2013 Challenge: One Poem a Week

hurt to delete this on another with no copy

.....

Waiting

After the first couple of breakdowns
it all becomes waiting
You have already read all the books
checked off symptoms and
exhausted all theories of genetic responsibility
going back to crazy great uncles, cousins and aunts
“It may have come from there”

Not daring to say aloud the most feared thing
Maybe I played a role?

Or the other thing.
About how it affects your own life, or will.

But when my mother writes to tell me
she has asked her 30 year junior boyfriend to
move out because its getting to be too much
to take care of both of them
Instead of feeling relieved
I feel a little sad for her.

As if she has given up on that last
Square inch of her own life
And now is just waiting.

Thoughts At the Supermarket Checkout

I don’t buy “women’s” magazines

Because I already know
Which jeans look best on my body type
(None)

Because I have no one
To test mind-blowing sex moves on
(They come in multiples of 5)

Because I know the type
of perfumes I buy in duty free shopping
(Oriental-floral)

Because although I am a Leo
I inevitably choose Pisces men
(Poor match!)

Because the "exotic" recipes
Are home cooking to me
(Try this!)

Because the book reviews
Never include Orhan Pamuk
(But never miss Nicholas Sparks)

Because
The things women really need to know:
How not to cry in front of your boss
How to gracefully escape the PTA
What to do if your kids are 3 season varsity athletes and you hate sports
You don't want your mom seeing that: why to designate a riend to go through your stuff in the event of your untimely demise

(How to figure out life)

Are never discussed.

28 5/15/13 Sonnet IV

We never talk and you know that's a lie
or not: You are gone, I'm destined to stay.
It's not as if I'm avoiding our sky:
I've wished crowds of stars for a better way
than the memories I have, flotsam I keep,
pink depression glass, a faded globe,
its storms passing ceaselessly. My sleep
conjures dreams of you. Remember the snow,
the skating on thin ice your bunny nose
still years from elegy or epitaph,
just two girls, mittens, cocoa and a dad,
a winter's day. I have the photograph.

29 - Untitled

The desert
I must cross
to reach you
gets wider
every day.
No oasis to offer
hope or soften
the harshness
of this journey
only I must make.

Behind me footsteps
come from a place
we both have made,
before,
on the next wave,
a shimmering
mirage of what you
once were. If I reach
to hold you, keep you
with me, the mirage
melts leaving me
weeping at the insult.

You are the innocent,
smiling with no
recognition. I too am
sinless, mourning
the loss of the living
and dying of thirst

Penumbra

In our desert
where the sun addles minds
to unwisely seed religions

Is your shadow
stretched out on red earth
dark solid core and ghostly outline

even your shadow
holds layers

It’s that not quite solid part
I wish I could capture.

.....

the air loom

the loom's gaseous tendrils
weave through the crowds
a fabric of dung gas

a fetid symphony
belched from the belly
bubbling with magnetic fluids

the gang of scabrous weavers
orchestrate the metals
projecting their malign influence

event working their puppets
into configurations of conspiracies
by inflicting kiting and fluid locking

when the air probes
and the tongue tastes copper
hold your breath and then...gulp!

oxygenate when the machine lacks focus
thus avoiding synchronicity
with the bellows worked hard in the cellar

holding off the lungs seepage of putrid air
to witness the circus follies
of the sane fixated on their madness

29

Farnsworth House

was built without ornament
as if god were a divine grid
of white steel and stone

and house was as euclid
might have envisioned it
floating above river plane

levitated on art on intelligence
even over the exuberant swells
of spring

the docent’s cotton gloves
the razor wire keeps
the mathematics clean

Schijt Dreams

...................................

29 7/20/13

Mercy

It wasn't a scowl,
brows knit dark face
pinched not to disappointment
but intent, even absent
in a far away dream
of what might have been
had she sat anywhere
but on display,
the office Cerberus,
keeper of the surest gate
to Hell in the building.

Rain or Sun lifting the drab
green walls, gray metal Mercy
sat presiding over phones
and footsteps, the occasional
anachronistic clack of Selectric
subsumed by the greater
politesse of click, the center
that held our slippery spokes
with dispassion and a face
like an angry clock. 7:25.

Now Mercy has slipped off
with the tide, my office,
community, world so many
grains of sand tossed asunder
just like yours. Her quality
was not as strained as you
might think. I loved her
when she laughed, a great
goofy circumzenith arc, pure
shine with a hint of gold.

