30 Poems in 30 Days

Dr.M. I-20 Joy in Huge

I-20

I see joy in huge
Great sweeping clouds large skies, chilling
Shadows on mountains, the moon dipped in oceans like sauce
Vastness and speeds of light
Galaxies!
The sole of God's foot in sandals (Roman)
Majesty!
Falling without end into impermanence
Great wings of imaginary ecliptics cut through space like cardboard
Wheels of Zodiacal splendor crank through the starry vault of heaven
Send me staggering, reeling, blinded by numbers, miles of string, chalk
Impaled by distance, crushed by darkness and the hulking heroism of size

And so I come back to you
The subluminous crawl of my luminiferous lips up the poetical slope 'neath your ear
Or the barely detectable chillgenic brush of my sensating lips against yours
And your eyes slowly closing
The heat of your breath
And my fingertip touching
The tiniest spot
Where your pulse
makes a bump
in your wrist

11

Souvenirs

Left behind radiation,
a souvenir. X-rays flicker
on the apartment's bare
walls. Soap peelings,
beer caps, rusted nails,
mementos of happier days.
The neon bulb flashing
in the bathroom recoils
on human touch. It sends
out its electric sex;
needing to be pleased.

Dr. M. I-21 Poet as Roadbed

I-21 Poet as Roadbed

As poet I can lie myself down
Along piedmonts' seaward rim
Stretch out shirtless, arms like diving
And be roads for autos rolling
Along my chest, my legs and torso
My neck my lips my Devil's Rock of Cock
I like the muscular thump of tires
Sexy the hot auto trails you leave
When it rains there's backwash puddles
Sun comes out my chest gets steamy

In the desert valley floor
Surrounding by sand and sunbleached billboards
Crashed UFO's and parts of airplanes
I lie face down in rock so semis
Haul along my graceful backbone
Stop and help that girl in short skirt
In the overheated Mustang
Drive on up to my shoulder blades
Go all night in the Scapula Motel

Through the den of crowded cities
Curled and bent and pretzel twisted
Reaching up and down and each way
Contorted crosstown freeway exits
Greektown, Downtown Chinatown Uptown
Exit Enter Express Only
Cars across shoulder, arms, like Atlas
Crash on neck and back of elbow

Speed is swirled and body moving
Legs outspin and armwheels turning
Road shot blinded bent high banked turn
stick the gravity line defying
Came for you, jump on me, wrap around now
Lie down flat open up and we're flying

Road bed night whore
Blue neon white core
Red icing speed more
Rubber wheels valley floor
This way
(No go slow so show flow)
highway

22
...

He sits there, skin and bones
like broken bark upon a stick,
eyes, black holes unable to hide
the smallest thought
that tangles and tears the cobwebs within.

There is no thought of saving payment
for the shoe shining deed done today,
the bottle in the brown bag in his duffle
puts paid to tomorrow.

He lives in a paper house,
cardboard construction
under a motorway bridge, decorated
with rainbow
graffiti.

He will pass unnoticed. One day
the police will check on him
and no answer will grunt
from behind the fumes, no
toothless smile and vacant gaze
will greet them.

He will pass unnoticed.

12

Missed Call

She swallowed her telephone.
It sloshed in the acid bath
of her stomach, its wake
causing her to throw up twice.
She felt it pressing against
her skin when she rolled in bed,
listening to muffled voices
trapped in its bakelite receiver.
Drinking water did not make
it dissapear. Pills had no effect.
When the doctor pressed his
stethoscope against her skin,
he heard its clicks, a pause,
and the operator's heartbeat
asking her if she'd like to connect.

Dr.M. I-22 South & Down

I-22 South & Down

South and down,
And all the rivers that circle towns
I would come into these little places and wander turning.
And round and round,
From wandering up and down,
I'd set my eye on some special dream and set it to burning.

Night after night,
In the dark that follows light,
I would roam the streets like a beast in search of something.
Sight after sight,
Hungered from thin delight,
I'd climb the stairs to no one there and find I had nothing.

Day followed day,
I would see them all blow away
Shrieking of emotion and pitted with sadness.
Gray always gray,
And crippled in their way,
The streets of each town gave ground to madness.

And whirled and swirled,
In this impossible world,
Like a drunk I staggered on till I could go no further.
I was twirled and twirled,
Chewed up, spit, and hurled,
In the choking defile of a soul that's been murdered.

And lost now it seems,
The most valuable dreams,
Come from excess alone and to excess return then.
And it's over and done,
Once you've ignited the one,
You believed in when you first started to burn them.

23

illiteracy

i
a poet, a good poet
can paint a scene
with minimal words.

ii
...it is
what is not seen
that smears itself into the spaces
between words,
ingratiates itself into the grain
of the paper.

iii
it is rebellion
that keeps me here at the page
obstinate refusal to bend
to the rules of form,
to succumb to the ties
of metre and rhyme
that binds the sonnet,
the sestina, the villanelle.

iv
i would haiku you
if that third photograph
would come to me, clear.

v
why can i not accept
that some days
are meant to be blank?

