Grandma Bird

Found art.
This old robin spent
Most of two summers
In the small back yard
Feathers salt
And pepper gray
Mottled pale orange
Not much spring
To her hops, her chirp
Crackly, must have died
Hidden beneath garden foliage
Old plants faded
And there she was
Papier-mâché likeness of bird
Buried now in situ
Waiting next year’s tomatoes.
Another robin’s back there
Measuring the room.

Sequitur

He wakes with wars
(Acrid metal in his nostrils, back of his throat)
Outside his door
(At the place he dreams of, prairie winds seep in)
Within his heart
(Wounded, just begun to heal)
All the Asias risen
(Africa in tears)
Heathens chant
(We are the infidels)
Young women sigh
(Like the animal inside)
In his ear, ask for
(We assume so much of each other)
Everything, undeclared
(And the request makes it inevitable)
All resources requisite
(Soil beneath your feet, the air)
No one believes
(Mesquite woodsmoke circles sacred spaces)
The reason he invades
(Enter now from all directions)
Is neither passion
(Far off a coyote calls)
Nor rich dark oils, but
(Our planet burning)
To prove himself alive

Spark

Walk against the wind, thin
spit though it double-turns onto your chin.
Kick the snow to a tiny tornado
and knock your knees against the trembling.

Belly-flop into the half-formed thing
though these December days weigh still and gray
and the televangelists are still proselytizing.
Bubble to the top of the rising dough.

Light a match to the classifieds
until the want ads burn staccato.
Pennies a word for paper and ink
(a profound reticence to think)
as dreams of the mine and yours combine:
light the pop-crack fire, kindling.

In the in-between dawn under right and wrong,
catch the insect by the God-smacked wing.
Start the spark in this muscle-bound heart.
Fill the space between your teeth with everything.

Inside the Raft

I ran outside.
Your brother was lying dead in the street
And you stood on the sidewalk
Screaming
Your hands covering your mouth.
I softened my focus
In order to determine the greatest need:
Three passers-by crowded over the body
Unwilling or unable to know its lifelessness
And you stood on the sidewalk
Fuzzy with perpetual motion
Screaming.
I grabbed you.

I grabbed you and I held on tight
Attempting to fuse your spirit back to its base
Keep you from killing yourself or
Tearing your hair from its roots.
Your hands over your mouth
Your hands in your hair.
The rocking, the stutter, the sobbing, the
Screaming.
You were fourteen, and your six year-old brother
Was dead in the street
Dragged by the truck
Library books in the road.
I held you.

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault,”
You chanted.
“Oh god, I want to die. Please let me die.”
You tore your hair,
And I held you.
“I know that you don’t understand,”
I said, softly,
“But it’s not your fault.”
And I held you.
“God is great.
You must pray.”
And I held you.
I held you, and your head fell back,
Mud meeting heavens, and you cried
Dios mio ayúdame, ayúdame
Ay, Dios mio, ayuda….

Later
Seconds. Minutes. A million years
Later a librarian asked you about
Your mother.
“At home,” you stammered.
I took out my phone and took you by the shoulders.
“I need you to tell me your phone number.”
Suddenly you stopped moving
Condensing your energy into
Ten points of focus.
“3. Oh. 3…”
“Does she speak English?”
You nodded.
I stepped away.

Right before your mother answered
I thought of my own mother.
I saw her drop the phone
Scream, go limp, evaporate
Incinerate, disintegrate, combust
Liquefy, and disappear.
The who and where must come first,
I knew,
Before the what and why.
She answered.
“You don’t know me.
My name is Andrea.
I am on the corner of Mississippi and Tejón.
I am with your daughter and she is fine,
But there has been an accident –”
The line went dead.

So quickly the afternoon was ruined.
So rapidly the crowd gathered
So shattered was the light,
The November side-light
The near-dusk, disappearing-trick,
Glinting, glancing, entrancing light
The light your brother ran into
The last light
The only light that mattered
As it shattered
As first the truck
And then the trailer
Jolted, bumped, took hold,
Would not let go
Thirty feet
A stripe of rubber
Ending in the gutter
Where now the paramedics bent
Over the body of your brother.

