Dirty 30 in 30

#23

For T.G.

Think about a voice that draws your hands behind your back.
Believe I have fingers of vine and stone, aimed toward the center
of every wild wish you make within the sweetest black.

Right now I breathe a choice for you to follow toward the red
flower of what you have daydreamed, now tightening over your skin.
Speak, finally, and hear the way your appetite has bled.

I hear you from the winter, rising toward the heated wine
of dream. The absinthe force of my fingers finds all the dark flowers
blooming in your landscape just across the borderline.

It's all or nothing when you see the rosy truth on skin.
You keen and bend as I paint your flesh with the bone-deep shadow,
one single organ made of mind takes the outside in.



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16

Today we're sliding off to school,
Upon a winter's day.
For the ground is very slippery
As we hurry on our way.
We like to leave our little slides,
Where others have to come,
So pensioners on their daily walks,
Will fall upon their bums!
 
17

There is fog over my hills.
a blank canvas
waiting to be painted
with the hues
of a million landscapes.
Chose your colours wisely
not too brown
for green still lingers
in the dell
where the vixen lies
nose buried to tail.
She quivers
dreaming through
the winter's chill,
reliving the spring hunting
a full belly, cubs to raise
man always at her heels.
 
*applause*

Arnold, well done!

Anyone who can write an annotated poem about giant boobs and include the word amanuensis and a reference to Ferlinghetti is definitely going to poets' Valhalla.

and were you not already on My List, you would be now.

bj
 
#24

Watching Fire

Then the log burned through and dancers
claimed the sides, wild to a snare of steam
and one sharp thing, maddened, its hair
on fire, waved narrow-leaf arms
fluid as seaweed on the bed of coals
skirts blown upward by draft
thrown side to side, an apache dance
the toss and spin, desire, anger.

When the wood turned the black box
was in the burning chamber. Gone,
the contents, whatever lay there
is destroyed now. Remember
or forget it; it does not matter.
the box is empty, filled with nothing,
gone for Good.


.
 
#25

Drive

Wasp-light, the sting of east in the eye
the strobe through trees cuts my skin bright,
cuts the hand's sharp outline on the wheel
Without the heat of these fresh hours
of dark just past, this cold would cut
harsh as a bone saw. I force myself
out from the deep blue of timeless now
to this pale yellow, sapped of shade
flat as a screen. Whipcrack, the morning air
without mercy, and the blinding white
knives lace across the road. If I did not have
this lush purple thought of you
what happened, and what will happen next,
I'd sever in the sweep
of that sharp scythe. Stay,
and cover my eyes, and let me
hold that wine-deep thought
against this stony air
a gentle shield against the sword of sun.


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#26


storm says

I intend no harm, but understand
that currents rage over and underneath me
the church of air that rolls from west to east
across your angled plains
and so I storm, pumped high by rising heat
from your sweet surface, rolling up to fall
an anvil, firming high above the skin
and despite myself descend
with thunder against you, and only hope
you'll stand up to the force.

My fingers are too harsh, and spark your fires
and sting like hornets in the spin of rage
but try to understand my tidal breath
and how your hills inspire me.


.
 
#27 here I come. comin' atcha.


.

discipline

learn
tai chi with its conscious dance of mind and limb:
gather clouds and sweep leg, arch into tiger
or phoenix spread wings. What if
I, behind and around this careful invocation
were to learn to dance along with cord
and collar, rope stretched like a ray between
the thickened length that circles back and hard
around your neck, and my defining hand,
the line pulled tight and high. What if
the scourge were tipping in that gentle sphere
the circles of our hands inclined to echo
mine with force against your peaceful pose
and your slow hands defining circles in the space
round rain and mountain, as you rise
on one foot, and make yourself a tree
under the lightning of the lash. Imagine,
dancer, how you can withstand
the counterpoint as you become
a standing tiger or a rooted horse. Imagine,
warrior, ignoring blows to stay in powered peace
and making pain a sun that fires in your hara point
a sense of good and god and stone,
a shining coil and thread of silver
through your deepened ground.



.
 
18

In purple shrouds she lay
not for her the white
to mask the face of beauty,
exquisite cheekbones
in death's pallor
flawless as a lover's kiss.
A queens serenity
amidst the flames of war
washed by the tears
of millions,
bathed silently in the heart
of one.
 
dirty one

Lion's tub

surely the sponges were starving
in that thin poverty soup tubbed up
as if it were a soul

or something beyond speculation
you could dunk a doughnut in

not near deep
enough for a pedicure

if you have two feet
 
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dirty two

In answer to what is your diet

a few dead trees worth of paper by noon
black coffee / water / antacid in that order
car exhaust / eau de homeless guy

whatever calls my sweet tooth:
a voice mapled and melting
sunlight spilled sidewalk

and that swallowed back tide
--mother's blood ocean
some days throw in also
stones of someone else's gall
 
sitting with loststar

So ponder with me
will you,
won't you.
Words come clear
when sitting in silence.

Sitting, sleeping
eyes open
while we kiss.
Kiss me, once again,
you fool.

Fool for love
without consequence,
suffer the consequences
of my desire
as I relish


ravishing you once again.
Yes. Again.
Let the storm roll
roll through your eyes.
Thunder crashing,

Or is that the book you were reading
before I felt the need
to taste you.
Tasting you,
sweet sex yielding to my tongue.

No way to say no
when gagged.
Shudder your emotion
once again.
Tears or not

on my pillow.
Just so long
as we find timeless
in time
for a moment.
 
