Dirty 30 in 30

[UnderYourSpell]

Did you know an Emmet is an ant?

 

[WickedEve]

Did you know an Emmet is an ant?

Hmm... that makes it a bit more interesting. I'll have to play around with that.

 

[WickedEve]

#23

there's nothing poetic about this. perhaps
the descriptions, like the abundant african sun
on the green muted mantle.
hugo, we mustn't leave the sun
behind but i will leave
grandma's deco to momma.

i write by the window,
by the vast window.
i will miss the window
as though i'm leaving behind my hair.

let me take my lilac bush,
please, the lilacs. i have a lilac vase
for my summer table,
for my vast window,
one for momma when she visits.

momma won't come
once we're gone,
except to pick lilacs
and board up the house,
her house --
never really mine.
those aren't my lilacs,
not my vast window.

we'll take the sun with us.
i own the sun.

 

[WickedEve]

#24

black dog hollows the earth
in pre-spring, barks to the wind
that is suddenly here,
a lion in february

i want march and april
the way i need six o'clock coffee
and my body pressed into his mattress.

dog and i walk down the road
into daylight and blue sky
and it all seems subdued,
simple, like waking
or writing a poem.

i know tomorrow will snow.

 

[WickedEve]

#25

crucifix, hecho en mexico,
pewter, numbered one hundred
and three, the size of two
female hands,
heavy as a two-slice toaster,
not quite. sacrilegious
penetration,
quite possibly.

 

[WickedEve]

26

where is the vodka,
tortured soul poetry?
it is all penguin.
do i hear mother?
fuck no.
mother is a bitch
egg donor.

poetry should be a pathetic
bundle on the door step.
oh, look, how precious.
love it. love it. love it.
even if it turns rabid on us,
love it.

real poetry is not neat. it is not a princess,
not a prom queen,
not a small town glamour hut.
it's ugly
and you want it to clean its yard,
turn down the rap.
but you can't,

you can't stop watching it
out your window.

 

[WickedEve]

27

bang bang
there was bang bang back
in 1919
serious jack in the pockets
to bang bang 12,000 square feet,
complete with, oh fuck,
nouveau, fucking love that art,
and some deco shit.

get real fucker.
think you gonna have big pockets,
big enough to live on luke mountain?

Oh, pardon me,
LUKE MOUNTAIN!
Overlooking the billows of white
that billowed toward the supreme Dog
back in the 20s.

God works at the covington walmart
and the mansion is cheap for a reason.







get real

 

[WickedEve]

28

i froze in the candlelight,
in the wick, the flame,
yes, in that tired flicker,
while peter shot the monkey
and i waited for a charge,
a medicinal egg charge.

how much longer...
leftover meat
and wafers
and really only wanting you
and not getting you,
so waiting for a charge
of rechargeables.

i'm only human.

 

[WickedEve]

29

spin in your chair
and it's long way to the top
but i made the summit

scream
pant
tense
muscle burn

sleep like a boy
man
sleep man
woman is crashing on your slumbering shores

forget channel 51
i killed the AA

 

[WickedEve]

30 finally

we play sit 'n spin
on deviant tiles
i'm yellow accpetance
your pissed off spin
we are an uncaring laugh
buying negro hawaiian shirts
with vintage pinup girls
and it's all good will to man
yes, we paid for a cut-out green hugo
to support the willl of good

you no need to understand, amigo,
tis a poem,
a foul floor,
a slick orbit

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Whoooo hooo you've dirtied thirty!

 

[WickedEve]

Whoooo hooo you've dirtied thirty!

Thanks. I wrote the last five while drinking vodka. I'm afraid to read them.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

I loved this

God works at the covington walmart
and the mansion is cheap for a reason.

Congratulations, Eve. Great 30.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Poems for NaPo so far have all been on the 30/30. I will pick up here with number 11 and will try to catch up. I have been traveling and unable to connect.

