007 Challenge

001

Dishes piled in rinsed stacks
over the week, ignored because

there is takeout, because
it is possible to play 20 simultaneous games of Words with Friends, because
the cat needs attention, because
Syria is rising up in the New York Times, because
it is cool enough to ride in the park, because
the phone rings and a real person has called.

Dishes piled in rinsed stacks
until this morning when because
was the last play and I used
all of my letters.
 
Here Comes Everybody

"Death and Propane", the new scent.
THE reason smoking was banned on planes.
Not because having all the non-smokers sit up front
Allowed the pro-smokers to hoot actually settled anything!

As it is.
How it goes.
There we were.
How's the clown?

Friday, flat as a pan.
Eric Dolphy? What year are you coming from?
You remind me of someone.
Let's talk later?

In my best morning voice,
I throw the sonnet into reverse
and look over my shoulder backing over
whatever sestina was trying for my attention.

I'm in the cab now,
jottings collecting at an end.
 
I think this should be titled something alluding to a cabdriver. Taxi?

MicahWh__oo? said:
In my best morning voice,
I throw the sonnet into reverse
and look over my shoulder backing over
whatever sestina was trying for my attention.

I'm in the cab now,
jottings collecting at an end.
 
002

blooms in the desert stand
pointing their red balloons
at airbrushed sky

their small leaks voicing
pluck me up and take me
in bowls of water

in clear need of market
analysis for only profiteers
bring fishbowls to the desert
 
Thrush

Reunion is inevitable. The bus pulls away from the curb.
The corrida is up the street here.
The crowd is throwing their arms up
as the matador, drawn up, looks
down the length of his sword,
leaving only the estocada.

The Bull, whose shoulders are balled,
is low in his stance. The crowd wants connection
-Inspiration. El Toro wants none of that for you.

He is acting on your behalf. He is no one's messenger.
The crowd blinks.

The bull is pulled away by the hooks in his shoulder.
The toreador limps away clapping to himself in an absent way.
having seen the moment slip his noose.
 
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xx

There is a hierarchy here, an order to this tent.

The father of seven girls is a King.
He sits on his deck throne.

We eat the cobbed corn together silently,
Loudly starving for attention.

Life is a pop up camper.
 
Tight poem, STF. That's a lotta girls. I get rather possessive over my cob. Guess we would need different campers! :) Meet you at the lake, though.
There is a dynamic that I am trying to find the words for. Thanks for the compliment. I think I will try to write tight more often. I hesitated on this one.
 
xxx

The men tinker around metal rectangles,
And collect the nights burnables-

The women wash decks,
And chop the days vegetables for salads.

There is iced alcohol in those water bottles,
And everyone shows up at dinnertime.

I soberly watch the interaction,
And toast the marshmallow life.
 
[Untitled]

"So, it is"
With that I spin in Love.
Like the old man, bent, smiling
stepping into the cart.
Children laughing at this audacity,
his verve! He shoves off.

As he mounts, he knows no wisdom covers this:
His latest toast to what is Good, Cheerful, Unadorned.
He looks over shoulder at the circle below him.
They are waving, racing along the track.

He turns forward to see the very top. Where his descent will begin.
What has he won to be here? What services rendered? No matter.
He lights a cigarette.

It's inevitable. At the peak, he will see for miles.
The horse track, the glittering scales of the bay,
The car lot filled on this Saturday morning.
He wishes he could pause
When gravity claims it's Angel
and brings him home.
 
xxxx

The tool box is stuffed with socks
And pressed work uniforms-
It is a panty-less summer.

The wash waits—
While we take salt water baths,
And showers at the campground.
 
xxxxx

The hair tangled the dirty blonde brain-
And fair eyes don’t match the black eyeliner,

But it doesn’t matter.

The sticky summer sugared fingers,
And earthy dirt feet are his pleasure.

The mosquito bites have scabbed over
And I am kissing the wounds

With candy coated lips.
 
Brazilian Wax

I will be coming in on
The small strip you
Have kept lit
with candles in wine bottles.

I have a guitar for a heart
That I have kept in it's exploded state
Releasing all bregas, the forrós, the tropicalias!

The pews have emptied out, but there is still the clapping
That I hear when I am walking with the sunlight that
Snaps off the concrete holding it's hands out towards me
Inviting me to join.
 
003

Now is the season
of big boats in Hudson harbors
lowing Norwegian love songs
to the chocolate dotted Caribbe.
We welcome this with flags and
umbrellas not because
we are afraid of rain but as
greeting from the sun
to the boats, the bicyclers the
travelers who come
sink into the busy whirl
at the top of the blender.

Hold on to me. I am a berry
small enough to float
us both above the blades.
 
Intuit


"Little Jet began his pilgrimage..."

I will take it from here.
Years later, in a motel, in
The motel
With the manners that can
Best described as "Arabic"

"He climbed to the top of a column
At night, where he left his name."

He sat on the edge of the spring-loaded bed
Thinking he was once again repeating himself.
The shower was running. All the water gone.

"He crossed the mountains, walked
Past the locked monestaries"

Searching to coin a phrase
He dropped his hands and walked
To the window.

