Challenge: Five Poems in Five Days.

[unpredictablebijou]

x-3

Cartography

This is the border between spaces on the map of the flesh
This is the drawn territory, the boundary of warring states
These are the routes and exchanges of open arms trade
This is the surge of current moving along the power lines
These are the trails of rivers in curves that fit and join two places
This is the place where they open and fit, these are the mouths
This is a line of knotted points like a spine
These are the rhythmic fences of roads for the fingers
This is a stream within wicked banks,
This is a high wall, a line of trees along a road
These are the lines of leaves, the ley lines along you
This is the horizon of the shoulder and the elevation of the neck
This is the division of the skin's territory bounded by a river
These are the limbs like trees and the lines I leave on you
This is the map of river and land, the map of our states.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

8-4 Faithful

When you finally reach it, you find it isn't
a valentine. It won't fit
in your palm. This heart is a living box
containing scraps of paper,
cookie fortunes on which
I've scribbled questions.

Can honor keep a body sound, alone
the firmament of a good hard life, atone
the spine like a firm bed
cold but for the cat?

Can I train my eye to look away
from the other pets on your lap,
stray hairs on your coat?

There is noone else in this conversation, no easy
reply, flip or sober, only questions that echo
like footfalls, chasing each other
through the tunnels of our lives.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-4

Glosa composed on lines from a love letter.

This was my dream.
She lifted her hips toward me,
deepened the cleft, the pressure,
her fit to me.


This was my dream
so she was bent forward
her skin rolling out downhill
a cream landscape
for my hands to round

She lifted her hips toward me
and my knees were steady between hers
driving her wide
and arched like a bow, I slid and gripped
and divided her
and she became water
and made the sounds of wild birds.
Her motion and arc

deepened the cleft, the pressure
The lotus making space
for this thick stem
this secretive disappearance
this miracle of space
And I reached
miles, to the top of her head
and out, into sunlight.

Her fit to me
was so perfect, thick
with sound, and I pulled
back, suddenly, and sent
glowing stars, whole oceans
over the length of her spine
covering her with it.
It made the gift
visible.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

8-5 Creme

Thin curve of spoon skates
over the fine warm brown and dips
a shiny toe into sauce puddle;

the tip is wet now.

Pull the spoon straight up
like a diver, the caramel drooling a thread
the diver will follow to the break--

a wedge that doesn't need forcing
just gentle insertion, prying middle tilted
and pressed into a whisper of resistance
until a spill of satin fills and warms
the metal, rich baked vapor
rising like a succubus with open palm promises
of fulfillment like you've never had,
make you utterly stopped and reborn
with just one round spoon full.

Curl your tongue to cradle
and water springs against the gums, rising to carry
the burnt sugar to cave buried streams within

but this is only foreplay. The spoon turns,
you see. All that pearly jam spills
over the sides, piled thick in the middle, trickling
slowly down the back of the tongue

until even the uvula is dipped with gold,
the lips locking silver at its width
in place until every wet grain is absorbed--

until the swallow and then, in the slothful step
of dreamtime, released, its mirror
examined with hungry eyes,
before a last sponge of tongue reaches for its belly
greedy for rumors of glaze.

 

[TheRainMan]

?-3

. . .

 

[TheRainMan]

?-4

. . .

 

[Homburg]

T minus 4

Dancing with vapours,
two steps ahead of what I know,
she hears the music of the leaves.

I am a breath of bark and stone,
and mark ancient ryhthms on the drum of her back.

She leaps through the window and carries me with her,
my thoughts seeking footsteps my feet will not follow.
Always ahead, dancing, laughing,
she knows the path
but will not show me.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-5

I heat you up like glass
you wall for my fist
you hole to press full of my eye
I slide my beating insistence
my whole thick life inside you
and you shift
to liquid in the sting.

This is your pin and shove
as I sink like teeth into you
and you balance into peace, asked
to taste everything
and the first
part of my red rage
my disaster, my angry river
turns your blood to wine

I bring the contrary
and smooth it back with a flat hand
simplify you to yes
to mouth, and take you through
that black gate between forget
and finding. Rhythmic,
I flake the shell from you
take the scales of the day
from our eyes
til you become the only icon
to curse and bless
the cup that holds me.

like it, like it or not.

 

[Homburg]

T minus 3

Blind.
Willfully.
Purposefully.
Stumbling about, unseeing.
Sight is painful
Can't miss it, can you?

Daylight sweeps the shackles of delusion
she keeps to darkness
Words on the wrong side of the wall
Not
graffiti
Not
art
Not
protest
-Runes, they keep the light at bay
"i love him"
"i don't want to be alone"
"if i don't do what he says-"
"he knows best"




(A little angry/bitter when I wrote this. I'll probably come back and edit it later.)

 

[TheRainMan]

?-5

. . .

 

[unpredictablebijou]

z-1

Mantra

It should say everything:
The words we say
when our bodies
finally shout and catch
are Yes
and God
which are the same thing.

Speak them all day
with every breath, as a prayer
as an invocation
and you will draw
that sweet climax
closer. Like this:
Yes
God
O God, yes.