I felt myself spinning
With the rotating lights
Hearing cries yet seeing beauty
In the way the four men lifted your mother
Dragging her to the grass
As though she’d been deboned.
Beauty in a woman, her hand
Flat on the top of your head, praying
Praying to God, entreating the sky
Dios es poderoso
Dios es fuerte
Dios en su sabiduria
Proteja esta niña
Protéjala, proteja
In your mercy
In your wisdom….
And then they took him.

No one would say
What at least one librarian already knew.
She had tried.
She had pressed his chest,
Blown air into his tiny mouth.
She was back inside the library,
A woman told me,
In the bathroom
Throwing up.

You were finally sitting
On the sidewalk
And I knelt at your feet
Both of my hands on your body.
I could feel you heaving
And I had nothing left to say.
I was near and also far,
Witnessing the tilt from denial to pain.
I could not turn off the beauty
No matter how shattered the light.
Your soft hair
Your long road
Your mother’s grief
And the driver
To your mother
How he held her
How he cried
How he looked her in the eye
And apologized
And the rocking
Like a raft
And all of us were in it.
Together,
Broken and weathered,
Alive.

Little Apple

I.
A woman who looks in the mirror

sees behind her
shapes
much like herself:

blue heron in tree pose,
heliotrope Chinese Houses
in the garden.

II.
A woman who bathes
in water like glass,
feels it shatter inside her.

In her mouth,
cross as a gull’s beak,
sea stars shorn from salt marsh.


III.
A woman who breaks a branch
of a manzanita,
desires its color,
the red so like a
garnet fastened to the sun.


IV.
A woman who watches everything
knows of regeneration:
the grace of the manzanita,
the grace of the sea star,
each her quiet enterprise.

-Barbara Sorensen

Wanted: Patron

I cannot bear this modern poet’s life.
For God’s sake, inspiration only lasts
as long as discretionary funds are rife.
It seems the bank doth future fame forecast.

Did Shakespeare have a day job? I think not!
His muse was kind as long as bills were paid
by his Dark Lady. It seems success is bought
and sold, and art in gold and silver weighed.

Be you ecclesiastical or noble,
my work is sure to please your worthy tastes
with themes immortal, relevant and global,
and as you like it: Cyprian or chaste.

And so, aristocrats and CEOs,
Please cast the glow of greenish glory hither!
Until you do, I fear I may compose
such mediocre verse as this, then wither

much like the ripest grape upon the vine.
Alas, let poverty not pull me to decline.

Got A Minute?

Now is or is not when
To bring this up
To you
I wish I knew
The answer any answer
That did not anesthetize
The brain of a fallen ape in a universe
So vast that time is small
And small becomes a place
Where matter and space vanish and quarks
Dance with neutrinos on their way
To
The beginning of round two
The other end
Perpendicular universes
Fifth through twelfth dimensions
Risen angels pinned to cork
The place where language begins
To put back together
All it has torn to pieces
Just in time

American Marsupial, Why Do You Grin?

[Not natcherly given to blog or form,
My screwups feared, but high is time
to buck up, give in to possum-fed norm,
count feet and join struggles for rhyme...]

Villanelle 1

Hum, don't sing; it's truly best,
words then won't be tangling your say.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Don't mar the air with lyric-fest,
like bone of fish with too much fillet.
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best.

Beagles and cats know how to request,
Masters jump, please at dumb bay.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Virgins weep from untouched breasts,
labored, details just get in their way.
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best:

All will rise, be more than mere chest,
Unencumbered, without cliche.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Politicos, preachers, those who'd impress,
shun your verbiage, eschew all fray!
Hum, don't sing; it's truly best.
Humble tunes will teach, caress.

Eugene's Wedding Toast

In any day with any weather
There is no fear if you're together.
Fool [full] Moon like magic light on sky
Just whispers gently: "You and I"

It could be day or could be night
It could be rain or bright Sun light
At any time and any weather
From now to ever you're together.

You're at home or you're abroad.
You're having fun or work.. whatever.
At any place and any business
To be together is your sweetness.

Sometime together be not easy
Sometime you could be sad or busy
But raining day will pass away
Replaced by happiness of futures days.

