Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[PandoraGlitters]

Three

It's late. Fire ate through the log; only ends
remain. It is too late

to blow against the grain and rouse
its flames (and to what point?)

There is nothing to cook: no meal
no plan, no book.

If you poke the darkened bark, it rolls
exposing its charred belly, barely warm.

It never burned as hot, nor burned as long
in hatred as it did in love. Still, I

will scatter what is left out on the ground:
little to bury, nothing to find.

 

[zack_constantine]

Sonnets for Barbara, 4/5

This test betrays unequal wills.
To her, I am mere anecdote
That can be shared among her friends
For mild titillation, and to break
The boredom of an afternoon.
But my hands shake
Like an addict in withdrawal,
Removed from my once nightly touch
Of that China White skin
And the needle of her unconscious cries.
This much is clear:
She can’t meet me, like, anywhere,
With my occluded, glassy eyes.
My steady rocking—always always on the nod.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

four

Probe

Possibly it will leave you sore
open, a little raw
crude, even, like all your child art
pulled out of the box and spread
out, seen via satellite, notably
uncommented for who can grade
a fingerpainting? Who can know
what we will find until we get there?

We must take the long way--
miles long--pushing against
your internal surfaces
with this electronic eye,
unlidded, alert for sudden curves,
vigilant for the flash of orange
disease, splayed like fingers
warning me to retreat. Thank god
not yet. I yet have hope to find
the honest reds and blues
of blood-lined tissues
fed from a living heart.

 

[zack_constantine]

Sonnets for Barbara, 5/5

There is no wealth in love.
I cannot bank
The pleasures of her body
In some heavy steeled vault.
Her coin’s a joy that when once spent
Evaporates into the cool air of memory,
A cloud that ever dissipates
With time. There is no economic curve,
No equilibrium to reach
Somewhere Supply gives in
To the desperation of Demand.
Instead, I save what I can save:
Her signature, a photograph.
And then, I touch myself instead.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

five

In this jackknife stomach pit
where the sour milk clings
your name turns and burns
in a slow dervish, pushing up
against my lungs forcing my mouth
open as if to make me whisper it.

I can still sleep, but not without dreaming
uneasiness, pale and thick like a worm
hovering at the bottom of the glass

and I wonder is this love? Or just
an ulcer?

 

[Tzara]

.

.....

 

[Tzara]

.

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

? - 1

-----

 

[TheRainMan]

? - 2

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[TheRainMan]

? - 3

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[TheRainMan]

? - 4

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[TheRainMan]

? - 5

-----

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Damn! Does this mean I'll have to pay to read those now?

 

[TheRainMan]

Damn! Does this mean I'll have to pay to read those now?

no, it doesn't. and I am by no means trying to discourage you from buying anything of mine.

it means I've edited them and sent them off to journals that don't take simultaneous submissions, so they really shouldn't be up anymore.

if you'd like to read them, I'll send them to you. let me know.

 

[Angeline]

no, it doesn't. and I am by no means trying to discourage you from buying anything of mine.

it means I've edited them and sent them off to journals that don't take simultaneous submissions, so they really shouldn't be up anymore.

if you'd like to read them, I'll send them to you. let me know.

Good luck! I enjoyed reading them, and I also think you're making perfect use of the thread.

 

[Angeline]

Jazzy

At the shelter
they did not tell us her age,
a tiny thing with black fur
so hoarse from crying she could only croak.
She was all ears and eyes
and never did learn the art
of purring.

We took her from the din of dogs
and her two boisterous brothers,
lifting her from the food bowl
where she fiercely protected her share
and brought Jazzy home.

She repaid that deed a thousand fold
an ebony beauty
sensitive to our every mood,
a gentle companion at the foot of the bed.

Now her sleekness is disheveled,
her gait distorted by arthritis
which she vainly tries to lick away
and yet she springs up on laps
and hurries, tottering slightly, to greet.

Her amber eyes are dimmer
and her face hollow-cheeked
but her heart is strong and love
is in her unflinching gaze.
How does one gauge
the quality of a cat’s life?

This is just lovely, Tess. You should submit it somewhere. Somewhere besides here, that is.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Thanks, Ange. I'd forgotten about that poem.

 

[Tzara]

n:1

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in Eight Lines

The world is all that is the case;
all statements are of facts and things:
This is a duck. Here's a red vase.
The world is all that is the case
and silence the one Mystic place
where things unsaid a poet sings.
The world is all that is the case,
and statements are just facts and things.


.

 

[butters]

i was very moved by PG's poem about the pregnant teenager!



stunning.


simply. that.

 

[butters]

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in Eight Lines

The world is all that is the case;
all statements are of facts and things:
This is a duck. Here's a red vase.
The world is all that is the case
and silence the one Mystic place
where things unsaid a poet sings.
The world is all that is the case,
and statements are just facts and things.


.

how complete a neat poem this is.

i love the sandwich you make with this as its filling:

The world is all that is the case
and silence the one Mystic place
where things unsaid a poet sings.

 

[Tzara]

how complete a neat poem this is.

i love the sandwich you make with this as its filling:

The world is all that is the case
and silence the one Mystic place
where things unsaid a poet sings.

Thank you, cb, but I'm just more or less quoting Wittgenstein there (from the Pears/McGuinness translation):

• 1. The world is all that is the case.
• 7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
• 6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

I also deliberately misquote one of his assertions in line two. Assertion 1.1 in TLP is "The world is the totality of facts, not of things."

But then I always was a sloppy student.

 

[butters]

Thank you, cb, but I'm just more or less quoting Wittgenstein there (from the Pears/McGuinness translation):

• 1. The world is all that is the case.
• 7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
• 6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

I also deliberately misquote one of his assertions in line two. Assertion 1.1 in TLP is "The world is the totality of facts, not of things."

But then I always was a sloppy student.

well my unfamiliarity with the original text worked in my benefit, then, didn't it?

 

[Tzara]

n:2

Zettel

Here words are brushstrokes
feathered into a rose, a beloved's thigh,
layered into philosophy, welded
to make a city or a train.
A portrait, not a text—
some thing for wall or garden,
not the dim stacks of a library.
No facts, no instruction,
no cause and following effect.
Just a different kind of game,
necessary as the air.

 

[greenmountaineer]

n1

I'd like to join in; hope I'm not intruding:

In Extremis

He sent his sister to a nunnery,
Although he could have dowered her,
After which Anthony sought his desert
Hovel to battle all the devils
Afflicting him with dreams of women.

He could not roil the Roman
And thus become a martyr,
But hid in caves, heard voices,
And saw an angel in a girdle
Fighting centaurs, whores, and satyrs.

Marquis de Sade became obese
Detesting prison food, fed on Justine’s flesh,
And craved both men and women
All because some desert father
Wore his bones like skin in Egypt.

 

[Tzara]

I'd like to join in; hope I'm not intruding:

Well, you aren't. You're very welcome. I'm just peeved that you're writing better poems (well, so far, poem) than me.

Bastard.

Sorry, I mean "well done, poet!'

:smileything:

Hey, GM, I think you are awesome. You write poems which make me think. I like to think. Hence, I like your poems.

Keep writing, bud. Please.