007 Challenge

One of us will wreathe the other
seed the breath and breathe another,
bud, blossom, and bloom
pass into another's arms

One of us will leave the other
cede the spread and shed a lover,
sow, scatter, and save
pass into another's arms
 
In an attempt to jumpstart...

Week 1, Poem 1: Muse-Ickally Challenged

When does this hiding become sought
or even briefly looking
around sharp corners and gentle
bends under pressure?
I wouldn't say, just curiouser
and curiouser, said Alice.

My bones know I need to stop
allowing my failure
permission to bother over poems
not penned by vellum fibres
or even pixels on a screen.

Don't keep it from my frontal lobe
conciousness can be higher
but only if it slips free of the medulla
or like a clever milk snake,
from deep inside the lizard brain.
 
Wonderful start, Bflagsst and Champagne. Bflagsst, I really enjoyed the repetition and internal rhymes of your poem. Quite lovely. And Champ, I loved the clever milk snake image. Look forward to reading more. :rose::rose:
 
2

My unlisted mourning mistress,
conquering floodtide
and the floodlit essence
of my unimpeachable presence;
my one and only calculated illusion,
that which cossets and coddles
like a crucifix



Thanks, PandoraG.
 
3

With less latitude, I won't meander
or have the ability to mumble,
my secret epithets of you
to the common crowd,

With freedom, I'll find my focus,
and from the periphery fawn about
the hereabout hallowed ground
which you plant your feet
 
Last edited:
1- 1 - She Has This Boyfriend... (For Jacque)

...and he does not quite bring her flowers.
No boring gestures, fistfuls-of-forget-me,
He brings her bouquets of grenades. She's playing love-me,
love-me-not, pulling pins with her teeth and spitting
bright wires into the gutter, remarking on the taste of cordite,
it's like jonquils, bass-voiced blue and inevitable.

I can't watch.
 
Last edited:
1- 2 The Devil Is not A Fan Of Sarcasm,

but he really likes Tetris.

He takes up a polite amount of space on the couch,
never seems to quite smoke all of your pot.
His beeper goes off constantly and you're a little glad
he doesn't have a cellphone, though you're always a little certain
that he's phoning Hell from your kitchen.

The voice that slides in and out of the blips and beeps is pretty, but sad,
as if he is overly used to watching things twist and fall,
or maybe he's just too stoned to be really happy, or even there at all.

"Of all the ways you have invented to lie,
I enjoy sarcasm the least.
It lacks any sense of elegance," and you're not sure
where this is going, but it's the first time,
since he turned on the Nintendo, you've been uncomfortable.

You'd expect him to be more off than
he is, a collection of almosts;
burnt cookies, the wrong puzzle piece dropping from a black sky,
an empty altar on wedding day, yet it is only his average
which is remarkable, and sometimes his weed.

"I am not saying it has no use to me, professionally,
I simply mean I prefer not to do it.
Nero loved sarcasm, you know. I liked him alright."
You wish his statements carried a little more
weight, but he's zonked out on whatever urban foolishness
he has pulled bright from his pocket.
He's always glib when he's high.
You don't really like hearing about his friends, anyway.

The blocks have been piling up slowly, forgotten,
one long stack reaching for the empty above.

"Maybe it's only a humorous misdirection,
heck, maybe it's sometimes well-intended,
but misdirection and lying are fairly close friends,
and what's my driveway paved with, anyway?
The truth? I love these little technicalities."
He grins a mouthful of teeth that you wish weren't
so neat, so gleaming. Sane looking teeth,
that have no business being close to a tongue.

"It's the good lies I cherish."

He starts a new game, and now the pieces are burning
towards the bottom of the screen.
"An elegant lie is creative. An elegant lie is art,
my friend. It's spun fucking sugar snowflakes
in all the faceted flies' eyes winking at you
from inside a house of cards," Which is gross,
and mixed up, but he loves that sort of thing.
(Plus, he's the devil, so you try not to correct his English.)
His voice picks up smoke as he rolls on,
talking faster all the time.
He's playing without looking.

"When all of the gears are really screaming,
when you've laid out the right pattern of yes
and no, when you take whatever comes and spin it neat
into your net," here, he stops, shaking his head.

