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007 Challenge

3

Pantoum, Mostly About Me,
with Some Few Lines Concerning You

I guess it’s just I’m not imaginative.
I’m plain in what I say, but sometimes shy.
I’m often dense, but have a lot to give.
I’m self-obsessed (these lines all start with “I”).

I’m plain in what I say, but sometimes shy.
It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to talk—
I’m self-obsessed (my lines all start with “I”).
I’m open to a different kind of squawk.

It isn’t that I wouldn’t like to talk,
I’d drape words on you. Bracelets, if I could.
I’m open to a different kind of squawk.
I think I’ll likely be misunderstood.

I’d drape words on you. Bracelets, if I could.
I’m often dense, but have a lot to give.
I think I’ll likely be misunderstood.
I guess it’s just I’m not imaginative.
 
005 (late)

Too Much Crime Drama Triolet

Sadistic motherfucker tries
tries to kill small birds
and pulls the wings from flies.
Sadistic mother, fucker tries
to please you up in paradise.
You made him out of turds.
Sadistic mother fucker tries,
tries to kill small birds.
 
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006 (late)

Last Night at the Bowery Poetry Club

Walt Whitman presides in Nite Brite glory
for one last time over the Urbana Open Mic
flooded by regular irregulars. Even the air
above our heads is frenzied with buzz
blitz, microphone vows that "This
is new shit." New is gold, here--newly
minted twenty years old but shining
with cultural memory and investigation and
threadbare cotton on bronzes of skins
for the last meet, the last beat of
The Bowery Poetry Club.

Next week it will rennovate into one of those
tasteful cabarets pretending strip tease
respectability for those too tired
to look for parking at Larry Flynt's.

Tonight, tonight the fingers splay around
Pabst Blue Ribbons, ipads, notebooks,
Taylor Mali's smartphone bedecked
in exotic hardwoods and deep fonted
paper. Clap for that. Or aw that jaw
when confronted with what you would
steal from yourself if your body were left
unconspicuously unlocked or you could pry
the cage open. Open mouths laugh,
jeer, reply to the mic the open microphone.
The powerful hush after washes each
of us in laughing dog villages of joy.
 
Occupy Paradise Renga

Week 1, Poem 1

OCCUPY PARADISE RENGA

What would you do with
seventy-two virgins? Instead,
start with this girl here.

Then we can all watch
to see how you will treat her.
We are the seventy-one.
 
Beatrice In Paradise

Week 1, Poem 2


BEATRICE IN PARADISE

They only met twice, but that was enough.
She was the woman he loved forever.
She died young. Would he meet her in heaven?

Yes. She stood in the lobby, his tour guide.
He knew her at once. But if she knew him
she gave no indication. They must wait,

she said, for other tourists to join them.
But no one came. He inwardly rejoiced.
After so many years, to be alone with her!

They moved on. Only then did she whisper,
You are that boy that always stared at me.
I avoided you, and then I married.

Now you may look all you please. The tour
will last one hour, walking together through
all the Paradise you will ever know.
 
007 (late)

two finger key in your hand
you were careful as your toes
trampled my hip huggers

after you felt the
keys in my pocket
your tender foot kicked
the jangle bowling over blue windex
they use for tampon commercials

then you bowed deep to nibble sweet
mandarin from Wu Hu
 
5

Grand Jeté

A dancer must throw herself
into the void and trust
she will land, lightly and with grace,
on the other foot

Perhaps more difficult
for her confidence is the "Giselle" lift

Her partner must be strong enough
to control her body,
steady her form
over his head
But

when it is executed just right,
the woman appears to fly
 
6

match

like chess, we play
a game of careful movement
that always ends in mate
or resignation
 
7 and done.

Siegfried’s Last Words

I think it was her bracelets,
how cold they were against my hips
when we joined.

Afterwards, I thought about them,
those loose hoops of silver.
I thought about their sound,

their rhythmic clink, clink, clink,
so like the forging of the sword
I slew Fafner with.

Another woman (or the same?) now waits,
uncarefully unguarded,
poised

among the Valkyries.
My love is fierce, but tired. Doomed, I'd say.
Please play my funeral march in tune.
 
1. As If

If I ponder the neuron light
that flits along paths
strewn with random matter
as if my choices were organized;
as if there were a plan
designed in madness.
How could it turn out right,

behind the acts determined
by where the light shine
lingers, and photon stimulation
illuminates a glitter
sparking deep within a smile?
As if happiness could be created
within biology and physics.

As if a madman could make it work.
 
