not sure how many words

[cjh]

tell me, she said,
of your memories.
do you recall the wonder
of being a child?
can you remember picking blueberries
and plucking apricots? can you conjure
the gooey sweetness
and buttery crunch
of blueberry apricot crumble?

do you remember the sound
crisp but yielding
of cleaving a ripe pear,
the aromatic swirl
of pooling brandy
in its hollow?

yes, i thought,
as i searched for a spoon
to find her gooey sweetness.

yes, i nodded,
as i remembered
the aromatic swirl and
the yielding tenderness
of her hollow.

 

[emaalr]

Smoke sits beside me

Smoke sits beside me,

like A constant companion,

and it’s hard for me to guess anymore

which one of us is real.


Smoke sits beside me,

hiding the questions_

that no one finds the answers,

and no one knows the reason I stay here by myself.


Smoke sits beside me,

hiding all that’s make believe

in this made to order world.


And the smoke keeps getting thicker

and the answers just subside.

But the questions rise above it all

til there’s nothing left to hide.

 

[Tathagata]

letter from saugus

.....

 

[eagleyez]

I saw a whiffle ball yesterday
cracked,winter gnawed
and blunted
under a forsythia bush
yellow bloomed
like a igloo of butter
I remember we had a secret hide out
under there.

Death has come here
no scythe skull
and ostentatious robe
Its a soft death
the one that comes on gum soled shoes
the one that hides
in rotting oak leaves
stagnant attics
pathetic cunts

cowards death
gradual and insidious
ballfields inch toward milkweed
and turtle ponds
vampirically drained by night
leaving a black muck corpse
who gasps when you pull
your sneaker from its flaccid gasp

dogs vanished
disintegrating leashes left
tied to tottering trees

and all the houses are haunted

perhaps I have come here seeking ghosts

or perhaps I am one

It takes one to know one.

I like this alot!!

"dogs vanished
disintegrating leashes left
tied to tottering trees"

nice work Mr Monkey.

 

[BooMerengue]

The Moon was a legend in logger lore.
Near seven foot and bear-like,
strong as an ox.
We named him The Moon
on account of his luminously
bald ball of a head.

We never knew how
the steam donkey fell
on Moon but as soon as they saw
men came running
from all over camp.

All we could see of Moon
in the muddy rut
was his bald head and it was screaming
“Off me! Off me!”
as the donkey sank down crushing
crushing
crushing the breath out of Moon.

We put our shoulders to the metal
heaving until our heads throbbed,
thirty of us, fallers, swampers and cook
but it budged not an inch
all the while Moon was bawling
“Off me! Off me!”
weakening fast.

I knelt in the muck holding his head
and lying to him as he
whispered his agony
until, in the awful silence
we stood away
impotent
looking down
at the wide unseeing eyes
ad blood filled mouth.

Days later, after help arrived
and the donkey righted,
it dawned on us,
Moon knew he was done for
and “Off me!” was a plea
for a swifter way out.

I love this piece! Thank you, Tris!!

 

[Tathagata]

It takes one to know one.

I like this alot!!

"dogs vanished
disintegrating leashes left
tied to tottering trees"

nice work Mr Monkey.

Thank you ee
hope you're feeling a bit less empty today

 

[eagleyez]

Thank you ee
hope you're feeling a bit less empty today

Your welcome.

I took great joy in eating last night. Coffee is godlike this morn.

 

[Tathagata]

Your welcome.

I took great joy in eating last night. Coffee is godlike this morn.

i would say " glad everything came out ok" but that would just be cruel


give my regards to the shayna punim that hangs around there with you

 

[eagleyez]

smokewatcher

the thirtieth sunrise barrels forth
like the barely wound clock standing tall
by the coalstove,
oceans of sequioa and doug fir sway in camera negative
for an instant
until green stretches out as far as the sky.

drag hand thru hair with head and shoulders popped
out of crystaline dew shrowded mummy, oil lamp snuffed
next to scrawled notes in blue and deep black,
windshift overnight brings hints of fall swooping
down from provinces of the endless north.

skidder moans low, sightless in lowbrush, chawing ahead
of dragline riggers marching thru the underworld of incessant shade.

up above, way up, sightline is set,
hands scratch under thermalshirt
with eyes poised clear over cloudless,
smokeless air,
one more day on the galvanized throne
king of nothingness

where you see it before you taste it, scent coming in a close third.

 

[Angeline]

i would say " glad everything came out ok" but that would just be cruel


give my regards to the shayna punim that hangs around there with you

Hi from the shayna punim.

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

Letter from the Wigwam bar. Rt1 Saugus Ma 1982

.....

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[Angeline]

The gift of summer is spread
over the land like an open palm,
casual on an August afternoon.
Its fingers are lightly pressed
on grasses, flowers, a vegetable garden
that stands gangly and weedy
like an overtall adolescent boy.
Windows like half-lidded eyes watch
traffic and butterflies. The crows are fat
and the squirrels are busy. A hum
of bees and distant cars carries
the wind to the pines that bend
on graceful necks. I watch this all
and pray to remember nothing
but the fly that crosses my vision,
the moment where I'm centered
in the sun, nothing but the air I breathe
and the time that passes in a dream.

