007 Challenge

In the Park

HUNCHBACK IN THE PARK 700501

There’s a hunchback in the park he’s been
there for three years
and
no one
thought to touch him, they

thought he was dead!

He still is but it’s too early
to tell where the body is buried

--certainly not beneath
that girl
moaning softly under the tree

certainly not in that cave
over the hill
where Venus sets

Who can he be the pale figure
with a bone in his mouth

That’s no dog
throwing its howl to the moon, that’s
no chisel
severing his mouth
leaning drunkenly into the wind

There was a girl here today
plump-thighed, with a blue school tunic
hiked up higher than the regulations permit

She dreamed of the hunchback
three nights back
thought she was dead

But she still comes
dangerously plump-thighed
in Spring

Days like this there’s no tomorrow
the sun takes care of that
bathing
the ruby glow
under the tummy
forgetfulness . . .

to be continued

--30—

(all girls in this poem are over-18—some of them are 90)
 
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None of the spiders in this poem were harmed.
Yet.
Settling down on the private
bedtime toilet I trespassed
an undisclosed timeshared
bathtub after midnight situ

Which left me staring helplessly
At one huge spider or two dollar
Spiders copulating. In my bathtub.

I hope it was two fucking spiders
Sated with porcelain and bedding
incurious.
 
Little Miss Muffet

sat on a tuffet, her
first mistake, the
tuffet tendrils
mischiefed her loose cotton
peasant drawers, she

felt a little reverish, not realising
how spiders flock to the warm place when
young girls become a little
tactile with daydreams, a little
teasy weasy upsie daisy
slippery

two spiders
sidling over
to check her growing scent
alarm the girl she
bounces on her grassy seat
invokes her maker, wishes
some village boy might
ride up like young Lochinvar

slay the things, she
scarce frames the thought when Jack
a village jackanapes
rides up on wilted horse
dismounts
with keen balletic grace, and

grasping a swishy branch
quickly dissuades the importunate arachnids
to disport elsewhere, to hie
themselves to another Court, he
shouts 'BEGONE'
more histrionically than she would have thought and
turns to her, arms splayed out
to stem her shivering fear
her incipient
tuffet-mediated arousal

and takes her in his arms, she
as the custom of the place
tilts up her face and puckers
delighted with incipience and
Jack not to disappoint
brushes her lips with his rough, tradesman's mouth

Years later Jill
(for that is Miss Muffet's yclept)
wonders why she gave it up so easily

now that she speaks for all
those oppressed
by memories of being taken
bent over the smooth rocks of the high country



-30-
 
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a certain insomniac

one sometimes feels
that a certain insomniac
prowls the corridors of night
 
Tapas sleeps always kicked
off my covers wee hours.
Some blame light pollution, but
probably it is just the chatterbox
rattling around my skull.
 
Streetlit flamboyance
crosstalked, down low,
"Call!" I call. Save
contact and swallow back
promises, assurances
grown people shrug at because
real delivers the tickets, remembers
what block, what hat. Real
is what's what. Everything else:
that's that.
 
It's taken me a week to break the seal.
Slim lettered hand is patiently unread.
Enclosed obituary proves too real
The rumor that dear David Sheets is dead.
One reads these things. Eventually must
Begins to grieve the words, the name, the date.
Too late believes. Recieves what little dust
Can envelope and mail a man for freight.
His quiet trees, his Brooklyn block, all buried
Beneath the Barclay Center, now. Just where
All trains are met and Brooklynites are ferried.
Perfect. I will read the letter there.
In pigeon silence city claims its son.
Of rare good men, our David sure was one.
 