Written by Yevgeniy Snezhkin, Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine
September 15th, 2007
E-mail address: yudjin@cris.net

Postludes

After T.S. Eliot

I
The moon swoons low and purse-slung
on the sore shoulder of a frostbit sky.
One-thirty.
The smell of exhaust and french fries.
And now the winter’s faithless chill
cuts skin until
your green hat Made in China joins
the gaping wrappers on the street;
cup-jangling coins
employ a kind of strangling beat
while neon throbs of beer and sirloin.
A tired engine shifts and dies.
And then the flight of barflies.

II
The sunlight bleeds its morning mess
onto the gum-pockmarked cement.
The coffee’s smell is weak and burnt
and many cracked hands will soon caress
their styrofoam and lid-capped cup.
Of all the paces time has run
or hobbled through the lonely nights
one thinks of all the heads picked up
from pillows of undreaming sun
to days bathed in fluorescent light.

III
You lounged, awash in t.v. glare,
you fiddled with the socks you hated;
you slowed your breathing to the pace
of the monochromatic dream
through which your soul was percolated;
reflected fingers shone in your hair
love and death scenes on your face,
and when you came back to the world
the dryer shouted loud and sterling
and through the sun and white dust swirling,
you felt the coming of a train
no human eye had seen before;
sitting on your tired chair
awake for now but unaware
bright visions sparked within your brain
while restless feet tapped resting floor.

IV
Her soul pressed firmly to a ball
that fell next to the kitchen waste,
or stretched to make a stunning dress
worn once and then removed in haste;
and cigarettes pass lip to lip
and fingers jingle useless change
and small white thighs press to the wall
built skyscraper-high to give the streets
tall shoulders stiffened to the fall.

I am woken by a gentle breath
and tendrils clinging to my sight;
the memory of some eminently waking
eminently unfolding light.

Shield your eyes to shadow, and laugh;
the days meander like the waves
on the softening arms of the shore.

T.S. Eliot (on his marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood)

To her the marriage brought no happiness. To me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.

The Burning Giraffe

from "The Burning Giraffe" by Salvador Dali

We onlookers are silent, like so many are
when they look on anguish.

Her frame lilts, balance precariously
preserved by these crutches
and sticks and perforated thick-
nesses of wood, ripped from within
or pushed from without we do not know.

Her frame lilts, bony armature propped,
arms akimbo, face shrouded
in red,
hands coated in red,
wearing red gloves of vein and sinew,
forward hinge of hips
pricking the vacant blue
like daggers, like the shrieks
we cannot hear, though they must be here.

Those crude drawers stagger open,
blackness within gaping like sores,
and why is it these old drawers never close?
Steely skeleton with no closet,
thighs with slipping skin
have plenty to hide,
but the contents of her chest
have been stolen.
Her drawer torn open from beneath
her breast
(and nothing inside).

So is this why she cries out now like the dying,
for the carpenter or the burglar?
Or the one who stopped up her face
with gauze and left her here tipping—
a column buckled,
a tower conquered?

Those unseen corners
of cabinetry
test fastidious attention to secrecy,
challenge meticulous concealment,
time-trained.

The lady by her side prizes her streamer of red,
silent
(as so many are)
though anguish is near.
With root-bound brain, her leafy branches
reaching for that weak scratch of clouds.

Only I remain still, one eye
trained on the stilted, lilting woman,
one eye on the distant black hills.
Following some invisible road
to water,
I arrived here, wandered in like a martyr,
neck and back ablaze,
flesh curling with flames,
fur singed like kindling.

Above me sits a stream of smoke,
a frozen songbird sitting
on its branch of orange air,
perched on its tall branch of fire,
and there is nothing
(at all)
for me to do
but burn.

fair's fair, I guess...

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
-- Robert Graves

Compost

Squash-colored leaves parachute
over the Highlands bridge
with directionless joy.
Beady headlights scramble
the road below unknowing,
pulling to both poles at once
like some schizophrenic river.
I know we are undone.
Complacent, splayed.

A bit of breeze might freeze you,
nick your kevlar chest
with my pear-shaped prayer,
my shrapnel syllables
a wound to the hollow tomb
of safety pin skin.

Good posture does not make you good.
You blew like true the little ledge
you were tonguedumb stalking,
hairy Heathcliff on the moors
sans passion sans pride sans whatever
simmers the cinder in my gut,
knew you would tidelike keep
retreating to and from the umbrella
stuck in the sand on the shore.