Nap09-11

This time arms reach longer
than arms alone can reach without
extensions, fingertips
tapping your name
your number
this invitation to enter

printed on the purse
of lips that sound out blessings
on each step you take
coming closer

with the hope that none
of the possible disasters will erupt,
shatter or poisonously pool
or that you will sidestep
even if you take longer, then,

you will still come
to me over or around or again
as required
until there is no difference
between us that cannot be solved
with a kiss.

 

[driveronice]

30 to 30

looking to love but started to hate but ended up loving

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Nap09-12

this whole place is made of squares
laid shoulder to shoulder and feet
to feet with thin lines between

two-lane highways, wood fences,
or even just the hyphen between names
to show what was and what is but even
in Kansas people jaywalk sometimes

so even here, where all food is made
of meat and boys will be boys and boys
who are not brutes are "funny" (limp wrist
gesture for emphasis) even here

there is you, my 86 year old torch,
limber fingers to toes, shocking the doctor
after pacemaker surgery as he lists all the things
you must wait to resume and you say,
"you left out sex"

I remember that in these fields and rows
there sometimes grows accidental bounty

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Dora, you're doing stellar work as always.

This, I particularly loved:

until there is no difference
between us that cannot be solved
with a kiss.

and this, below, blew my head off. I just lost a very dear, rather old friend this week. He was older than 86, but you'd have described him the same way:

there is you, my 86 year old torch,
limber fingers to toes, shocking the doctor
after pacemaker surgery as he lists all the things
you must wait to resume and you say,
"you left out sex"

this is the story I heard just tonight. Hoppy was 93. A true lover of women. Unresponsive, he was two days from dying on this past thursday. My grandmother, at whom he has made shameless passes for years, goes to visit him. As she leans to kiss him on the cheek to say goodbye, he turns his head, and she ends up kissing him on the lips. Even halfway to death, far along his journey, the man knew how to steal a kiss.

I loved him more than I can appropriately express. So this was well - timed. Thanks.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Thank you, Bijou. I am sorry you lost your friend, but pleased you can remember him so richly and fondly. My torch is my grandmother. A lovely woman. I love this thread. Thank you for reading and commenting.

Dora, you're doing stellar work as always.

This, I particularly loved:



and this, below, blew my head off. I just lost a very dear, rather old friend this week. He was older than 86, but you'd have described him the same way:



this is the story I heard just tonight. Hoppy was 93. A true lover of women. Unresponsive, he was two days from dying on this past thursday. My grandmother, at whom he has made shameless passes for years, goes to visit him. As she leans to kiss him on the cheek to say goodbye, he turns his head, and she ends up kissing him on the lips. Even halfway to death, far along his journey, the man knew how to steal a kiss.

I loved him more than I can appropriately express. So this was well - timed. Thanks.

 

[StepStransky]

2-12

I missed a couple of days on the 30/30, so I'm going to try to finish it in here.

-------

Shiny stuff peeking out from behind
stones and pots and garden gnomes and
clumps of other... growing stuff. If the sun
should shine they'll come across this stuff as litter
tomorrow. If no kid should find these things, that is. Which
is, let's face it, unlikely. Here they come. Pushing past
each other to be first with their bucket. Their *bucket*.
Their BUCKET full of flavoured fat (that's what
we call chocolate, Europe tells us). Parents watch;
big smiles at the shouting, and the squabbles they
dismiss as, well, 'kids'. It's an Easter tradition
apparently.

 

[StepStransky]

2-13

So.
Let me see.
What would be a good thing to say?
Which weak spot shall I aim for?
How many times will I hit him?
And how will I dress it up, my dears, so that
only he will know
that my bullet has his name on it?
What metaphor shall I use? What
cultural references shall I throw in?
Something classic? It will
lend me more authority. After all,
I'm not one of these kids, you know;
it's not like I'm posting teenage hate
on Bebo.

If you like,
I am the sniper, siting on a rooftop half a mile away.
When my bullet hits, that boy will drop, and no-one
will know what hit him. Unless I tell them.
And I'm not interested in putting one
through his heart or through his eyes. My target
is his soul.

