not sure how many words

[RhymeFairy]

All night the fires burned
in the fields along the tracks west of the village.
Her window glowed, a sullen, bloody red
and she kneeled at the sill as if in prayer
to watch the wind lift the flames
fringed with sparks dancing
in the dark sky, jittery stars that died
and fell, black flakes, back to earth.
The silhouettes of the men, her father
and others walked through this hell
beating at the spreading fire
with jackets, spades and feet. One danced
out of her sight, his cuffs alight.
The shouts of the men reached her
and the scent of the burn caught her throat
so that she couldn’t stifle a cough.
She was bundled to bed by her clucking mother
to wait for the morning train to start
it all over again.

fires burn
words flow
life

is a chance
upon a stumble
to step

head held high
to hide behind

her mask
of yesterday. I dream
I want

I need
him, beside me.

Yet, he has

faltered
stumbled upon another
path. Her limbs
are wondrous, I can

but guess --
to imagine,

of man, but I can

not help
but
wonder, dream

is she good enough
is she fair?
Can she boil

his blood as if twin witches

dreamed up
a concoction
to steal, and be-moan
this man
of mine. I understand

the years have passed
I know, he is free

to choose

but I shall,
will
can not help

but
wonder

is his mistress - his
dominatrix

as good
fair
loving
wanting
and demanding
as I.... Come,

my pet

she is NOT

worthy. Now !




:caning:



Mmmhmmm

 

[Tzara]

Lament, on the Onegin Stanza
and One’s Own Failures in Life
in the Form of the Form Discussed

The form, at best, is rather sprightly,
Both clever and way fast on feet.
When poor, it’s thin as Keira Knightley,
Though none so beautiful nor sweet.
This is the fey Onegin Stanza
Of verse forms, kind of Sancho Panza
To sonnets and to villanelles
And triolets and terzanelles.
It’s kind of like a graphic novel—
Dynamic, forceful, not too deep.
It’s not the form to make one weep
At some Dickensian awful hovel.
It’s best for irony, I think.
But I rust iron with every drink.

 

[eagleyez]

The formative moment feeds back
Like a strat dying down in
overtones, crows bending on hills above the water.

the cold woke me up,
the sun.
a shaft of lite.

locomotion on the whaleback of a song
is pure...

the formative moment
comes up and takes me shopping

In mines and caves and up mossy mountains,
the formation is perfect, the air as lilac.

once an electric cow surprised me
at the barb wire fence,
I did my best to ride her,
To calm her down,

indeed a moment is,
crows bending above the hills and the water.
forming the energy
formative moment.

 

[eagleyez]

"youre a shoveleer" i whisper under my breath
slagging back to Bellow and his Humboldt Gift,
A lost intertext on the combover gent sharing his
snow clearing exploits in the chicken shack
luncheonette, us swirling on counfter front chairs
in the chrome diner 15 miles north of Georgia.

Just a coke and an ashtray lie before me,
as he tells me the rough and tumble of thirty years
worth of piano tuning stories, with "bounced checks and bulletholes"
weaved between narratives of the current situation- "knee swelled up the size of a watermelon" he moaned, bending down all the while.

An old woman nearly slips on her kmart Michael Jordans
coming out from behind the flu shot partition,
her life lock necklace swinging round her neck
like a TV Saint Christopher,
agile enough to catch her double knit ass as it heads for the
shiny tile, with a sweater buttoned up tight around her blue
metronome neckveins.

A pamphlet on the neoprene table barks out, " secrets to healthy aging"
in Readers Digest script, and I ask the guy if he ever wrestled with a
Fender Rhodes.

"Naw" he says, " but Ive fixed the likes of a may silvertone accordians when in disrepair."

Just then I remembered a dream I had 2 nights before. Got a call that my old man had keeled over and I went into a panic because all I had was hillbilly clothes, none worth the salt of eulogizing.

I paid for my BLT and tipped my hat, SURE that I would rather cease to breathing than face such conumdrums, and headed out to the rain and the
random distraction there to be found on the radio.

Drove north.

 

[eagleyez]

"youre a shoveleer" i whisper under my breath
slagging back to Bellow and his Humboldt Gift,
A lost intertext on the combover gent sharing his
snow clearing exploits in the chicken shack
luncheonette, us swirling on counfter front chairs
in the chrome diner 15 miles north of Georgia.