Aviatophobia in an awkward grasp
(murky heat from musty core),
despite your assiduous calculations
of feet per second and landing gear.
Epiphanies of falling, not a
misplaced embrace of wings.

Gratia plena and onion rings.
I favor this escape,
pick brown stalks and green tomatoes,
dump bits of tired earth
and eggshells already broken,
and one more call at midnight,
into the heap to sleep
and dream of spring.

THE "S" IS FOR SALMONELLA

for Barbara S.

Our hostess does not wish to kill,
but the shrimp puffs have an axe to grind.
She served them up. We ate our fill.
Our hostess does not wish to kill.
But the heat of day and lack of dill
have turned the shellfish most unkind.
Our hostess does not wish to kill,
but the shrimp puffs have an axe to grind.

JD Frey – October 31, 2007

Grandma Bird

I’ll call her found art
This robin spent most of two summers
In our small back yard
Feathers salt and pepper gray
Mottled pale orange in front
Not much spring to her hops her chirp crackly

She died hidden
Under garden foliage mid-summer.
Now she is a papier-mâché likeness
Of the bird that felt at home here. She is buried
right there to feed next year’s tomatoes.

The world has a lot of work to do it seems
To feed the dollar machine change the water the air
Speed up time until it is almost gone.

Another robin is back there now
Measuring the room.

FOR A.R.F.

"I will take the end of a thought in my hand and walk back and forth."—Sherwood Anderson

Before you take your simple leave,
before all the air disappears from the room,
give us a simple holy moment to grieve.
Give us a chance to write a damn poem.

They who have known you are many and spread.
Change comes to most from a distance.
So before we announce you're officially dead,
give us time to explain your existence.

Tomorrow like all days will show up for breakfast.
Quite possibly you won't be there.
So we wish to collect on this hasty checklist:
your eyes, your philosophy, your hair.

Pacing around with these words in my hands,
while, Mother, you leave us for unwritten lands.

JD Frey – October 25, 2007

No Return

Wonder why the universe is here
almost every day there comes a time
blank face enrapt within empty stare

while some part of brain seeks rhymes
searches unanswerable questions
to muddle, let mind swim with the sublime

and absurd. There is freedom in the notion
that this body’s not the real me—
a vehicle rather, to constrain the soul from

its fall, an acorn from a old oak tree,
disperses waves within a puddle
only there as long as seen.

And which are we, there’s the trouble,
are we ripples or their cause?
I fall asleep when questions are this subtle,

wake to a world as full of flowers and flaws
as the one just dreamt, where
our own awareness makes the universe ours.

Third Floor Walk-up (Ekphrasis after Stiegliz)

I
Mrs. Meuller’s bed linens frozen on the line.
What will another night in the cold city bring?
The sheets are stiff as boards, been out there a long time.
Mrs. Meuller’s bed linens frozen on the line.
The sky grows darker and she’s looking for a sign,
her Heinz walks up the alley and begins to sing
Mrs. Meuller’s bed linens frozen on the line.
What will another night in this cold city bring?

II
She loves sea mist and fog, loves to stare out the back window over the sink at pigeons on the line. She loves the first night snow. Her boys will be home soon from school, Heinz a little later from the plant with that strange smell on him of metal and flowers and most of his pay. It is time to start the onions.

Rearview (ekphrasis)

The pope doesn't approve of my green hemp dress
or the way it sags between my shoulder blades.
Even his picture, busy and smiling on the balcony
with the usual entourage of fluttering cardinals
has a weather-worn sheen, tired of its misplaced
place in the fair-skinned air of Saint Malo's,
the dated hair, the fuzzy image safely framed.
I catch the whisper of misplaced stones,
gather my stilted breath from the rafters,
stuck like an axe in rotting wood.
The swallows follow overhead, sullen shadows
in a misplaced v, oddly obedient, free.
Sunset descends. It is too cold here, too small,
too much laminate on wooden Simon and Pieta.

At the mountainous altar of his own church,
he waits outside, these predictable afternoon storms
unknowable, plain, wipes my face with a nubbled
grey sleeve, mannequin to my pandering,
sinner and savior in the gathering rain.

