2013 Challenge: One Poem a Week

[Angeline]

4

Try not to look
while I give the longest
best-ever blow job
to this poem.

I can't help myself
I'm grateful for whatever
mystery unlocked its gate
and said come back in

here
where the words sing

as if trees and grass
began to speak again
as if dead language rolled
back the rock to light a path
way through the quotidian
gloom.

I'm gagging on metaphors
swallowing the farthest reach
of the mind's eye.

Later
I'm going to fuck this
poem silly until neither
of us can quit laughing.

 

[greenmountaineer]

16

Visit the Sins of the Mother

"Hey Boy," his Big Mama used to seethe,
clenching her teeth because she hated
any name starting with Genesis,

making him cook meth in her kitchen
all those years until surprise,
they're both in a State of Missouri prison.

Now in the Chillicothe Women's
morgue she's waiting for Aryan heaven
because she had given seventy reasons

times seven to women with outside kin
and brothers with shivs who'll visit her sins
upon the son in Bonne Terre Prison.

The warden says "Hey, Boy, whatchu been doin'?
tattooin' four of your fingers with HATE"
on the right while LOVE, what's left of it, bleeds

48 hours in Segregation
where Little Nurse Big Tits has to contact
visit and hear her nickname again

the while he grins and bares her his teeth
after he's eaten his shit on a shingle
shoved through a slot by Handyman Spade

he otherwise could give a rat's ass to
why, when he's asked, his time bomb mind
ticks it's Ben. Goddammit! It's Ben!

 

[Angeline]

5

12 Bar Blues

Let us have no truck
with the bottles, the cans
reds whites single malts
blended to a fare thee well
stirred

or shaken poured straight
over ice foaming or fizzing
sparkling, gussied up in pastel
tinkling and bristling umbrellas

or conveniently packaged
labeled in feline women
caressing the slender
glass as if it were you
lips parted legs

or stout Celtic letters,
thin promises en Francais
spidering across parchment,
Southern gents in white suits
rocking, sipping or just
utilitarian cardboard
carriers generic
anonymous.

Take it all and crash
it into a boozy lake
blast it off to a super
nova or convert it
to power the future.
I don't care.

Listen.
I've seen the elephant:
not the trunk or tail, neither
tusk squat feet nor leathery
hide, but the whole mother
thundering thing and it is
bloody hell.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

16 - Cryptic Cross Words

Ten across,
Two words,
Five and three.
“What the driver said to Phillips”
First word an “S” a “C” two blanks “W”
Second word, two blanks “U”.

Ten down,
Two words,
Four and two.
“Behind the bars”
First word “S” two blanks “T”
Second word blank “P”


Answers
10 A Screw you
10 D Shut up

 

[Tzara]

16

Let Your Hair Go Gray

because you have never been too Cosmo
because you are not your mother
because you want to make a statement
because you are not a joining person
because you are very happy in your life
because you don’t need validation
because you are fucking fulfilled by

somebody who loves you.




End there.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Angeline]

6 4/19/13

Aftermath

She cried for a year.
Every time a plane flew
overhead she ran, cried.
I held her, said everything
is ok now.

Not all planes explode and blast away pieces of a city.
Not all planes explode and make your friends' fathers disappear.
We're safe, safe, safe

is the biggest lie,
but what else do you tell
a seven-year-old?
She and her brother
are the only safety I know.

Even that will change.

Childhood recedes
in flutters and blinding flashes,
lightening bugs and whispers.
They will remember safety
fleeting fleeing but forgive me
my lies.

Later we'll watch
each other over miles,
teacups and telephones.
We'll feel our way
to some kind
of understanding.

 

[bogusagain]

10 weather vein

the economy is desultory
just like the weather
you learn to put up with it

economists like witch doctors
diagnose and predict enough
to be right at least once in a while

the politicians are just wrong
they always are, they know they are
ignorance is their strength

my back weakens to the load
my pockets are full of holes
anger spends my energy

I’ve dusted of Das Kapital
it gives analysis and reason
where the Bible claims hope

hope doesn’t fill the belly
neither does analysis and reason
but it pinpoints your enemy

 

[bogusagain]

11 alien nation

I wear a goldfish bowl
like a cosmonaut’s helmet
it protects me from the wind
it keeps me feeling warm and safe
quarantines me from the disease
called civilization

birds cut across my vision
only chance prevents our collision
but one day chance will toss different dice
a bird will dive from the eaves
and end crucified across my life
my glass will crack

life will seep in like a gas
alien nation is known to be contagious
unable to resist the world
my brain will swell and fester
my limbs will flail and fail
to keep my mental balance

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Angeline]

7 4/21/13

Seven or So

First they surround you
in an untidy ring, cruel
smiles crude words
You don't notice eyes
that pin you to the ground

for you won't look up
even as you know the sky
is there, the warm even
breath of spring but all

subsumed, clotted to jagged
pieces of morning shrinking
behind the sounds they make,
the way they smell.

I'm not dirty.
Mama bathes me every
night I swim with the bubbles
I'm a fish, a clean one Mama
says and yes

I know a Jew. Papa
says I'm special, we are
Einstein, Salk, what would
Freud make of this little
herd, rabble with a rope
and no one is jumping now

Mama Mama save me quick
Call the doctor say I'm sick

when it cuts bee stings
and I finally break free
beaten into tears and guilt
I don't even know who Jesus
is. I'm not dirty I didn't
kill him.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

17 - Boston Marathon Aftermath

In the subsequent vacuum
we turned to CNN for answers
and there he is,
standing head and shoulders above
the reporting rabble clustered round him
like apostles hoping for a miracle.

