Poetry Challenge for First Week of May

[GuiltyPleasure]

Sin by Fool – 5/28/06

Does the smile when I whisper mean you
are not offended by my words of lust?

Fingertip caresses explore
as I breath my desire
into your open smile.

Sit with me a while.
Share a drink with me
and let us talk of decadence
openly. Thoughts that might
take all night to ponder

deeply with the time
we have to share.
moments spent
in minutes
or hours
perhaps days of lust.

Sin with me a while.


Inspired by Sin and Foolishness

He whispers heat , delicious sin.
Sprinkles suggested transgressions
throughout the night
as our bodies meet halfway to heaven.

He kisses my smile still questioning
his intentions
but resolute, his fingers
follow tender trails that find me
fighting for a breathe.

We murmur of fine wines,
lush sweetness and velvet ropes.
He whets my weaknesses,
feeds my greed until I yearn
to own his reality....

……and so we sin.

 

[Epmd607]

I want to see more butts laying it on the line next week. This exercise is about honoring your fellow poets. Thanks to all the butts who've laid it on the line this past week. More butts!

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/butt+is+on+the+line

 

[Tzara]

Inspired by Palba_Noruda's quite fascinating Mermaid Tai Chi:

Mermaid, Tai Chi

Fluid as an eel, her body opens
like a water lily in the sun
as she begins her exercise—
Golden Cock, Single Whip,
Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain.

He is reminded it is martial art
when he attempts Push Hands.


​

Note that I know nothing whatsoever about Tai Chi, so the movements probably make no sense.

Poetic license.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Inspired by Palba_Noruda's quite fascinating Mermaid Tai Chi:

Mermaid, Tai Chi

Fluid as an eel, her body opens
like a water lily in the sun
as she begins her exercise—
Golden Cock, Single Whip,
Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain.

He is reminded it is martial art
when he attempts Push Hands.


​

Note that I know nothing whatsoever about Tai Chi, so the movements probably make no sense.

I learned Tai Chi but in Canada. Isn't it suppposed to be box tiger's ears? I probably am going senile, but that's how I remember it.

Poetic license.

Fair enough.

 

[Tzara]

I learned Tai Chi but in Canada. Isn't it suppposed to be box tiger's ears? I probably am going senile, but that's how I remember it.

I used this as reference. Have no idea if it is accurate, but Tai Chi seems to have several variations in technique and, I suppose, positions.

There's also a book named for that movement (position?), so I assume it is a real one, at least in some forms.

My concern was more that I may have strung together movements that don't make sense in series, not that they are necessarily meant to be a series. I picked them simply for their names.

Probably a bad idea.

"Box tiger's ears" turns up in Google as well.

 

[champagne1982]

I've been reading the postings and stuff from the back pages thinking about poems I'd cop and rob if I were writing a poem. Someone wrote one with a first line that I misread as "...yesterday's beard"(which may have been "bread") and now I can't remember who. Author of said poem, remind me, please.

I think you're referring to my poem, "Indifference"

 

[champagne1982]

This one was inspired by an older poem by Champie. Like my Anna variation, this is more riffing off some images and themes than anything like a rewrite:


Baptism for the Dead
Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead
if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?
—I Corinthians 15:29

Because even the dead want to dance,
if only in some conga line
led by a Bergmanesque guy with a scythe
and no sense of rhythm. Because they remember life,
its wild complexity, its chaff, as more interesting
than the dull plod of decomposing
into nothingness, like another dopey song
that has no beat.

Sure, they once had a life, though it was often short,
well before cellphones and Survivor,
a game they often had to play themselves

while working on shit dust bowl farms
or building pyramids for glamoristas
down from Memphis to catch the Giza rays. I would even splash
my atheistic self with water, if that could bring some jazz

to one poor, thin ancestor, stuck in the onion skin of limbo,
that flaky, outer edge
that Dante glides on past as if the homeless
are unworthy of his narrative in verse.

I don't know if Mormons dance,
but I know they should, submerged
in the basements of their white stone temples,
pulling plenty willing partners from the earth.


.

You flatter me dear man. I can catch hints of more than one of my poems inside your offering. I think I could use some of that brilliantine polish just so I can rub the dust off, never mind the tarnish!

 

[bflagsst]

I close my eyes
and carry you down aisles,
push your shopping cart for miles.

