greenmountaineer's thread

[legerdemer]

Imperfection is. That cleft lip remnant,
having been sutured long ago
that knows how to kiss,

that pink petal birthmark
turning your cheek, Love, into a rose
beneath bedroom eyes by candlelight,

the incision positioned just right
in the middle of your abdomen,
pointing the way towards heaven,

and, my Dearest, your once slender hips
that ache for another accouchement.

That is what beauty is.

I couldn't agree more about beauty and imperfection, for example those things that deviate from perfect symmetry and make one unique. Lovely and lovingly said. The alliteration of the penultimate line - !! but more, the sound of 'accouchement' working with 'ache' - perfect.

I also find it quite erotic in a subdued but roiling kinda way. Beautiful, this.

 

[greenmountaineer]

I couldn't agree more about beauty and imperfection, for example those things that deviate from perfect symmetry and make one unique. Lovely and lovingly said. The alliteration of the penultimate line - !! but more, the sound of 'accouchement' working with 'ache' - perfect.

I also find it quite erotic in a subdued but roiling kinda way. Beautiful, this.

Thanks Mer and AH. This one was rather pcersonal.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Hands Down

First there was Nancy. Then there was Rosie
who wantxed yours truly in the front seat of
my father's Chevy after the prom
NOT TO PULL MY ZIPPER DOWN!

Then there was Susie I took to the movies
who made me hold on to her popcorn
with both of my hands just as Godzilla
stepped on a house in Tokyo.

Did I mention Genevieve? Mon Dieu!
who has a certain Je ne sais quoi
and wears a little white silk blouse
that's always unbuttoned on top

who's cuter than Nancy, Rosie, or Susie,
hands down, mon ami, hands down.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Cabbie

Boss said I didn't have to speak Spanish,
corner of Grote and seventeenth Street,
just had to drive them to Allentown.

I can smell welfare a mile away,
"No tip, no shit" says to myself,
boarded up storefronts, heaps on the street,
no laugh lines in the brown eyes I meet,
leaning into one Mrs. Rodriguez
like an overdone strand of linguini,
a limp sixty pounds I'm guessing, at best,
without the shirt, the pants and the Keds.

So I go to pick up the lady's kid
who's a dead weight with arms and legs.
She knew enough to say "José,"
and I enough to say "no sweat"
to drive them up the Interstate
with the blues I hear in the backseat.

Up ahead is Allentown
among the slag heaps that span these hills
of Pennsy a scat dirty brown
like diapers they're gonna put José in:
"He's sleeping. Don't wake him.
He's shitting. Go change him,"
two guys with a gurney standing outside.
She doesn't speak English but knows the sound
of a meter running; "no sweat, Lady,"
figuring the boss owes me the time
for burgers, two cokes, and a shake for the kid
before Mom and me leave Allentown.

 

[greenmountaineer]

By the Numbers

I always took the Monday morning
flight from Boston to LA,
but for football Sunday night,

only time for toast and juice,
no eggs, no tea, no marmalade
or kiss Melissa and the kids.

I thought I was a tail who knew
always how to wag the dog,
rushing for the 6:15

train for Logan flight 11,
but kicked the tire because I was late,
and nothing since has been the same.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Changing Diapers

I remember, Dad, which little piggy
wee wee wee'd all the way home

or maybe I didn't,
just a way to pass some time
with little girl stories you told to me

when I rolled you over each morning
and your half-a-laugh sputum muttered
you must have smelled to high heaven,

you who once had a way with words
but no longer knows my name

nor why a bag is strapped to your leg
you smile at all the same.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Calamine's Notion


I'm half the price of therapy
and much more for your money.

Hey there, Barman, get me a beer
and one here for my buddy.

Now tell me, Pal, what gal ya know
would buy a man a beer?

Look at that head. Know what I mean?
Hey, slow down, don't swallow so.

Name's Calamine because I'm pink
where it matters. Know what I mean?

and I can help you through the night
after kissing ass all day

as long as I'm kept out of reach
of children and the missuhses,

and Baby, you can shake me well
before you use me. Know what I mean?

 

[legerdemer]

Changing Diapers

I remember, Dad, which little piggy
wee wee wee'd all the way home

or maybe I didn't,
just a way to pass some time
with little girl stories you told to me

when I rolled you over each morning
and your half-a-laugh sputum muttered
you must have smelled to high heaven,

you who once had a way with words
but no longer knows my name

nor why a bag is strapped to your leg
you smile at all the same.

Ah, yes... sigh... a really good one. I love the way this one weaved it's message, part and parcel of living. I like how it lilts gently.

 

[legerdemer]

Calamine's Notion


I'm half the price of therapy
and much more for your money.