So.
I need a setting.
I need a clever context.
A person in history, perhaps, with
all the right associations (people can look
it up on Wikipedia after and see just how learned
and observant I am).
Maybe an animal? Maybe a sky?
Maybe a colour you add
to fabric?
Dare I play on words? I might just, you know;
I might just.
I can smile at those who see it and grin,
a little cheekily,
and I can show those who frown my middle fucking finger.
I'm from the street, you see. I write haiku with
my knuckles. Of course,
I'm not just one of those kids, you know.

Then there is the issue of audience
and timing, who I want to be there as witness and who
I want as happless, oblivious bystander. My moment,
if it is right, will win me my longevity. And I
will help the doubters through their dissonance
by reminding them of what an utter fuckwit he was and
by whispering in their ear just how much I love them.
It is all
so kinaesthetic.
It is all
such poetry.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Damn you are good, Step. Scary good, particularly for a new poet, but just generally a really engaging writer.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Nap-09 ?

Not sure which number this is. Only have a moment to write, so here goes.


Enter the Jealous Husband
played by last week's roughneck, now
holding time in both hands and tying
it into a lasso. The knot is clean and
loose enough to slide. He tosses it
into the air easy so as not to hit
the ceiling. Did I mention that he is sitting
at the lunch counter? Did I mention his co-star,

Pretty Wife, early 20s, violet-eyed, behind? Stop me
if you've seen this one, but you won't because drama pulls
us in, doesn't it? Even when we know what is going to happen
next, as if we heard the soundtrack and noted
the exact minute that the violins begin to saw,
scaffolding our excitement, our vicarious terror. Of course

It's not as though she offered anything more
than buttered toast and sunny sides. She sews her buttons
tight, but that doesn't stop the customers from looking at those
tender, visible bits: the slender neck, the calves like plump
exclamation marks over small dot heels. Some probably coo

how romantic as he pulls her to him. As he holds
her possessively in his hoop. An older waitress imagines
thick hands at her waist and sighs. But others do not see
as we see the ride home, the slap,
nor do they hear as we hear the names he calls her
when he wakes up from a dream in which he headlined
in The Cuckold.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Nap09 - ??

I'll count 'em later.



It's a trump game. Bowers are high.
Ten years since I have played Euchre
and I remember just before he says it

It's a kids' game. Play it on the back of the bus.
It doesn't matter how you deal so long
as there are four left over. I could feel

the shivering polarity of being two-suited
with three trump and not looking, not looking
into your eyes but you knew old friend

years and years and years gone by since we
swept the table like this. No trump, gone alone,
facing down the euchre sheer as a cliff

looking ahead instead of down. No
sweat, cojones. But the man to the left
did steal the deal from me so's I'd know
he was worthy.

 

[StepStransky]

Damn you are good, Step. Scary good, particularly for a new poet, but just generally a really engaging writer.

ty Dora... your kind words make me glow (even if they also add to my sense of guilt and growing panic about now being way behind on my napo count!)

 

[StepStransky]

2-14

"He said it's because I'm lazy, which
I know I am," she said. I'm hardly going
to disagree. Inside,
her inactivity sits in piles on
the carpet and the stairs and
is stacked up beside the kitchen
sink. Out here it blocks out
the sunlight and
threatens the felt.

Before we start, we audit our
requirements and come up
short by a saw. "You know," she
says, "I think I might have left it
at his place." For sure, it's under
something in her shed, but
we make the trip to the store anyway
and she tells me how he
dumped her in a text. I do
my usual tangent thing; I wonder
if it's time someone invented
a word for that as we look
at the step ladders.

It is good to work with
the sun on your neck. Perhaps
that tree didn't need cutting
up into quite so many pieces. "It's not
like I'm so different now," she says, as she
brings out tea, "than from when
I first met him." Which actually does
get me thinking. Is it five
years now? Is it six?
It's nearly twelve since his
predecessor; that much I do know.

"Oh well," she says. And she launches
into recent anecdote.
His story is in pieces now, neatly
sawn. Fuel for future
conversations.