The Gymnasium

[ShyErraticTable]

Sonnet 4a, Because a Sudden Raid (Foray), or;
Why Finnegans Wake Makes Me Dream on You

Because a sudden raid on your honour seemed unwise,
I thought some dialogue might schmooze you, dear,
and twist your body to that love mine eyes
have seen the glory of the coming of. My lord! Your rear

is beautiful, nay, beatific! I think I think on Joyce's
river Liffey, Anna Plurabelle, and that thinking
makes my stiffy. Sorry. It's a kind of kink thing
I have for Joyce. Don't tell my mother. Not my choice

to have that weird fetish, that's for sure. I'd rather be
a normal lover, one who sees you by appointment,
regular and happy, sans erotic ointment,
earnest as H. Hudson on the Zuider Zee

eager to explore new worlds over horizon, there
beyond my simple ken. Like HCE I stroke your hair.

 

[recklesschild]

Banquet of Convergance

Touch upon touch my imprint on your skin
weighs in my mind’s eye as stones, as mortar
stacked until you cannot move; you are pinned,
drawn, nay, may I say halved and cut-quartered

and I, cannibal, open my eager
mouth to take my feast still beating. Flesh-heart,
do you mind if I taste you rare? Meager
seasoning of saliva does impart

to my hunger as best flavour. To touch –
this is but the start. To hold, a much more
designing part. To keep, tell truths and such,
blah, blah, blah. But to dine…never a chore.

Lover, I have set you at my table.
My banquet of convergence, you enable.

 

[Sara Crewe]

I will take my tragedy à la mode
and mix it slowly with my life
so I taste a little bit at a time
and then share it with the people
sitting around my table.
No sudden cardiac arrests, train wrecks
dental records or unidentifiable remains
for me please. I will know where I sit
at this supper and still swallow the last
of my infinity. Lick the cream from my lips
not for me but for all of you
and when the coffee cups grow cold
you can squeeze my hand and say
until then, adieu.

 

[Sara Crewe]

Today I had a craving
for satisfaction and I couldn’t find it
in a brownie. Okay, I didn’t find it three
brownies so I bought a bigger purse
but now I have less money and still shove
everything in a pocket with my cell phone
that’s always on vibrate so I don’t have to talk
to anyone but still feel connected
even in this third ring of florescent hell
where I endure the torture of trying
on bathing suits and realize I was hot
twenty years too late and now stand
illuminated and at best lukewarm,
pretty sure I will never be celebrated
by anyone except my children
and when I squint my eyes and look
past the mirror that seems just fine
with me until I look again tomorrow.

 

[ShyErraticTable]

Sonnet IX, for a Younger Poet

Yes, it is odd that I, an older man, so love
one so young as you. It seems not right.
That I celebrate your poems is fine. Their tight
prosody and language and use of image move
me as you meant to move me. They are art,
your poems, and why your language start-
ed me on this affectionate road. In my past
are other loves, but none so talented as you.
Your very words are beauty, and your face,
now I have seen your picture, has a grace
becoming of those words. Almost like Mary, who
in medieval paintings has a beatific cast
to her expression. But this is blasphemy.
Your words and world are open, need no virginity.

 

[Sara Crewe]

I often wonder if Moses tried to extinguish
God before they spoke. How long do you wait
for burning bushes to talk before you throw water?
They don’t cover the important stuff in the bible
like a detailed plan on how to differentiate
between the saviour and escaped psych patients
would have been very useful. We didn’t need the ten
easy ways to stone a woman for having a good time
or was that coveting a good time? Oh, that's right,
it doesn't matter. Sometimes I wish I still believed.
Life was easier before Thomas whispered
in my ear and the stories seemed less solid,
lost dimension and it became just another mythology.
A mother’s kiss to soothe the things we cannot change.

 

[Sara Crewe]

For the table guy to make up for scattering my babblings among his sonnets...

A table can be measured by design
or viewed with possibility in mind.
A symbol instead of a place to dine.
See an altar where carnal needs unwind

and food is flung with plates onto the ground
to make room for her back to kiss the top
warm as he smoothes her out without a sound
seamless and soft when arms and legs drop

over the edge with a sigh he drinks down
like a shot of whiskey that slakes and burns
away civility and rips her gown
to bare skin but it’s in her face he learns

that lust is the shade of green in her eyes,
a colour he will feel until he dies.

