007 Challenge

[Tzara]

4

Confused Poem

I didn’t know how to lay
my heart across the border
where it could actually touch
your beautiful fingers. So,
of course, I hid myself
among the rocks of mischief,
never understanding
which words probed or pained
or whether any words were anything
other than deft marks on a cave
Archaeologists would later think
some graffited midden-heap.

You are married.
That is neither accusation
nor excuse—just reminder
that whatever pleasure we might seek
is consequential to our others.
I do not want to hurt mine.
More would I hate to hurt yours.

I think I only want
to hear your voice, clear
in brisk, clean air
saying, unequivocally, I love you,

not that you do, of course,
nor I reverse. But yet, I do.
I know this is confusing.

What love I have
is not sufficient. I want again,
or, especially, and,
as if you might somehow be satisfied
to be a coat I might wear
only on alternate Sundays,

when the only thing I really want is to kiss your iambic feet
all days, and celebrate their patter.

Oh, my. Oh, my. The end.

 

[Tzara]

5

What I Think About
When I Think About You

Your breasts, of course,
your hips, the beauty of their breadth,
the arc of your calf,
your neck, how long, how proud,
your spine’s furrow down your back.

Because I am a man, this is what I think.
But that I think of your breasts,
your hips, your calves?
That is quite another thing.

 

[Tzara]

6

.....

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Carry on, folks. I must take a brief break from my 007. Mourning a friend. Will be back when I am not so oozy.

 

[hmmnmm]

001

------

 

[hmmnmm]

002

Nobody’s perfect. Everybody
fucks up. At least once. No perfect
record. Nobody. Claws that sink
deep into the truffle that
came out flawless - or they need
not pierce that deep - can simply
linger, years and years, holiday
after holiday, labor
after labor after fictive
vacation; well it can really be
the most precious box given
for no nationally
designated day. Hell of it is,
is it seems to arrive late
so a middle aged man may feel
quite adolescent. Lights
of a gambling den dance upstairs
where waitresses in skimpy skirts
serve up tastes from the fountain
of youth and there is no reason
to believe the potion is
not genuine; but the stray
white pubic hair is more so.

 

[hmmnmm]

003

hour is a wine glass
one of those with mouth
that gapes and floor
that with foam rubber
is a bed for lost lovers

no orgy,
only two in love
hiding from cruelty

prefer to drown in protection
prefer to forsake substance

to favor return to
microscopic particle

even if it means to slide back
to the time and land of slime

like the saliva trail,
the shine on the shell,
the smooth torso husk and since the bloom
came tardy microscopic pimples
fan all across the virgin glade

the golden plain
the breeze caresses

but some flowers seem simply fated
to suffer the crush
of a boot like the petal
that began to believe it was
waking from a bad dream

just when there was no mere tongue
but when on the precipice of oral
envelopment and the boot
came along and kicked
the wine glass
so it fell, shattered.

Nightmare is eternal
and is no dream.

 

[hmmnmm]

004

-------

 

[Tzara]

7

Is here.

 

[hmmnmm]

------

 

[hmmnmm]

006

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

 

[hmmnmm]

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

 

[Micahb2]

It wasn't as much a shortcut
As the recognition
Of the pleasure
Crossing the open-handed
Field.

The corners had been cut
Leaving the tall grass in the center
Last.

The barn swallows our guests
I spot the man waving his fiddle
Drawing my attention
Like a baby swallowing it's fist.

Turning back to you
I set your leg back over
My shoulder. A bear muzzle
In honey.

 

[Micahb2]

001

Let Love tear us apart again.
Let Love have its tiny-fisted way with us.
Let Love raise a banner.
Let Love lead a charge against us.
Let Love draw a line in the sand.
Let the little shits and their mercantile
Outbid us.

We do not need any walls to hold Love.
We offer our beaches for Love to
Crash upon.
We offer our cliffs for Love to echo off of.