2. Cold River Vignette #1

Pelicans raft on the eddy side
of a sandbar, dining on fingerlings
served by currents clad in green
bottomed wash and crystal
ripples that tinkle like fine wine
glasses and fashionable chartreuse
china and then the herons, maitres
du service, at this head water cafe,
bow and spread their wings in snooty
farewell; the table for twelve, lousy
tippers all, had stayed too long.
 
3. On The Occassion Of A Conversation With My Dog

Happy yips hello
before the door opens
he's bent in half
with every wag

I know you want to swim,
yes. Don't look at me
like that, changing
is important.

The lead gets nudged
by panting dog
so with clip and tugs
around the block

And then! O' glorious
then! We get in the car
and I know, you smell
the lake. And yes, we swim!

PandoraGlitters said:
Welcome back, Carrie! Great to read your poems, again.
Click to expand...
Thank you, Dora. I wasn't really gone, just too lazy to post. :) I seem to be writing, but right now it's labour, I'm sure you can tell how forced the writing is. I'll get it back. Just need to do it every day.
 
4. There Are No Poems Without It

Without it you're no where.
This title cannot be seen.
I'll bet you have no idea
just what I mean.

You think and you wonder
what I'm on about.
You just can't discover
what you can't do without.

It's up there in the heading
what's missing right here
I want you to tell me
the absent thing, dear.

So, don't fuss and don't get
yourself all riled and bent 'round
you'll never decipher
what's not lost nor found.

This verse is a riddle
and I'm willing to say
that because I'm so tired
I won't answer today

If you return here tomorrow
Maybe I'll reveal
the absent contender
or not, depends how I feel :D
 
The night they hung the moon
* *In the tree
I saw it's feet kicking like a
* *Fish flipping on a dry dock.
A half-moon of a clipped toenail.

I returned.*

The old man was in the neighbor's
* *House playing their piano
His legs pumping the pedals*
* *Like he was in a paddle boat.

I laughed.

Down on Shotgun, I heard the mailman's
* *Scooter backfire. I ran down the drive.
Where I opened the mailbox, where I*
* * Was swallowed whole by Bees.
 
The night they hung the moon
In the tree
I saw it's feet kicking like a
Fish flipping on a dry dock.
A half-moon of a clipped toenail.

I returned.

The old man was in the neighbor's
House playing their piano
His legs pumping the pedals
Like he was in a paddle boat.

I laughed.

Down on Shotgun, I heard the mailman's
Scooter backfire. I ran down the drive.
Where I opened the mailbox, where I
Was swallowed whole by Bees.
 
001

The postman did not carry me; I clung
to the wing of a night bird

over the greening gray,
skating over state lines
and medians,
over treetops, through branches

diving down and down bee
lining your driveway.

Here the segue to interior
(skip the sofa)
where we slid into one another--
honey into beeswax.
 
5. Lament of Soles

Sausage toes were never
my favourite amuse bouche
when they ache and scream
obsenities at my arches

Which are by no means at fault
I have to admit - mea culpa
I have a deathwish, maybe?
I dunno, but I ache in my feet

My knees are grumbling
but so is my bank account
so I gotta say "Shut UP"
and return to work, poor soles.
champagne1982 said:
If you return here tomorrow
Maybe I'll reveal
the absent contender
or not, depends how I feel :D
Click to expand...
The letter "P"
 
Paradise Case File

Week 1, Poem 3

PARADISE CASE FILE

We only know from the paintings
but a picture is worth a thousand etc.
and to me it looks like they hate each other.

Even before the fall, they are wary and tense.
They had no choice, the marriage was arranged,
the garden was planted, the one best tree forbidden.

And by the time she came along, even the beasts
had gotten all their names. Was she wrong to think
that naming the animals should be a couple decision?

Another mistake: moving into his place.
Much better to have shopped around together
to find somewhere that they both could have loved.

There they stand, face to face, left and right,
shy as two boxers who size each other up
wondering how to start, deciding what to hit first.
 
1

Jigsaw Bed

It comes apart, she says,
like a puzzle.

He nods and wonders
quite where she would fit
in the tiling of his life.
Is she a corner, an edge
that helps define the image?
A quiet piece that fills
dark into background?

He thinks most likely
she is the face, the gown,
of Spring in Primavera—
not Venus (too haughty,
too central), more beautiful
than even the goddess
simply by being human. Five

or six tiles out of a thousand,
yet hers are the ones
he lingers over last.
 
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6. In Which I Run Out of Things To Write

An unwilling Erato
denies my libido access
to my finger tips and thus
no erotic poetry
will grace this place
today, tomorrow perhaps
but arousal of a muse
sometimes takes more
than a clever tickle of fingers
 
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