007 Challenge

Week 7, Poem 1

Your hands have made me solid;
where I was vapor and aura now
firms to shore so that you can lay
anchor. Bite into my belly with its
toothy claim! Let the rope sing, sliding
on greased air as you fall on me,
sinking in to the grip that moors you,
welcoming all of your pirates ashore.
 
1-4

I know how the sonnet goes
or the song or the story all
the same old same old words,
all the dancing, joust, parry

and thrust cmon show a little
lust or something to say I am
alive. I'll still think you're one
old lurker and one selfish

jive turkey but to each his own
(whether boy or girl) whether
lie or whirl from one gender
to another. Six months ago you

were my brother, my pocket
playpet if not my lover but this
was afore they all moved on,
left me holding the bag of words,

a few broken bones, and mercy,
who ever understood shit
about me anyway? Cmon kc,
cmon will. No that's Will Basie

and Tamy can have david
and I'ma shoot a big whole
in the still, let all that precious
liquor run afuck and drown

in the metaphors, the hills
which once were alive I now
pack up, and move poetry
South to the big city.
 
1.2

Missionary

His eyes strain for heaven,
do not descend to me,
the earthy soil in which he sews.

What does he say to God?
I love you? I am sorry?
Or is his gaze just pain

from lactic acid build-up
in the long muscles of his legs,
the wrong mix of vitamins,

too physical a strain
for his advancing age?
All he'll say is that he loves me

and I'll believe him, for I must.
It won't be what he's thinking.
Would even his God know?



.
 
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1.3

Spoons

We nest like old flatware bent
by the dishwasher, nicked by wear,
dulled shanks snicked

together by the faint magnetism
left from rubbing stem-on-stem
for a long, long time. Your comfort

is familiarity, for you soothe
more than spike anything like ardor.
But even though you're often cold

along my swerve of spine,
in the jangled drawer of morning
you're quiet, and let me lie asleep.



.
 
Week 7, Poem 2

Put a spell on you (not you) you
said crack-hoarse Bo Jangles, dancing
around the poles of the D train
lively as a popping kernel that has lept
free of the flame. I put a spell on you
(and you)
he said before he went high
and high again, his voice floating like a bag
caught in the swirl of wind above ground
that stirs the cauldron of Columbus Circle
in a spray of dancing sea horses. Thirty-one
per section--I know because I count them
then count the money that I could
have given him had Bo Jangles put
a spell on me.
 
1.4

Top

is not so swell as Cosmo says.
For in looking from above,
I see your eyes, laid dead.



.
 
Week 7, Poem 3

Even as I fill your every corner
you think of mercury poisoning;
you pray to take more when I curl
inside of you, a blooming globe of silver

knuckling bedpost that pulses
and tugs your cries from your cervix
until you are born again into my palm--
all jellyfish
stung and swollen
and stinking of origin.
 
1.5

Back

I need a firmer stomach, or a tat
circling more ropy bicep than I own,
or some entwinèd vines

adorning my so non-fit ass.
I wonder, when you roll the rubber on,
why you don't ask me to be rid of it,

because I'd say OK,
and not mean by that Now marry me.
Remember, please. You never ask.



.
 
Week 7, Poem 4

Sixteen bars of a Hindi prayer
ring from an i-phone one after one
after one piling up on itself until every task
of our lives is stacked within it
and purring along with a happy hum
for we have become engines
in the Gods' great locomotive--
some of us engines. Some of us
empty cars. The world needs
empty cars to shovel all its shit
into. Where else could its shit fit if not burnt
by engines or shoveled inside?
We push into the moment in front of us,
unzipping down its track in packets of four
by four. CHUG chug chug chug. (Sustain)
Choo.
Choo.

Why not just roll open
and welcome the shit? Why not just relax
and be the vessel of engines?
 
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Week 7, Poem 5

Bartender, I am addicted
to the click, I admit, of three of a kind
and to the pop of the extra ball
and yes I read those ads that promise
work from home and make a mint
or laser away to your inner supermodel.
I read those ads like any schlubb
looking for something extra at the back
of the tabloid. What is the luckiest number?
Can you pour it into my gin? Where
do they build bombs for heaven?
The YMCA sells cinnamon jawbreakers
benefiting the Shriners
and somehow every time I see their
red cheeks I think of virgins and how
I'd never kill myself for pussy
let alone a thousand assholes
just showing up for the paycheck
and riding elevators with envelopes.
 
