007 Challenge

[PandoraGlitters]

Sixth

Tapdancer in a burning theater freezes
for a fraction of a second deciding whether
to buffalo or drop and roll,
torn between recency and primacy,
looking into the audience then side to side
before leaping into both answers
both feet off the floor
and leading the buffalo stage left
as the house manager signals
exits to the street
which also burns.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Seventh (late)

It was just a job, checking passports
at the border but I never had to look.
I knew the photo was false. Unimportant.
Always the words were honest even
when they were mistaken.
Always I loved your voice.

 

[Micahb2]

You are something that says
"Hey remember Claudette?"
Of course. I am not rude.

The dam was a lock. The tiny
Train in that tiny valley waves
With a blast of steam.

I am so in love. That woman is in my head. I am so ready. Your tiny trap set is beguiling.

Listen, my daughters: I am talking to you. Be fearless and fuck shit up. Help, lend a hand. Be You in the face of this wonderful catastrophe.

These cards? Here. Take them. My boys and I are gone.

Claudette was saying something over a slice. Her tiny teeth flashing.

I can sweep any change off the table. Meet you on time

I watch the locks drift.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Jealous Bees

The low tongue of the forest thickens
and rolls out around the trees, over cords
of roots knuckling into loam. No ear finds
my iamb that easily, sir. I learned
to pad, to follow the crack with a roll
outninjaing your fondest cat. This autumn
is already in my backpack, dear, folded in
napkins, brewing us up some cider.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Judges Block

The several Judges huddled wearing catcher's mitts
in which they held newborn human
babies blinking back the light. This is not a parable
or a lecture or a sermon or a dream. It just is
a huddle of Judges wearing catcher's mitts. It is a meta
for religion: Judges
holding catcher's mitted babies,
revering life strategically, ready to rumble, their robes
pulled up and trainers crossing to block.

 

[Desejo]

Rictus -1

Polished diplomacy is difficult
with this homegrown accent
not bred for high society stables--
my vowels are unclipped and I live

in mortification that you will
someday ask me about wine
over a plate of steak tartare
I'd question the cutlery
and drop my napkin

And the conversation!
so infuriating when
you challenge deep set beliefs
as myth or infantile thinking
or puritan snobbery even

my smile freezes in a rictus
my face blazes
thin skin over stretched freckles

Watch now the confidence
I am so known for
shred in stripes
and wayward states

Please do pardon me
if I forget to lift the sash of my ball gown
when I pee and I leave
a trail of tears
in my wake

 

[PandoraGlitters]

conversational bellybutton peeks out
from the stretch between that hovered
too high to be a lull

centered right over the coaster and it asks
are you ready for what comes next

which raises the question what
comes next but we know
that next is work

grinding the corners and waxing
our bookends to a shine so we can
contain all this memoir and salvage
the words and blinks and tastes

corking it for later
tongues and sunset thirsts

 

[PandoraGlitters]

The Hard R

Loretta waltzes across a lonely floor
watching the shadow of her everything
fade but this is 2012. We have buttons
to draw this out. Slow, stop, frame
by frame we could tease the salt
out of each tear. Finger twitch impulse
wants to stop and stop and stop and retry
with new spawn at the doorstep, on the balcony,
reboot, relog this goodbye until it rewinds
as hello. The trained palate arches and looses
the R of this song as a high Ah, approving
crystal and floor filled with waltzers but

Loretta does not sing that way. Her R
is untrained. It is hard wood and right angled,
oblivious to scrutiny. Never meant to be flung
into the rafters. That R (there
goes my everything) sails into the open mouth
and hooks the cheek, growling to the final g
until it pulls tears right out of their ducts. This
is so we can know the power of goodbye--
so we can swallow it back until it is meant
to be spent some dark night from which
one cannot wake without pain.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Yes it is heavy

Even against the beat of artful feet
on the hard path walked often by many,
even roped in the sweet hum of this
morning's song, the burden is too much
for a shoulder or a wrist or a hip. This jug
you left me on Facebook is sloshy with problems,
with dotted lines named and signed, successively,

seconds apart. No one should sign
this many times! Did not the W. Bush
Congress teach us? Each signing is a vow
of the self to the universe. I am! I will! I must!
The only way to carry such a platter of Yes! is atop
one's head because otherwise the wrist or shoulder
will give. There can be no preference for right or left,
only balance on the common crown
and careful steps back
toward the thirsty, the village.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Desejo, welcome to the 007! Rictus was a great start. Quite inspiring. I look forward to reading your work as ever.

