Dirty 30 in 30

[Tzara]

26

Pomegranate

Back in spring, your skin would bloom
under cultivation of my fingertips,
its paleness brushed a burnished hue
by blood drawn from your earthy roots.
But in this darker time of year
your color’s washed away and wan,
as cold and white as bone or moon.
Cannot my touch still kindle growth?
Or does that slumber, underground,
indifferent and seasonal and sad?

And if so, with what agronomy
may I germinate what’s Dead?



.

 

[Tzara]

27

You Make Me Think Pornography

You make me think pornography
on any random flight of steps,
how even in ascent
you make me think of going down.

You make me think pornography
with those sleepy, feline eyes
that track me everywhere
from that so still and quiet form.

You make me think pornography
the way you eat a peach,
banana, apricot, or plum;
how swiftly you devour any bitten fruit.

You make me think pornography
with most of what you do.
I know it’s jeans and hormones, but
it’s also attitude.



.

 

[Tzara]

28

Metronome

She counts to four
as if I could remember
to sleep my my libido,
dance time.



.

 

[Tzara]

29 (Late, I know. Get over it.)

Friend of Death

His big teeth and hollow eyes
are empty as my bank account.

I'd maybe date his sister, though,
if she had skin knit on her thighs.



.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-24

I plead snowblindness. Trying to catch up now.

TZ, I really like #28. You're so damn concise. I envy that, so very often.




we begin with
ambition that passes for hunger or love
when in an artificial room in a red curtained space
I make my interrupted way to your center
and find new ways to pluck your strings one by one
your tragic little spaces where my words
have found a way to fit, where I can sculpt
my little pieces to fit in damaged corners
the spiraled bits of your maze, and my task
is to find what turns you red

Where does it all, truly, come from
and where is the exposure, the point
when it becomes unfamiliar, rootless
or caused in repetition by the rub
against the tender place? What part
do I play in firming the hills and holes
into your fierce net of hunger
your flexed complexity?
When strong as a tree you move round
to me, early, and make nothing happen,
hungrily, waiting for me to slide my hands
to your eager neck, what do I build
within your eventual becoming,
and how will I know
that my thorny pieces press correctly
and make the divine crown
you so deeply deserve?




.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-25

I can describe what he wasn’t, but not
what he was, and that alone
is the first clue. With these deep creatures it is not
what they claim to be, but what, carefully
they do not say. In Poland, he told me,
his name was formal and informal,
alexei, perhaps, but what he pronounced
was lovelier, and somehow I cannot
quite remember it.

Everything he knew, he seemed to know casually
and well, like a scholar, beyond ego, beyond
the need for proof. His clothes the same, well-
worn but not self-conscious, the kind of clothes
the young ones imitate too excitedly. Denim, and an old
tuxedo shirt, worn overcoat, all proper, carefully
accidental, exacting, and ancient.

He had no accent, no clip, no slant
no desire to prove a thing, or hide. I could
recognize him if I wished; if I were smart enough;
to him, it did not matter either way.

He could hide his teeth, which I
kept trying to see, but could only catch
glimpses, but his eyes
were undeniable. There is no way to say
that color, that unearthly turquoise, quite
unnatural, and he seemed to know
I could not think quite straight
when I looked into them.

I can say
only what he wasn’t: not eager, not affected,
neither secretive nor tense, nor concerned in the least
with what I thought, what I suspected. Neither old
nor young, not handsome but entrancing, not foreign
but unearthly, not from this place. Is the weather
typical for this season here? I felt the heat of him
long after he left, how those startling eyes
dove into mine, how he knew
my kanji was improving, the way he mentioned
Aramaic, and the neighborhoods
of Chicago, and the weather
in so many, many different places.




.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-26

Break five
and move for six.
The numbers of your mouth
are simple ones and zeros, love
not even yes or no
but dampened versions, phrased
for the escape. Is it fear
or love which slaps you back
from firm and makes your answers
pale, despite my concrete kisses
and the firm desire of mouths?
What poison or what Zen
informs your careful
resistance?




.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-27

I am a moon that, to touch you
would destroy you. i revolve, simply
at this distance, drawing your
subtle tides back, drawing waves
to your surface. Your bare shores
are laved by my distant face,
luminous, the rhythm of your
expression.

Once in a month, and better it be
when I am full, then you gather yourself
and crash against long standing stones
against monuments set against your storms.
You are the boundary against your own
tidal desires, and you build desperately
whenever the full moon becomes fierce,
reinforcing the blocks and sand against
those rhythmic waves.

You and I are in steady balance
against one another, like gravity and gravity
motion and dissolution.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

. . . . .

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-28

I apologize
for simple chemistry.
It has to be you
It cannot be anyone else
Because of the top of your head
the way it smells, the way
the hair is shaped across your chest
the look of your hands. I cannot
tell you why
it has to be you.

You’ve addicted me
to those light slight sounds
I’m a rat pressing a bar now, one
skeletal foot, again and again
until I starve
for the wire into the pleasure center
for the slight surge of juice
into the middle of the mind
the space behind the eyes, the spark
at the top of the flute. You bridge
the gap like a rod, like a jacob’s ladder
and I find the frisson only when
I can see your motion, slight,
inadvertent, in your limbs, only
when I hear that singular sound.



.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-29

Mogador

Like so many, she fashioned
herself from scraps
in a dressmaker’s shop, and learned
to dance with the tragedy
as skeleton partner
but her hips belonged to the fortress
and named after walls, became
impenetrable as desert stone
dancing with nothing, with everyone.

They say la Belle Otero ate
like a child, gleeful, every bite
because she had once been hungry.
How much more
the hunger of the skin, when
as a grisette, there is only the plain dress
plain street, plain lack, put out to alley
or basement shop and endless monochrome.

