not sure how many words

notebook hoarder
pedal steel harmonium
paper napkins
and thick mountain
melody,

the Vancouver trainline
passes east through
Omaha,

the main drag in Reno
comes abrupt thru
my memory,

the six string
sits quiet in the
Lennon of our doorways,

the earthquake
shocks the bottom of
our pigskin wallets,

the markets in colombia
tickle our
noses,

San Luis Obispo
sits astride of our
beaches,

the shuttle spills
upward
on walks in North Florida,

The Sons of Champlin
play funk
in our Berkeley,

The African cornhusk
lies buried
in our ceremony,

the song of the
south precedes
our migration,

the pennies in
my pocket
jangle my moment,

hotels and casinos
play dice with my
television,

St. Thomas a Guiness
lies deep in my
thorax,

E minor
A minor
visions of Johanna,

old older oldest
the rythm
of the sandstorm,

that breeds in
the window of the
rusted locomotive,

that crosses my
Nevada on the
way to Ensenada,

Surfing is the
best feeling
Ive ever found.

eagleyez said:

notebook hoarder
pedal steel harmonium
paper napkins
and thick mountain
melody,

the Vancouver trainline
passes east through
Omaha,

the main drag in Reno
comes abrupt thru
my memory,

the six string
sits quiet in the
Lennon of our doorways,

the earthquake
shocks the bottom of
our pigskin wallets,

the markets in colombia
tickle our
noses,

San Luis Obispo
sits astride of our
beaches,

the shuttle spills
upward
on walks in North Florida,

The Sons of Champlin
play funk
in our Berkeley,

The African cornhusk
lies buried
in our ceremony,

the song of the
south precedes
our migration,

the pennies in
my pocket
jangle my moment,

hotels and casinos
play dice with my
television,

St. Thomas a Guiness
lies deep in my
thorax,

E minor
A minor
visions of Johanna,

old older oldest
the rythm
of the sandstorm,

that breeds in
the window of the
rusted locomotive,

that crosses my
Nevada on the
way to Ensenada,

Surfing is the
best feeling
Ive ever found.

Click to expand...

My kinda road trip.....good tunes, good company, good times - nice 'n easy.

Tristesse2 said:

My kinda road trip.....good tunes, good company, good times - nice 'n easy.

Click to expand...

Hey sassy,

hope the clover is getting high up yonder.

night was sweaty as wine
oh months and months of may,
hardwood planks
shook in front of cinderblock murals
of spraypaint moon and
lapsteel shadow,
dim light and hogsbreath cashregister,

13th street in a gator town
used cars pouring in
down your peninsula
all decked in black
and red rick sixstringed
and signaling for another round
on the tab
on the shirt
jiffylube stain faded and wet clean thru,

pour me a smoke
and light me a drink
cast out the stones
fastrack the cowpunk jazz
to the sidewinder crowd
in the cave of my remembering.

I dreamed a pickup truck
heavy eyeshade
and lashes glued on,
your words like a switchblade
coming home
in the borrow pit
where all the dead dogs lay,
coming home
after midnight-
begin the begin,
the month of may.

Angel's Share

off the train platform
I ashed the best
cigar I could buy
whisky chasing
smoke to the chasm
to tide you over
until you could
find a good
Kentucky barrel
to spirit
the vapor due

4am jitters and only one valium left
my feet are good for walkin, too, ya know
so off I go
to sleuth out a mystery for a little one
who got up to pee at the right or wrong time.
his decision.

we sshhh... out the back screen door
and run to the wall and over
before anyone sees us. Now our
jammy bottoms are soaked and
through the thinning trees I see a fingernail lit up
away up high where the Cloudy Horses live.
They sleep tonight waiting for the Lightning to crash them awake.

Hey! in a whisper... There it is again!
and we pause to hear the metallic nasal song
we hear from time to time as we slide into sleep.
OK, I say. Down, and crawl quiet as an ol native
watching the crazies starve as they eke out
subsistence in The Land Of Plenty.

Listen... what do you hear? munching he says
and swishing... like a horses tail. I smile. Keep listening.
and I watch him as he watches the dark.
The dark that moves towards us.
I place my hand on his shoulder
whispering wait... dont run.
quietly we lie there, knowing the monster was very near,
and suddenly he feels its breathing in his ear.
He slowly reaches up and feels the velvet nose
and looks at me a little chagrined.
It's Ol Mary, he says.
She doesn't make noise like that.

