007 Challenge

001

bitter

hate a melon for being red
hate a child because she's dead
hate the wheat for making bread

what does it get you
 
6: breaking apart

when the music broke
I was left askew
tormented by the whirlwind
shards of melody
torn asunder

and flying at my eyes
tearing my tongue
piercing my fingers
and all I could hear
were the rough remnants
where harmony once reigned

and I nearly forgot
your shattering words
with wanting everything back
to where it had been
before
 
002

Crows

sound like people sometimes
dogs barking even
motorcycles
beer cans popping
because despite legend
they aren't too good at standup

only mimicry and even then
they only get tone
missing content
entirely
 
003

Pre Conventional

I do what I do because if I don't
I will be
beaten
ridiculed
made uncomfortable in social situations
have my wallet stolen
locked into solitary confinement
pay a penalty

I do what I do because if I do
I will be
bribed
praised
invited to participate in conversation
given money or coupons
have my existence acknowledged
be allowed to glance up her skirt
at the golden fleece


Conventional

I do what I do because
I am a good girl good
girl good girl
it says so right there
good girl

I don't do what
I don't do because God
Obama Mother Sister Mary
said we mustn't and
Law is Law is Law is Law


Post Conventional

we are boat afloat
all of us are in this hands
up if you want pizza jump twice
if you believe
in fairies
but don't rock
jump over
if you really have to

what kind of person
is my world what kind
of world is my person


Beyond

if the devil is six

this monkey's gone to heaven
 
this morning
the world changed to paper

when I peered through my tissue paper curtains
out my oil paper window
overhead
crisp paper clouds
hung from the blue paper sky
lit by a glowing paper sun

the grass was green and yellow
with pink paper flowers
rising from brown paper gardens
perfuming the air
with the smell of old paper

and all the walls were shiny white paper
just begging for words
but in all my paper house
there was no pen

and when I pricked my fingers to find ink
my paper hands were hollow
empty
powerless

I think this is good. Keeper. Also I like the image of music being torn apart in a whirlwind. Glad to have you joining me here, ninianne.
 
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7: the storm

crash
a thunderbolt
touches ground
its massive power
under no control but its own

yet those in its path
panic

seeing in its fury
deliberate mayhem
brought into their lives by a
vengeful god
 
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I think this is good. Keeper. Also I like the image of music being torn apart in a whirlwind. Glad to have you joining me here, ninianne.

Thanks--the paper one was a mixture of memory and nightmare. Once I was at an art gallery. One installation was interactive--in part of it, they'd made an entire room out of paper. And me, I was really tempted to get out a pen and start writing a poem on the walls, so I left in a hurry.

I'm not sure I'm totally happy with the poem, yet, but it's closer than I've gotten in a while.

I'm glad to be back--graduate school doesn't leave me much time for online fun.
 
007

Storm broke
clods of dung apart into the soil
under a sky frantic with lace
reminding me

I am not alone in this world and
not too big either but
glorious is the unseen made
present in all of its lonely
power
 
I have been using stamps that will insure
these notes get through.
The stamps hush and hem. Push the fedora back
with a little knowing smile.

I am Here all the time!

Declarative: bah. Hogs and hollow, benedictine and sallow.

My Listing imagination has gone baroque in order to solve this case.
It did it on itś own, making calls after leaving the party at 3 AM
The bride already under her Valium.

Can you check something for me?
Point out what is so damn distracting?
Keyholes pour light.
Fixtures nurse themselves in dark corners
as I enter the room with a note. That
I have been carrying for too long now.

That note says:

¨We swung by having forgotten we saw you standing on the platform. We were surprised to say anything. You keep appearing, folding in and out. Flexing and fluctuating. We will write more after we open this enjambment.

Yours, Curly¨

I put the keys down and quietly dance.
 
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We were running around having to
bend Space and time again. (Note:
I never run late. I walk.)

I have my fingers caught in the rubber band that
is holding the oldest´s pigtail, or ¨tweedle¨.
The other one is still melting crayons in the kitchen.

Rewriting the constants is what we do here.
The Planck constant, Pi (Let us make it equal ¨4¨ today. Map that.)
are subject to all whims. Jokingly, I tear up.

We get out the door, butterfly knives, hands are flashing in the air.
A bird with blue metallic quills, a shadow for a crown lands on the fence above us.
We pass under it, invisible to the ancient god whose vision is without stars, vacuum,
or emptiness.
 
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004

Somehow I went from 3 to 7. I am filling in the middle now, touring missed curricula. It is a long ride past parking lots of sestinas and triolets. Miles pass. From the bus, I see a guy waving. Buddy wears no enjambment—hell he's barely threaded. Buddy plants himself under the 100 mile marker and crosses the sky with flags, claiming the sand beyond for the Devil. If you want it, spit on it. It, not me. Me, you have to write or massage for. Oh reader, how strong are your hands? How active are your verbs? Step right up.
 
Bond Girl

I have some notes here toward a Greater Calamity.
You have seen the dosages being taken and the
half-tracks in the mud and snow.