 

[butters]

some really inspiring writes here. 'slovely to read after ... other stuff.

 

[Desejo]

2: Hands

Clairvoyance was not needed
to see what was coming
when they offloaded
men,women, children from the truck
flurries fluttering about in drafts
though it was June

But there are times when mystic is good
and distraction better
so Robert Desnos grabbed a woman’s hand
and read her palm
as if they were friends in a parlor
dozens of hands stretched out to him

He calmed frigid hands in his
traced wondrous futures for all
full of love and joy
Here, below where the stolen wedding ring
Protests in a ring of bleached flesh
We have an an artist!
This mark here, that looks like a star
A lover! A father to three!

All that power
in his hands

 

[PandoraGlitters]

<3

Love dances over the palm, dances on its tip
blinking red gloss until it solidifies its swanning necks
and the line moves up [return].

Love or the image that plays love
on my phone ends this night in the words
that stand in for lover, for hands and legs.

The dummy in my bed is a cell phone
coincidentally about the size of a human heart
but sturdier. Sturdy enough to ring

6am, 6:15 and 6:30 even under the pillow
or the cat, or my unmolested hip. Love kneels
under the alarm clock window

bearing the stain of your casual affection
that I have cultivated, saved, carried, allowed
to fade into night so it can be resurrected tomorrow.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Talk of the Town

The last we saw was the bathroom window
lighting a tender brush revealed
by the upheld arm. The memory of focus
shifts because the fuzz was insignificant
against the twisted smile above it
which launched the words blonde and fun
in my brain. But both of these words were
spun by that twist in the corner of your mouth.
The blonde fun fanned under the inevitable
blow dryer until these, too, lost significance.

What remained were sharp eyes smiling
against the forward chin, against the posture
challenging look down
into the milky swell.

 

[Desejo]

Desejo, welcome to the 007! Rictus was a great start. Quite inspiring. I look forward to reading your work as ever.

Thank you- I'll try not to disappoint.

 

[Desejo]

3: The Bucket you kicked

The bucket you kicked

Would have been a calabash
like the one I would use
to pour palm wine on your grave
Should I ever get the courage
to do that

People will tell you
you remember the good times,
not the suffering at the end

If only that were true.

I still see hundreds of pills stacked
on your bed stand
like millet in a village granary
on termite ravaged posts
And your bones —
so impatient to poke through everywhere
pale and white

I still see that first, not
the way your eyes crinkled up
whenever you tried to keep a straight face
The drunkenness of your skin
Nina, oh-o Nina Nina, hey oh
playing on speakers over the bed
the glint of your silver bracelet

The last time you called
It was from Ziguinchor
your home

I said, I will come see you - j’arrive
I did not.

Because I did not want to forget the other things.

 

[Desejo]

4: Root cellar

White plastic tubs marked Costco
fill the shelves that grandma stocked
with canned tomatoes and preserves
Eat what you store, store what you eat

Nowadays it’s stuff like Chicken a la king, dessicated
and there’s ammo stocked in a corner
to fend off whatever comes to get us
aliens zombies hippies ebola arabs
at the end of days

This is the last stand
the place we will hunker down
Defend
It’s dead serious stuff
life preservation and all

But as you lift the crate of peanut butter
up to that top shelf
the naked bulb hanging on twisted wire
lights
pale, flat muscles rippling under
your wifebeater t-shirt

Come here.
After all, this is a root cellar.

 

[butters]

And your bones —
so impatient to poke through
pale and white

very originally voiced

 

[PandoraGlitters]

carry the bitter root too close
hold aconite in your hand or
pull the monk's hood too far

over your eyes and it is your own
life you will poison
your own heart melted

like fat in a wok
dissolved in the acid
of hatred


life is too short to spend it making and killing enemies
leave toy soldiers to children for they are childish things

 

[Desejo]

5: Problem conjunctions

Listen, my smile is a poor imitation
in your absence though
Your presence is unbearable too
My

thought was
to kiss you
I say just once, but

But.
This is all but

Listen, words deny explanation
in your actions even so
I understand but I do not understand

Because
This is all because

 

[Desejo]

6: Getting it On Paper

One scribbles a few words on a page
Balls it up and tosses it into the wastebasket

One dribbles into a tissue
Balls it up and tosses it in the wastebasket

Either way, I end up being waste.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Like it or not, the scab will drop
away from new knee skin it has cradled
......its flaky hems reaching back as it skitters
..............down the shin.