 

[Homburg]

T minus 2

I tell my friends
style means nothing to me, yet, inside,
where no one goes,
I long for the days when men wore hats.
Not ball caps
or trucker hats, but real honest to
god fedoras. When
a suit was not something
you wore because you were forced to,
but because you were born to.
When women
wore snazzy dresses and
thigh-highs with the seams
proudly displayed on shapely calves.
When young boys wore short pants
until they were old enough to be
called young men.
When what I am wearing now might,
might!
be acceptable to mow the lawn
on a hot summer's day when
clipped grass tossed about by
the whirling scythes
of my push-mower
might stain my summer-weight
linen pants.

Bring me some tea, honey. It's hot out here.



(Wrote this in time, just didn't get it on the boards in time. Mea culpa, and all that. ETA: Even better, I posted it to the wrong thread. I sucketh mightily.)

 

[Homburg]

T minus 1

"Oppurtunity"

So hot
The haze wavers distinct in the air
So loud
The beat is a thing felt
So fine
She moves so smooth I have to stare
Our eyes
They meet
She smiles
Time stops
I hear the moment slide on by

 

[Homburg]

"I need this."

My fist tangled in your hair
Say it!
Knuckles pressed hard into cheap carpet
Say it now!
Twist you
Need you
Hurt you
Love you
Say it, say it!
Invade you
Destroy you
SAY IT!
Not my name
Don't call me that!
SAY IT!
Want you
Bite you
Lick you
Bind you
Say it now! Say it!
Smother you
Consume you
Not your name, goddamn you
SAY WHAT YOU ARE!

 

[unpredictablebijou]

z-2

Before Damascus

The angels have struck a cheap road on you
blind straw man, locked in distemper
you are strong as glass and grit
your teeth hard against the cold
but you have begun to notice
that your hands cannot be contained in one another
there is no binding cure to stop the twisting
or the thorns, the way you stripe yourself
black with howls. Nothing can keep it
from burning down around you
No thunder comes close to the silence
Pray for rain now with the last
of your brittle bones, pray for the lash
of lightning, pray for the voice, however harsh
Quickly, break your knees down, blind saint
under the slap of salvation.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

z-3 late

Thieves Bracelet

Thread the thin serpentine
discs of shell along the string
like a vine that will roll
like a ringsnake along your wrist
each singular glint
calls your hungry fingers
to stroke, and pluck at
smooth ridges
row upon slick row
bone around bone, the gleam
of shell and skin, a skeleton charm

 

[unpredictablebijou]

z-4

song

Cockrise, wise, we sing tandem on the shaft
Sweet round the fleshleap of the voice
Music and red leaves hum under your hand
A stem in the water, down to the root of the lotus
and you, smoke-slick shape
invade the candy mouth of the flower
the ring in which our voices join
to moan and coil round the thick sweet sun

 

[PandoraGlitters]

9-1 Submissive's Prayer

these two hands are supplicant
palms up on flat thighs
because I am ready
to wait

for what you give me

these eyes are clear
calm water
open and purposeful
in my waiting, in my ask

of you to do

to make use of this pale body
of these bright lips
of this small heat of breath

offered because your need sings
from you like the watersong
of a stream under brown earth

I have lain my head to hear
the trickle of question
and now I offer

the possible answer
my body a prayer

 

[TheRainMan]

?? - 1

. . .

 

[champagne1982]

1-1

Why me?

Self-pity isn't a crutch
I offer. Empathy
pillows my sharp
shoulders and smoothes
the rough edges around
my heart. We both know
the knife leaves
cruel ridges above brittle
shattered bone
and all that holds
it together is a fragile
whisper and wonderous
awe that we yet live.

 

[TheRainMan]

?? - 2

. . .

 

[unpredictablebijou]

z-5

You hire me with the juice of you
the thick sweat between your thighs
You demand me, and rise up
pure, rise up pure for a moment.

your mind falls down your spine
to see and hear without contamination
(to live in the tip of your cock), you escape
from the tyrant of days to the eye at the opening
that sees through the body where you move into cause
and slam your vision into me. You bring
the force of the music through the glass prison
of the body to look through the tip of the skin

you offer wages of pearl and moan
and drops of sweat against my back
we trade mouths and hands
you want the eyes of inches
as the cock sends itself into height
as it stretches into blood and through
the other side of me

 

[PandoraGlitters]

9-2 Capable

Square hands that leave no questions
under cuffs bare wrists
smooth of marks
bulged by claims grasped

in the right, passed
to the left.

Here is a palm wide enough to sit in,
fingers that possess
all they can splay around

grappling for ground. There
is no mystery. The lines are deep
and easy to read. Here is a long life.
Here is a deep love. Fate
cannot flatter or hide under vagaries.

The path is straight. The world is round
as a knuckle.

 

[TheRainMan]

?? - 3

. . .

 

[champagne1982]

1-2

Just Blow Me

Fellatio never sounded so good,
you said. It tastes better
than orgasms but only
until orgasms occur.

And then? I asked.

Well, then nothing
ever tastes so good,
you said. Just blow me.