April Brought Rivers

APRIL BROUGHT RIVERS

By JCSTREET © 2018, all rights and lollipops reserved


April brought rivers
madness churning the blood, that
running down the road with mouth open gulping
fresh air feeling

a need to tear one’s clothes off and

in bed of a Saturday morning the crying
of playful children
crystallized

hung in a candle
above suburb fields

then I turned choking
to taste the contoured smoothness of your body and
perhaps I over-indulged in my , but
it was in both our best interests

you said so yourself

perhaps
this is the last Spring and
next year I’ll be old

-30- Montreal 1968

(Editor’s comment: Yeah right! How pretentious are young poets)
 
Tonight I am blind to the pharmaceutical side effects,
the stick thinness, the constant chaperone.
Tonight I see gas flame eyes
still looking, still cooking.
Tonight is easy, rickshawed, its weight
shared evenly, plans amended. Every
fragile admission is beaten back
with "I am getting better. I can
feel it working." Still my lioness
however gray and small, hails a cab
in seconds with her long
imperial arm.
 
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Thank you

This is what poetry must feel like on planets with really dense atmospheres in which everything is compressed at much higher pounds per square inch than is the case here on easygoing earth.

You compress to the point of black holeness, squeezing out all that is not germane and quintessential

By contrast, I ramble on lazily as though the fields of poetry stretch endlessly to unfathomable horizons
 
001

Of all the piano lounges in all
Inferred multiverses, I choose
The one where the cat is alive.
Let's open that box confident
In blinking purr.
 
002

Last night the audiobook was
Zodiac, an early reimagining
Repositioning re- re-
Rethinking of science
Fiction. Thus all night through
Several rem cycles the
Ardent adventuress through
Chlorines and genetic
Modifications. I woke
Earachy. Scratchy. No more.
Toxicity is banned. Tonight
Sleeping ears will bed
Astrophysics for
People in a Hurry--
Reliable as the eroscillator.
Let's make tomorrow pretty.
 
Tocsin

TOCSIN

By JCStreet © 2018, all rights reserved

Her voice is a tocsin
stirring the dead leaves of the heart
half sensed over the far seas
through a bleak fire in the west,

the forefell.

A tuning fork that resurrects
the soul-dead spaces of the heart, makes
supple
the reliquary of memory, brings close
. . . the upward spring.

-30-
 
003

Wide red lillies twin
yawns at the sun,
roars at the moon.
Floral sex scandalizes
the entire bedroom
window and hottens up
The silkies. Gentlemen,
blooms tune the tambre
warmer. This very night,
bring her flowers.
 
004

"Pinworms," exclaims Andrea,
of course. Pinworms. Apparently,
much of what ails us might once
have been food for the animals
easily confused with pestilence.
Fault by association burns every
oxygenated room until the whole
Mansion cinders. So every creepy
crawly slitherer is safe from these
vegan boots. One person's pest
may otherwise be medicine.
 
005 so much sky

135th street remembers its own stars
placarded in concrete. Alongside grows
a minigarden memorial for dead
police officers. A block down, 40 some
candles mark the spot where a man,
young man, just shedding his boyhood,
was shot. Every morning the super
three buildings up sprays clean
the fifteen feet of concrete she controls
and says "have a blessed day."
She reminds me over a thousand
mornings that every woken day
is a blessed day. So much sky. Yes.
 
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TOCSIN

By JCStreet © 2018, all rights reserved

Her voice is a tocsin
stirring the dead leaves of the heart
half sensed over the far seas
through a bleak fire in the west,

the forefell.

A tuning fork that resurrects
the soul-dead spaces of the heart, makes
supple
the reliquary of memory, brings close
. . . the upward spring.

-30-

Clever. I had to consult a dictionary. Your vocabulary astonishes.
 
135th street remembers its own stars
placarded in concrete. Alongside grows
a minigarden memorial for dead
police officers. A block down, 40 some
candles mark the spot where a man,
young man, just shedding his boyhood,
was shot. Every morning the super
three buildings up sprays clean
the fifteen feet of concrete she controls
and says "have a blessed day."
She reminds me over a thousand
mornings that every woken day
is a blessed day. So much sky. Yes.

Good stuff.
 
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