Just a coke and an ashtray lie before me,
as he tells me the rough and tumble of thirty years
worth of piano tuning stories, with "bounced checks and bulletholes"
weaved between narratives of the current situation- "knee swelled up the size of a watermelon" he moaned, bending down all the while.

An old woman nearly slips on her kmart Michael Jordans
coming out from behind the flu shot partition,
her life lock necklace swinging round her neck
like a TV Saint Christopher,
agile enough to catch her double knit ass as it heads for the
shiny tile, with a sweater buttoned up tight around her blue
metronome neckveins.

A pamphlet on the neoprene table barks out, " secrets to healthy aging"
in Readers Digest script, and I ask the guy if he ever wrestled with a
Fender Rhodes.

"Naw" he says, " but Ive fixed the likes of a many silvertone accordians when in disrepair."

Just then I remembered a dream I had 2 nights before. Got a call that my old man had keeled over and I went into a panic because all I had was hillbilly clothes, none worth the salt of eulogizing.

I paid for my BLT and tipped my hat, SURE that I would rather cease to breathing than face such conumdrums, and headed out to the rain and the
random distraction there to be found on the radio.

Drove north.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Love reading your writing, EE.

This isn't a poem: song lyrics I need to put somewhere so I don't forget.


You come to me as a woman on Sunday
taking me in with your soft eyes.
then you come 'round as a banker on Monday.
I can't tell which one's the disguise.
You come to me as a lover on Tuesday.
I take your hand into mine.
Then you come down as a father on Wednesday
making me want to tell lies,
making me want to tell lies.

These are the names and the faces
of the romance that we share.
You tell me I am too secretive.
I reply you shouldn't care.

I come to you as a mother on Thursday
cooking for you while you wait.
I call you back as a Mistress on Friday,
spanking you when I am late.
You come to me as a lover the next day.
I take your hands into mine.
Then you come down as a Father on Sunday
making me want to tell lies, making me want to tell lies.

These are the names and the faces
of the romance that we share.
You tell me I am too secretive.
I reply you shouldn't care.

 

[eagleyez]

middle of traffic
sandpaper wind
whips my neck
and i am there-

lumberyard early
saturday smell,
wood steaming and I can see Marin
over the Richmond SanRafael,
north from shasta come
blowdown winds.

speaking with family,
the Irish side-
makes me think
of stronger legs
longer hair,

Les Paul in the trunk,
2 doubles please, 75c apiece
In Oakland,
In great times
Hard.

You sing all the old songs,
A morphine cocktail,
And rise up on the end bed-

A development of extreme importance.
everyone loves you,
loves you,
love.

 

[Tzara]

How I Ended Up in Hell

It was, of course, because
I held my hand across your mouth

as if I thought, somehow,
that stifling your body

would consecrate it in God's eye.
But He rejected me

and my experimental act. And then I knew
that I must expiate my sin

through careful thought. It's not
demons that will drag me down. It's you.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Deliverence

Released to fly elsewhere

 

[bogusagain]

ANGER! want some?
have some of mine!
I’ll acquire a Kalashnikov
stop this futile world
from turning…rat-a-tat-tat

language has been neutered
verbal origami, pleasantries
small talk like big talk
is just a form of apelike
grooming

indolence and the idiot eye’s
one way conversation
a political mouth piece
for stating the bleedin’ obvious
my skull, a crucible of molten logic

Neroesque politicians
failed bankers, corrupt financiers
brankrupt businessmen
mass docility and you
yes you!

you! the only one who
could drive me to drink
ache for the burn of a cigarette
make me depend on
chemical addiction

 

[Angeline]

ANGER! want some?
have some of mine!
I’ll acquire a Kalashnikov
stop this futile world
from turning…rat-a-tat-tat

language has been neutered
verbal origami, pleasantries
small talk like big talk
is just a form of apelike
grooming

indolence and the idiot eye’s
one way conversation
a political mouth piece
for stating the bleedin’ obvious
my skull, a crucible of molten logic

Neroesque politicians
failed bankers, corrupt financiers
brankrupt businessmen
mass docility and you
yes you!

you! the only one who
could drive me to drink
ache for the burn of a cigarette
make me depend on
chemical addiction

Talk? It's all elephant talk
the trumpet whinney neigh
a veritable Noah's Ark of yap
and jabberwocky on and blah
and on

I said Keerist somebody
turn off that yim yammerin
tv it's like a disease bleeding
its babel on my weary ears and

they wonder why
I want jazz.

