007 Challenge

[Tzara]

n:1

Sonnet for She Whom I Will Never Know

Let me not doubt the marriage of true minds
Is still a possibility, though sex
Remains less bed than battlefield, mined
As it is by conflicting interests,
The petty needs each ego saves for self.
For no one’s love could rightly be called love
Were not some sacrifice involved, some hell
Down to which Orpheus descends to prove
His sighs are not just songs. A poet’s voice
Falls silent with no Muse to fix his thoughts,
No symbol he can fitfully embrace,
Without his Ikon, all he has are doubts.

.....My hand is not extended, just my pen;
.....This poem is clumsy prayer. I close. Amen.

 

[Tzara]

n:2

A Recursive Kind of a Triolet, After a Photograph of Angelina Jolie

Her lips are surely plumped, as love would want.
Which lips? you might well ask. I think line one
Implies a pro, not just some débutante,
Whose lips are surely plumped. My love might want
A normal girl, one not some fluffed croissant
Too airy to be food. I want a bun
With hips securely plump. My love will want
Witch lips? You might well ask. I think, line one.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Six (late)

hours or days
of dead time down
system waits
sleeps

almost waking
up steep walking or
train riding or saying
regular one sugar

but somehow staying
dead in this mist of mornings
and evenings that pass
out of your company

until you whisper don't
move and pin
me to the mattress
inhabiting me like a character
you were born to play

 

[Tzara]

n:3

The train was late. By
only three minutes,
but that fucked my transfer
to the Brooklyn line.

I’ve heard you don’t live there
anymore, anyway.

 

[Tzara]

n:4

Removed pending revised post on New Poems.

La la la.

 

[Tzara]

n:5

Lares Familiares

We have left them food—some dates,
a jar of olive oil, milled oats, salt—
not so much as offering as sustenance

to keep the villa healthy as it ages
along with us. These are no immortal gods,
uninterested in human life

except as mild diversion
or the occasional light foray
to spawn yet another demigod. These

are beings like us, happy for a warm hearth
and dozing canine, the quiet
of dull domesticity. No one worships

these small deities as figures cut
from some impossibly white marble,
or drinks their health from golden cups.

They live much as we do, cloistered
in a nook behind a curtain,
watchful when respected,
keeping household safe and certain.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

007

even the gin has a website
on the upper east side

(tonguing the lower regions
of Yorkville)

& probably a dress code
to match the zip code

color guard is maintained
by sharp sticking relaxation
of Standards

(we are all
fans of Nolet here and spice
disguised as sentience)

the girl said to her mother
via cell phone in the women's
John I am only giving
her Xanex and Valium
because she isn't drinking

adding with the phone
pulled away this is my
mom's favorite restaurant
and

she won't give
me money if she thinks
I'm fucked up

 

[Neonurotic]

1: Beachcombing Memoirs

Her white spiny conch shells were treasures,
ones bleached and smoothed by Haystack Rock.
Then she whispered into its curve and with a
secret smile, tucked it away in a sunshine
yellow bag. "Someday you will know".
Years later, I listen and it still says 'I love you'
for the first time. I remember, but I let go.

.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Removed pending revised post on New Poems.

La la la.

Yay! and Neo, Lucky us!

 

[Tzara]

n:6

Positivism

Right now, right now, my love for her bleeds out
like an opened vein,

one that drips red onto a dull carpet
only noticing the stain

as if that brick color meant death.
But O, but O, Love is not Death; it is everything Life.

It is Legos, I-beams, everything
that structures world in which we thrive.

 

[Neonurotic]

2: Lightsome

Lemon yellow, the sun shines through
my window, catches hope in its rays.
It filters sad memories as it lights,
centering a pool on my chest. It warms.

Today I am happy.

.

 

[Tzara]

n:7

Paranormal Activity

Ghost eating a candy bar
caught in hazy video
off-hours in a convenience store.

How odd is the disappearance
of those half-moons of chocolate, serrated
by dead or undead teeth

on the ill-lit surveillance tape? Like,
where does the ingested substance go?
Into some kind of aether where finicky spirits live?

Are there calories there?
Physics has only this to say—
Matter and energy are conserved.

So, like, if this tape is real, someone pays
for that ethereal Hershey bar (alas, with almonds),
with real pounds, somewhere.

Shit. I know
that skeptics will still whine,
ascribe this all to trickery, multiple exposures,

lack of reasonable controls. Fuck—
who can control such vile events?
That candy bar was mine.

 

[Neonurotic]

3: Lake Pontchartrain, a Painting

Handcrafted mitered corners, sanded fine
then stained in cherry are an old
carpenter's perfection. I find initials hidden
in the clouds. This is his brush signature.
Grandfather

Nose to the frame, smelling dust and old
oil paint: King Blue, Prussian, Cold Gray.
If I wish hard enough, dream, fall in,
I let Titanium White turn into canvas sails
that catch the wind. I can almost
taste the storm clouds, the lake, the rain.
I'd hear him cursing the weather, laughing,
It's OK, we'll eat pancakes instead.

But, no we won't. This is only a painting
and we never leave the dock.