"Little Jet saw the blue waters over
The hills on a morning that saw him
Decide he would go by ship."

It was such a silly thing. Watching the
Snow covered parking lot. He smiled.

"I will write home. Tell them everything"
 
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6

Summers homeless days tumble,
Like the weeds in my hair,
That have not been pulled.

I missed the poem day again.

To fix this thistle gone wild
That murdered all the flowers
In the garden of my life,

I might have to shave my head.
 
004

The birthday. The
birth day revisited after
death of the born. It roars
from its calendar cage, last
one on the page. July
ends in red eyed rage at a system
that killed this woman
held her and killed her.
It was the HIV.
It was the cancer.
It was Texas.
It was cocaine

still available in for-profit prison
but no clean needles and no
doctors. Five years
became life
stolen from my mother
over $15 worth of cocaine
scraped off the back seat
of a borrowed car.

Now it is August
and my eyes close
out the red, trying again
to green.
 
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Girl With Scarf And Eiffel Tower

4th poem of 7

PHOTOGRAPH OF GIRL WITH SCARF & EIFFEL TOWER

French men will adore the shape of your mouth,
and your arms make them think of their sisters.

For all that you might be at home,
they have better words for it here:

poète, veuve trop jeune, divorcée,
artiste, professeur, perdus et trouvés.


You should have been born here
You have never looked less lost.
 
1

Quelques commentaires d'un saucier
La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable Bonheur
—Auguste Escoffier


1: Béchamel

....I take too much pleasure in scalding
....the milk, its whip
....into the shy flour and butter,
....the resulting rue.


2: Espagnole

....Reduce over hours,
....skim, skim
....stock, flower, butter,
....her brown and opened bones,
....roots, meat.

....Season to taste.


3: Hollandaise

....requires skill and knowledge
....to prepare and hold,
....to be smooth
....and brook no hint of separation.

....All methods require constant agitation
....with a wire whisk—
....off-heat until light and frothy.

....Constant agitation. Make a note.

....Finally, a touch of butter
....clarifies.
 
2

My Artificial French

Je dis
«Puis-je utiliser tu»?

and am forced to wonder if I've asked
May I clean your teeth? or

Are you unwell? or
Your sadness becomes you like the morning of an ambulance. Does it not?

Perhaps, if we have to hit each other with fish,
we should do so in English—

smack each other properly
with plain Dover sole.
 
005

This whole page is a keeper! Marvelous work, poets. I am hungry and ready to board a steamer for Paris!

Apollonian

No need to cab it, we are Here
at the brightest star on 125th.
My charges and I hustle
tickets up flights and wink
back at Red Foxx climbing
up to the upper mezz
excited and dancing already
to the Amateur Night Band.

Cheers, claps, wild singing along her
8-year-old daughter and me, too,
humming, waiting our chance
to boo! Boo! Bring the dancing
executioner in blue but no he appears
as James Brown tap dancing across
the Apollo stage with mock kicks
aimed at the retreating rapper
who will leave for Philly with the honor
of that shoeprint in his pocket
(for how many people can say
they were booed off stage
at the Apollo? Is that not a sign
of a valiant life?) Yes.

The juggler wins and the pink lycra
keyboardist places. Voter registration
hooks me from the stream for a moment
before returning to guests out under lights
so bright it seems that time reversed--
still summer afternoon after all.
 
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Despot

You asked for nothing
Why didn't you share it?

Photographs are splayed on
the front seat next to me.

Lovers in a Dangerous Time?
It has become dangerous because
You dropped your camera and left.
Back to the room in the front of that
house on Roncesvalle.
It has become dangerous in a small way.
For small hearts, no heart.

"Welcome to the Underground" were your words
I heard on entering that house. Your arms spread wide.
There were shots of the neighborhood, of men in doorways
of women looking over their espressos, holding their
cigarettes at length, on the table there.

I had felt your eyes on me at breakfast. You were standing
In front of St. Casimir's. You were all shadow there, too.

What adventures we had, the attempts to fill this out!

This is it.
I got the set of keys back. Thanks.

Driving by on the way out
I see you've changed the curtains.
You told me in case anyone
was onto you.
 
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The Difference Between Love Poetry And Erotic Poetry

poem 5 of 7

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE POETRY AND EROTIC POETRY.

When you write a love poem
your girlfriend takes off her clothes.
When you write an erotic poem
the editor takes off her clothes.

You are probably thinking
you could write a poem so good
it would work on both of them
but that is not a worthy goal.

Instead imagine that your book
is such a hit that Fresh Air
wants to interview you, in person.
Write a poem to make Terry Gross laugh.
 
3

Film noir
I was beginning to think you worked in bed, like Marcel Proust.
The Big Sleep


Hardly like Proust.
It often seems more play than work,
though one can lather up quite a sweat
when it’s going well.

And you can surely bet
I won’t need
a spongy, tea-soaked madeleine
to remember this long evening,

but neither will these memories
make for elegant prose.
They will be not so much Swann as Mike Hammer,
told better in Saxon than French.
 
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