Redress

(From the Floral Radiographs of Steven N. Meyers:
Amaryllis, Mountain Fire Pieris, Fern Forest, Rose Petals, Dogwood Blossoms, Four Callas, Foxglove Ballet, Columbine #2)

“Flesh, our one possession, the heart is its own redress.”
-Matthew Copperman

One day a doctor peers at x-rays
and sees what she knows:
spalled bones,
mass on a skull,
small spills of cells.
At night she dreams
these things change,
that in the morning
she brings
a patient in a milkblue gown
news that all is well;
everything is just a flower
rendered transparent.
Her hand covers the patient’s hand
and together they look at
radiographed rose petals,
wavy bivalves floating
on an invisible watercourse;
engrailed bracts
in a spring cold snap;
serried bells;
the throat of an amaryllis
in which bursts a resurrection;
mountain fire’s plain pearls;
bracken.
Someone down the long hall
calls out “butcherbird, butcherbird,”
as if in warning,
but the patient is already
beginning the lonely, arid walk
toward heaths,
all their color burning
beneath her skin.

-Barbara Sorensen

Freewrite

Prompt: "Another dozen or so new laid eggs from any one of which I might yet poke my little beak"

laced, diseased, the eggs's pulp tumbles into bowls blue and white. we know they harbor the froth and grind of all that's healthy, all that's not. we wonder if we will know what first will signal the precipice of sickness, perhaps the shadow of a small boy with salmonella, perhaps the beginning signs of schizophrenia in its curled infant stage of paper-slicing, skin-piercing, hallucinatory, new-laid dreams, and the boy, his little beak of eyes sees all, and yet he remains still, refusing to believe anything could be so fantastic from an egg, an egg, any one of which could be birthing the very first Easter he comes alive.

Awful Ready (Already Fall)

AWFUL READY (ALREADY FALL)
And, like the changing trees, we're dignified
With radiance. We don't acknowledge our unease
About the want that closes winter in parentheses.
We participate instead in a sarabande,
Glad to slow our tempo in a dance
We've memorized, but cannot understand.
This is the way of all things. Choice and chance
Step and turn in sentience, while the globe
Whirls like a dervish in trance.
In belief, or suspended disbelief, we probe
For purpose. How unlikely we exist!
Here it is, already fall. The sunlight's strobe
through yellow, gold, green, red, and amethyst
leaves the path we thought we knew ablaze.
The whole world is an amorist.
For a season we resist our sad malaise
Of too much, too much information,
Acquiesce to this astonishment, and praise.

Solitude

I cried for it at midnight
just to be done with it,
enough is enough, after all.

I tried to cry for it at six
but the sun was just setting behind old steel mills, the sky
resplendent in red-ochre and deep violet,
my eyes in tears from sulphurous air.

I nearly cried at noon, when the sun
made a brief appearance, illuminated gray hills and houses,
then disappeared behind the gray banks
as though frightened by what it saw.

At misty dawn I began to cry
for another lost night, my mind lost
in labyrinths of doubt and desire.
Then the lightened sky called
to me, insisted that this was the very day,
the fine moment of now
from which I might transform
all of reality, meet the people I am meant to know,
find the perfect spot to sit and sip potent liquids
ponder sun and sky and self until they swirl
in a favored dance that will end at midnight.

Occlusion

If only I could recall the shapes
of all the cities I’ve visited in dreams

then perhaps I could build something fresh
in this world. A map worth living in,

streets laid out, nerves tapped
in just such a way, gray-black, gold-blue

as these flickers of dark and day
that spread, flayed out like dissections

to be learned from. Here is the heart,
beating—clogged; here are the airways,

the bloodways, the intake and output,
this taxonomist’s wetdream,

thrill of gush and flow and now,
times like now, choked, stopped up

the gash bled dry, all movement
halted

to this frozen frame, all fixed all empty
all flat but for that red light

of eye seeing, that glow of dreaming life
hid beneath, behind, o this halo

of arrested conception.

