007 Challenge

Smashing

Wonderful start, Lubricant, particularly your apology. Smashing last line. Look forward to reading more of your poems.
 
4

It Was at Cape Canaveral

that our love evaporated
like liquid oxygen streaming
into low florida sun

off the shaft of an atlas v
parked thoughtful, rigid, and metphallic
aimed smack into the void of heaven



drizzling, it looked like steam escaping
but could freeze a grape to marbled glass
you could shatter with an axe

and did, but you were so cold
that I just sparkled, purple and anaesthetized
until the afternoon's inevitable thaw
 
5

Dear Jane Note to Barbara Hershey

you were those little bits of chocolate
caught between my teeth
I don't like chocolate, however
toot sweet
 
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6

Situational Koan

a Buddhist, even in the desert
tries to pick a stone, a plum
(unlikely), a rapid lizard to venerate
to pee on, to whack upside the head

Where is the head of an ordinary stone
or plum? the Master sung
so puckishly

the students sighed
Where the lizard's was, we know
because it's dead
 
7

Fancy Feast

I am a cat in self
regard, bland
about hell and purgatory

more wondering about food
Usually asleep
deep in feline mores

where yowling during sex
is perfectly acceptable
on a fence post

or beneath some parked automobile
even on Sunday, early
if I've been fed first. A lot
 
1

confession

imagined: My tongue
at the top of that turned furrow
licking seed from the earth
like a crow, like a crow

I hop, cock my head
toward her fanned red shock
trim as a field

along some Central Valley highway
drenched in stolen water
swollen, succulent
teased

into, finally, contrition
I am Father, so I know. Know
 
2

untitled

there are no dancing girls
in the cavities of my dreams,
no strippers twisting in the lap
of my dyspeptic Id

just you, Rose Red, with your snow-white skin
placid as a faerie's tale
for your sharp warming whisk
of hazel switch
is simply firm, not grim

I wish I were more bear instead of beard
and you were poor enough
to save

but poverty is not your vice
but mine, though
only morally

and surely that is poor enough
tonight
 
3

Lost Photograph

The split fig of that image
damp red center, rippled flesh
always pooled saliva on my tongue
though it merely pictured fruit

Its rich taste lingers
in the odd, deceptive way
of a ghost. Or a lesion
 
4

Slackwire

I imagine you, balanced
on my diamond edge of tongue
tipped

left or right, as my strength slipped
to one side or another

That I could even hold you up
bespoke of my firm desire
our hours of talk
anchors

to hold your weight up on the webbing
you waltzed upon
My licks tickling your feet

over that abyss
 
lubricant - some fine stuff going down here. thanks for showing them
 
5

Graduate School

when you first opened your legs
I thought I could simply read you
like a book

but after riffling a few pages
and skimming here and there
I knew some careful study was in order

highlights, footnotes
analysis of certain problematic passages
so I could understand

what other, wiser men had thought
of the soft back of your knee
your pelvic curve

how exactly to touch here
when your eyes flash green
and the little warning signals seep

between your clenched teeth
which is why, I guess, you have write a thesis
to become Master of Fine Arts
 
6

Cadenza

your violin shape
so resonant and full
so ripe for fugues or ricercares
or the occasional fantasia
run up and down your fingerboard
in taps and slides and stops

yet often you're best played
sometime well after midnight
in a darkened, empty hall
when with amplified sustain
I can really make you scream
like a cherrywood SG
fuzzed through a Marshall head

and capture Jimi kneeling at Woodstock
squealing The Star-Spangled Banner
into the wet, doomed, distant Sixties air

eating your strings
eating your wild, bent strings
 
Perhaps there is an essence
of you left behind. A sense
memory, a hint of cinnamon
and winter, a drift of silk
on skin, the cabinet door
that always creaks shut.

Everyone hides their own
secret garden of near forgotten
roses, a scent of rainy backyards
or attics, dusty cedar trunks,
brittle paper, old lavender
and mothballs. What else is folded
with the white gloves, the yellow lace
and birth announcements?

It's hard to tell.
But there are moments
that flash on the edge
of consciousness, little
dharmas, little miracles
when a forgotten smile
cuts through like a knife
in butter, time stands
and whirls at the same
instant. You are with me

only then and I
sometimes wonder if you
can know how right you were
when you said memory
is everything.
 
Perhaps there is an essence
of you left behind. A sense
memory, a hint of cinnamon
and winter, a drift of silk
on skin, the cabinet door
that always creaks shut.

Everyone hides their own
secret garden of near forgotten
roses, a scent of rainy backyards
or attics, dusty cedar trunks,
brittle paper, old lavender
and mothballs. What else is folded
with the white gloves, the yellow lace
and birth announcements?

It's hard to tell.
But there are moments
that flash on the edge
of consciousness, little
dharmas, little miracles
when a forgotten smile
cuts through like a knife
in butter, time stands
and whirls at the same
instant. You are with me

only then and I
sometimes wonder if you
can know how right you were
when you said memory
is everything.

Memory is everything.
I sit silent with my thoughts
and drift in time.
No regrets.
Okay maybe an occasional sigh,
or wistful thought.
But she deserves that,
we deserve that.
Although there never was a we
to speak of.
Not that I didn't try,
but not hard enough
and not so long
before I moved on.
I lied.
There was a we,
but that was decades ago.
Decades ago
that I whispered into long blonde hair.
 