"I mean, look at you. You actually think I like being stoned."






(who fucking knows? it's four am. this is what I think about when I play tetris. I don't smoke pot. But the devil would.)
 
4

You are a fraction
of the desert
drenched in sweat,
an element
of the uncorrupted,
naked from my bed.
 
5

A prayer for the praiseworthy,
who laugh with hypoxic lips,
who break the hammer
from firing pin,

An armistice for the wounded,
who've gone and borne the word,
all in a language, no more lyric
than your own.
 
How wonderful to pop in and find these poems from you three. I'm rapt and reading a second time.
 
Last edited:
6

Spread the leaves
around the yard

like a woman wed
she's hand at hem

dangling summer toes
as I carry her to bed,

we two berries
formed on one stem

-----------------------

I obssessed over this poem last night, whether it should be "she's hand at hem" and "carry her to bed" or as is. Any opinions would be welcomed. Tomorrow is number seven, I want it to be the best of the seven. I'm gonna stay up past my bedtime to make sure.
 
Last edited:
Week 1, Poem 2

Sleepy Time

Dreams follow close on toss and turn to wake
a thought from memory; a wish that never sleeps
for fear it would be lost in the fugue of muted
lullabye to regret the passage from mind
in the morning when once exhaustion forced head
and pillow into a flirtation with an inevitable end.
 
Spread the leaves
around the yard

like a woman wed
hand at hem

dangling summer toes
as I carry her to bed,

we two berries
formed on one stem

-----------------------

I obssessed over this poem last night, whether it should be "she's hand at hem" and "carry her to bed" or as is. Any opinions would be welcomed. Tomorrow is number seven, I want it to be the best of the seven. I'm gonna stay up past my bedtime to make sure.

I like "She's hand at hem" better because without the pronoun, it sounds like she was wed "hand at hem," and I can't imagine what that might mean--she was wed holding up the hem of her dress? (See what I mean?) When you add the pronoun you get a nice, clear image of this woman being carried, holding the hem of her dress and her toes dangling.

It's a really good poem. I love the last two lines especially.

ETA: And I'd lose the pronoun in the second place ("as I carry her..."), and just say "carry her to bed." You don't need the pronoun there, imo, so better to not use it. I'm still confused about how a woman wed is like leaves spread around a yard. I'd put something in there to connect the ideas better (if I'm understanding this poem correctly), like maybe use the word "lace" or something to suggest some aspect of a wedding.
 
Last edited:
...

It's a really good poem. I love the last two lines especially.

ETA: And I'd lose the pronoun in the second place ("as I carry her..."), and just say "carry her to bed." You don't need the pronoun there, imo, so better to not use it. I'm still confused about how a woman wed is like leaves spread around a yard. I'd put something in there to connect the ideas better (if I'm understanding this poem correctly), like maybe use the word "lace" or something to suggest some aspect of a wedding.

Thanks, Angeline. I'll probably go with both of your suggestions if I ever show anyone else. The last two lines are good because:

"So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition."

"Two lovely berries moulded on one stem."

I'm jocking Shakey for the last two lines, but the whole thing was like a jumble of that and some songs, summer weather in fall, picking fall berries etc. like a woman wed/she's hand at hem -- is what I want to read in a poem, and the last berry lines were what I think my gf would like in a poem. It's disjointed but that's cuz the title gives the form and I didn't include it.
 
Thanks, Angeline. I'll probably go with both of your suggestions if I ever show anyone else. The last two lines are good because:

"So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition."

"Two lovely berries moulded on one stem."

I'm jocking Shakey for the last two lines, but the whole thing was like a jumble of that and some songs, summer weather in fall, picking fall berries etc. like a woman wed/she's hand at hem -- is what I want to read in a poem, and the last berry lines were what I think my gf would like in a poem. It's disjointed but that's cuz the title gives the form and I didn't include it.

Darn I'm losing my touch: I did not get the WS reference at all. I do that quite a bit in my poems, too, riff on a famous poet that I love. The references are usually pretty obscure and in there for my amusement.

The berry lines are good no matter what. I say this as a poet AND a girlfriend. :D
 
Week 3 Addendum

This is a late poem 7.