Theory of Convergence (terza rima)

Theory of Convergence
after Kenneth Patchen

In the footsteps of broken night,
convivial discordance.
Touch a lamppost’s slender height,
touch an arm. Ever since
the walls came crumbling down
and blustered our allegiance
we push that rubble all around.
We build them for each other.
The boiling point of calming down
grows in tornado weather,
scatters our loose vertebrae
in a poorly rendered blender.
We make a fairly rare sorbet,
activist and anarchist
meeting Monday’s breaking day.
Gathered in a loose kiss
the pines in time will soon forget,
I am bothered by our brokenness.
Wrench the punctum’s pirouette
from all observing eyes.
Watch, the streets are getting wet.
With a stomach’s slow surprise,
I drink the gibberish of glib,
leapfrog the sullen compromise,
and with an awkward mock ad lib,
we fly.

In a Murderous Time (Villanelle)

The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
I work hard to understand
the whole idea of war--peace through death; how's that going?

Morning news shows the Ship of State sinking;
adds a fresh news bite from the Captain.
The American heart breaks and lives by breaking.

Sometimes, I think this President is joking
when he trots out his latest plans.
We're kickin; ass, he says; we're winning.

Sometimes, I think this President is dreaming
or just phoning it in from Texas ranch land.
The world's heart breaks and lives by breaking.

Sometimes, I wonder what he's smoking
as he takes another bold stand.
Peace through torture--how's that working?

The war drags on and the world is watching.
I work hard to comprehend
how the heart breaks and keeps on breaking.
Peace through fear; how's that working out?

World View

The World *, ** ,*** ,**** ,*****

It is real or it is not.
It was created,
or spontaneously began,
or was always here,
or something else.
Planned or random,
probably both.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* Rated CG 13. Anyone over the age of thirteen must be accompanied by a child to be admitted. Child Guidance is suggested throughout due to absurd juxtapositions, graphic violence, some sexual content (language, brief and prolonged nudity, sexual situations and widespread preoccupation with sex.)

** Contains one or more of the following: wheat, peanuts, chicken parts, dairy products, bits of hooves, ashes, dust, sausages, aspirin, lofty mountains, searing desserts, leafy glades, soul wrenching slums, fabulous villas, boring suburbs, electronic gadgets, god-awful weapons, intractable diseases, lots of plants and animals, salt water, time, space, other stuff and death.

*** May cause headaches, constipation, deep blue depression, dry mouth, sweaty palms, constant fidgeting, dropsy, ague, croup, fantods, shortness of breath, shortness, coated tongue, hemorrhoids, enlarged prostate, plantar fasciitis, colds and flu, and/or drowsiness.

**** Do not drive or operate heavy machines while reading. Do not use in the shower or tub. Objects in mirror are not what they seem. Safe for septic systems and pets. Should the universe suddenly collapse to singularity, continue reading on the other side.

***** Slow down. Look around you. Listen carefully. Taste your tongue. Smell the nearest flower. Feel good.

As Sweet

It is analysis at last
that kills us. Our wish
to tear everything to pieces
in the mistaken belief
that we will understand
in parts that which has eluded us
whole. This last rose is not red, is not
even a rose. My eyes and nose
are joined with flower
in mutual dance of beauty,
neither is without the other.
My words are red, I am at one
with a slim silver electric box
and a cool autumn breeze on bare feet.

Cloud/Sea Freewrite

I am drinking a cloud
or the sound of the sea, endlessly
repeating, but what is
a dream, are there sounds in it?
Is, perhaps, the endless repetition
the thing? Earth, rotates, revolves, endlessly
almost, and we short-timers will never know...
Our big home, this spiral arm
circling a center of an ordinary galaxy
amidst a cluster of galaxies, moving
gently, at great speed
in an ever widening arc
a cosmic helix,
the coded reality
of the one who knows
whether and why we ought to care.

Who is this cloud dreamer
awash in inner oceans
his own DNA?
Buffeted by waves
of chance,
chemistry and spark
stray neutrinos force muons
from quarks that at last
are not there
endlessly rotating
in a universe of silence.

Drinking a Cloud/Sound of the Sea (freewrite)

Oolong

I am carrying the thud in my solar plexus
(like an unopened package of Oreos)
of a voice, of the sound of a voice
clipping out of view.

I am a little teapot,
I am peas porridge in the pot,
I am the cat inside the hat
and all its referential signifiers.

I am peeled like a grape
though this endless escape
back to the safe soft skin.

