Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[Tzara]

2

The young write about sex
as if it is all hunger and thrust

that never passes an expiration date
and spoils like old milk

or moldy bread. They don’t know
that appetites change with age

and that some foods are not worth
the odd broken tooth or heart,

no matter how delicious
they may seem in perfect light.

 

[Tzara]

3

Suicide Prevention

could be as easy as changing your job
or your girlfriend or your parents

but since it’s probably not, you’re now calling
that number from the sticker you saw on the bridge

hoping some trained stranger
can talk you out of that gallon

of good whiskey, that handful of pills,
that closed garage,

where at least you could check out like a poet,
driving toward some Eleusinian mirage.

 

[butters]

what mind-food you guys are delivering this past week i am never replete, but these are well-worth consuming!

 

[Artina Heartflash]

The young write about sex
as if it is all hunger and thrust

that never passes an expiration date
and spoils like old milk

or moldy bread. They don’t know
that appetites change with age

and that some foods are not worth
the odd broken tooth or heart,

no matter how delicious
they may seem in perfect light.

Amen. Give me Honor milk and hot cross buns with bhut popper seeds.

 

[Tzara]

4

Apology

I would leave my phone number
on the beach for you
if it was a beach near your home.

But the only waves
near your life are breeze-blown.
Mine are all tidal,

and the moon will not let me
draw figures in sand wet
by such distance.

 

[Tzara]

5

μετουσίωσις

Hold my unleavened hand open,
flat as bread. When you bite

it does not leak blood,
nor is it Christ

or anyone's body. It's not even mine.
It's just muscle and twine,

woven threads and flesh
now perhaps bruised, but quite fine.

 

[KatieJones]

......

 

[KatieJones]

......

 

[Tzara]

5 (+1)

Ulysses

if I could put
a stop sign on my blood

I would, as some way
to anchor me in ignorance

of how some sand’s smooth grit
rolled along my fingertips

reminds me of another ocean,
inland, and some siren

whose trill and lilt
I would never want to stop with wax

but I am bound to Ithaka
and may seek but never yield

 

[Tzara]

You baited my hook
showed me the kittens....

A very affective poem and one, I sincerely hope, that is fictionalized.

My hug, anyway, even if it's just a message on a pron board.

 

[KatieJones]

......

 

[Tzara]

5 (+2)

Each of our poems is a puzzle
in which we try to read tea leaves

that determine our lives,
our sex, our links, and how we kneel

to happiness, as if cheer were God
and we His supplicants, even-

tempered, calm, at least awake,
like awake is a good thing.

Which it is, if alert
is some part of that and that dreamy song

that's always there is filtered through a sieve
called intelligence.

I put a knife in the ground to mark my foot
because it is is physical.

Your turn. Step farther out
and we'll gut that ground as well.

 

[KatieJones]

......

 

[Tzara]

5 (+3)

On Some Universal Laws of Science

The riven sea cannot be still
nor can anyhow I, for too I feel the pull
of action at distance

in my long-arced, unresisting fall
like an apple's roll
off a windowsill. In Newton's glance

he saw, complete, my fate;
I move as if in dream or trance—
her draw is squared as I close in on mate.


I know. Technically disqualified per the OP as I missed a day. Tant pis—I have a job.

 

[Tzara]

5 (+4)

Dwight Yoakum, 3F, AS461

I’m in 2F. He requests
three tea bags,

a Styrofoam cup,
hot water, two glasses of ice.

Nothing else. He’s quiet. I sleep.
When we land, he wants

to give my bag
to the woman next to me.



God, I love music.

 

[Neonurotic]

1 : Kaze no Stigmata

That bullet passed by with a
hot breeze and a thunderhead threat.
In its wake, I breathe, knowing
it missed because I was slimmer
by holding on the exhale.

Next time there may be a storm
and all I can do is hope for a thin day.

.

 

[butters]

1 : Kaze no Stigmata

That bullet passed by with a
hot breeze and a thunderhead threat.
In its wake, I breathe, knowing
it missed because I was slimmer
by holding on the exhale.

Next time there may be a storm
and all I can do is hope for a thin day.

.

wow!

there may be room for small tinkerings, but i love this exactly the way you've presented it. you make what it says more important than the words used to convey that.

 

[KatieJones]

.....

 

[Tzara]

5 (+5)

Jargon

She crossed those Cleopatra legs
in that high-hiked skirt

sitting saucy in the first row
and it made me stutter like Polonius

trying to tap slides in Power Point
in a lecture on syncretism.

What I thought I knew I wanted was to meld
age and knowledge, youth and beauty

but, confusing catharsis with cathlexis,
I ended up with excess.

 

[Neonurotic]

wow!

there may be room for small tinkerings, but i love this exactly the way you've presented it. you make what it says more important than the words used to convey that.

Thank you. I guess I should've put that poem in a different thread that doesn't require a series of poems since I failed the next day to write a poem. I fell asleep early.

* Leaves Tzara to it.

 

[KatieJones]

Jargon

and it made me stutter like Polonius

but, confusing catharsis with cathlexis,
I ended up with excess.

I always loved the stabbing of the stuttering, Polonius. Not sure what that says about me.

I also feel great pride that I only had to look up one word in this poem.

 

[Tzara]

Thank you. I guess I should've put that poem in a different thread that doesn't require a series of poems since I failed the next day to write a poem. I fell asleep early.

* Leaves Tzara to it.

I'm done, bro. Though I am not so rigid as you about the OP's parameters--kinda missed a day (or at least made it very long) and in no way could these poems satisfy criterion numero 2: " Every poem that you submit must be something that you would be pleased to see your name under if it were to be published in a magazine."

I mean, other than if I could get crap like this published, I'd be pleased I snookered the editors.

But your conscience is not my conscience, thank God. You might try this thread which is not so chronologically unforgiving.

Good #1, in any case. Shame to waste it.

 

[Tzara]

I always loved the stabbing of the stuttering, Polonius. Not sure what that says about me.

That you'd like to lance boring old windbags?

If you were guy, it would be easy--we all want to drift our girlfriend's fathers. They are the superego gettin' in the way of our id designs.

I also feel great pride that I only had to look up one word in this poem.

Better than me. I had to look up two, and that was before wanting to make the Narrator's lecture be about Georg Calixtus.

 

[Neonurotic]

I'm done, bro. Though I am not so rigid as you about the OP's parameters--kinda missed a day (or at least made it very long) and in no way could these poems satisfy criterion numero 2: " Every poem that you submit must be something that you would be pleased to see your name under if it were to be published in a magazine."

I mean, other than if I could get crap like this published, I'd be pleased I snookered the editors.

But your conscience is not my conscience, thank God. You might try this thread which is not so chronologically unforgiving.

Good #1, in any case. Shame to waste it.

Hah.. thanks for the tip on 007 thread, more my speed if I were in the mood to write. The dude who started the 30/30 is a sadistic bastard. I don't know how anyone finishes it unless they really enjoy a 30-day long flagellating.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Reading the Decree Nisi

I shall remember the marriage bed
Nonno Donato crafted for us

in his workshop near Flushing Meadows
where he companion planted

marigolds with heirloom tomatoes,
a perfect pairing, he said.

He always brought two dandelions
for his lovely Sofia

when they drank his dandelion wine
and made love until midnight.

I, the party of the second part,
reading the decree nisi,

once upon a time turtle dove,
am now paired with other things:

bedroom eyes that looked away,
rings that no longer mean anything,

lawyers who didn't work fast enough,
and hearts that no longer bleed.

She nonetheless was the perfect hand
inside my less than perfect glove.