 

[Tzara]

our time signature changes
when a waitress places drinks
on table

because, man, we can
drift like a kayak
among the reeds of the song

with just an occasional paddle
to keep us straight
where we're going

I know this is confession
and ask Mary to help me now
avoid the needle

when the music lets me down

 

[bogusagain]

Talk? It's all elephant talk
the trumpet whinney neigh
a veritable Noah's Ark of yap
and jabberwocky on and blah
and on

I said Keerist somebody
turn off that yim yammerin
tv it's like a disease bleeding
its babel on my weary ears and

they wonder why
I want jazz.

Jazz, she posited
can be a form of making love
defending her tastes

my raised eyebrows
and puffed out cheeks
mimicked Dizzy Gilespie

a blow job is a figure of speach
she said, sucking in her cheeks
until her lips burst a kiss

I'm all for sound effects
when they affect the heart
even when it's jazz

so with a trio of onomatopoeia
I tum-tum-tummed, bop bop bopped
trump, parp, toot, tootle, rootle-tootled

until she beat the mattrass
thumping it like a bass drum
while she wailed in jazz

(OK. I can't help it. We have a heatwave here and women are walking around all but naked. In fact, along the banks of the Spree, near the Tiergarten, they will be naked. Hmm perhaps I should pack myself a wurst and a beer and tootle down there.)

 

[Angeline]

Jazz, she posited
can be a form of making love
defending her tastes

my raised eyebrows
and puffed out cheeks
mimicked Dizzy Gilespie

a blow job is a figure of speach
she said, sucking in her cheeks
until her lips burst a kiss

I'm all for sound effects
when they affect the heart
even when it's jazz

so with a trio of onomatopoeia
I tum-tum-tummed, bop bop bopped
trump, parp, toot, tootle, rootle-tootled

until she beat the mattrass
thumping it like a bass drum
while she wailed in jazz

(OK. I can't help it. We have a heatwave here and women are walking around all but naked. In fact, along the banks of the Spree, near the Tiergarten, they will be naked. Hmm perhaps I should pack myself a wurst and a beer and tootle down there.)

Yeah. And in my boyfriend's thread even! But it's ok. We both still love you, and your poem is a roisterous cacophonous delight.

 

[champagne1982]

Just Another Steinbeck Summer

Grandpa finally got gas lights
that cast sharp relief on his craggy
features and shone a silhouette
of forehead mesa, nose spire
and a chin plateau on the plank
panelled wall behind his snores.
"Of Mice and Men" laid flat
against his slumbering chest.

The tuneless hum that comes
from an age before the electronic
buzz polluted silence, snuck
into the cottage summer and Granny's
throat like the chirp of tiny
tree toads hiding by the wood pile.
As if that would save them
from the stalker kitty with a taste
for moths and amphibian songsters.

I miss the trek back to the farm
yet stories of the stubborn horse
that pulled the plough through soil,
laid thin on continental shield,
still reign the night; when Coleman
lanterns cast shadows on the walls
and snores as soft as kitten paws
sneak into the quiet summer night.

 

[Tzara]

Parvati

When I look at your bed,
the sheer size of it,
I wonder how many arms you have,

for surely it requires many hands
to dust all that woodwork.
And I wonder how you’ve found sheets

to cover the vast expanse
of that divan.
I am not Hindu. Nor are you, I think.

So let me simply take you
on the lawn, animal,
as we always are. Then, I cannot escape.

 

[champagne1982]

Rebirth

I am a succubus; come to snare
the virtuous in the night,
through sinuous form
and plump desire swollen
fat and hungry between my lips.

You need this virulent tongue
to whisper sin in language
you have never spoken,
until now when helpless denial
is no match for gluttony.

Smell the good that sears
in sulphurous glow, fired
in lost faith. Taste it die
and steep your lust in pain
while I devour your memories.

Love in the instant when delight
rips free from being you and pours
its happiness over hell's odourous
embers, to writhe nascent agony
into the hollow vessel that is me.