13

Imitation

Clouds practise their ventriloquism,
imitating river-grey rain clouds.
Perhaps it was done to impress
the wolves on the hill, who in turn,
were trying to be fluent in the
language of the Moon. Sometimes
we try to imitate what we perceive
as our better, bending our lips
and ignoring the voice lost in the well
of our chest. Only when we sleep
do we let go, hearing it replay
those forgotten scenes of our lives,
until some distant clapper board claps.

Dr.M. I-23 Celtic Fest

I-23 Celtic Fest

At Celtic Fest the air is filled
With the skirling swirl of melodies that never seem to end
But tie themselves in endless knots that travel back again
And return to loop in dizzying lace of intricacies endless traced
In pipes and fiddle and penny whistle and sweating odd bodhran
As the sun down sinks down orange and the greenish night comes on
And the people talk in cell phones as they wander on the lawn
Clawed by emotion, wracked with loneliness
Tangled in the music but it's love that they want
For their lives to be a Celtic knot forever and unending
A woven tangle blending
With hearts filled with joyous birds who fill the sky and thrill the world
But still their shrilly voices fill the air with feverish choices made in
Ignorance and desperation the best they'll do on this occasion
Sad expectations
Yet what are they to do?
The earth turns blue
And Celtic Fest is through.

24

The older the woman gets,
the more pronounced her stoop.
Her shoulders carry the weight
of decades, and I long to unzip them
to set free an avalanche
of yesterdays,
childbirth and chilblains,
arthritis and the maths of making
ends meet when the beginnings
were minimal.
Times set the rod for her back,
gave her a farmer
and four children. Time sucked
the nourishment from her eyes
the nurturing from her arms,
the independence from her back.

14

She Loved To Hibernate

She took the contents
of each day, dumping them
in her purse: my slow breath,
her phone's loud purr. Caught
a piece of every open window
she had passed: a limp ficus,
half a fan's aluminium fin;
moulding them into a jacket
that she would wear in winter
for her long sleep, ready
to be shed next spring.

Dr.M. I-24 Lakeside Motel

I-24 Lakeside Motel

At the Lakeside Motel
The neon green fills the room because the curtains are so thin
The neon orange is flashing like ink upon her skin
The girl is naked and ready, stripped to her shoes, tied to the wall
You pause, throw back a shot, and hear strange noises in the hall
Then you pick out your whip caress her ass, and hold her hair
You whisper, "Relax precious, you know that fair is fair."
The light upon her skin's a lurid hue
The whip comes down, you know that true is true
She gasps and bites her lip but she doesn't yell
It's by an Ethiopian restaurant
It's the Lakeside Motel

In the Green Mill Lounge
The place is crowded, they're leaning on the bar
There's a poet on stage, he knows how drunk they are
He says, "The tits of the universe fill my hands with restless sleep"
The drunks pound the tables, they all think he's very deep
But the girl with dark eyes isn't listening, she's looking your way
And she walks up to the bar and she stands close enough to say
"I know a place where the lights are green and orange and go all night long"
And you think you know poetry and when you look, you both are gone..

There's hot and cool and the light is just like sweat upon your skin
And your mouth follows your hunger and the poetry is sin
And her flesh in your hands slides like gold in a miser's grip
She's soft where your hardness touches her, her teeth sink in your lip
She spreads when you press against her, she flowers like a rose's bloom
You fill her slicky socket, she's neon hot like the room
She arches, thrusts, folds up around you, she's everything, heaven and hell
She's the very apotheosis of the Lakeside Motel.

25

...


It is another foggy morning
and the ground of heavy dew
promises a slice of heaven
for later on.

When the sun bites
its way through the mist,
and leaves great gaping holes
of yellow and green,
smiles will appear on faces

previously devoid of charm,
cold and alien to the charm
of making their way
through a white world.

For now, the birds
take over the land,
chatter and fly
as if the devil is on their tails

diving through the white
cornering them
straight into the teeth
of the sun.

15

Seeing the Birds at the Natural History Museum

They are glassed and boxed
like ornamental dolls, each body
posing for an unseen artist.
Some have their wings outstretched
like Jesus on the cross, others lie
without a head. Like John the Baptist.
The glass rocks whenever someone
stops to look, drawing them closer
to see a miniature key turning
a vibrating clockwork heart,
signalling something buried deep
inside the human skull.

26


...

I would write of man
describe him in detail
as a man describes a woman,
her arches, her curves,
her red bowed lips.

He carries an attraction
his jaw, his eyes,
but it is the raised brow,
the unexpected wink
or touch of his palm
that turns my head.

There is warmth in his smile,
guile in his words
that convey his strengths -
sight assures me
I know them.

I would compose poetry
not of him,
more of the swirl of joy
he sets in motion,
the tilt of soul he lifts,
the possibilities of tomorrow
he promises.

