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007 Challenge

Maybe I can manage this, even the dirty thirty escapes me right now, fucking life.

Missed Call

Heroin plays in the background,
the Velvet Underground is always
uplifting and depressing
chatting music and fucking symphonies.
An ignored cigarette goes out
thanks to new chemicals
added for the sake of less
drunk assholes lighting themselves on fire
with cancersticks long forgotten,
fast asleep. Or fast awake at midnight,
talking to her until the square
burns down to my knuckles
leaving early morning blisters
to remind me of our conversation.

That girl tells me I'm too busy to be the guy I was.
Let me tell you, the guy I was,
he wasn't so great.
Sure he had time, but he had debt
and he was in no place for her
to invade his private little microcosm
with her wit and brilliance
and those moments that make him giggle.
Fucking giggle, for fuck's fucking sake,
do you know what they'd say at work?

But I work, until all I can do is sleep
and ignore we and us until
we are both left craving another
value meal like McDinner.
I want to fill you up,
but I want to buy us a house, too,
not a temporary fix Happy Meal.
I want that Ecstatic Meal,
that Til-We're-Old-and-Gray Meal.
 
Cinque

darkerdreamer said:
Heroin plays in the background
Click to expand...

the velvet underground was always heroin,
ignored cigarettes, lost dates,
some wiry german girl turned into a guy
or a machine

in a walk-up coldwater flat
where we were nursing plants as paintings
and poems as tire tracks
or squeegee men

spraying grease on the windshield
of our somehow inauthentic
happy lives where we
now have a romping dog and a lawn

and marigolds and children
like in a comic book, four bright colors,
and we don't have to sweep
needles off the sidewalk

in front of the house,
anyway, at least when school is out
 
Tic tac toes,
I play on those perfect digits.
I let myself win.
I congratulate this little piggy
with a kiss.

Your hair is falling out
from stress and reality.
My expectations are high
and your expectations are
genuine, realistic. Cautious,
rightfully so.

This little piggy went to the market,
this little piggy gave herself away,
this little piggy jumped off a bridge,
this little piggy left the door open.

I'll huff and I'll puff, and let myself in,
and I divine that you're mine,
by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.
 
Sei

alopecia

my hair is leaving, lost
to genes and testosterone, drink
and poor diet, lack

of female companionship
or its surfeit,
maybe, but I want to know

of course if the estrangement is reversible
and if not
will you ever, darling, darling, swill me more?


.
 
Sette

Polyxena Speaks to Neoptolemus at Achilles' Grave
Nec tamen moriens adhuc
deponit animos; cecidit, ut Achilli gravem
factura terram, prona et irato impetu.
—Seneca: Troades

My time is come. Yes, earlier than most,
But war confuses fate. I wish I'd loved
More than my ravaged family, some young
Patrician, say, whose glibness caught my ear,
Whose cultured ways would flatter, who'd embrace
My thin, undeveloped form. I'd see through him,
Of course, quite easily, know my family's wealth
And power overruled my girlish charms.
In the calculus of his need, he'd want
My father more than me. Still, that's something
Most women would take to their grave. I'll take
The fond memory of an arrow-spiked heel
And one more enemy dead. I'm yet princess.
You cut. I'll stand. Do not hold my hair.


.
 
Tzara said:
Polyxena Speaks to Neoptolemus at Achilles' Grave
Nec tamen moriens adhuc
deponit animos; cecidit, ut Achilli gravem
factura terram, prona et irato impetu.
—Seneca: Troades

My time is come. Yes, earlier than most,
But war confuses fate. I wish I'd loved
More than my ravaged family, some young
Patrician, say, whose glibness caught my ear,
Whose cultured ways would flatter, who'd embrace
My thin, undeveloped form. I'd see through him,
Of course, quite easily, know my family's wealth
And power overruled my girlish charms.
In the calculus of his need, he'd want
My father more than me. Still, that's something
Most women would take to their grave. I'll take
The fond memory of an arrow-spiked heel
And one more enemy dead. I'm yet princess.
You cut. I'll stand. Do not hold my hair.


.
Click to expand...