I am picking the piece
of a cultural consciousness
between the toothpick and my teeth,

I am hogtied, hornswaggled,
desperately indefinite,
tethered to the infinite,
pawing at the catnip,
wondering where my claws went,

begging for omnipotence
so I can be all things for you:
one, two, three, achoo.

I am gargling my breakfast,
I am stuck in last week’s mess,
I am paralyzed by possibility

that this is
or this is not.

I am ringing the phone to call you,
counting sidewalk squares,
and neon open signs, endless dotted lines,
desperately hoping you won’t answer,
mouth a nest of noise and blur.

I am the power of this thought.
I’m rooted to this spot.
Flip my mind like tiddlywinks.
Tip me over,
and pour me out.

Sexual Limerick! (an assignment, sheesh)

My leg on your lap earns a hot rise
You squirm; your eyes dart to your trapped thighs.
You casually shift,
But I know that you're stiff
And I let my leg lay where the heat lies.

Drinking a Cloud / Sound of Sea Freewrite

I am drinking a cloud
Or the sound of the sea
I am drinking a drum
I am thumping impossible
Bear down on plausible
Water from chocolate or
Cheese from a stone -
I'm clamping the clone of this thought.

When the tide pulls out it trips
And gurgles, humiliated and raw.
If I stare it will continue to shudder,
Drawing itself to safety,
And sometime before dawn it will slink in,
Sure as guilt.
I can't watch that long:
I won't be waiting.
I'll be off tearing fingernails
And wringing necks,
Craning toward a cloud,
Opening my throat.
Don't you want to climb,
Say farewell to the shore?

I forget myself -
That sad chill that cliff-dwells
That bears down
That sea-binds,
Hangs tight and holds on.
That drawstring that gathers,
That water that gurgles,
Those oysters that clatter,
Those waves, and the tide
Has come in.

No Less Effort (a villanelle)

Effort wears a costly dress
I hate the volume of my hair
I fear that you will love me less

I keep competing with my mess
And damaging the calming air
Effort wears a costly dress

A sentence starts with "I confess"
And, rapid, winds its way from there
I fear that you will love me less

So there I purposefully press
Until you grant an ill-masked glare
Effort wears a costly dress

With conflict I've had great success
I've earned division of this pair
I fear that you will love me less

There's terror there beyond the rest
And with the best I can't compare.
Effort wears a costly dress:
I fear that you will love me less.

Why aren't poets more sexy than gym socks?

WHY AREN'T POETS MORE SEXY THAN GYM SOCKS?

Why aren't poets more virtuous than grocers,
more noble than monks, duller than wonks?
Why aren't poets braver than a breadbox, happier
than bullets, double-jointed, left-footed, trim, rich
and shrink-wrapped? Why aren't poets more agile
than yogis, able to dodge iambs at a single bound?
Why aren't poets more perky than pirates,
more wooden than wax, more free of syntax?
Why, oh why, aren't poets tall dark and pensive,
shy but expensive. Why aren't poets
the best looking people in the room?

Gateway

Comments welcome. I'm not committed to this form, it's a fairly new poem - thoughts?

Gateway

After a few years
in the canyon, its
odd damp corners
Swiss-green in the desert
climate, its leering
plateaus gashed with
geographic years,
studded with brush
like a teenage upper lip,
it almost became
invisible, wallpaper,
a barrier to beauty
instead of its evidence.

Until some rich prick
riled this lazy
post office town
into a turf war,
codified angry secrets
into marketing terms
like “lush landscape”
or urging visitors
who apparently don’t
of their own accord to
“breathe.”

And now there are
lampposts and organic
tomatoes and embarrassed
half-glances as people
hide condescending
amazement that so
sorry, there isn’t another
restaurant in town
except the café that opens
when they feel like it.

I am an alien
to both these worlds,
tourist among tourists
leering at nature’s
newly-groomed trails,
pool boy in this
sand-colored stucco
prison without even
dreams of escape,
as boredom leaves
a dent in my passenger
seat and we dare
the plateaus
to defy us.

Welcome.

Friends, here's a blog to organize our ponderings from poetry night. Feel free to post your poems for comment, thoughts on the readings, mad rants, love letters, etc.

Here is the crazy Dutch video from last night, and the behind-the-scenes "making of" video too. (With English subtitles, even. God, I love them!)