2013 Challenge: One Poem a Week

[Tristesse2]

Do you watch your fingers
as you play your piano and think
of the way you gentled my spine?

Have you buried your face
in the camisole I left behind
as I have inhaled you deep
in the heavy sweater you lent me
on our walk?

Does the cry of the sea birds
remind you of my pleasure
as the grunt of Nadal’s serve
calls up your weight rising
above me.

A waft of certain aftershave makes
me pause, look for you. Perhaps your
early morning, lonely stretches remind
you of me, think of my voice, feel my
lips soft on yours.

One of us will reach out.

[Ahlam]

ONE

Sin,
verb or noun,
imperative or exhortation,
white picket fences to keep the dogs
in or out.
Special occasion panties
concealed beneath burqas
of misinformation,
Curling ribbons of lust
wrapped in intent,
tied but not bound,
trick or treat.


TWO

Beyond the indifferent miles,
the jetsam of the universe,
the waxing and waning
of celestial bodies,
and the ticking of clocks,
caresses will write the sky
you wish to dream
and I will read my portion
of the night with serious glasses
and enough myopic abandon
to tickle your waking
hours

[Desejo]

Two bins on the curb
black and blue
markers of
each week passing

seven days intake
in their bellies
waits reincarnation
in environmentally friendly form

or internment
in a sky-scrapping midden
a survivalist goldmine
With passing of time

disposed like clockwork
according to some
Divine plan

Still, I forget to take the garbage out.

[Tzara]

Originally Posted by Angeline

Tzara, why not start a companion thread to this one for comments, questions, etc., and ask one of the mods to move these posts there so this thread is for poems only?

Well, because I personally don't think it's necessary, but given that Tessie seconds this idea, and that the two of you are as like shimmering, glowing stars in my firmament (cf. Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain), I will not pout about it.

I will ask that one or the other of you create it, though. Sorry.

[tongueslip]

how
we love
our heirarchies
perhaps because
they inspire belief in
waterfalls and benevolent
gods leaders systems marriages

I check none of the above but tonight
will collect the three tiered cake
ordered with ironic plans
to feed the unmarried
unholy unhomed and
frosting deprived
via licorice whip
grooms for
tidying
up

[butters]

no napkins


bite
into that herb and seasoned crust
hot hot the fat juices flow
transport a tongue, transport the mind
back in time
to two hands buried in bloodied pelt
canines deep in red red meat
that satisfying crunch of bone
flesh
........still
...............twitching

[greenmountaineer]

The Greatest Generation

The Welcome Home, Everyone's Audie Murphy
Times Square ticker tape parades are gone.
Now there's the vote for me red, white, and blue
who tell you their fathers fought just like you.
They bother to tell us the reasons why
we battled in Okinawa where tears
from grenadiers fell on fox holy legs
of Betty Grable pinups blown sky high.

Back home in Levittown we ate puffed wheat
in water five a.m. five days a week.
With meager pay for our property rights
we turned off the furnace on work day nights
in March and dreamt of forests in Ardennes.
Regrets? a few like the holidays reft
of sons who left when we shouldn't have said
they better love it or leave it. Amen.

[champagne1982]

Motion

A cooperation of ligaments
and bone, tendon and muscle
combine to roll just so -
just so well that flesh
glides over flesh in autonomous
answer as nerves flash
response to each stimulus.

[Remec]

I find them all about
the edges of my life,
lost scraps of a chat
or pieces of a post
from some long since
closed down forum,

those are the obvious
ones, that I know will
always bring you to
mind since there's no
seperation between them
and us--when there was
an us, that is.

It's the ones that catch me
unaware...a song comes on
the radio or across some tv
show, or someone happens
to say one of the phrases
you always dropped that
clued me into your current mood.

Those ones spark within me
most vividly and I see you
just the way you are always
in my mind--either sitting on that
bench wanting to know how I
felt about you, or kneeling across
me so I could caress and tease
you with one hand and still
watch what you were upto with
your own hand and mouth,

or, sometimes the most striking,
flashing me a steely glance and
walking away as if you'd not seen
me or, more likely, as if you had
but wanted no reminders, no pieces
of me to be left lingering in your
mind, the way the thought of you
still leaves me smelling Le Fleur.

[bogusagain]

week 2

occupation

you have colonized me
uninvited, you have taken up residence
squatted on my life
and told me to consider you a good idea

I have read books and written manifestos
as a defence against your subjugation
but still you march through my life
like the armies of Napoleon

you look grand in your blue and gold braid
your breasts pushed out like the Imperial Guard
your overall posture, imperious and aloof
I wait to be trodden underfoot

yes, you allow me to exercise upon your person
take liberties where liberty was once forbidden
but you have taken control of my borders
the secret police are out in numbers

I cannot help but wonder
as you stroll naked across my territory
how beautiful you are and how envious I would be
if only you were occupying someone else’s land

[Tristesse2]

After the final chord
and the applause dies
there is no rustle,
standing shuffle or
stretching into sleeves and,
when he looks past the footlights
each member is pinned to the plush seats
and each pin has a clear glass ball
at its tip.
Then, the final curtain.