The quality of waiting
is pretty strained. I try
to be near my computer at least
I can play patience as I hold
the phone, as I wince
at the music which is soporific
at best, piercing at worst.
Minutes tick by

and I stay calm despite
frequent Nurse Ratched assurance
that my party wants nothing more
than to serve me. I am the most
important customer ever, except
while I am waiting, trying
to remember all three things
I need to ask, in the correct order,
and whether
my pen works.

My party is not even a person,
but a disembodied voice,
a ghost in the machine, sometimes
en espanol para my confusion.
It repeats itself and says I'm sorry
I didn't quite understand that
but
artificial intelligence notwithstanding,
I don't think it understands anything.

Isn't it always a shame
the good old days are gone,
when your biggest problem
was asking Mrs. Tulliver
to stop talking to her sister
so you could make a call,
or the kid next door
to get off the line already?
 
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7

NDE

In my lensless nakedness
your lacy garter belt is lost—
those chromed, chained nipple clamps
as well, for all I see
is fuzzy, pale light, as indistinct
as moonlight filtered through high clouds,
a poltergeist, or succubus,
or other restless spirit come
to fuck my complacent, corporeal world.

So I trace your body otherwise:
The round rasp of your voice,
that cat's yowl and purr; the scent
of that upscale perfume crossed with sweat.
I find that I can tap my way along the wall to skin so pure
my very fingertips erect.

And so to, finally, my Dowsing Rod;
the odd, capricious thing below my waist
that always picks you from a crowd
because it knows a well where it can drink
and never, never thirst.

When that says Walk into the light,
I do. I walk and walk and walk

and only little die.
 
Fabulous week, Lubricant. Your muse must be ecstatic! :) And great start, Fool and Angeline. I can SO relate to that being stuck on the phone poem. Nothing makes me want to smash things more than phone trees. :rose:
 
Fabulous week, Lubricant. Your muse must be ecstatic! :) And great start, Fool and Angeline. I can SO relate to that being stuck on the phone poem. Nothing makes me want to smash things more than phone trees. :rose:

Yaknow with this move, I have been making tons of calls where I have to machete my way through the phone vines. Moving company, isp, switching my car insurance and on and on. And I can say that the state of automated phone service is very poor. But it did give me something to write about. :D
 
1

Ecstatic Muse

perhaps she is, sitting on a bench in McCarren Park
filing her nails, texting friends,
sowing scraps of stale bread for overfed birds.
Or if there's ecstasy in laundry, she would know
how to find it, sifting whites from reds and greens,
cottons from lacy underthings.

She could well be ecstatic in the street,
blessing the sidewalk with her long-limbed stride,
or in a supermarket aisle, picking up kale
and shiitake mushrooms to stir-fry
while watching old Kurosawa movies on AMC.
I don't know, really,

when or if she ever is,
nor if her ecstasy takes form as Saint Teresa of Avila
or Bonnie Raitt. I can only wish
for my own improvident, impudent dream,
of twisted sheets and tousled hair
and little breathless whimperings.
 
The quality of waiting
is pretty strained. I try
to be near my computer at least
I can play patience as I hold
the phone, as I wince
at the music which is soporific
at best, piercing at worst.
Minutes tick by

and I stay calm despite
frequent Nurse Ratched assurance
that my party wants nothing more
than to serve me. I am the most
important customer ever, except
while I am waiting, trying
to remember all three things
I need to ask, in the correct order,
and whether
my pen works.

My party is not even a person,
but a disembodied voice,
a ghost in the machine, sometimes
en espanol para my confusion.
It repeats itself and says I'm sorry
I didn't quite understand that
but
artificial intelligence notwithstanding,
I don't think it understands anything.

Isn't it always a shame
the good old days are gone,
when your biggest problem
was asking Mrs. Tulliver
to stop talking to her sister
so you could make a call,
or the kid next door
to get off the line already?


I just mimic Ange for the irritation value...:D




So was it yesterday
I could hardly wait
for that once a week call?
Feeding coins into a machine
as I listened to your tinny voice
so many thousands of miles away.
Hearing the sound of children,
my children,
as we spoke quickly,
of what was,
what is,
and what we want to be.
Compressing images
into minutes,
sorrow into seconds
and love into words
spoke frantically.
Handset hard
and cold in my hand,
against my cheek,
offered metaphor for the trials
of long ago.
Opening the door to the phonebooth,
entering a world so far away from mine.
 
I just mimic Ange for the irritation value...:D




So was it yesterday
I could hardly wait
for that once a week call?
Feeding coins into a machine
as I listened to your tinny voice
so many thousands of miles away.
Hearing the sound of children,
my children,
as we spoke quickly,
of what was,
what is,
and what we want to be.
Compressing images
into minutes,
sorrow into seconds
and love into words
spoke frantically.
Handset hard
and cold in my hand,
against my cheek,
offered metaphor for the trials
of long ago.
Opening the door to the phonebooth,
entering a world so far away from mine.

I take it as hommage. :heart:


For T With Ever

Six years of us,
cooking pots and pillows,
Ginsberg and Piercy,
Lou Reed and Jay Farrar,
the chair with the leather seat
that changed its mind
and decided to tag along,
all the passion, the laughing,
furniture with the dents
and dings to prove it.
A prayerful night of emergency

room, stained with tears
and promises. All of it, all
of it parceled into boxes,
bags stuffed with three
in a space for two, and oh so
carefully fitted like us, hand
in hand, shoulders brushing,
eyes speaking and bundled
like spoons in a drawer,
off we scoot.
 
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