 

[Tzara]

I can only leave the silverware out so long
before someone will steal it
and let the food go bad. Better

that I gave the plates to the poor,
who could use them, or even spread
the leftovers out in the rain, for the crows

would devour my leavings if no one else would.
I have no way to gilt your words. You must believe
in your own worth. I have no saint’s blessing

wherein my kiss would cause your work to blossom.
I am not even a honeybee, carting pollen
from one bloom to another.

In fact, I’m simply drone, carrying my sac
of gametes like aluminum chaff
meant to draw missiles into death.

Do not be bitter, my dear heart. Know
that my admiration is not always on display,
so as to draw forth the commons’ opinion.

Let me, instead, inscribe a circle
here in this open patch of earth. A double arc,
where all your words may fall onto sacred ground.

 

[Tzara]

All things must end, and I wonder
whether I will be bang or whimper,
fire or ash,

whether I’ll end in flood or conflagration.
Please, please let my death be glorious,
and not just end of paragraph.

 

[Tzara]

Clumsiness & Love

Do you like animals? I might ask,
knowing how you wept
over that last death.

This is both manipulation
of your feelings and a kind of melting butter love
I spread over you like comfort food,

because what you feel I feel
in my stumbling, half-competent way.
Perhaps it would be better

if I just left you on the sidewalk,
cocooned in your pain,
preparing to fly around the neighborhood

like a Death’s-Head moth,
skull burned onto your back like Hell’s brand.
(Though I would much rather we held hands.)

 

[Tzara]

Last Rite

On the cardiologist's screen
my arteries lit up
all yellow,

like I had chosen a Steeler theme
for Christmas,
heart black

as an NFL jersey—
the thunk in my chest just a hit
by a linebacker

who oddly started to sing
Nearer My God to Thee
as he stood over me, triumphant.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Last Rite

On the cardiologist's screen
my arteries lit up
all yellow,

like I had chosen a Steeler theme
for Christmas,
heart black

as an NFL jersey—
the thunk in my chest just a hit
by a linebacker

who oddly started to sing
Nearer My God to Thee
as he stood over me, triumphant.

I'm hoping this is your wonderful imagination at work.

 

[HarryHill]

Old man stands mute, unspeaking, silent
jaw dropped emotions devoid of all other
expressions that would explain interest

Deep carved monolith, inscribed majestic
words, unfathomable depth of ocean trench
turn away, 'tis only heartbreak to see

Then 'ere leaving, a grin as he bent low
bowing before to take loose stone tumbled
scratching 'I was here' on sheer expanse

Soft tear and wistful glance returned more
than once 'til at last feet brought near
Magnetized poems on refrigerator door

 

[Tzara]

I'm hoping this is your wonderful imagination at work.

Thanks for the concern, gm, but no—I am apparently the true son of my father and have inherited his predilection to coronary artery disease.

The prospect of eating fish and spinach for the rest of my life is rather dismal, though I actually quite like both. But God will I miss a bacon cheeseburger:

O, fat-filled meat
I ecstatically ingest—

May I grovel (howe'er unseemly),
Before you in my interest?​

I'm just getting old, I think.

Something kills us all. That I likely have a coronary bypass operation in my future is a good thing. Not a pleasant thing, but a good thing.

I may not, however, be writing poems during that period I am trying to blow a ping-pong ball over some marker in a tube. (Watched me Da do that, and it was painful.)

Anyway, enough bring-down. I think the doctors are mostly going to "counsel" me about weight and dietary choices at the moment.

Carry on.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Thanks for the concern, gm, but no—I am apparently the true son of my father and have inherited his predilection to coronary artery disease.

The prospect of eating fish and spinach for the rest of my life is rather dismal, though I actually quite like both. But God will I miss a bacon cheeseburger:

O, fat-filled meat
I ecstatically ingest—

May I grovel (howe'er unseemly),
Before you in my interest?​

I'm just getting old, I think.

Something kills us all. That I likely have a coronary bypass operation in my future is a good thing. Not a pleasant thing, but a good thing.

I may not, however, be writing poems during that period I am trying to blow a ping-pong ball over some marker in a tube. (Watched me Da do that, and it was painful.)

Anyway, enough bring-down. I think the doctors are mostly going to "counsel" me about weight and dietary choices at the moment.

Carry on.

I have a 62 year old friend who had bypass surgery ten years ago. Today, he's the old man of the sea out on Lake Champlain in his kayak doing rollovers in the winter before the lake freezes and beating kids half his age racing.

Then again, he likes fish and spinach.