 

[recklesschild]

Playing Favourites

I suppose I’m out of the running for
Miss Congeniality this year,
again. I guess I must have polished more
tiara than ass. Damn. Just when I sheared
my silken banner to drape fetchingly
between my breasts, not across. Amateur
mistake, really. My legs were stretching wee
further each morning at the barre; coiffure
perfected underneath each heavy book
laid at top of skull for walking only.
I should have opened it and had a look,
maybe. It’s moot. No votes, only lonely
offers for sex in cars. Cars, if lucky.
They growl, “Get naked. Wear your KENTUCKY.”

 

[clutching_calliope]

(Thinking About Ned Beatty)

deliverance, you say, thought it were yesterday
and not a particle of speech delivery

but past

tense and memory. it’s all happening,
now, you used to say, all of time,
every thing, grains of tocks and ticks

of skin. at this very same moment.

i blink.

each blink connects with every other blink
you’ve ever blinked and becomes the new now,
you say.

i try and keep my eyes open this time
while you mumble some

talking aloud about ned beatty
seeing the rapture or if it’ll be one
giant speck of dust in his ever closing eye.

 

[recklesschild]

Stars Feel Closer. Atoms. Dogs Talk. Asimov Barks. Love. Yeah, you.

I have to admit it. I never got
your note until late tonight.
............................................Well, later
than I would have found it had I, robot
Pavalov-ed to ringing atomic matter.

Yes, your matter.
............................I knew you were not due
today, jettisons and all of George’s
family, including Astro, the pooch
that talks with an impediment, gorges
on space treats. Do you think he might be a
distant relative of Scooby Doo?

....................................................Any-
way.
..........Besides the point. (What point? You say.)
..................love you, mister..........................................Hey.
It’s a poem. For you.
................................... A parcel of many
useless letters strung together in a
galaxy. Lightspeed, godspeed, no delay.

 

[Tzara]

Heavy Equipment

..........Thank God

the tractor tire of your beauty
crushed only my head.

I don't need
...my brains to fuck.




—for my Deere, of course

 

[Tzara]

View from My Window, Marriott SFO

reeds crowd the cowed shore
where few ducks
skate on concrete bay

 

[annaswirls]

:bows:

wonderful

Inadequacy, Want

I don't know anything and
I don't want to know anything.

It is too easy to know things
and I don't want easy. I want

problematic and queer and difficile,
like that would make a différence

but, bien sûr, it won't. I want
you to love me. But I know you don't.

 

[annaswirls]

damn!

this is a three damn poem
wish I could write like this damn kind of poem

Prayer of the Modern Supplicant
to Venus Erycina et Genetrix

There is no male heart your body cannot win
to its allegiance. This is mere fact of life.
Your lavish pregnant curves bend men to sin
and men will kill to secure you for their wife—
a circumstance you can exploit and well
use to your advantage. Shake money from the till

of their foolish pockets. Tease them. Find them
ripe for harvesting, broad silly field of rape,
and crush their seed to oil, cut off every stem
at groundline, leave a barren weal. Shape
even history as you dispense pleasure, aid
poverty through having men you've laid

donate their dull effective powers to your cause.
Be whore. Be mother. Be nature, without laws.

 

[annaswirls]

oh my god I have to stop reading now, you two,
by two I mean let two = x
(x=(b+b) * alts )


oh goodness, I have to add a sara crewe to this list

y'all are making me dizzy, I still see spots where your poetry was

Touch without touch is like this without thus,
push without thrust, bread without crust, morning’s
mash without mush. I am full of you, lust…
love… and cannot change these amber warnings.

Every star tumbles with the ice in cups,
supped with dry fire on punished tongues. Blue
flames shoot highest, fall hard, seek to erupt
below the ribs where most itches debut,

deep-seated, stubborn, drunken and foolish.

If only one could scratch, be more content
for one flea’s lifetime… would it but fuel this

brief lit room or dark the cave of resent?
I know that touch, your one touch such as thus,
that you deep in me is worth all the fuss.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Paperback Anthologies

All he knew was about placing days
and nothing of how way

leads on to way
bound to each other such and such
in natural piety. His was nothing of morning dew,

nothing of the church’s pew, and where without
the graveyard stew
taken with a pinch of melancholy. He put

Wednesdays in his topcoat pocket
and patted them for safekeeping, got
on the bus and waved instead of tom-peeping
to no one in particular.



*thanks anna

 

[recklesschild]

life, little l

How long in time does death mind our passing
thoughts? Such as the words we leave behind, grave
markers of importance, works, flesh, blessings
of our hands upon the land, noble and brave
acts of lore fabled humanities rise.
Mine is a humble wish that in this: you
will remember me tomorrow. That Wise,
having been a stranger, Love a blue
room without water, Want a belly-ache,
and Loyal having no fixed address should all
find themselves at my door. For my own sake,
know: they were not invited to the ball
called Life, and my life, little l. If known,
you knew me well. If not, I have but flown.