All of the drawers are pulled out
to exhibit stacks of print and plain
blouses, bras, and what to say
here? If I say panties it is going
to be one sort of poem and if I say

underwear, another sort. If I mention
whites it could go all deconstructionist on me.
Really, there's a reason we're warned
against hanging our laundry, evocative shells
of the body. It's easy to be dispassionate
when sorting, folding. Hanging, however

requires good posture lest one's hems
pool to mud. Like most I know, I go
electric but for the odd design--the one
I am saving for the first day in San Francisco.
When it dries, I will fold
the sheer taupe and place it on top
of packed stacks. Now writing
like undeveloped squares of film
dates me, so I won't. I've gone electric

and digital. In fact I'm becoming
a shell collector, overly fond
of reflections. Sometimes they flutter
from my arms like tinsel in wind and sometimes
I pull them, heavy on rollers behind me.
 
Last edited:
7

In an effort to mend
the beat beneath your breast
you made me promise to

"Come back to me in the end,
walk me to the stable,
bring my mare an apple,
taken from my mother's table."

I said I'd miss the plucky girl,
if you grew up more womanly,
you said:

"Come back to me when
birds meet autumn at its end,
come back to me without a word,
as the boy I remember, as a man."

I said I'd find you in the stable,
bring your mare an apple,
then take you on your mother's table.
 
Last edited:
Beautiful seventh poem, bfflagst, and wonderful run. I love your use of repetition and how you didn't repeat find you in the end but left it hanging there, still evocative. The switch from innocent to sexy there heightened the focus on the missing years for me. I've really enjoyed reading the poems you posted here.
 
Thanks, PG. Number seven was the most forced, it was two different poems that I ended up running together. Pretty much all of them I wrote the day I posted, which I think was the point of the exercise. I'll try another seven in the future, but I didn't really like how it felt the last two days. I'll probably re-write the last one into two poems, some of the lines are too sappy. I had these good lines all lined up, I just couldn't put them together right. Boohoo.
 
This is a late poem 7.

...Hanging, however

requires good posture lest one's hems
pool to mud.

I really like hem lines, not sure why. Could you explain the hems pooling to mud? interests me. I also really like your 'dispassionate' line, I probably like everything thru 'odd design', then it gets spotty for me. I didn't like 'deconstructionist' though, it's one of those words that has probably sounded dated forever. I do like poems about writing poems, they're notoriously difficult to pull off, alot like songs about writing songs.
 
Could you explain the hems pooling to mud? interests me.

If a dress is hung too low, the hem drags in the dirt. When the dirt becomes wet from the clothing, the hem is in mud.

Thank you for reading and commenting on the poem, bfflagsst. :rose:
 
poem 8 of 7, addendum

Our day was headed toward its evening,
and I thought I had discerned your meaning,
so I told you how you'd still make me yearn
at twenty-four, thirty, and forty,

But when my hands began to pry,
you gave me the dirty orb, or 'eye',
like I was one of Dickens' poor,
and you, Marley
 
Last edited:
Week 4 poem 1

it is hard to convince a poet
some mysteries must be seen
in plain day,
roots teased apart
with one's own two hands

even when lined to long straps
words cannot pull weeds from the garden
or hold water on the train

this is not a metaphor it is my hand
this is not a metaphor it is my hand
 
Last edited:
I really like hem lines, not sure why. Could you explain the hems pooling to mud? interests me. I also really like your 'dispassionate' line, I probably like everything thru 'odd design', then it gets spotty for me. I didn't like 'deconstructionist' though, it's one of those words that has probably sounded dated forever. I do like poems about writing poems, they're notoriously difficult to pull off, alot like songs about writing songs.

I saw you had a hem line in one of your recent poems, too. Hem is a lovely word--strikes a clear note in the palate.

ETA: Up for another week? I'm back for another try.

ETA 2: I didn't read your hem poem until after I'd written mine so mine wasn't a reference, honest. :) Yours is so gorgeous. It's just a funny/nice style thing that our diction runs a little similar at times.
 
Last edited:
Week 4, poem 2

My hair falls to the table
as I rub in wax to try to seal
the sun in that your poem
spilled over it.
 
Back
Top