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007 Challenge

Look how it runs.
It is beyond me and
The curtains of this room.

Water splashes in the tub.
If I smoked, this is where I would
Go out.

I don't smoke as much as garrot
The watchtower full of snipers.

Yes, snipers. All of them spinning like
Compasses. What they are looking for
Is our best chance.
 
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Sir Thomas Moore would not admit
his greatest fear: that the CHURCH is
political. (Already, the reader thinks,
this is not a poem. An author is not supposed

to tell the reader s/he's wrong but . . . )

Structure upon structure, a house
of cards lined up in a room where none of the windows
can be opened. Of course power begets power
invisibly with court sanction 9.999 . . . (here the elipses mean etcetera)
out of ten but it has always been simpler than decimals.

(How many tenses can one poem sustainably
employ, the reader would be excused
for asking.)

A good friend of mine said once "I hate elipses. Sucky
writers use elipses and I am not a sucky writer."

He was right. But only 99.999 . . .

Back to Thomas Moore. If he were living
in America, he'd shame the Koch Brothers for their tampering
because he would not recognize the GOVERNMENT
is Corporate.
 
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When the texture of sand is more noticable
than the taste of seaweed, dreams of sushi
yield to alarm. The first alarm questions
face up or face down? The second questions
indoor or outdoor? The third questions
daytime or nighttime? The fourth questions
clothes? Thus we rebuild, recover,

embarrassments shining on our faces
like sunburn on an oiled ass. We spit sand.
What was swallowed cannot be remedied
and despite the discomfort may even
prove beneficial, at the end.
 
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What I Mean When I Say Heart

Of course we are sacks of blood and bones and little villages
of functions that move and heal and die. I took 10th Grade
Biology like most sacks of blood in my socioeconomic quadrant.

Of course the heart is a miracle but only as much as the ear
or the eye or the ass. Possibly, had things gone a little differently,
we would draw stomachs on St. Valentine's day because

after all stomachs genuinely ache. After all both
stomachs and hearts push and pull, ship and receive.
The difference is only music: a preference for drum
over gurgle. The music is part of it, when I say heart

I mean music. And I mean give and take, the cycle
living in my fingers which bleed all over
the poems I wrote you. Please forgive (and this, too
means heart) forgive the blood ambiguating
letters I sent. Believe because I meant more
sincerely each :kiss:, each :heart:, my love rediscovered
at the edge of the cliff

where our hearts beat a little faster as we watched
the rocks at our toes tumble over.
 
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1: Paris, 15:00

Countess Olenska writes yet another letter
with clever turns of phrase she knows
will amuse

She smiles as she writes
and though I call her for tea she
does not hear

In a few seconds she will stop
and crumple the thin paper
between her still fine hands

These endless
Unsent thoughts I use
To kindle the evening fire
 
2: Middle School Phone Policy

Jessie’s phone vibrates a joyful dance
inside the backpack on the floor
Have a good day sweetie :)
flashes on the screen before there is a
chance to turn it off because
the teacher swoops down in a check
Like a flying monkey on a mission
NO phones in school!
your parents can come get it
before 4 pm today

Mom works late.
I don’t want to be a bother
Maybe if I walk real fast
She won’t worry
If I don’t call her on the way home

At the end of the school year
there is a single bright unclaimed phone
lying silent in the metal locker

It’s hard to call from the back of a milk carton.
 
3: From a Prison Window

It rains outside
elongated ovals glistening like
saline pearls chained single file
one by one they spill

drip drip drip

into the drainpipe of freedom
metered torture
of time passing

drip drip drip

this is why we lick stone walls
hoping to make a canyon
 
4: Dead friends on Facebook

I have three dead friends on Facebook.
Cancer. Traffic accident. Old age.
People leave comments on their timelines
like roses in a virtual mausoleum

They are not totally inactive.
Sometimes they still “like” things
Perhaps consciousness has transcended
into cyberspace
 
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5: Spell

Spells

As if it were not enough
that we endured tales of the Frog curse
whispered on dark nights
words chanted over a frog buried in the river bank
dying and putrefying as does the intended victim
stomach growing fat and taut shiny as the frog belly fills with maggots

As if that were not enough
we now had a love spell
or so we suspect
we imagine her name written
in spidery letters on a fly of paper
sealed in an amulet
somewhere on the singer’s body

He appeared on her doorstep
called out her name in concerts
materialized in bush taxis
met her at the end of a plank
over an open gutter
in a town she had never been to before

with that big smile and self assured swagger
that he would get her
one way or the other

It was the other way she was worried about.