Beat, Love will ring up. You and I will take Love's coat. Trace
Our fingers along Love's barely remembered face.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

do over

bounce passed over
the sweat dribbled court
where sequence is kept

not for score but for penalties
binding cause to effect in some
certain ledger

until shoes squeak behind
painted lines and bleachers and doors
open to the world's air
in which one breathes

the canopied reach beyond
easy measure

 

[PandoraGlitters]

second

Gmurczyk embroiders hours off
jackboot strolls with Sedevacantists

amorously gripping the busy
needle with which he stitches

white white white
erasing the print

that fruits his nightmares
with all that dreadful color.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Third

with great surprise
we beheld the orange sun

rising over misplaced mountains
which themselves rose steaming
from open trunks

rising with attendant lint
link tail monkeys
burning up in their chatter
all of the receipts

we'd forgotten a decade
now feeding the fire

rising without trumpets
only ash confetti
floating from low branches

rising from our dusky
wake of lashes

 

[Micahb2]

Fragment

Memory spins and an open palm
Speaks of white sand and a blue sky
That is so quiet, all I hear is the pebbles rattle.

I love you. What comes next
I'll bring.

 

[Micahb2]

The snow has melted all day.
The neighbor tipped me off
"That boomerang in your hips won't ever land."
I figured as much. She runs her nails along me.

Funny thing, I sat in a parking lot this morning.
The snow melting on the windshield.
I sat there, smoking
Leaning back

The phone rang
Black lines snapped.
A black airship dropped down.

I told a funny story to the cashier.
He laughed. Asked, if I had been here long?

Let me tell you how long I have been here.
I have seen the monkeys in the Philippines screech in out left field.
Been chased by the Yuba City College cops
Chased into a high school bathroom by a librarian because I stole the mascot....

There's more,...not here, though.

It's been a good run.
Look at my hand.

I am not afraid of your touch
I can do anything with you.

Look closer.

 

[Micahb2]

That spring in my step?
It's Elvis whooping it up
When he yelps
"That train took my baby, but it won't again"

My Love is a butterfly knife,
it's the coast of Peru,
It's Monk's Escher-like chords,
(and his Godel-like silence)

It's over I know.
He was such a sweet guy.
His favorite song a siren.

Call me
When you close tonight?
We will drive down the street
past the parked cars
past the cats under street lamps
Till we get back here.
We will pull out the skittering guitars, the low moan,
the hips of white cotton.

 

[Micahb2]

Prodigal Lover

I've been thinking of a white beach.
The tents on fire.
In the background a volcano lays dormant.
I remember you at the screen door.
The hem of your dress on your thigh.
I tried to wave off catastrophe.
It kept biting around my eyes.
I figured,
with my hands,
Change.

 

[Micahb2]

What shores receive you?
What sky do you traffic in?
I know the sand is burned brown
..and rain is a snapshot. A rumor
caught by a mouth red with smeared gloss.

Love, Honey...turns us into animals.
That's where we belong

The lakes stretch out beneath us.
My compass being your
trailing wing.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Fourth

The airport kiss reassertion
that there is an Us occurs
without agenda
meeting minutes or chairs.
Hands huddle, the placards
fall to obscure bluebeige
carpet, the chakras align
(Shirley MacLaine coos
approval atop the distant
song of vacuum cleaners).
Heavy lidded we approach
that half familiar landing
between the selves,
overgrown where the surface
cracked but even enough to neck
the stretch across.

The language of this treaty
is spoken with bodies which never
lie and with poems which always
lie, but usefully. The language
of this compact is a mirror of tongues.
The binding of this promise is warm
fingers laced along our hips but no
more contained than this because
Us is too good to keep to ourselves
when the huddle breaks, palms up,
before the world
arriving and departing from La Guardia.

 

[Micahb2]

Hound Dog Taylor's Left Hand

There's ghosts in those satellites
and in those parking lots.

Look out, Sugar -

I'm gonna outlast you all.
You girls, too.

(Little Jet hid down in the backseat.
Black angels were flying above the treeline.
Looking over the lip, he couldn't be the only one
seeing this.
The Ol' Man in the rear view was playing the Devil.
He turned down the radio.
"What's up, Boy?")

I'm going to bury you before
You bury me, then
I'm going to take that girl
back to Innisfree.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Fifth

Sun bounces between buildings these precious hours.
Licked bricks warm the corners that hid
still sleeping creatures. Wake! Shake
the sand off. Sort yourself! they seem to say.
Pat down for the self begins: the charger.

Keys, cards, phone, and yes! The book
and all of its accompanying notes! Oh yes!
Pen in pocket, stumble up and right
down the boulevard where coffee hoards the night
collected dreams we pour right from the pot.