Hey there, Barman, get me a beer
and one here for my buddy.

Now tell me, Pal, what gal ya know
would buy a man a beer?

Look at that head. Know what I mean?
Hey, slow down, don't swallow so.

Name's Calamine because I'm pink
where it matters. Know what I mean?

and I can help you through the night
after kissing ass all day

as long as I'm kept out of reach
of children and the missuhses,

and Baby, you can shake me well
before you use me. Know what I mean?

...whereas this one made me smile and want to read it a few more times to make sure I got all the references.

 

[LizzieEr]

Though I don't know why the universe spins
with science I know I'll always know how

Original Version

I loved this one.

 

[greenmountaineer]

The Color of Being


It doesn't cut.

It bends with the wind.

It takes the sun in.

Even when plucked, it's green

before it turns brown

when going to seed

for green again in spring.



The egg descends,

the seed begins,

we live, we breathe,

we take the sun in

before black absence,

or so it seems,

perhaps just another

color of being.

 

[greenmountaineer]

In the Beginning

After the fiddlehead came undone,
having poked out of the ground,
a frond was in the beginning
before a fecund leaf unwound.

Having poked out of the ground,
it didn't last long as a frond
before a fecund leaf unwound
and rose like a blood red sun.

It didn't last long as a frond
in the earth that was its mother,
and it rose like a blood red sun
while frogspawn skimmed a pond

on the earth that was its mother
and a mule deer rutted near a cypress
while frogspawn skimmed a pond
as in the beginning there was

a mule deer rutting near a cypress,
frogspawn floating in a pond
and a blood red sun was rising
after the fiddlehead came undone.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Fur Girl

She says she went to Bennington
with her baby grand for a BFA,
Sammy who enters confession

at Hennesey's Fine Jewelry
to charge our latest promotion
and later sell it back to me.

No need to know her credit score;
Bon Jour, Samantha, ma Cherie.
We've danced this dance before.

I make money and she lets on
her summers in the Hamptons
turn her hair a platinum blonde,

and she's running late for afternoon tea
at the Tavern on the Green
where Babs will be oohing and aahing

up to her white glove elbows
the sparkle in Sammy's oola-la-lying
eyes from her gigolo ring.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Gentleman's Farm

There's a still birth of hoarfrost on the lawn
when you drag yourself out of bed at dawn

to run to the office, Daddy Long Legs,
not once having heard the one million eggs

that hatched last spring as peepers in the creek
to sing, but hey, Boy!, you got through the week,

finally home where a deer with its fawn
statue graces your gentleman's farm,

and though summer's gone, a harvest moon's rising.
Your football team lost, so it's not surprising

that what you need is to find some relief.
You're all out of red and Beth burnt the beef.

So get on your Lawn Boy just one more time,
and though nothing grows, hey, ride, Larry, ride.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Two Cheshire Cats

You purred as much as Lord Byron did
who sat on your lap at dawn
hearing about the tin food he ate,
how it was good for his tummy
in your stream of consciousness way,

moving on to your yesterday,
tomorrow's hopes and dreams
about which time I stumbled in,
wondering when the yak yak would start
with my boss at the office again.

So I hid behind the paper to read
Obits, Yard Sales, and Help Wanted ads
until one day, turning the page,
I grinned at you; you grinned at me,
and then we faded away.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Divide and Conquer

Scipio, having ordered
the heads of its living generals piked,
wailed for Carthage, as was the custom
though he whispered to Macedonicus
whose ghost remained on the battlefield,
"It's Rome I wail for, Cassius."

Meanwhile, a mille passus west
on the very same field of carnage,
Nazek said to Hadl,
"Aren't there enough fish in the sea,
fig trees, wheat, and love to be made?"
as they dragged Sahbi to one of the pyres,

smearing their night of nights henna nails
with what was left of his vitals
before they joined the other brides
with sticks to chase the vultures away
while the hags pissed a perimeter
for dogs that no longer wagged their tails.

 

[greenmountaineer]

There's an App for That

my friend, Ibrahim, said
that can help me find lamb that's cheap
in Aleppo when I'm tired of eggplant
we eat from the backyard garden

that Rasha, my daughter, cultivates
at Salah when the bombing stops,
provided there are no Shariah
police to make her kneel facing east.

Of course, the meat's not really cheap,
except it isn't the higher price
that Akram, my neighbor, charges
who offered me a kilogram

as a favor to promenade with Rasha
if bombing ceases for Ramadan,
but Akram worked for an infidel once
at a clothing store in Paris.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Folio 34R

As young Mike O'Brien ponders the Word
Made Flesh in the Book of Kells exhibit
after a class trip to the museum,
he wonders if the monk preferred snakes
more than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The flourishes made him think of the serpent
with Eve in the Garden of Eden,
the sun going down and for some reason
a bulbous mushroom head burgeoning
in a cave beneath an apple tree.