Dr.M. I-25

I-25

A plane across the midnight air
Wing tip to blue to empty to blue
A dream carrier disconnect static free
He leans forward towards the dark, his head full of story and myth
She lies back with earphones, thinking of numbers
Large, large numbers, Sets, their properties, distributive beauty
Plane drones, sways
The light on the wing is red, flashing
There is meaning here, poet
In the moving silent roar,
The tension of motionless speed,
Caught in this harness of air
Magazines at 30,000 feet
His hand caps her knee
In the pressurized cabin
Both are deaf
Stingy lights shine down
Her numbers give way to sex
Manshaft thrusting
Already between her legs
The male pressure and pushing
She feels it in her seat
He thinks of myth. Orion's bow
Arrows of stars. Looks in her eyes
How deep can he get at this height?

16

Landfall

The isthmus was locked away
in a seagull’s mew. Deep fried
yellow from a lighthouse poked
inside and spotted an abandoned

Volkswagen Jetta perched on its
edge, its owners’ clothes scattered
like poker-table cards. Urgency
had been abandoned ten miles

up the road, next to a stone cottage;
where, if you looked closely, could
spot one shadow hitting another,
carefully creating a new type of dark.

Dr.M I-26 Ground Ivy Growing In A Chain Link Fence

I-26 Ground Ivy Growing In A Chain Link Fence

I saw a butterfly on a hammerhead
It was the same
As some ground ivy tangling up a chain link fence
It's white flowers swooning where the road took a bend
And disappeared. I thought
"The male must be dense
"And powerful while the female is light. Her evanescence
"Is undeniable." But it was more than that
The steel beneath the butterfly's feet
The ugly aluminum upon which the ground ivy trembled
There were things in me that steel and aluminum wire resembled
And sought the fine insect and the flowers and from them assembled
An image of innocent eyes that stared from behind a barred mask
Knowing and not knowing and not choosing to ask
But choosing to be drunk and to be slaked and devoured and possessed
Drowned in oceans of desire, revived, released, made rapturous
From darkness and through darkness and to darkness delivered
As from the hammerhead the butterfly its orange wings now quivered
And headed down the sky road, the car stopped, she got out, she shivered
And I didn't have to look twice to see the barred mask.
Where the ground ivy tangled up through the chain link fence.

4-1

pulling up a chair

lit salon
the most familiar
greatness with all that's
fit to press enter

enter

some of the good ole
minds
passing cards
painting hands
gambling
with the blank page

hold my hat
cash in chips of pride
and see if I can come up
aces

deal me in!!!!!

27

winging it

no time for pleasure today -
pressure abounds.
it's funny how we turmoil inside
and yet outward calm transcends
dimly lit hallways,
whispered reception areas.

Nurses breeze bright,
doctors smile thousand dollar smiles,
daughter lays, pale, receiver of nutrients
through tubes and bags.
home again, resting with blessings.
now the tough part starts.


sorry no time for more today - man this is rubbish

17

Messenger

Rain speaks on our behalf
to the rivers, hills and streams.
It carries our complaints,
prayers and messages of hope
in its transparent bones,

letting them absorb
in the water and soil.
We wake in the morning
to see our words dangling
like earrings on every tree,

windowsill and car; flooding
the surrounding area with light
from an opened window
at its centre.

4-2

a whistle
calls to order

sun refused

moan a Nina Simone
told to heart ache
fruit tastes gray
inside jokes are hard to come by
the reassurance of touch is far off
no one knows or cares about the whole story,
my story

the house is quiet

posted on the front window
shine wanted

the girl is gone

28

...

Your heart stops, waits
for the next rise and fall
of her chest,
the unconscious twitch
of a limb in sleep,
and you keep one eye there,
on her chest,
the other on the drip, watching
it feed her, one morsel
at a time
and with each drip fall,
rises a prayer,
a precious plead
for mercy
and pain free recovery,
knowing all the time
that pain means life,
that agony equals life
and then she stares at you
through drugged windows
and you just want to start tomorrow
now.

Dr.M. I-27

I-27

Oh Mirabelle, I could like launch myself from a plane
Sky dive through space arms outstretched and legs splayed
Land in you, Lips to your face, and display
The eager amour of my love that flows leaping
From o'erpassing aircraft to fuck you while sleeping
The thrust plunging manlust of cunt-burst robustness
The joyful thick dickness of into you slickness
Oh darling I'd screw you flat. And land on you with a splat

Or come on you like the tide
Slide up to your thighs and sidle inside
Be warm on your buttocks like sun on the beach
Caress your sweet flesh like two lips on a peach
As the juice drips in streams and the streams are like honey
And you slip through my hands like two fistfuls of money
And all these dreams would come true,
If my darling we only would screw.

18

Godot

Waiting for the crackling vinyl
horse-heads seen before death
produced no remorse before
my attempted suicide.
Rather, it made me aim

the sledgehammer I kept
by my bed at the clock's
fragile head and stamp
on its Swiss-made innards.
I stored its glass shards

in a feedbag and watched
hunger gobble them up,
thinking I would hear their
familiar neigh and swishing
of tails.

But that never happened,
and I walked along the empty
road like Vladimir and Estragon,
running for cover at the sound
of hooves, not knowing
it was actually rain.