But from the barn a new sound...
a hard kick to a wall
and a bodyslam on a stall door.
And the noise. So loud! So close!
That breathing in of tortured air,
blown out like a runaway train.
Over and over and loud as the
Iron Gates Of Hell opening just for us.

I grab him and we run... faster than our heartbeats..
ba thump ba thump so loud it hurt
just like soldiers we hit the stonewall
running and rolling just to get over it anyway we could!

Lying there, gasping, finally able to breath again
I giggle. He looks at me
not like I'm nuts, cuz he already knows I am,
but eyes full of questions.

Do you know how a mule is made I ask.
Not the 2 legged's we know so many of
but a real one?

He shakes his head. He knows about babies,
and all that stuff, but not this.
Ol Mr Brownlow bought a donkey, honey.
To make a Mule w/ Ol Mary.
and that ol Jack is wanting to get out
and do his job! And he's wantin out bad!

He lies there thinking... that slow easy
coffee eyed grin spreading across his face.
Thats what I been hearing? I just smile back.
We better go get dry or were gonna be
in big trouble in the morning.

Quiet we walk back to the house, and
slowly I feel his hand slide into mine.
We don't say a word. We don't have to.

Surfacing, he keep his eyes shut
and savousr the lingering sense
of anticipation and arousal.
Disappointment slides over it,
darkening his excitement like a cloud
heavy with unshed rain
and yet he remains aroused.
She had been naked and within his reach,
he could have stretches out a hand
and touched a breast or
cupped her downy pudenda
but that was all a presentiment.
Was her hand in his
bridging the space between deck chairs?
That is lost in the mists of waking
but the desire lingers,
a taste, a scent, a real
wanting
thing.

Death

The staff kept saying we
could close the door
for privacy,

as if they felt my father’s dying
was something best
shut away. Their call,

of course—I had never
seen death before.
Nor had my mother,

oddly. But it is everyday
for them, like sports news
or chewing gum.

Life left him
as if it needed to be elsewhere—
in Obstetrics, possibly,

or the ER, where
passion makes tenuous
some person’s random life.

In any case, Life left him,
and eventually I asked
the nurse to test

if he was dead.
She probed
with her bright stethoscope,

sounding
an iron mine, and told us
what we already knew.

We signed things,
spoke to the uncomfortable doctor
consoling us

and left for a world
where my father simply is some
kind of memory.

Tzara said:

Death

The staff kept saying we
could close the door
for privacy,

as if they felt my father’s dying
was something best
shut away. Their call,

of course—I had never
seen death before.
Nor had my mother,

oddly. But it is everyday
for them, like sports news
or chewing gum.

Life left him
as if it needed to be elsewhere—
in Obstetrics, possibly,

or the ER, where
passion makes tenuous
some person’s random life.

In any case, Life left him,
and eventually I asked
the nurse to test

if he was dead.
She probed
with her bright stethoscope,

sounding
an iron mine, and told us
what we already knew.

We signed things,
spoke to the uncomfortable doctor
consoling us

and left for a world
where my father simply is some
kind of memory.

Click to expand...

Very poignant, Tzara; a topic that doesn't get much currency on Lit. I particularly liked the many contrasts.

greenmountaineer said:

Very poignant, Tzara; a topic that doesn't get much currency on Lit. I particularly liked the many contrasts.

Click to expand...

Thank you, gm. It is a very bad poem, but one I had to try to write.

Trying to write this has made me think a lot about what I maybe can and cannot do as a poet. The "cannot do" list is much larger than the "can do" list, unfortunately. Actually, I'm not at all sure there is a "can do" list for me.

So I fall back on Tzara's Rule Number One of Poetry Writing: Do not be afraid to be bad.

At least I can do that.

Tzara said:

Thank you, gm. It is a very bad poem, but one I had to try to write.

Trying to write this has made me think a lot about what I maybe can and cannot do as a poet. The "cannot do" list is much larger than the "can do" list, unfortunately. Actually, I'm not at all sure there is a "can do" list for me.

So I fall back on Tzara's Rule Number One of Poetry Writing: Do not be afraid to be bad.

