The Gymnasium

[TheRainMan]

.....

 

[clutching_calliope]

Clear Nights, Cloudy Skies

......

 

[Tathagata]

If I could only say what I mean!
But here it is,
that sometimes I hate you
and sometimes
I hate myself for hating you
and sometimes,
in between,
we are in love.

that's so true it hurts to read
nice work

 

[clutching_calliope]

.....

 

[Tzara]

A Toast, with Limp

Happy birthday's an easy curse,
one that rolls simply off one's tongue—
like butter, like water, like butterwater.

Oh, yes, about the curse—it is a basic one:
I damn you here another year closer
to a lonely, pathetic death is what

it essentially amounts to. Hardly
fighting words to Hatfields or McCoys.
In fact, it's almost friendly

in its weak animadversion:
You're older, you poor fucker! That,
assured, we all always will be subject to.

But enough casual diversions. I wish
you a pleasant natal day, the anniversary
of your birth, and I remind you

of how we once were all still clean,
still innocent, still helpless, meek; and how
far we've come from there, and how not.

 

[Tzara]

My Forearms

have always been
thin. But now when I pinch them,
unleavened dough.

.

 

[Tzara]

Ed Thigpen (1930-2010)

It's a subtle beat,
snare wires brushing skin

instead of pounding it.
Like jazz, in its own way,

where the beat is off, syncopated,
and the lead, horn or piano,

runs here ahead, here behind
the rhythm section

which can fancy things up a bit
but always keeps a steady time.

.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

in need of a title

Help!

We work in partnership ‘tho seldom meet
but neither can we do our jobs alone,
a hand to hold us makes our team complete.


We know we must be edgy and elite,
our handles often ivory or bone.
We work in partnership but seldom meet


Not needed to eat soup or cream of wheat,
we keep our council, lying distant, prone.
No hand to hold us, team is incomplete.


“Knife cuts me” I whine “and finds me effete.”
“little does knife know but we’re all a clone,
we work in partnership and seldom meet”


The cutlery wars rage on, no defeat.
Our canteen is shattered, its cover blown,
a hand to hold us makes our team complete.


Victory’s easy but so bittersweet,
beating my drawer-mate, my sharp chaperone.
We work in partnership but seldom meet
a hand to hold us makes our team complete.

 

[Tzara]

Myopathy

I used to be able
to play the guitar, although badly,
until my fingers refused

to coil
around the neck
to the fretboard. Nor

can I now strangle a goose,
not that I would have wanted
to strain life

from an animal,
however much it resembled
food.

So if my grip
has softened on your hand,
it is not because of lack of will,

or love. It is the feel
of my muscles as they are dying—
how they spasm, waving you goodbye.

 

[Tzara]

The Apprentice

Now Papadopoulos is singing
and Gates and Manafort are fraught,
with Mueller on their trail of scheming
to launder Ukraine money, thoughts

that possibly involve collusion.
But Trump tweets This is just illusion!
It's Crooked Hillary whose faults
have kept me from swell games of golf

and forced me to address corruption.
That's bullshit, but it works for him.
(His acolytes are kind of dim—
and treat this as mere interruption

in his glorious and admired
ascendancy.) I want him fired.

 

[Tzara]

Not Wanting to Bother You,

but if I could now change history,
I might lay out plans
where we would talk about

the use of modal scales
in Kind of Blue,
or the subtle shifts

of pace and rhythm
in Steve Reich's early music.
As it is, I want to leave a paperback

of some book I think you'd like
on that table where you often sit
in your local coffee shop.

Think of that as an artifact
flown in fresh from another coast,
as if I had pressed my palm

onto your tabletop
so that I could somehow sense
when you pressed,

matching my fingers, back.

 

[KatieJones]

I Can Only Hear You Say My Name

Alone I can hear the hum
of rubber skim the asphalt
in a steady base line that plays
below the voice of a singer
who had it all
until he had nothing.
I don’t contemplate the loss
of his lyrics but rather his kids
now living without their dad.

It makes me think of mine
and admit to the solitude
that when our song ends
we are remembered
but only when the music plays
over top of the indistinct noise
made by the march of the living
and even then, voices quiet
as time slowly turns down
the sharpness of memory
until the notes are all but gone
and no matter how hard we try
we can no longer hear
you say goodbye.