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I know how the sonnet goes
or the song or the story all
the same old same old words,
all the dancing, joust, parry

and thrust cmon show a little
lust or something to say I am
alive. I'll still think you're one
old lurker and one selfish

jive turkey but to each his own
(whether boy or girl) whether
lie or whirl from one gender
to another. Six months ago you

were my brother, my pocket
playpet if not my lover but this
was afore they all moved on,
left me holding the bag of words,

a few broken bones, and mercy,
who ever understood shit
about me anyway? Cmon kc,
cmon will. No that's Will Basie

and Tamy can have david
and I'ma shoot a big whole
in the still, let all that precious
liquor run afuck and drown

in the metaphors, the hills
which once were alive I now
pack up, and move poetry
South to the big city.

Uncertainty


I forget how the sonnet goes,
Right before I climb in bed,
I forget all the sentiment,
My head's filled by your scent,

I forget how your sonnet read,
I can't complete a thought tonight,
Nor lament a friend long dead,
Right before I climb in bed,

I forget what your sonnet meant,
When I spy you from the bed,
In your mirror or changing clothes,
I seem to forget my day's intent:

The things I'd once opposed,
Even the basis for this text.
 
1.6

Knees

I am safe here. My husband
surely can’t object to this—how I
rub my face against a man,

another man—for this sex is not sex,
just an infidelity I mail
stamped with the wet lick

of weighed and proper postage,
neatly addressed for oblivion
and, ultimately, hell.



.
 
1.7

Wheelbarrow

God. This trick makes my weak arms hurt so;
It grinds grit into my palms.

When you drop me on my knees, I know
Some positions are just wrong.



.
 
Week 7, Poem 6

Good week, Minervous. *happy dance for you on a red table*

Twenty minutes after finishing
the red silk red clouds over a desert landscape,
the brush presses canvas to let
paint bleed down over the frame to the table.
The painter repeats this in white
then blue. One imagines inhabitants
forced to view the other half of their world
through carnival acrylic. Perhaps a figure
will appear with waivers to sign evading
penalty for exposing the populace to indigo.
 
Week 7, Poem 7 (late)

Always behind the running behind the what did they say
on the loudspeaker? Where are my spreadsheets?
These are the private, anxious conversations
we have with our hands as they wrench
our lives even to half-minutes.

This is why God made tea, to lubricate
the schedule so that the cubes slip into place
more easily. Slip right in to 08:37 and a half. Half breathe,
half eat, half shout the morning down the hall, why anyone'd
need a cuppa after that mess. That's the problem with working,
it's habitual.
 
day 1 wk 1

I got the invite to this thread based on a 'word rant' lol. This one is fresh off
the keyboard, and I suppose in a similar vein.

The Smile

I sip the first merlot of the night
Bored and lonely
Mind desolate
Of even the germ of an idea.
Scanning the crowd of strangers
The white noise static of faces
When you emerge

Music

A melody of auburn ringlets
Turquoise and silver cadence
Counterpointing dark lace and ivory skin

Across the room our glances converge
Briefly you look down
The beginning of a smile
Dimpling your cheek....

I felll in love.

Whisked you away to an all night cafe where we talked the sun up
found we both loved forgotten obscure bands, hated the smell of freshly cut grass and when caught without a book read the ingredients of shampoo bottles on the toilet

We made mad, passionate, bone-wearying love for hours
Days on end, insatiable, intuitively knowing where and when to touch
Got in trouble at work because we couldn't go eight hours without talking
Played the 'you hang up first' game and gave pet nanes for each other
Too cute or graphic to mention here

You were turned on watching me shave and I was turned on just watching you
You were my muse inspiring endless stories. I left an ode a day on your pillow
A hundred lines alone on how the candlelight caught the curve of your shoulder
We stayed up every night deep in conversation and each other
Getting off on tangents and tantra until we explored every inch of each other
And mined every vein of interest. But then things began to fade.

You mistook the melancholy and silence that incubates my writing
For disinterest and anger, and I began to resent your constant cheeriness
Especially in the morning before my three cups of coffee.
I was hurt when you said you didn't understand any of my poems
But it was really over the time you suggested it might be fun to go line dancing

We tried to make it but soon our conversations consisted of you
telling me the thread plot to the latest reality show while I pretended to care
And we had infrequent, absentee sex; in the dark, me thinking of the bank teller
Who always made a point of touching my hand, and you probably thinking
Of Travis Tritt or some other shit kicker.

It went on like that for months, the love growing sparser and the silences immense
I felt I had exhausted your intelligence, and you were exhausted by mine.
Yes, that's biased and unfair, but it's my poem,. Write your own if you can stop thinking
about Surreal Alive Surivivor Top Chef Two Biggest Loser Coreys for five fucking minutes

Ironically, you left me for the manager of my bank.
I came home to find all your things gone and a note that read:
'Your novel. Is pointless, and your bald spot is VERY noticable'
But by then it didn't even sting.