So
To the marabout she shall go.
to check for magic, I need to see you naked
She gets up to leave
Then you must wash in your own pee for a week

She tells us this in complete seriousness

What can we do except compliment her
on her strange shampoo
and sniff her with raised eyebrows

After all. A spell is a spell.
 
6: Crise de Foie

My melancholy is perhaps best expressed
in French, although
the Portuguese have fado, but
I’m not much of a singer, and
the Irish have their poems, but
I can’t drink like I used to, so
that eliminates Russia as well, and
The rest of the world is too busy
feeding itself to worry about other existential issues
and so I come back to French

The protest of the liver - the Crise de Foie
is a close cousin to Cris de Foi - cries of faith
which are wailing away in my gut
like Oum Kalsoum on replay
So let me drink Portuguese tinto, Irish ale, Russian Vodka
dine on the finest France has to offer
Then drown those Cris, in a true Crise.
 
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7: Strange Economics

My floor is papered every morning
in coupons for fast food and custom closets
sandwiched between glossies
on job creation and drilling the Artic

The CVS clerk is appalled
when I refuse self-check out
and decline his offer for a discount card
But look, he says, you can attach it to your key chain

He shows me how he saved me
three dollars and slips it into
the petroleum based plastic bag
like a pusher giving a sample

I look at the red shiny baby card
and think about the red Coke cans
I used to hand over to African street kids
so they could make toys
 
I'm late, I'm late

Five o'clock in the morning look at blades
shouldering in front of me, the dreams
running two lengths ahead of me
(I am already late). Yes, the definite
article signifies indefinite possession. These
are American Dreams. Made in China.
 
001

Withdrawal

It starts
As a sickness,
Bile rises like the unwelcome tide,
I'm surrounded
And suffocated,
Parts of me are melting.
I reach out,
For you to neutralize me
Bring me back down to the sea,
Be my rock, my unforgiving base,
Just hold me, I'll pretend you mean it
When you say you'll always be there.
You are my drug
I needed you to leave,
Because I wasn't strong enough to say goodbye.
But
I'm lost,
I'm so lost with you,
But with you, I never was really found,
Just brief moments of blinding sunshine
Followed
By
Weeks
in your darkened cage-
Cold and empty, starved and lonely,
But at least then, I knew you'd come back some day.
Now there's just me,
And this sickness,
That makes my body shake.
 
This was really moving, RBS. Thank you. Also, great run, Desejo. Evocative and reaching on many levels.
 
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002

Thankyou Pandora :)

11:11

Eleven eleven,
Make a wish.
Eleven eleven,
Make him come back
And tell me
Just tell me those promises
Weren't fiction.
My mind is a series of movie clips
Replaying the tape of him,
The way he moves,
The sound of his voice
or that I trusted him
Against my better judgement.
Eleven eleven,
Make a wish
Hopeless wish,
For him to be kind
Like he said he'd always be
And how sweetly he held me
As I cried in trust that he'd always be there.
Eleven eleven,
Wish that
I could forget
Everything.
 
Nov 1

Selecting from Netflix, Crime Drama, BBC

The yard must eat
whether knuckles or inches, perhaps some modest
stand of grass. It must fill out
tweed until it gains
proper somber girth. Certainly
there is a ratio though the calculation requires half
the mathematicians pretending to be
screenwriters residing in London.
There is a ratio that balances
hunger to bones which,

once recorded, repeated, even if softly voiced,
reduces the screenwriter's task to geography.
Will the speech's several feet be
swamped or dry?
(Less critical for export)
will the vowel round under or
over the tongue? Will the o shove
forward its baby a, or duck
under the cape of its ghostly glottal,

or will it howl howl open
its hollow palate wide
protest at light's edge. Will it find
an opening between
the rush hour's proletariat
plosives stomping down tongue,
heads set against closed teeth like missionaries
determined to breech the red gates!
Articulate the first separateness! Launch the claim
of unique emphasis!
Royally ignore arc and pump
but choose to open your mouth--
the house that cradles your singular voice
within your yielding tongue.
 