At least I can do that.

Click to expand...

Why do you think it's bad? I've been there. It's how it is. Except for the questions just a few minutes later. "Who's responsible for the body" I am. "When will it be picked up? We need the bed." Thats the worst. I think you did good. It's spare. It should be. The Hospital Factory. Not for me.

Tzara said:

Thank you, gm. It is a very bad poem, but one I had to try to write.

Trying to write this has made me think a lot about what I maybe can and cannot do as a poet. The "cannot do" list is much larger than the "can do" list, unfortunately. Actually, I'm not at all sure there is a "can do" list for me.

So I fall back on Tzara's Rule Number One of Poetry Writing: Do not be afraid to be bad.

At least I can do that.

Click to expand...

Perhaps I should have been more specific about what I meant by the contrasts I saw and liked in the poem: the obvious contrast between the inevitability of your father's death and obstetrics; the acceptance of death I presumed by your father and the fighting for life in the ER; doctors more accustomed to dead patients than to consoling families of the deceased.

The last two lines suggest finality in the poem. I might have added an extra stanza to suggest it didn't end in the hospital for me.

Also, the occasional rhyme and near rhymes throughout with the easy-going diction I've seen so often in your submissions gave it a simple pleasing lyrical quality, at least for me.

BooMerengue said:

Why do you think it's bad? I've been there. It's how it is. Except for the questions just a few minutes later. "Who's responsible for the body" I am. "When will it be picked up? We need the bed." Thats the worst. I think you did good. It's spare. It should be. The Hospital Factory. Not for me.

Click to expand...

Hi, Boo.

I probably think it's bad because the poem doesn't feel right to me in terms of capturing what I felt. There are some pretty obvious flaws in it, too--the poem is very prosaic, for example, suffering from the dreaded "prose with line breaks thing." But it also does not seem very poetic, I think. There are few real images, which are the lifeblood of poetry, according to most authorities, and I tell more than show (e.g. the doctor was clearly, to me, uncomfortable, but I merely say that instead of trying to show it--guy had his hands in his pockets the whole time he was talking to us while my Dad was lying on the bed like a dead fish, for example).

On the real life hand, the experience was not, actually, particularly bad for me, overall. I miss him terribly, but he was very ill for months beforehand and it was more like relief than anything for him to die.

Oddly (at least, I think for a lot of people), the experience confirmed my materialistic atheism. I had thought that the emotion of experiencing the death of a loved one might make me disturbed about what I believe, but it actually had the opposite effect. I ended up being relieved by it.

Anyway, thanks for the comment.

greenmountaineer said:

Perhaps I should have been more specific about what I meant by the contrasts I saw and liked in the poem: the obvious contrast between the inevitability of your father's death and obstetrics; the acceptance of death I presumed by your father and the fighting for life in the ER; doctors more accustomed to dead patients than to consoling families of the deceased.

The last two lines suggest finality in the poem. I might have added an extra stanza to suggest it didn't end in the hospital for me.

Also, the occasional rhyme and near rhymes throughout with the easy-going diction I've seen so often in your submissions gave it a simple pleasing lyrical quality, at least for me.

Click to expand...

Well, thanks. You flatter me.

I still think the poem is, as I said in my reply to Boo, too prosaic, but hey--direct is sometimes good.

I think I'm too close to the material to know what I really think at this time.

Anyway, I, as always, appreciate the thoughtful comment.

His medicine
cabinet faced hers, the mirrors
endlessly reflecting the fronts
and backs of heads while
flossing, shaving, searching
and that is how I imagine
our last conversation
when I visualize
the effort we made
to understand
the difference

the subtracted breach
between what you heard
and what I said and what I
heard and what you
didn't say. Luckily
the doors are unlocked, only
magnetized. Even fingers
small as mine can pry
open the paradox so that we
share the tonic, paste, anti
oxident the way we share
salads and sheets:
easy as breath
falling and rising

when our bodies curl
together, dreaming.

what is before me

Percussion,
Hickory nuts bomb the deck
as coffee steam wets
taught jaw,
whiskered by last week
silent and non flapping.

Up with the sun,
a holy ritual of birds and
mountain shrouded in
Chinese silk,

the cars
a sitar,
words.

eagleyez said:

Percussion,
Hickory nuts bomb the deck
as coffee steam wets
taught jaw,
whiskered by last week
silent and non flapping.