30

The Narcissist

Joe Joe, draining his big longneck Schlitz,
says he was stunned to find coal in his costume
and further tells Miss Fit who serves him another
Christmas is shit despite all his gifts.

"Hey Joe Joe, no Disney World smile today?"
says Harry a kid he thinks he remembers
from ticket taker training in November
during the firm but flexible role play

before they asked him if he could learn how to
yuk yuk like Goofy he does now for Harry
who has no reason to act so damn happy
what with those mind numbing kids from Ohio,

"Cleveland for Chrissakes, the armpit of Erie!"
he says to Miss Fit who's staring at his
and for a big tip heaves "Betcha ya pump iron"
while Joe Joe nixes the Schlitz for St. Pauli.

Spring cleaning

I save your email.
Every one of them.

Filed evidence
of what was said

In case I doubt
or you deny.

I’ve given away books
once displayed like trophies

no longer needing to prove
my love affair with words.

But I still keep those emails.

30 - Walter and the Naiad

His lonely walk takes effort,
oppressive heat, no shade
or breeze. Doctor's orders
still he rebels. About to turn back
he glances over the lake.....
He is no voyeur but
cannot look away,
leans on his cane afraid to blink.

Breathtaking,
pale against dark ripples,
she bends, splashes a hand
as she wades. Water consumes her,
knees,
thighs
and, as it laps at her buttocks
she turns to reveal a dark triangle
and chill-sharpened nipples.
Eyes blissfully closed she falls

backwards, submerging
then surfacing her hair slick
and dripping. He realizes she
is unaware of an audience, aches to join
her in cool youth. Seconds
it seems, he is naked too, knee deep,
then at her side in a lazy crawl
he hasn't done for years. She smiles,
unsurprised, swims beside him
easily.

"I hoped you'd join me."
"You saw me then?"
"No I felt your presence, need."
She dives.
He gasps
as her lips find him,
a sucking sea-thing. He is sinking,
dreaming, swimming gill-like above her.
They break in turmoil
both breathless,
he hasn't felt this way,
perhaps for ever.
His hand explores, a thick,
throbbing dowel grows
from his groin. Her hand is there,
guiding him, warmth gloves him
in sweet softness as her legs wrap him.
He bucks her mulishly, every muscle, joint
and part working as it should,
he remembers how he could
in younger years.

They swim and float as one, he rooted
in her, she nurtures his desire until,
with a howl of submission, his release
echoes over still waters. She sinks now,
below and away, he can see her smile
so clear is the water, until she twists
fish-like and is gone.

30

postscript

How do I text you my fingerprint,
latent on the wineglass
of my desire?

This is why all you get is words—
little bits of my being
left like pebbles marking the path

my mind stalks toward your body
and your bed. My only verbs
are touch, my nouns

simply name all your limbs and trunk,
your face, your hair,
as the only country I care to explore

were I free to wander anywhere.

Seeds

It’s all about what you eat
says my father, perplexed
The shop keeper seems familiar, but
speaks a different language, and
the food is a bit off.

Seeds, for example.
Sunflower, pumpkin and squash seeds,
dishes spewing discarded husks
cracked open neatly by teeth
stained in too sweet tea
sipped in tiny cups

All this means they are like us.
Americans, by the way, do not do this.

We buy salted seeds, leaving
A trail of precisely cracked husks for others to find.

Poetry-ism, the meeting

.....

31 - 1847, Expansion, boy to man

Finally, in his fourteenth year
Jack left both home and father,
a drunk who used him as a slave,
beat him with anything to hand,
leaving him broken the next day,
nothing out there could be as bad.

Drawn naturally to the bad
in men it was those he met that year,
traveling at night, sleeping by day.
By St Louis he had no taste to go farther
alone, joined militia with a shake of a hand
becoming just another kind of slave.

Befriended by an addict, slave
to opium. “Boy, I need it bad!”
a fighter, lost fingers from his hand,
some hostile Yumas lopped off an ear.
This older man became his father,
the boy missed his own not one day.

Mexico way at the crack of day
the gang set off. Teacher, ex-slave,
a trapper and fellow called Judge. “Bad
omen” muttered the surrogate father.
Lost and unruly, wandering a year
with danger and death always close at hand.