1

raw umber and violent
skin paled before
you noticed, though you no longer
notice. i described my flesh,

and speaking of flesh, more
pounds lay on my lonely
belly that rounds out
its days in sweet

companionship. a new lover is stricken
sterile white, like a sick room —
motor-tremble white
for my healthy thighs, for this
impatient patient, ailing
for your curative pound of flesh.
 
Wespeak, welcome. That's a stellar beginning. Really evocative.

Foolio, Arnold, Annie, Dora, you really grace this thread with your work. I don't know about y'all, but as 'fun' as the regular 30 30 has been to do on occasion, I seem to really do well with just a teency bit less pressure. Maybe someday someone will get all excited and try both simultaneously.

lol.

And I'm about to finish, which means the sabbatical (or, hm, what did Homburg's Cock call it... snit fit?) is about to be over. Sometimes, just for my own satisfaction, I need to prove it all night. Again.

namaste. and yo, what up?

bj
 
#28

December

I.

In a stretch of glass and
steam, our breath
makes rags on the window.

My fingers strain against
the time, breaking across
fabric, stumbling on buttons.

She opens her hands against
my face. The moon turns
and looks at her.

Along the wheel
this white bone-light
is the ridge of a spine.

She echoes the blue
light of the new snow
in the edge of her mouth.

Surprising heat
in the crescent of jaw
like a slice of moon.


II

Stunned by the quiet snow
and the hot and cold of this
dim aquarium, all steam
and thick language, I talk
too much then, spilling
words all over your hands.

Drop them back, silently,
onto me, and listen instead
to the air, just outside
and the window, overlaid
with our reflections: face
moon, the shift of a hand,
ourselves on the screen.

Look. Look at you: glory
indigo, suddenly stone,
in the way a sphinx
stands, blue lit, impossible.

I hear myself say, Never
forget, here is this
moment, but all I know
or can remember
is mouth. God.
God, your mouth.



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#29

untitled


Off to the west, you settle yourself within a lit window,
the stem of a glass in four fingers. You drink one home, one word
pressing down on your own skin,dead quiet, still as snow.
Smooth rim on the lip of wine, you pace, speaking in one tongue,
this half glass the delicate audience in your careful hand.
Against the surface of days you preserve one secret thought,
light one candle sometimes in the office as an indulgence.
In comes Winter, dragging its fingers along your cool screen.
What I want is this. This is what I want.
Your cool screen doesn't hide you the way you'd like: In comes Winter
an indulgence in my everyday, and so I light one candle,
one secret thought about the way you'd press against the surface
in your careful hand, if I were to take, and drink this half glass,
speaking in one tongue, tasting your smooth rim on the lip.
Still as snow, I can hear your red daydreams pressing down,
one home, one word vibrates the tone through the stem of a glass.
A lit window holds you in like wine, off to the west.


.
 
# 30



Philosophy

That's your answer for everything,
he said that afternoon. The spoon
was tense in his coffee, like a curved spine
and he wouldn't look at me.

Feyerabend, Artaud,
these minds, these bright stars,
you'd fuck them, just open
your legs and you'd know
everything, suddenly?
Underneath his fingers
sugar marred the black
tabletop. I brushed it
out of his distraction.
I'd know, I think,
something new
about them, I said.
Something no one else knew.
The root. The essential.

He hated the answer. But he
was in the mood to hate
answers. And all it did
was make me want
to fuck him too. Not to help
but to understand.




.
 
# 31 yup.



Humbert Humbert

The angels themselves assist my sins.
What am I to do? They guide me
toward these alleys, the crooked paths,
the things one must not admit. How
can I help it? What am I to do?
Winged things, their hair
like seaweed, like silk, walk
to me and gently set
lights on those places
where I am to step. What god
made the sirens? What cruel goodness
seals me to the deepest ground
and opens my way?




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# 32



Dance

Seven
The slap that begins it
tells you your father is not your father
your mother is a wall, a wolf
a sharp wail
and you come loose, alone.

Six
Not everyone
is good. We love
hard, and our hands
are slapped. The bloodiest
monsters
are those we choose.

Five
No just god
reigns here, but
weavers
without mercy
make crooked lines.
Who deserves their days?
Who does not merit
their own fortune?

Four
Only Time stays
and carries you down
and away on the river.
Faces surface
and submerge. You keep
nothing for long.

Three
Each new fact
exposes new ignorance.
Fill the world full
of your mind, understand
all, and know
nothing, know
more of the empty space.
Knowing anything
reminds you of the rest.

Two
There is always
a greater force
against which you
cannot stand. You
will fall, somehow,
rise again
and fall.

One
Emptied of yourself
and helpless against
great forces, relinquish
your edges. Erase
thoe borders, become every bird
every suffering thing.
Shed your hottest tears
for the unimportant
Undone, undefined,
here
you may begin.




.
 
# 33


Tokudashi

You think it is the last veil
but it is only the first.

Ama-no-uzume saved them
when she lifted her skirts.
Sacred, shameless fool,
she knew what do to, and her
rude dance made the gods laugh.
Amaterasu was lured from the cave
and the world was saved.

Baubo bent like a whore
to make the women laugh
and cheered Demeter,
daughterless, wandering.
We feast, we strip our clothes
in gratitude. Winter ceased
and the earth opened
and we were saved.

Innanna shed her veils
at seven gates and brought
the young god back
to drive the green force from the grain
and feed us the thick summer.
Naked, she surrendered
and so we dance
her surrender, her return.

Now it is lit with red
and they come to the edge of the stage
no temple, but a hush
above the music. Look,
she says. I open. I save the world.
Every year, I save you.





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