The little grey one
transforms to cocotte, the cocoon
at the dance hall, hoping for lace
scraping for silk, and willing
more than willing to dance
forward into the velveteen risk
of reputation.




.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

x-30 whew and only three weeks late.

Classic
pretty-minded
and minding
scholar, you know
too well that
Oracles
finish themselves out
with a charm or a curse.
I say now you will outstrip me
soon enough, and I pray
I still have something
you want.



.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

5

. . . . .

 

[PandoraGlitters]

6

It wasn't the dying
grandmother I called but the other
whose conversation reveals her
brightly living as the green clear flesh
of a peeled cactus.

I called her first because
I know she keeps the obituaries in the drawer
by the phone and each one is a goblin
she faces whenever she answers

so I made my voice softer
and she too, until we half sunk
in the phone connection's static,
floating in its fuzz
and letting the words float around us:
burial, flight, Oklahoma . . .
softened now thanks to T Mobile
and the slide of train against track.

I tell her I'll see her when I come.
This time she is the first to say
I love you. This time she doesn't say
goodbye at all.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

ooo Dora, nice! I hate to leave you lonely in here, but I can't do another 30 right now; i'm still limping from the last one. But know I'm watching you, and as always, admiring your mad skillz...

 

[champagne1982]

ooo Dora, nice! I hate to leave you lonely in here, but I can't do another 30 right now; i'm still limping from the last one. But know I'm watching you, and as always, admiring your mad skillz...

She isn't alone... I've still got another 56 days in my 30 in 90 to go (don't I?)

 

[unpredictablebijou]

She isn't alone... I've still got another 56 days in my 30 in 90 to go (don't I?)

*laughing* True! You just keep bashing away at it, ya smart thing. It's like any other treat - rarity makes it more tasty.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Seven

I swim in the blouse he has of me.
It's all air I swear and it's old,
caught under taupeful flag
glossed over, packed and unpacked,
worn again. This is the blouse
I wore before. The day he picked me up
at the airport the swell of their last kiss still
in his smiling lip. His arms are low,
ready to carry or steady.
He whispers low, as to a colt,
trust.

 

[Tzara]

The Rider Deck, 01

Preface

The cards chose me. They're simple,
common, obvious, and crude.
Often oblivious to subtlety
or nuance of any sort. Even I
sometimes spout and divine
pratfalls of mistaken judgment,
however proud I am of color
and clean design, even though
I wouldn't walk ten meters
in someone's Ferragamo shoes,
much less stroll barefoot
over ovened soot and coals.

But I digress. Welcome, you.
I will try to ease you in
to my tight, unimaginative life
where wires run wild switches
in some crazy Tesla net
and Waite's and Lévi's coils
arc across my firmament.
Or maybe I'll lay pasteboard
coffins on my grave
of feelings. All the same.

.

 

[Tzara]

02. Hey! A Revision, however minor!

Preface

The cards chose me. They're simple,
common, obvious, and crude.
Often oblivious to subtlety
or nuance of any sort. Even I
sometimes spout and divine
pratfalls of mistaken judgment,
however proud I am of color
and clean design, even though
I wouldn't walk ten meters
in someone's Ferragamo shoes,
much less stroll barefoot
over ovened soot and coals.

But I digress. Welcome, you.
I will try to ease you in
to my tight, unimaginative life
where wires run wild switches
in some crazy Tesla net
and Waite's and Lévi's coils
arc across my firmament.
Or maybe I'll lay pasteboard
coffins on my grave
of feelings. All the same.

.

The Rider Deck: Preface

These cards chose me.
They're simple, common,
crude. Oblivious to subtlety
or nuance of any sort. Even I
sometimes spout and divine
pratfalls of mistaken judgment,
however proud I am of color
and clean design, even though
I wouldn't walk ten meters
in someone's Ferragamo shoes,
much less stroll barefoot
over ovened soot and coals.

But I digress. Welcome, you.
Reader, I will try to ease you in
to my tight, unimaginative life
where wires run wild switches
in some crazy Tesla net
and Waite's and Lévi's coils
arc across my firmament.

Or maybe I'll lay pasteboard,
paper coffins on that grave,
my feelings. S'all the same.

.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

eight

Dragged like smoke across slate,
his fingerpad eases the bone
to slack in my shoulder

and I breathe, trying not to look
over it. Trying to take everything
I see as being what it is, clean
and obvious. Present. As if

no one had told me
each detail of my life is quantified
in binary spat to live cd. How then
to accept him? As if

I were the girl he loves
whom he has only seen
from a distance?

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Eight

Dream About a Parlor and a Stranger

Two cards are on the table
one here, one there
face down. The backs are red
diamonds laced over scratched
ice lakes on the wooden table.
Between the two cards
is your hand. Between the two
cards you ask for mine
and we hold, you hold mine;
I leave mine in yours.

The cards do not mean anything.
They were just props, a way to enter,
to bring up the topic of unlacing
diamonds from my body.

Under the cloth,
I am uncrossed.

 

[DrewberryLess]

Hold
my
body
down on your
wooden table
between two scratched diamonds
trying to take
every
present
then
leave

Cento
Source: eight and Eight by PandoraGlitters

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Ten

This map is stored
in the body, not the pocket.
It has different capitols
where bells sound or where
they roast coconut in little carts,
remarked apartments
habituated still by ghosts
of people we knew.
All this time we kept
the corners of it, the folded seams
compressing with our spines
waiting for us to come together
piece by piece.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Oh my! I don't think anyone's used me in a Cento before.

Hold
my
body
down on your
wooden table
between two scratched diamonds
trying to take
every
present
then
leave

Cento
Source: eight and Eight by PandoraGlitters