 

[Desejo]

7/7 : Something about a Man Cooking

Something about a man cooking

I attack from behind
biting your neck like a mountain lion
You misunderstand and feed me a sizzle of
bacon from the pan

When I nip the grease off your fingers
and push you up against the truck
then you realize — there is no escape
Leave those armadillo boots on cowboy
but the jeans need to go

We rock, rise, crash in a sea
of sweet tall grass wind and sunlight
rippling in quivers over miles
cooling the parts of us
that are not still joined

Prairie dogs twitter about our antics in a semi circle.
We may need to pay them off to keep their mouths shut.

Do you think they like bacon?



(reworked from an old 5 senses challenge someone beat me to, but I kinda liked it)

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Ibrahim wanted a fight. He needed to feel his fist smashing
the lips of Martin's too easy smile. All too easy, Martin's
petty thefts, Martin's behind the back
whispering, taunting. It was too easy

for this boy from the neighborhood to gather
his five-year friends and his cousins to follow
Ibrahim's path to the Grande Concourse
twittering, "You mama sucks off the cook
to buy yo dinner. Greasy Salvatore
. . . gives you family they meat" and the seven
five-year friends and Martin's cousins
echo loud laughing "You mama
sucks," as if it were dirty as if he
were dirty but even this isn't why
Ibrahim wanted a fight.

. . . . . needed
fist to bone and bright blood.
It would be easy

to bash that untracking eye
which never had to watch the horizon
for aid trucks and warlords.

Martin and his cousins, his flank
ing five-year friends finally rounded
that deli moment corner
right after 3pm when all
Cardinal Hayes High School
stopped.

It was easy. In the plum middle Ibrahim turned
in the eye of the crowd to face the little lash
of Martin and his little audience. In the plum
middle, Ibrahim turned. He turned to face
Martin, smug and shirtless Martin and Ibrahim's

blueblack fist sailed
like thunder right into the high eye
again into the thick lip
again into the upturned nose,
breaking off the gold tooth spinning,
bouncing off the sidewalk
into the irretrievable street.

Ibrahim beat and dodged until Mr. Castillo yelled

"I know this boy!" putting his arm around Martin,
pulling him off, holding him back
for Ibrahim to pass and for peace
on the walk home "I know this boy!"
but Mr. Castillo didn't. Wouldn't have
guessed.

Martin, tear faced and bruised
Martin of the goldless smile reached out and pushed
Ibrahim's hoodied back, aiming him for traffic.

* * *

Two blocks over Ibrahim's mother turned on the gas
and blew up her house, burned to ash the children
she made from her own body
because the cook paid his new waitress

a compliment.

 

[Desejo]

Ibrahim wanted a fight. He needed to feel his fist smashing
the lips of Martin's too easy smile. All too easy, Martin's
petty thefts, Martin's behind the back
whispering, taunting. It was too easy

for this boy from the neighborhood to gather
his five-year friends and his cousins to follow
Ibrahim's path to the Grande Concourse
twittering, "You mama sucks off the cook
to buy yo dinner. Greasy Salvatore
. . . gives you family they meat" and the seven
five-year friends and Martin's cousins
echo loud laughing "You mama
sucks," as if it were dirty as if he
were dirty but even this isn't why
Ibrahim wanted a fight.

. . . . . needed
fist to bone and bright blood.
It would be easy

to bash that untracking eye
which never had to watch the horizon
for aid trucks and warlords.

Martin and his cousins, his flank
ing five-year friends finally rounded
that deli moment corner
right after 3pm when all
Cardinal Hayes High School
stopped.

It was easy. In the plum middle Ibrahim turned
in the eye of the crowd to face the little lash
of Martin and his little audience. In the plum
middle, Ibrahim turned. He turned to face
Martin, smug and shirtless Martin and Ibrahim's

blueblack fist sailed
like thunder right into the high eye
again into the thick lip
again into the upturned nose,
breaking off the gold tooth spinning,
bouncing off the sidewalk
into the irretrievable street.

Ibrahim beat and dodged until Mr. Castillo yelled

"I know this boy!" putting his arm around Martin,
pulling him off, holding him back
for Ibrahim to pass and for peace
on the walk home "I know this boy!"
but Mr. Castillo didn't. Wouldn't have
guessed.

Martin, tear faced and bruised
Martin of the goldless smile reached out and pushed
Ibrahim's hoodied back, aiming him for traffic.

* * *

Two blocks over Ibrahim's mother turned on the gas
and blew up her house, burned to ash the children
she made from her own body
because the cook paid his new waitress

a compliment.

Not sure what the protocol is for commenting on the 007 poems, but this one is compelling. The end in particular, since if forces the reader to draw some conclusions.