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Riding the Carousel to Brooklyn

That time.......( that one time)
we went to the sea side
remember? I keep
thinking the edges of it,
the horses' solid manes, the round
platform spinning moderately
under pipe pumped steeds
up and down brass notes
ambered beyond shine
by 5500 Saturday
passengers to Happy.
 
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1

Forgive my hand
its rummage in your sweets

or my heart
or my heart

and it is not
just my dumb appendage

that never seems to understand
my life.

It is really
O, the snick of your mind,

the way it nestles into mine
like home.

I could live here,
happily. Happily.
 
Three The New A

In the upper right hand corner
of that dropped ceiling that makes
this Upper East Side office
affordable, I find the focus of my
inattention to the needle's press

toward

over

under

Finally into the stubborn
skinny, inevitable
give of vein, bite my lip and yes
hold my breath and yes
squeeze my thighs yes
the hemotologist
called me back
took my card
and welcomed me
grudgingly, in the spirit of
Thanksgiving,
into the black leather chair
and the poignant combination
of Benedryl and iron

which is my current
middle aged fix
after which I nod inoffensively
over a plate of asparagus omlette
waking to ask for Vitamin C
which the waiter cleverly translates
to Orange Juice.

I assure the Matrons who look after me
"doctor said" and shrug
the feather boa colored
after wormwood from moon skinned shoulders
to the cherrywood floor.
 
Four

The great chefs are men, but he is great
at other things, content to let me stir
butter 'till it clarifies and brown the air garlic
until each inhale mmmms out.
Tips stiffen in freezer's gape;
Brussels sprouts bump ice in the bath
before tenderly we slice,
his knee between mine and my knife
pairing bright emerald buds.

Sprouts carmelize in the wok, bubbling
birch syrup and plumping crans berry. He prepares
a tender mouth which swells when kneaded
expertly. All consumables sizzle and sigh
this preliminary giving of thanks.
 
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So early it is remarkable
to see shadows but they loom anyway

with each step I pound down
the urge to reverse run

this sensible path with each bite
I chew down the words missed

in sunshine whispers of prayer
I try not to listen for the scratch

of Bob Dylan on vinyl in doorways
steaming with coffee
 
Three phones ring when called at my fourth floor
rooms at the Morrison-Clark. It is historic, Smith
sonian down here. "Ya'll" they say as they direct us
to the snow globe Chinatown where wait two
silent machines ready to ding at our least pressing.
We lean into this evening early, practice our jokes
and confessions, take coffee liberally.

Tonight we drink to Jake as we continue
Project Sensitivity, sensitive to how friendships
wither without active tending. We are past
pruning. Now under low lamps,
we will whisper encouragements
and pour amber succor, cupped in the
pots of this Perfect World. We take what we want
On the Way Out, red gold threads lining the pockets
where we have thrust our hands.
 
Seven Percentages and Fractions

Bandages soften the pink so that
if I blur my eyes she looks a little
like a bunny which characterization
makes it easier to look right in her face
without flinching.

Seventy percent of her body I will learn
later, in the lounge, was burned. Bunny
sits quietly. Too quietly for partner share
time. Her hand does not easily raise. I keep
looking into her face and insist that a girl
answer this time: "What is the numerator
of unit fractions?" and finally a small lift
of stub that is enough. I point to her, careful
not to be to careful about it, and she answers
a small questioning "one?" Yes.
And the next time. And the time after. By 3pm,
Bunny can be heard even by the last row boys, one
of whom, with all his skin and all his wits and clean clothes,
perhaps a little extra weight, despairs that
no one likes him. Bunny smiles at me and at the children
who ignore her passing wheelchair
as an aid holds open the door for her
early dismissal.
 
1.0 Settlements

Settlements

Just as you believe that the Jordan river
Is deep and wide, hallelujah
Only to finally make that trip to Jerusalem
And find a pathetic trickle in the desert

Perhaps you are thinking that they mean
Small shelters, like squatters
Maybe, because it’s the holy land
You even think of them as tents

When you do make that trip to Jerusalem
You will see them hovering Goliath-like
Deep roots like weeds in the ground
blocking the light
That makes olive trees grow
 
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