You will be assigned this flitter of crows
(You notice they all turn to you.).
In time, you will get a murder.

The subject we are tracking appears, at first, randomly.
I want you to know that is not the case.
It appears according to a lattice stitched into the background hum.

We trust you can draw it out, brush it off, help it off its knees.
Forward the message that we want it to go for us.
That all the filings have been correct.
 
005

This is a day for the slow reveal--
pulling back the curtain
at cloud's pace. The door to this
room doesn't swing
open it just creaks. And creak
it should for we are
stepping into the rainforest
where there is never quiet
only a brushing away of distinction.
Anteaters lumber against
a blue drape of poison dart
frogs glimmering under macaws
and toucans, the songs building
on one another as one fabric
as continuous as the travel of planets.
Paint with me the wonderous
moans of travellers on this
habitat. If our howls are true
shot through straight spines,
moon milk will trickle
through the canopy to our
song held lips.
 
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What pair of claws are trawling this ocean floor?
What does not wave back?
What car drives through the crosswalk?

Two kings were entering a labyrinth.
One casually mentions
¨This should not take long. Just follow me. Take your head out of the sand.¨
The other murmurs acquiescence.
Shadows tend to the birds overhead.

They spend years inching forward. Company best kept private
-and eventually still.
The company breaks.

The desert blooms.
 
006

Who would paint the walls
within the factory of cleaving
beasts to bits
white?

What white can expose
through weakness:
drip in the flasked
vodka leaking
in snowpits.

I do not want to paint
it black; I want to
paint it red
rum and
if good

if you have been very
very good: cherries
on your tongue
hosting six
usbs (

two letters off of
bs, btw.)
 
Préludes For Piano, Book I, L. 117

Going back to west Texas, outside Lubbock
Where the UFOs pull over. Back among the tornadoes
that finger the buttons on the radio.

I can see from here.

This is easy enough to flip a card over,
watch the dealer brush the cat off the felt
ask me if I want another.

I am not sure that this is the right enumeration,
or the ¨ageless beauty¨ I mean to transpose into
terms like ¨laundry¨, ¨riverwalk¨, ¨tresspass.¨

There is no name for this.
There is the mesas, the wood flutes, the Kachinas,
the people down south.

Up here in the north, we carry everything with us at all times.
Never letting down. Never asking ¨where?¨
 
C'mon Tess. Why don't you jump in?

Here's a provocative quote from MI5 I just heard (linebreaks reflect the actor's pauses):

A British secret agent's response when asked by his girlfriend "how was your day?"

"A man
who believed in a cause
killed himself for love.

Totally pointless."

It does not show the girlfriend's reaction. Wonder what she'd have said back?

Anyway Thanks, Tristesse. I do think you should do the week. Maybe your muse(s) would join? :)
 
Wonderful, Tzara. So vivid. Funny how this anti-form still makes a decent form when aptly executed. And so it was. The drinks on the lawn is an ominous image which adds emotional complexity to the poem. Well done, Sir.

ETA actually the whole final stanza quite ominous. The "rose" of the bride is strewn (loss of virginity?) the parents weep and the guests vomit on the lawn! Quite an unspooling of the romantic scene. Disturbingly gorgeous.
 
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n:2

Dread

The clock ticks over
like an astronaut making sure
he has enough oxygen
to return to the hive.

As if perhaps we are all bees,
all female, always busy,
gathering, gathering.

We make enough honey, we survive
the winter. Not enough, we die.

I do not want to die. Buzz.
Buzz.
 
n:3

Cold Deck

I hadn’t thought about it much,
The way cards fall. How blacks and reds
Turn over ace or ten, a clutch
I hadn’t thought about. It much
Seems open to a conman’s touch,
How with deft dealing, the dealer beds
“ I haven’t thought about it much.”
And makes cards fall, some black, more red.
 
n:4

Poem Written Like a Sad Richard Brautigan Poem

Here I leave a shoe.
It is my shoe, or it was,
before I left it here.

I still have its other
on my foot,
as if that meant

we joined
through the years.
But all it really means

is that now
you have one shoe,
and so, though another one,

have I.
 
001

Met Day

Fifty bright-shirted classmates board the train.
Fifty bright-shirted classmates board the train
(Manhattan bound then back, again).
Manhattan bound then back again
train fifty classmates bright-backed,
shirted 'board the Manhattan-bound train.

Columns build the sky from bones of art.
Columns build the sky from bones of art.
Degas and Renoir paint the gabled door.
Degas and Renoir paint the gabled door.
The bones (Degas, Renoir)build sky
and column the doors from gables of paint.

School children squeal at marbled penises.
School children squeal At marbled penises
and ask, "Why do art be so dirty?"
And ask, "Why do art be so dirty?"
Squeal dirty penises at marbled, school
children ask, "Why do art?"

Teacher says "For several centuries . . . "
Teacher says "for several centuries
artists called the human form Gods' masterpiece.
artists called the human form God's masterpiece.
Centuries teachers called the artists Gods'
human form, the master piece.
 
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