Bitterest winter, frozen foot and hand
this band of brothers, prickly company by day,
endless, sleepless nights longing for the year
to turn warm with no need to slave
to stay alive. Indian ambushes bad,
Jack became the protector of his “father”

wounded in the chest, cared for his “father”
as he coughed blood, gripped the young hand.
This new death no different from any other day.
No recourse than to slog and slave
through hostility, making tracks for next year.
Death no stranger; the losses were bad,

starved, sick, the fighting worse than bad.
Often Jack longed to join his “father”
in oblivion but survived that dreadful year.
Near Tucson, fought the Hopi hand to hand,
blood washed away hate, Jack quit that day,
far north found a wife, daughter of the Slaveys.

31

The Great Pestilence

Soon after the latest La Danse Macabre
wet nurses Agnès and Adonise
fled from the manor and, we have learned,
God's wrath by way of His Eminence

who offers a partial indulgence
and twenty drams of his brandy
should their remains be found in Les Alpes
by proof of turnshoes or amulets.

Down hastily your tankards, mes frères.
Apostates are stealing to Rome
where Satan ruled the universe once,
having hung Peter upside down.

30 7/30/13

It's not easy being mom
from a thousand miles
away no hugs no eyes
to meet and share,

money gifts presented
from strangers' hands from
empty digital transactions
reassurances clouded
with vagaries of voice
and schedule we move on
farther further roads years

piling between us
like twilight falls, no less
affection and ever greater
knowing filling the juncture.
Fog in a ravine.

31

Tiger Beat
GQ Magazine's social media editor was in the middle of eating his chicken salad
when he noticed the publication was getting more death threats than usual.
—“One Direction fans launch #Twitter war against @GQMagazine,” NBC News

You love a band, they’re like your family,
as if Peter (if there’s a Peter) lives next door
and dates your sister, because he cannot see

how perfect you are for him. That’s how unfair
life can be—your bedroom walls are simply glossy
with the colour of his eyes to help you sleep,

though the tint serves just to make you dream
little romantic agonies that make you twist and creep
out from under the covers into the disquieting night.

Enjoy the loneliness, the angst, the dark, my sweet.
That insurance adjuster in your future? He will keep.

32

Rondeau: From a Darkened Room

You're beautiful, I have to say,
As if that makes our love okay
And not a thing that we must hide
From spouses to whom we have lied
Just where we've spent these hours today.

See, morally, it's somewhat gray
Which who has led which whom astray
To this dim room where we collide.
You're beautiful.

It's not as though we must betray
Our other loves, but come what may
I want you here in bed, beside
My eager body, opened wide,
All your perfections on display—
You're beautiful.

32

Sally Finds Jesus in the Desert

Under the exit ramp Sally Does Deep Throat
shouts to Snake Eyes, "You better get up!
It's time to visit one of your Wild Oats!"

The empty bottles, except when she's sober,
look like the minis they'd pour in her cup
when Sally was dancing at Full Disclosure.

"Better get goin' there, Sugar Doll,
or Bitch won't let little Peggy Sue sup
with her daddy down at Vincent de Paul."

When Sally went hunting down at The Nugget
she saw a one arm bandit hold up
a bleach blonde granny who looked like a puppet

doing the hokey pokey while jiggling
two nickels left in her plastic cup.
So Sally gave Granny all of her bling bling

after a swig of something like scotch
and hitched to Mojave where the coyote
dung stinks less than a delegate's crotch.

32 - # Brave New Words

Muggles wear mankinis
muffintops are viewed.

Texting, sexting twitterati
tweating frankenfood.

Droolworthy dudes in jeggings
guylinered bromance abound.

Screenagers typing woot and lol.
Beware the dumbing down!

Whatevs, it's so called progress
so Luddites stay away.

BRB but don't unfriend me
while I'm AFK.

Don't chirp my mains, that's rachet
we might decide to bach it!

The noobs are here and, OMG,
they just h8 to disagree.

So, bless up now, stay swaggy, yo
and remember that YOLO.

Translation available by request.

31 8/6/13

Pantoum for the Lambertville Music Circus

In circus tents and summer fields
I fell in love with rock and roll,
thrilling to the shrill tumult--
my generation guitars the beat.

I fell in love with rock and roll.
My father didn't like it much--
my generation guitars the beat.
(He called every musician George.)

My father didn't like it much,
his little girls in miniskirts.
He called every musician George.
Perhaps Gershwin might save us all:

his little girls in miniskirts,
writhing and racing out the door.
Perhaps Gershwin might save us all
when there were intervening years

writhing and racing out the door,
thrilling to the shrill tumult
when there were intervening years
in circus tents and summer fields.