We used to pick berries from bushes
pinch blueberries 'til they burst,
here they sit uniform in boxes,
twice washed, thrice bundled

No more heathen berry prayers
offered to make you mine,
as the once great players
now queue in checkout lines.

.......................................................
AnnaSwirls' Source Material


I will close my eyes
and tell you what is mine.

This, your beauty I carry with me down aisles
calling for lost children, selecting
the box with the reddest of strawberries.

All of these are mine.

Not all berries, these berries.
Not all children, these children.
Not all of you, but this part of you only I hold.

Other lips may taste juices,
I see them on display,
but not these, not mine.

 

[Tzara]

Restylin' our Challenge Master his own self, from Epmd607's In Prayer:

Agnosticism

I don't Believe, so cannot pray
to God in Heaven, but our play
could possibly at times dismiss

my doubts about a Deity.
It isn't just erotic bliss,
though it is that, but piety;

perfection how my this, your that
haply conjoined form conjugate
and conjure something unforeseen—

a mental state of supreme being.
This could be Darwin, or merlot,
or simply mystery. I guess

that I don't care if your caress
is prayer or science down below.



​

I didn't follow his rhyme pattern, but wanted to make it kind of irregular, as he did.

 

[Tzara]

Re-themed from chipbutty's poem

bridge

a favoured place for suicides
this massy bridge, so it is told
but i would rather stand and watch
the waters flow
the fog slip by in silent drifts that
come and
mizzling
go

which reminded me a little of Frost (no, I'm not really sure why):

Leap

The water tumbles, far below,
on huddled rocks. I think I know
how this appeals to suicides
debating should they stay or go.

Release is what the jump provides,
they'll perhaps think, and there resides
the rest we Restless need and seek.
In nullity, some faith abides.

Some prove too timid, or too weak,
to jump. I have a coward's streak,
and so am saved this time, although
Hell's dreams, while subtle, aren't unique.


​

 

[butters]

Lanced
by champagne1982©


Festering, like fallout, memories
get locked inside the scars
time blows over a depression.
Stuck in a crevice and forgotten
until scrapes scour the rock
clean of yesterday to release
all that is rotten. Raw and bleeding,
the past exposed to the antiseptic
wash of fresh air. Now clean;
true healing begins.

pockets of pus, sulphurous sores
scab over
hide,
don't heal
new laid turf over poisoned soil
a deep ache settles in her geology
grinds infection into landscaped bones

time scrapes her glacial valley
scours, erodes, ex
po
ses
till standing naked and bleeding
arms raised to the light
she welcomes its antiseptic sting
accepts scars are best worn fearlessly

 

[butters]

Re-themed from chipbutty's poem

which reminded me a little of Frost (no, I'm not really sure why):

Leap

The water tumbles, far below,
on huddled rocks. I think I know
how this appeals to suicides
debating should they stay or go.

Release is what the jump provides,
they'll perhaps think, and there resides
the rest we Restless need and seek.
In nullity, some faith abides.

Some prove too timid, or too weak,
to jump. I have a coward's streak,
and so am saved this time, although
Hell's dreams, while subtle, aren't unique.


​

i truly love where it took you!

 

[Remec]

First one

Stigmatized

The pain along my temple
pulses a rhythym to match
the blow you struck my chest;

You never seem to aim
directly for the heart, but your
near strikes are enough to
arc my back and make
hand and foot fold themselves
about their rivets;

Anchored in place, I no longer
stagger under the weight of you,
or the devotion I still maintain,
but simply abide..shallow breath,
sour taste in my mouth,
and questions I cannot bring
myself to ask.

inspired by I bear on my body the marks of... by bflagsst​

-----

 

[butters]

Bus stop
by Remec©

Crisp, cold morning
Children waiting in the chill--
Hoping for sunshine.

bleak hearts
raw hands
waiting with hope
for love

 

[butters]

The Fool

So if I am unmasked
am I emasculated?
Perhaps we can switch masks
in mid stroke,
caught in the passion
of the moment
so as not to see clearly.
Not sure that you would,
could, should
see anything anyway.
Other than a hollow space.
No my head is not filled with straw.

remove everything
every mask
every adornment
till you are naked and honest and brave
and then
when passion moves you
moves me
remove my blindfold
let me see into you
please. don't close your eyes

 

[butters]

Garden Wall
by annaswirls©


In time
Warm sun returns
And thistle turns to seed
While I remain here, mortar bound
They flee

.




brick walls are all well and good
for keeping things in
keeping things out
as points of start
and finish
but true to our nature
we remain static and endure
immovable even when we would move
remove ourselves as barriers
all we can do is wait
slowly crumble
shed the odd brick
and wait
hoping someone will come along and
knock us down
opening the way

 

[CharleyH]

I make daily use of

of course.