[greenmountaineer]

It

At dawn the morning bird sang
and sound was but a crackle

what a wood stove does
with wood.

I lost any thought of
noun or verb
in the stove
or meadow

anything in town
upon to do commerce.

On second thought
the thought I lost
it might have been
what has no name

spring summer fall
winter spring.

Repeating the pronoun
all the same
I don't know what
it was.

[Tzara]

Montage

I know. I have not been steady—
more like skid marks
sliding out of the film of your experience.

But pan just to the left, and you will find me
pensive, doodling in the margins
of my textbook,

drawing, redrawing, your figure
obsessively in the waste of Eisenstein’s lectures,
in that place you collide with my life.

[bronzeage]

John held his staff to Akhenaten's head.
If you want to be followed, you must first be led.
God has no peers, he has no friends
Eternity is boring, he knows how it ends.

[oggbashan]

Omaha Beach

Neatly arranged, gleaming in the sun,
The gravestones precisely set.
Each mourns someone's son
Their relatives grieving yet.

Lined as if for military drill
The honoured dead rest in France
Each marks a German kill
Resisting Freedom’s advance.

This neat and tidy plot
Shows the cost of total war.
It should never be forgot
Reality was blood and gore.

Blood and Guts to make us free
Sacrificed for him, for her, for you and me.

[bogusagain]

week 3

consumer report

hour after hour, day after day
you take grubby money from grubby hands
and never raise your eyes

the dull monotony of your existence
passing gaudy packs of inedible food
over automated counting eyes

the tally of each shoppers basket
buys the equivalent of your youthful vigour
a disposable product in a disposable package

in the future my shopping will be processed
by a middle-aged woman, overweight and sad
at the passing of her beauty

[champagne1982]

At one inch an hour rate of fall
the snow piles higher
than the grass in spring grows.

[butters]

snow-decor

my cat wasn't happy
with the changes to her outdoor loo
has left me a pointed request
at the top of the stairs
for indoor facilities

[Ahlam]

Pull this string,
ripping a seam
to mend
and then rip anew.
Rent to own,
tearing from me
one sensation
and then another,
Silence me
with my own screams.

[Desejo]

Divesting from kruggerands
and blood diamonds
spilled out over two decades
in a gigantic vein running from Transvaal
to Freetown
was more obvious.

It is a web now.

Even your iphone
blinks with countless electronic
eyes running virtual
trafficking rings
to rare earth guarded by
unrecognized armies
in places you cannot pronounce.

It blasts through gateways in
whispers
So low you cannot hear the
drone of the precious
incanted words:
Tantalum. Coltan. Tungsten.

[Remec]

Clicking through the
uploaded images of
a life I never lived, I
am reminded of how
much I am still drawn
in by her, and of what
is still the biggest pull--
her smile.

[oggbashan]

Snow lies deep and thick
Cars sliding on rutted ice.
I'd love to unfreeze my prick
In warm flesh would be nice.

She's stranded miles away -
With my mother-in-law.
Sex must wait another day
I wish it would thaw.

[Tristesse2]

Oh, the swan-like curve
of her long neck as she turns away
to laugh at some comment,
young, unblemished.

He sees his fingers follow that line
to the shadowed hollow at her throat,
turn her face to meet his eyes
and lower his lips to hers.

He allows his mind to drift
to a tumbled bed and throaty laughter,
casual familiarity, urgent intimacy

He can hear her voice,
low and husky,
an invitation,
but he is frozen, feet from her.

and a sea of self-absorption
divides them, an ocean of possibilities
dries up in a split second.

[greenmountaineer]

Childermas 2012

The schoolyard playground looks like a frozen
cenotaph that once was a forest green
sandbox Little Girl wiggled her toes in.

Vestibule photographs put on the notion
we all lived in a yellow submarine.
The schoolyard playground looks like it's frozen.

Last June I said, "She's poetry in motion.
Come Fourth of July, she'll likely be seen
skirting the ocean, first dipping her toes in."

Little Girl loved all the boardwalk commotion.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream
and castles of sand hairpins get lost in.

The priest says to pray that all souls repose in
Christ! Not the one with the magazine!
My nightmare last night bled calamine lotion.

"We had the Christmas toys already chosen!"
I screamed to Gehenna's killing machine.
The schoolyard playground looks like a frozen
sandbox Little Girl wiggled her toes in.

[Ahlam]

If you are reading this,
I'm already gone.
Do not call the morgue.
Do not drain ponds.
Do not search, but look
to the Narnia
of negligible essentials,
of orphaned socks and ball point pens,
of discarded pennies and intentions.
Look to the infinite stack of unwashed dishes,
to the moldering remnants in the fridge,
and to the continuous pile of soiled diapers.
Look to the fading crease in your trousers,
and you will see me
hiding there in plain sight
with an empty face
and the sum sensuality
of dryer lint.