...You look up and complete the smile, which I don't return.
Your face dissolves to white noise.

By my second drink you are just a reminiscence.

***
 
Quite an engaging story, Poetedge. Great to see you taking up the challenge. I look forward to more of your poems.
 
wk1 day 2

Any suggestions for a title please



We share these thoughts
like interesting rocks
we have collected
in our travels.

Rose quartz grief
adamantine laughter
the too rare
tiger eye resolve

We take them out
of velvet bags and say
this is my joy
this is my pain

Do you have one of these?

Where do you keep them?

In your pocket?

I tried that but the pointiest ones
would invariably
make its way to my shoe.

And the ones I treasured most
would find the hole in my pocket
and disappear.

I have lost several
heart-shaped
lapis lazuli
that way.
 
wk1 day 3

IF NOT ALL...

So used to being unheaed you spoke as if alone
The words not meant for me fell like lashes
I carefully kept them hidden
Knowing the place of pain you hurled them from

If alone the words not meant for me fell
I would have borne their weight without a word
But your doubt began to wear my body down
You took it as if I learned your wounds

Like lashes formerly hidden
Made me see I didn't like you after all
I tried to prove you wrong
Ignored comparisons to you and her

Knowing the place of pain you hurled them from
The battle you waged to make me regret
Your soft touch thrilling me awake
Because I woke amidst an avalanche

I would have borne the weight without a word
I only you could say that you believed
Except in moments when entwined embraced
Immersed we thought of nothing but the way

We wore each other's body as our own
The love renewed the selves we had denied
But after as I spent the night alone
Writing painting thrumming in afterglow
I faced the silence of your absence

Your soft touch thrilling me awake
The sweet ache in my thighs became
The phantom itch of an amputee
As the days between our next touch confirmed

Our love awoke amidst an avalanche
So when you spoke the words as if alone
I heard you say that we could never be
Each other's one merely someone else's other
I could no longer dodge the stones that fell

****
 
Week 8, Poem 1

Before there was a heaven in fact
before the word 'whore' was conceived
or any word in any language that means 'whore'
there was the river. The river ran only one
direction, sooner or later losing herself to the sea
and people walked by her, drank from her,
shat in her. The river floated their dead
but how unbearable to think of the sea then!
Better for her to be swallowed by the earth
with Persephone. Better to pipeline the dead
someplace more conveniently out of sight.
Easier, then, to forget that they shouted
and stank alongside us. Easier, then,
to forget Death stalks us, too.
 
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Before there was a heaven in fact
before the word 'whore' was conceived
or any word in any language that means 'whore'
there was the river. The river ran only one
direction, sooner or later losing herself to the sea
and people walked by her, drank from her,
shat in her. They river floated their dead
but how unbearable to think of the sea then!
Better for her to be swallowed by the earth
with Persephone. Better to pipeline the dead
someplace more conveniently out of sight.
Easier, then, to forget that they shouted
and stank alongside us. Easier, then,
to forget Death stalks us, too.

Pandora, this is so powerfully compact, rife with imagery and a nice gut punch at the end. Cheers.
 
wk1 day 4

AN INSATIABELLE MEETS A SENSUALISTO

Frisson
Only us
Rake of nails
Enticingly
Pulling clothes aside
Lingering and pressing
Against each other's secret
Yearnings sliding rolling panting

Oh. Yes
Right there
God don't stop
AVE MARIA!
So good so good so
Mm make me come again

Adrift
For hours
Timeless now
Exhausted but
Renewing touching
Grasping building urging
Leaving no place untouched
Once again inciting stoking
Wildfires roaring with our need
***
 
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wk1 day 5

AN APOLOGY TO THE INTRUDER

In roundabout ways
Through serpentine paths
Walking in the darkness
Of my shadows
I have traveled toward this spot
My entire life

Her grave.

Still I am surprised
At the bottomlessness
Of my ignorance
Only learning as I read
The headstone
That you lay with her
For eternity

And as I spoke
To the mother I had so briefly
You were in the way

Forgiveness should be
Unconditional
Love sent with no reservations

I am sorry I cannot give you that
I cannot lift this bitterness
Cannot release
This painful resent

I am sorry for that flaw
In my acceptance of things past
I wish you weren't together
And wishing that makes me
feel petty and small

Perhaps time will unclench
This final fist
And let this jagged pebble
Fall away

But for now
The love I send is incomplete
And I wish you weren't together
****
 
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