I need a swig 'o that! lol

 

[Tzara]

Riffed off of EroticOrogeny's Icicle:

celsius

she chilled my sodden love
with her icebox arts,
hung me from a gutter's edge

so with the tepid warmth of dawn,
one bitter, briny kiss
I'd drip to death along her floral bed


​

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I need a swig 'o that! lol

Don't gargle that unless your throat is lined with unruly hair, Charley!

 

[CharleyH]

Don't gargle that unless your throat is lined with unruly hair, Charley!

ROFLOL!

 

[The_Fool]

Sin by Fool – 5/28/06

Does the smile when I whisper mean you
are not offended by my words of lust?

Fingertip caresses explore
as I breath my desire
into your open smile.

Sit with me a while.
Share a drink with me
and let us talk of decadence
openly. Thoughts that might
take all night to ponder

deeply with the time
we have to share.
moments spent
in minutes
or hours
perhaps days of lust.

Sin with me a while.


Inspired by Sin and Foolishness

He whispers heat , delicious sin.
Sprinkles suggested transgressions
throughout the night
as our bodies meet halfway to heaven.

He kisses my smile still questioning
his intentions
but resolute, his fingers
follow tender trails that find me
fighting for a breathe.

We murmur of fine wines,
lush sweetness and velvet ropes.
He whets my weaknesses,
feeds my greed until I yearn
to own his reality....

……and so we sin.

Just talk to me, I am beyond. But then you always turn me on.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Just talk to me, I am beyond. But then you always turn me on.

 

[Tzara]

I guess my own experience giving up smoking was a bit different than UnderYourSpell's:

Divorce

That final cigarette was the death of my lover,
a woman I'd grown tired of always
clinging to my shirts, my ties,
even to my yellowed, bitten fingernails,
as if I could ever want another
bitch like her in my bed
whom I'd fuck
because I have to, not
because I want.


​

(Actually, I found it pretty easy, but it seemed like it should have been like this.)

 

[Epmd607]

If you're reading this and haven't posted a poem yet...YOU have less than four days to honor a fellow lit poet by re-writing one of their greatest hits.

 

[Tzara]

Ah, hell. I'm trying to do everyone who offered poems to corrupt and/or rewrite and I think I'm here overextending myself. I don't know if I need more time or just more talent.

I suspect more talent would help a lot.

Anyway, bflagsst, my apologies for the following mash up of your really good (and quite sardonically funny) poem "Hunting Ghosts." I think I'm trying to dump too many elements into my write-over, which is, at best, only loosely inspired by your (quite good) poem.

Dammit.

What can I say? I'm mired in woods lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep.

So please don't upchuck all over this:

Speaker for the Dead
Yea, she did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son.
—Alma 39:4

He was always there, though, at first, silent.
When we mounted the hill Cumorah,
and in its fields of airy grass found our own way,
he stirred, and began his distracting whisper:

You are impure.

Impurity, for Youth, intoxicates,
so we chugged it down like Jägermeister, slammed
on tender livers
that would be scarred in later years.
Hey. Everything is fun while it lasts. Even Ariadne
thought it would be kwel to give that guy some string,
for he was cute, and she might dream
about his huge gonads or her own constellation
or a god ejected from a cart
while she shyly looked away
toward her place in heaven.

Lorrie and I used the earth,
often, even when his breath brushed
both my ears:

It is sinful, what you two do together.

Finally, anger overgrew our ardor
like the blue weed of cyanide
strewn across our soiled sin. My groin
still felt the tidal pull
of her moonlight-pale body
but our once great love sailed off like voices do in sleep,
into a distant, fizzy buzz.

Even with the stick of Judah

am I laid unto your vague, discorporate hands.


​

There is nothing which is good save it comes from the Lord: and that which is evil cometh from the devil.
—Omni 1:25