.

 

[Tzara]

n:1

Repetition

Thin, intense woman with dishwater hair,
Sheathed in a gray print dress.
Why are you drawing my desperate stare
Thin, intense woman with dishwater hair?
I have no reason to start an affair
Where I’ll only end up emotional mess,
Thin, intense woman (with dishwater hair
Sheathed in a gray print dress).

 

[Tzara]

n:2

Why We Don’t
I cannot believe I came 23 times in one day. I will never have prostate cancer.
—From “Why We Cheat,” by Lisa Taddeo, Esquire (April 2012)

It’s not like I live for the transient ecstasy
of my limbic system overloading

like a transformer blown
when an unlucky squirrel crawls inside.

Nor is it simply evolutionary drift,
some primal need to reproduce, that washes

me up upon your wide, safe shore. It’s not,
ultimately, sex at all that binds me to you

like a fly caught in fresh shellac,
though, of course, it is. It just is no longer

a blowjob, your breasts swinging, your ass
upended like an animal’s. It is still all that

but it is also how you nest your head
on my shoulder before we rise from bed, how

we fold each other’s clothes, how I know
you will care for me when I am old. Or I you.

There is an age we pass (or most pass)
where biology finally wanes

as the main theology of your life.
It’s not that you don’t still believe

in the Miracle of Sin, just that you find
you’d rather linger on the couch in socks

because your feet are cold and later,
perhaps in the parental dark,

remind each other, inventively,
why you live in the same house.

 

[Neonurotic]

4: Cold Snap

Next to you, the ice melts.
I get caught in your rain and find
I'm soluble, soul saturated,
lightsome for a moment.

A little truth to touch your skin,
then more, trust enough your life is mine
and mine is yours. Hearts interlaced,
an we are an infinite beat or so it seems.

It's not, it's been ephemeral all along.
I leave the womb-like happiness
running down your leg. Now confused,
it's winter again and I freeze.

.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Why We Don’t
I cannot believe I came 23 times in one day. I will never have prostate cancer.
—From “Why We Cheat,” by Lisa Taddeo, Esquire (April 2012)

It’s not like I live for the transient ecstasy
of my limbic system overloading

like a transformer blown
when an unlucky squirrel crawls inside.

Nor is it simply evolutionary drift,
some primal need to reproduce, that washes

me up upon your wide, safe shore. It’s not,
ultimately, sex at all that binds me to you

like a fly caught in fresh shellac,
though, of course, it is. It just is no longer

a blowjob, your breasts swinging, your ass
upended like an animal’s. It is still all that

but it is also how you nest your head
on my shoulder before we rise from bed, how

we fold each other’s clothes, how I know
you will care for me when I am old. Or I you.

There is an age we pass (or most pass)
where biology finally wanes

as the main theology of your life.
It’s not that you don’t still believe

in the Miracle of Sin, just that you find
you’d rather linger on the couch in socks

because your feet are cold and later,
perhaps in the parental dark,

remind each other, inventively,
why you live in the same house.

This is a remarkable love poem for anyone who starts to see time slipping away. I loved the way it worked its way to line 11 (like foreplay) and then accelerated until nearly the end. Truly beautiful. Would have definitely favorited it if/when submitted under New Poems.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

This is a remarkable love poem for anyone who starts to see time slipping away. I loved the way it worked its way to line 11 (like foreplay) and then accelerated until nearly the end. Truly beautiful. Would have definitely favorited it if/when submitted under New Poems.

Like the act of love itself.

Beautiful, Tzara.

 

[Tzara]

Aw, shucks, you two. Now I have performance anxiety.



Where's that damn pill that gives me natural poetic enhancement?

 

[Tzara]

n:3

I sweep up words
like dead cockroaches
piled in a corner

though it is best not to touch
the hard dark shell
of their bodies

yet must I place them, carefully
onto the empty grid
of my page

queen on her own color
as she requires, king
a little lost on the other

guaranteeing he will be afraid
by rule, it’s how the game is played

 

[butters]

just reading and admiring. admiring and reading some more.

 

[Tzara]

n:4

Never mind. See below.

 

[Tzara]

n:4 do-over

Blanche-Neige

Somehow, she seems more vulnerable
in French, her soft nasal name
more delicate, as if she were an elegant candy

laid prettily to rest on a satin bed. The prince,
with his long strange fingers, still might pluck
her from that home, as if selecting a truffle

from a tray presented by some underling
in a balloon sleeve shirt with too stiff a ruff.
Can she be sweet enough to be our queen?

is what is on our peasant’s mind, a question
no folktale can resolve. Her blood is just as red
as anyone’s. It’s her starch will answer.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

one

 

[Tzara]

n:5

Fleur-de-lis

I have no tattoos. I apologize
for my lack of ink, for my being so unhip,
my being merely old. But I was startled

by that lily on your belly—
I admit my only thought was then Is she French?
before I was otherwise consumed

and just thinking with my tongue.
What bothers me
(and I know it should not) is how

you are no longer quite such a perfect surface
I am free to paint
with the thin wash of my love.