
begin the rhythm
of slowly and quickly.
The pearl will emerge.

Valley Proper

Stay here and labor
in the deep furrows
and draw her pleasure
out in many peaks
till she yields bounty

Deep Chamber

Only two fingers
width remains outside.
Enter the garden
and begin the play:
Nine shallow, one deep.

Inner Door

You batter the gate,
a conquering force.
Her limbs are weakened
and her tongue is cold;
she has surrendered.

North Star

Now at your deepest
you give direction:
offer your own force
your bolt of heaven.
Balance Sky and Earth.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Y-4 Fanclub

I can feel how hot your sun is
in your poems. You burn
everything but the root vegetables
so that's where I feel you
in this space they've grooved under
the surface. The fine hairs of them probe
and twine, taking purchase

until I can carry your poems with me all day
like balloons over my shoulders; their ribbons
grow right from my bellybutton. I look up
and read them back lit
with orange afternoon, shifted by clouds too
thin to cool until your poem

pops. The air of your words joins
the air expelled from my lungs and I feel lucky.

 

[Homburg]

..... As I untwist
......... the ribbon of
.............. the road, the
.............. fourth letter of
........... the alphabet
........ rides shotgun
........ Physics names
...... her Change
... Velocity and
. Ferocity
.She holds
.... my heat and
........ my lust while
................... Carolina roads
...................... hold my eyes

 

[Eluard]

z-iv

Structures and Ordeals


Like a net descending on the moon, made
of a poisonous light; like a brooch

made of all the Earth’s live creatures.
Like the word transmuted into a sudden mirage

as it lays open the graves in a memory; like
the eloquence attached to the tongues

of the night. Like an angel falling
upward into the darkness of love.

Like the skin that is hers which then becomes
the surrender in his flown white flag; like

the smell of an illness from which we never
recover… but which is like, eventually,

the great silences of the sea
consuming the skies we fall from.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Y-5 Bridges

Flash lighting from the slim side of the cobweb,
we watch the beam cling to slim thread and rustle
warning of Webster's climb to the top.

Soft the night only whispers
existence beyond this four meters of lantern beam.
The spider plucks at a leaf, trembling the rope bridge
span between branches,
weaving this night, itself, the trees, you and me
all together into breathing moss and bone.
Your hand takes mine and this is all I need
I whisper the lie behind my eyes so you can
see it in them if you look closely.
Fair you should know

I leave ashes everywhere I go.

 

[Eluard]

Je voudrais vous revoir

As once we were —
Since as the Italians say
‘The living always meet again’. We are living still, aren’t we?
You see, I no longer feel you in the world
As I used to.
Packets of rain come down from the mountain
With no name, as once they would have had yours.
But that was all so long ago, someone will say
Splitting a truth into two lies

And whereas there was a time I would have kept the truth
Now I have only the lies.

. . .

The countryside passes by your closed eyes
. . . that accuse that love was not enough to save them.
. . . . . .But whose? Don't answer then.

All torn paper, all reefs and shallows.
A picturesque remorse gets photographed, even though the
inevitable Japanese honeymooners partially block it out,
smiling insanely (do they ever develop these?).

Winter is like a wardrobe full of coat-hangers.
It has tried for years to shake me from this stubborn love
with its street-mime of non-existence.

I throw it the coin of the sun and pass on.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

w-5 late

Elements of the Red Meal

1.
Do not drink the wine.
Instead, the entire cup is poured out
on the earth. It is for
the world to drink, it is an offering
to thirsty death.

2.
Of the five courses, the grain is most important.
Tear the bread in half, slowly
with your two hands
one solid half for you
and one for God.

3.
The prayer begins this way:
Honey and sesame and bright wine
containing life, may my mouth
now be the mouth of god.
Give me holy hands, so they will not burn.

4.
Forget one another's names and feast
from jeweled dishes, believing everything:
meat, fish, water, fire,
under the bread is the belly
painted with spirals.

5.
You must offer the oil in cupped hands
enough to keep eight flames burning.
Call on breath and the water to be present
touch the earth with one fingertip
to testify, to remove all doubt.

6.
If one of you becomes a grain of wheat
the other must become a sharp-eyed bird.
You may be fish and otter, apple and snake.
Taste all of it, drink from one cup,
prophesy, and call each other by the Seven Names.

7.
In the shapes of the Sun and Moon
meet and meet again, red joining white.
Kneel at the table that holds the feast,
lay hands upon the bread, the oil, the wine,
let blessings and names be written on your skin.

8.
Open the Nine Gates, each with a taste
of seeds on the tongue, the syllables
like sections of an orange, gently
opened with the fingertips.
Let perfect words slide from your parted lips.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

w-6 penance

Anasuya

To test
the rumors of her
True Enlightenment
the Three Gods went to her
disguised as guests.
As she lit the lamps
they gave her great insult
demanding that she serve their meal
unclothed. Did she know
that underneath her skirt
was the endless world?
She baptised them
when they weren't looking
and turned them to infants.
Then she suckled each of them
at her breast. Here
the story ends.

White Corn Woman
demanded that her four sons
tear her to pieces
twice.

As she rolls under you now
Can you un-name yourself and drink
immortality, for a moment?
Are you god enough to kill her
to redeem the world?

 

[ArnoldSnarb]

1-1

.....

 

[ArnoldSnarb]

1-2

.....

 

[ArnoldSnarb]

1-3

.....

 

[ArnoldSnarb]

1-4

.....

 

[ArnoldSnarb]

1-5

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

many - 1

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

- 2

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

- 3

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

- 4

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

- 5

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

? - 1

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

- 2

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

- 3

.....

 

[Tzara]

n:1

.....

 

[Eluard]

The Sketchbook of Subtraction

. . . .I

Need I remind you, princess,
They even have it written down somewhere.
. . . .Go! Hurry!
. . . .The mountains have been
Picked clean by the stars. Little scavengers.

The moon opens up the final socket book
How I fished for rockets
. . . . . . . . .In the quiet years
But now I fish for souls.
Childe Perceval to the dark woods came.
. . . . Lo! I must get back! They are calling!

But they have taken away the Earth in
railway cars, one hundred million cows
. . .and cities dark and unnamed.
Taken together it is a diagram of God.
Follow the instructions.
. . . .Anyone can get lost with this map.

. . . .II

Yseult of the two rivers, of the two hills
. . .Bind me to the halo of your name forever.
The winding number of the tower is toward the Alephs
And setting, setting
To where I am entombed with this dream of you.

Be over her music, be the words that part her legs!
Be the clock’s two spears semaphoring distress.

. . . .III

At the foot of the volcano the black beach glows.
The sun is the part that is unwritten.

The rooftops! Red from the silence's spilled blood.
All curses and doves return in italics.

. . . .IV

Storm clouds flex in the distance like a hat of ink —
I am soothed to sleep by its
talk of disaster.

To nothing I say `tired of spiders,'
and the spider moves. Seeds blow upward
to the moon, all hidden now.
My head radiates disaster like iron spikes
. . . .and you, are you a season that cares?
. . . .Toy winds and toy stars are no longer
welcome here.

This is a swan that has come through the magic paper air
into the fury of the real.
. . . .He will never return. Can
never.