 

[Tathagata]

,,,,,

 

[Tathagata]

.....

oy

 

[Angeline]

We agree that our grandfathers were serene,
that they had cycled through whatever pain
the walk across Poland or the skid roads
of Whiskeytown had suffered them.
They tumbled into the other side, our world,
bringing love and a taste for God.
Your grandfather's hips twisting to the old songs
and mine doting on his graddaughter
in the Florida sun, handing a smile to any stranger
and buying bags of oranges with no turmoil
in his calm eyes, nothing to suggest
his bare escape from hell and pogroms.
My Philip. Your Edgar who crawled out
of the bottle, grabbed hold of the Bible
and never let go. We are their beloved
babies who carry the gifts of their wisdom
to each other now. Who else would have it?
Who else would treasure the tissue-thin
memories wrapped like brthday presents
but your lover, who cares enought to try
to love you the way your grandfather did.

 

[Angeline]

.....

oy

Shouldn't that be oy oy? One for each poem?

 

[Tathagata]

We agree that our grandfathers were serene,
that they had cycled through whatever pain
the walk across Poland or the skid roads
of Whiskeytown had suffered them.
They tumbled into the other side, our world,
bringing love and a taste for God.
Your grandfather's hips twisting to the old songs
and mine doting on his graddaughter
in the Florida sun, handing a smile to any stranger
and buying bags of oranges with no turmoil
in his calm eyes, nothing to suggest
his bare escape from hell and pogroms.
My Philip. Your Edgar who crawled out
of the bottle, grabbed hold of the Bible
and never let go. We are their beloved
babies who carry the gifts of their wisdom
to each other now. Who else would have it?
Who else would treasure the tissue-thin
memories wrapped like brthday presents
but your lover, who cares enought to try
to love you the way your grandfather did.

that's some pretty nice stuff shemeh

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[RhymeFairy]

We greet, with smiling
faces, as he drops knee
to ground, displaying
his worship, of what's
to come.

Rosary beads, slip
short coming, not hip.
Capturing nipple to tongue
cementing these holy
grounds.

Curved pretzel loops
around the bend he scoops
scouting new territory
to take and command.

Professing prolific proposals,
pretty words, clipped. Sharing
his world of teaching, with his
Mistress of pain.



~

 

[eagleyez]

signals of a turning

Wood ducks like IED,s
Kerbanging in fits, early warning program shift ahead,
Until I see them surrender and curl south, sure to light upon
Pushaw or old Blackstream, a mere ridge or two over.

And then there is open door music, a whoosh of leaves as a sound layed atop of
two guitars and bass and drums, dragging out the lines, turning north on the tracks, familiar songs and little dances throughout the shrinking daylight.

Crismson Kings all a blaze with dark lavender, while higher up, the older, slightly weaker Red Maples hint at the turning, spotty brushes of color widen by the day.
Lupin dazzle with turquoise along side snowberries and burning bush gone crimson.

North, way up north, the masses are assembling, clear blue air masses, cloud shrowds and ice spray, winds and currents, riverbends and into soon frozen ponds.

We kick the dust of summer off boots and legs, thank the perseus night show,
Start talking about soups and lentils and stews and onions, a strawberry short
cake supreme, our delight rises, bursts through all uncertainty and gets busy.

Being relegated to this position of guard, of sentry as it were, has returned me from lazy summer,with ear to the rail. So much to hear, so much listening to do,

While guideposts,some creosote, some sequioa some rounds of beech n wihte ash
all about 4 by 4, steady walkin planks, for when the rivers rise and the ice comes i will Leap right in, balanced on natures sidewalk.

Never understimate the need for regognition, a world satori, earthly delight abounds with eyes coming up from halfstaff.

 

[Tathagata]

.....

 

[eagleyez]

sketches of spain

red as mars,
all glascondoed arpeggiated and palimpscestually stacked
like winter wood,
the formation, a thing unto its pieces
pryed by bowed dark head.

It a village piece, cobble sounds under shadow of Pyrrenees,
the incessant rightone as if daylights possibilites abound
from town down to the mystical ocean,

his muted horn may as well beckon Odysseus to siren caves
the lull of the movement gives way to Morricone themes spagetti western
crab like cornets and hand held castinettes
the flecks of holy grime on anlkles of mariontettes

before a bitches brew comes a stenographer man of sorts
and i return to this lesson regularly, free to make a map.

 

[Tzara]

Agnosticism

God (oops) bless here
Thomas Henry Huxley, who
Did not feel fear
But reasoned his way where
Ungodly natural things
Were, like, normal fare.

I know not your God,
he said. But He is welcome.
Please introduce me.
Nothing happened then.
Our Huxley now is skeleton
in Marylebone. G'save'im, there.