Tonight he will think of Mary Postanak
and wonder why, confused in his bed,
such ancient colored pigments on vellum
make his blood feel like it swells in his head.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Table Dance

It shouldn't matter, I suppose,
the scarring from some surgery
with cantaloupes the size of those
when, so to speak, you're nose to nose.

I think I'd gladly sell my soul
for this serpentine Salomé
to whom I slip a dollar bill
among two fivers in her thong.

"Why, you cheapfuckingskate," said she,
"Rate's a fivefuckingspot or more!"

And when I say "Why, Ms. Tmesis!"
I'm a "fucking doryphore."

"What in hell is a doryphore?"
I say to her, but soon recall,
Ms. Insouciant PhD,
an adjunct lit prof just like me
for all the student don't wannabes
at cheapfuckinguniversities.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Table Dance

It shouldn't matter, I suppose,
the scarring from some surgery
with cantaloupes the size of those
when, so to speak, you're nose to nose.

I think I'd gladly sell my soul
for this serpentine Salomé
to whom I slip a dollar bill
among two fivers in her thong.

"Why, you cheapfuckingskate," said she,
"Rate's a fivefuckingspot or more!"

And when I say "Why, Ms. Tmesis!"
I'm a "fucking doryphore."

"What in hell is a doryphore?"
I say to her, but soon recall,
Ms. Insouciant PhD,
an adjunct lit prof just like me
for all the student don't wannabes
at cheapfuckinguniversities.

That one is very entertaining. I puzzled over "peeling the label off your Bud," but now it looks like you removed that line.

 

[greenmountaineer]

That one is very entertaining. I puzzled over "peeling the label off your Bud," but now it looks like you removed that line.

It was confusing. I also thought the stanza ended more humorously with the metaphorical "nose to nose."

 

[legerdemer]

Table Dance

It shouldn't matter, I suppose,
the scarring from some surgery
with cantaloupes the size of those
when, so to speak, you're nose to nose.

I think I'd gladly sell my soul
for this serpentine Salomé
to whom I slip a dollar bill
among two fivers in her thong.

"Why, you cheapfuckingskate," said she,
"Rate's a fivefuckingspot or more!"

And when I say "Why, Ms. Tmesis!"
I'm a "fucking doryphore."

"What in hell is a doryphore?"
I say to her, but soon recall,
Ms. Insouciant PhD,
an adjunct lit prof just like me
for all the student don't wannabes
at cheapfuckinguniversities.

I also love this one. That first stanza is just awesome - this would be a great addition to the humorous poetry threads.

Plus, you have expanded my vocabulary with a new word - doryphore. Really great play on words! (though for just a second my mind went off in search of Dory, of Finding Nemo fame)

 

[mLa2123000195]

In the Beginning

After the fiddlehead came undone,
having poked out of the ground,
a frond was in the beginning
before a fecund leaf unwound.

Having poked out of the ground,
it didn't last long as a frond
before a fecund leaf unwound
and rose like a blood red sun.

It didn't last long as a frond
in the earth that was its mother,
and it rose like a blood red sun
while frogspawn skimmed a pond

on the earth that was its mother
and a mule deer rutted near a cypress
while frogspawn skimmed a pond
as in the beginning there was

a mule deer rutting near a cypress,
frogspawn floating in a pond
and a blood red sun was rising
after the fiddlehead came undone.

That's not like you. I like it.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Ode to Chloe

Chloe once had pearly white teeth,
but Chloe was blackened by Daddy's
nicotine breathing at midnight,
smelling worse than his second shift armpits
after two cans he hid in his pockets
when Mona was out pumping gas.

Chloe soon learned how to survive,
the way she'd stare at the looks in men's eyes,
those with a white ring on wedding ring fingers
and those too rough when they gorged themselves
because they were always hungry
or didn't like the taste of enough.

But Mona, Honey, don't you still love me?
won't supply Daddy beer until payday
which Chloe tries not to think about,
a year on the streets in Cincinnati,
since liquored or not, when Daddy was hungry,
Chloe at midnight knew what was in store.

 

[greenmountaineer]

On Women's Primordial Language

Their language is different when women,
sometimes unspoken, sit with other women:
sad hurting faces or turning away
that others don't see eyelids well up,

except when tears stream other reasons:
for example, a husband and lover,
or looking up at a son or daughter,
or to nuzzle an infant that suckles

as if to cry out their names by the fire
"They're mine!" while tossing extra to evening's
dark perimeter where there are shadows

they smile at when paws touch the ground softly,
come wagging tails, and lay belly up
without any words to get in the way.