Up with the sun,
a holy ritual of birds and
mountain shrouded in
Chinese silk,

the cars
a sitar,
words.

Click to expand...

i could eat this, breathe it in, touch the view

but especially,
especially

a holy ritual of birds and
mountain shrouded in
Chinese silk,

chipbutty said:

i could eat this, breathe it in, touch the view

but especially,
especially

a holy ritual of birds and
mountain shrouded in
Chinese silk,

Click to expand...

I'll throw in some roasted Hickory nuts. Got plenty, lemme tell ya.

I wanna lick you

from bottoms up
to
top down. Catch your hand
thrown against the wall
nibbles to neck

a long, leisurely stroll with
tongue tracing
circling circles

from your nipples
to ears. slick, wet
kisses as my tongue
dives deep.

turning your insides,
to jelly ..

mmmm, how I love
to taste you



...

he wants the strings


a throw back
to what was. a child shared
a moment
in time

what was. I repeatedly share
feelings, wants

desires. He pulls,

begs

wants to be the man I want
need, him to be

I preach on, you need to be

yourself

you need to be
the man

you are.

he knows my thoughts, dreams
wants, strengths
desires, yet

he profusely demands

I be

with him,
somehow. he says

he knows
yet
doesn't listen

does not know

me~



...

The ten thirty from Luton.

All night the fires burned
in the fields along the tracks west of the village.
Her window glowed, a sullen, bloody red
and she kneeled at the sill as if in prayer
to watch the wind lift the flames
fringed with sparks dancing
in the dark sky, jittery stars that died
and fell, black flakes, back to earth.
The silhouettes of the men, her father
and others walked through this hell
beating at the spreading fire
with jackets, spades and feet. One danced
out of her sight, his cuffs alight.
The shouts of the men reached her
and the scent of the burn caught her throat
so that she couldn’t stifle a cough.
She was bundled to bed by her clucking mother
to wait for the morning train to start
it all over again.

Tristesse2 said:

All night the fires burned
in the fields along the tracks west of the village.
Her window glowed, a sullen, bloody red
and she kneeled at the sill as if in prayer
to watch the wind lift the flames
fringed with sparks dancing
in the dark sky, jittery stars that died
and fell, black flakes, back to earth.
The silhouettes of the men, her father
and others walked through this hell
beating at the spreading fire
with jackets, spades and feet. One danced
out of her sight, his cuffs alight.
The shouts of the men reached her
and the scent of the burn caught her throat
so that she couldn’t stifle a cough.
She was bundled to bed by her clucking mother
to wait for the morning train to start
it all over again.

Click to expand...

Wow! I love this.
You pulled me in and I felt, tasted
... everything. Dark and vibrant!

Tristesse2 said:

All night the fires burned
in the fields along the tracks west of the village.
Her window glowed, a sullen, bloody red
and she kneeled at the sill as if in prayer
to watch the wind lift the flames
fringed with sparks dancing
in the dark sky, jittery stars that died
and fell, black flakes, back to earth.
The silhouettes of the men, her father
and others walked through this hell
beating at the spreading fire
with jackets, spades and feet. One danced
out of her sight, his cuffs alight.
The shouts of the men reached her
and the scent of the burn caught her throat
so that she couldn’t stifle a cough.
She was bundled to bed by her clucking mother
to wait for the morning train to start
it all over again.

Click to expand...

I think of the thatch roofed enclaves of the potato irish, oddly enough, with their whiskey ways and spittled violence.

Nice one sassy.

RhymeFairy said:

Wow! I love this.
You pulled me in and I felt, tasted
... everything. Dark and vibrant!

Click to expand...

eagleyez said:

I think of the thatch roofed enclaves of the potato irish, oddly enough, with their whiskey ways and spittled violence.

Nice one sassy.

Click to expand...

Thank you both, it's a rough thing yet.

old mac surprises me,
stretches his claws
on the pressure treated 4 by 4.

its good to have an edge
I think,
many edges,
as the pinestraw mud
comes up smelling
like childhood,
where the riverbottom
pours silt on the rounded rock.

the wine of remembering
splashes on the leaves
of yesterday,

now
the colors
are predictable
and perfect.