It took some Googling on my part, but it was well worth the effort. The last two lines had an incredible dramatic effect. I was spent, but alive unlike Polyxena.
 
greenmountaineer said:
It took some Googling on my part, but it was well worth the effort. The last two lines had an incredible dramatic effect. I was spent, but alive unlike Polyxena.
Click to expand...
Thank you, GM. It's a subject I rewrite periodically, because it resonates with me. I keep trying to write it how I feel it.

Better this time, over previous times, though still not right.

Thanks for your comment.
 
1

Fright

is not eyes
of any color, or a voice,
however stern. Fright is that alien

surface where you
are not and will never be

even when I've apologized
and drawn your bath and put flowers
around the edge of your fertility.

Fright

is that that you have left,
reasonably, carefully picking up your things
and erasing my number
from your phone, from your life

like a line on your resume
for a job you once had
that didn't work out

and wasn't something you wanted to do,


like, anyway.


.
 
Last edited:
2

Count to Four

before you complain about anything I've painted
on the door of your conscience:
sealant, graffiti, oaths, a nice
clean coat of yellow,
or orange, of blue, perhaps that dark red shade
that reminds me of your knotty hair
held in my fist, as if that would somehow work
to subjugate you. I don't want you to kneel.
Not exactly. Just give in,
give in to me, though I know you won't.

I do not want you blonde. I just don't.


.
 
Six

Sleepwalking last night I peeled
off my clothes and pressed
against the door of my family's
house. The wood did not give
for my shoulder, my knee. My breasts
compressed between the dark oak
and my urgent body. I woke
hearing my own voice reverse
gulping help, help. My suddenly
capable fingers found the knob to turn
so I stood bare in night air on the threshold
for a long minute remembering,
the who/how/where which
slid into my ears like differently shaped
blocks in a sorting toy until
I rattled into awareness
that I was naked in Kansas
trying to come to you/at
you haunting you from miles
miles miles away.

Or maybe I just had to pee.
 
Last edited:
3

Feral

Sometimes tenderness is not
what either of you want. That quiet
inward curl of arms and psyches
around the campfire that is love
can be too sticky, too sweet,
the way that marshmallows
end up cloying when you toast
the whole damn bag. Sometimes
I need to be savage, armed
with just a thick and sharpened stick,
swinging through the jungle,
stalking my not-unwary prey
as she pads silently through the leaves
in a Maureen O'Sullivan shift.
I know—Me Tarzan, you Jane—OK?

Where'd you think Boy came from, anyway?


.
 
4

On Being Asked Do I Look Fat in These Jeans?

You slow my walk
and rearrange those parts that
were quite quiet

and fine in their sloth
before you tried
on those skinny-legged things. So

non, ma chérie.
It's only me
now straining at some denim seams.


.
 
Meditation on Ice Cream

Be is the finale of seems
when concupiscent curds
release their vapor in an icy cup
of dreams while lusty
wenches will the day
in froth of silk and glaze
of gay--

the gold and rose
of yesterday, the baby's breath,
the news is nothing

more to say than dressers
are a curious shape,
missing a knob, recepticles
for pillowcase embroidered
with the praying hands
that cannot hold December's
breadth then
in the denouement
of if.
 
PandoraGlitters said:
Really interesting wordplay, Ange. Good to see you here.
Click to expand...

Thank you mon cherie ami. :)

My scribble probably makes much more sense if you read this first. I was reading it yesterday and felt it was the first time I really felt its emotional power. I think that is the strength of Stevens' poem: so metaphoric and mysterious that you can fill in the blanks much as you wish, and yet very clear in its theme.

:kiss:

PS I was rather hoping Swirly might show up and give me some feedback because I know she loves Wallace Stevens, but she didn't. Eh bien...
 
5

Angeline said:
Meditation on Ice Cream
Click to expand...
Elegy for Vanilla

Pack the body in ice and salt;
Mere chill no longer freezes her.
It's under earth where she should melt,
So should we all. Her sepulchre

Is gray in flavor, texture, bite,
As was her choice in clothes and men.
Her winding sheet for Afterlife?
Not white, but dun. And so, amen.


.
 
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6

Fault

Today my son messes up his life
like an afterthought, for an appointment missed
because he overslept when God
was talking about morals
and the sanctity of life.
When he finally rose,
he ate some cereal and pizza,
played Halo all afternoon,
till his thumbs just ached, ached,
walked outside and changed our lives.
Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix,
ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.


.
 
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