 

[Tzara]

Dope: Three Letters, Easy

CIA? Ick—not OK.
FBI forever spies.
PhD, I wish I was.
MBA: Stuck up. Not wise.
MPB's the one for me, though
THC just makes me high.
The AFL joined CIO
so extra letters matter. Sigh.

 

[clutching_calliope]

Last Days on Mars

I have gotten used to you,
red sun,
and no longer
breathe behind glass. Your landscape

at first hostile,
now predictable, comfortable, welcome.
We ran the gambit

on the suit of hearts, but
there are diamonds to be mined
and other worlds to conquer.

Farewell harvest soil, soon
it will be time
to say goodnight again.

 

[clutching_calliope]

I is to Blame

The cover of Time
said I was the person of the year.
It meant I as in you, but I,
capital I, towered over all of you
and collected penalty taxes. Wikipedonomics

says that mass collaboration changes everything
but they really mean
a room full of I’s,
not a room full of lowly
and lowing sheep. I ventilate

and the world changes temperature,
levies burst, frost grows on lemons in California.
Blame the I
but don’t blame me. Coming together

is what we do best. Staying together
is still in school, out for recess,
in detention. I exasperate
and Al Gore is in the news again.
I populate and propagate, fornicate,
deviate, masturbate, conciliate.
Africa has AIDS with a capital I
in the middle (you might point at the HIV).

There is no I in team.
There is no I in team.
There is no I in team.

 

[Tzara]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

Lycanthropy

Spoon-fed with moonlight
and its glistening dreams of blood,
I ebb and fade, mere undertow.

Another spreads across a blackened beach
this darkened, frothy water. And when I say
Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,

you'll know this is no longer play.

I know the color of bone
gnawed and dry
when it appears in the sky
ash Wednesday thumbprint
as if touched with the host I convulse
spit forth lies that boil your blood
in preparation
for a gruesome visit

only with love will you run in rivulets
down a beastly chest
and in the morning
I pick remnants of your trust
from between forgetful teeth

 

[Tzara]

I know the color of bone
gnawed and dry
when it appears in the sky
ash Wednesday thumbprint
as if touched with the host I convulse
spit forth lies that boil your blood
in preparation
for a gruesome visit

only with love will you run in rivulets
down a beastly chest
and in the morning
I pick remnants of your trust
from between forgetful teeth

On Why, When Spelled, Addiction Comes Out N-E-E-D

It is not her bones I gnaw. I do not
hunger for her marrow, however red and soft.
An other nourishment is what I want.

My fingertips are lustful, my nails claws.
I want to carve initials in her flesh, because
because, because. Because I am weak enough

to want it, to simply, only want her love
however oddly made. How differently she moves
throughout my life—here taxingly, here smooth

and here so separate, that when I crush
her will, that mouse's skeleton, I must then must
restrain from drinking it too much. I am a lush.






Tag. You're It.

 

[clutching_calliope]

The Birthday Letters

burned in an August pyre
and perhaps that is the only thing he regretted

(or was attracted to); this heat of her

that he couldn’t control or douse. He roused
himself once, twice, thrice
into her arms

and onto her marriage shrine

but left less a man each time. It’s not
like she wanted fixing. It wasn’t
the cooking or the babies
or her vacuous staring at Eliot with her

mouth parted ever so slightly, making her
(not wanton) moronic, flaccid.
The birthday letters were regrettably
the best she ever gave,
the best she ever took
back
with her
to read
later.

 

[Tzara]

burned in an August pyre
and perhaps that is the only thing he regretted. . .

Birthday Vespers

Geez, Ted. She put her head in the oven.
That was kinda your fault, of course,
chasing after other skirts,

you bastard, but Syl was wacko too—
said so herself, as Ms. Lucas.
Life has complexities we can't talk

about with those who haven't lived enough,
which is everyone. You were,
OK, some guy with clever words.

She was a girl. Stuff happens. Life
intrudes and life is always bad,
or always seems to be. Now why is that?

There is no apologizing to the dead.
You lost your chance there, but instead
you kept Syl's wordiness in bed

and would not let it out. And so?
Would you, if live, be all surprised
how normally you're vilified?

Thought not. So just let her go.
She killed herself long time ago.
She's dead. Hey. You are, also.





Your poem is way way way better, Ms. C. Just sayin'. Good poem.