He patiently replied to questions
he already answered, his mind
still on the past hours in surgery
removing shrapnel from six year old legs
and the last shreds of flesh that attached
a twenty year old beauty to her foot.
His weariness was undisguised yet he listened
to request he could not fill.

He was darkly handsome, movie-star material,
but I had tears in my eyes watching
his struggle for composure
as he backed away apologizing
to return to carnage

Now that’s history
and there is progress,
success, triumph. But Martin
is still dead, his mother oblivious,
coma-bound and his little sister
still thinks she has two legs.

 

[greenmountaineer]

17

CONFUCIUS FIGURINES NOW ON SALE

In Qufu where the master was born
a bridegroom can have his honeymoon sooner
with Ling who loves karaoke bars
on red lantern nights before the next wedding,
reminding all the American business
her name means swallow, the bird, of course,
and knows enough of their white devil English
to wink while mouthing a long neck beer.

From inside a doodad stall it seems
two discounted figurines of Confucius
are frowning at t-shirts across the street
that hang on a tree a huckster tells tourists
is, but it isn't, a ginkgo biloba
on which Chairman Mao once hanged a duke,
and if I lift a dollar from my pocket,
he'll show me the photo to prove it.

 

[Tzara]

17

Her Empty Thighs

God. As I hoped, you were always open
at least enough to let me lie,
well, between them,

to gutter myself.
I am sorry. It has been no
shame for me to lie with you,

Miranda. You are lovely,
point of fact. And I'm sorry
to leave you perhaps besmirched,

but your body, however wonderful,
could never speak my language.
Your beauty is just beauty—

and you could never balance cocktails
at a club without offering to
what my friends, of course, would love.

We love Beauty. We love Truth.
We love, we love—
God, we love women. Saints above.

 

[Angeline]

8 4/23/13 Wallace at times Ted

He a man of secrets
who in whose bed what
pills drinking quarrels
even fisticuffs Frost broken-
jawed bloody knuckles
by the sea hours spent

painting words out
from comic bubbles imagine
what they might have said
imagine sunlight slanting
beyond a cloudy gloom
conjuring a brighter ago.

Morning elevator doors
creak he sits with numbers
actuarial tables projection
outside the walls whimsy
dips obscurely a message
hidden word on word
lines that giggle then hush.

O blessed rage for order*
he stands on pavement
deceiving Lower Broadway
Pepsi in hand, an ill-
fitting coat.

*from The Idea of Order at Key West, Wallace Stevens

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[bogusagain]

business

beauty is a usable asset
like a banker uses deposits
like a lawyer uses words
like a politician uses promises
it’s about available currency
it’s about earning a living

she offered a particular sexuality
neither aggressive or threatening
feisty, offering a challenge
her defences were sound but not invincible
capable of being overrun
by a foe with charm and money

she spoke with her guiltless body
saintly and sainted, a vagina
undressed, over and over again
her virginity regularly discarded
something necessary but temporary
like yesterday’s underwear

 

[Angeline]

9 4/26/13

Branded

Biblioteca de Babel
the fragrance is high
toned and expensive
redolent of fiction lifted
wholesale metaphor
for a modern nightmare:
too much information.

Spin meaning out
from ink, color it
an uneasy shade
of anonymous pleasantly
cloaked in cedar, cinnamon
tuberose.

These are no pressed petals
lingering in treasured pages
but notes from a bureau
calculated for the vapidly
vacant to trail a hint
of what could have been
an idea.

 

[HarryHill]

.....

 

[Angeline]

10 4/27/13

Invitation Embrasser

I'm stiff as a board
so I bend low, slide
fingers down this long
stretch of me, fifth
position arms en haut,
petite plié.

I'm stiff as a board.
Your hands work.
I turn, fall to your
watching eyes following
lips the soft-spoken
command of you,
the scent.

Invitation embrasser
la petite mort.

 

[bogusagain]

it's always politics

rumour says Sophie shaves her vagina
or should that be vulva, pudendum or pubis?
it’s difficult to intellectualize, when
your mind is swimming below waist height
a dog sniffing around at random, searching
for a morsel, or even better, some bitch in heat
you know, you’ve been there too, don’t deny it
it keeps your mind occupied and who knows
someone always wins the lottery

her porcelain pubis polished to a mirror
a V pointing between her thighs, the cut
which keeps you awake at night, your face
reflecting back, with a gash between your eyes
this concerns you more than the boot, pressed
down upon your sternum, the weight of the world
squeezing your bellows chest of oxygen
pumping hard and making no headway
it’s the impossible vision of her you see

am I writing this from experience?
everyone needs a distraction, a hope
as the government reduces you to a number
puts its bureaucratic hand up your arse
and proceeds to pull your insides out
even proud stallions are ending up as gelding
to make them race more efficiently, to win
but not to stud, that’s your owner’s right
you are domesticated and being farmed

I studied Karl Marx for the betting averages
asked Frederick Engels for his opinion
‘Freedom is the recognition of necessity’
I applied this reasoning to shaved vaginas
boxes full, like harvested mussels, puckering
a field of failed last dying words, bubbles
inflating then deflating, moribund explanations
you may imagine Sophie’s smooth pudendum
but in the end all it is, is politics

 

[bogusagain]

15

plague

frustrated? try pouring water up hill
should you succeed, anything is possible
you have just broken the laws of physics
otherwise, it’s an exercise in futility
welcome to the human race

Nietzsche asked, is god man’s mistake
or is man, god’s? everyone believes in god
even atheists, I give myself up as evidence
the grubby stain on my brain cannot be expunged
it remains with me, pesters me, like migraine

man and god, creatures of mutual conceit
god the idea, more real, more cancerous, more deadly
than god the man, god the astronaut at least
was flesh and blood, man with too much knowledge
god the narcissist, at least, is time limited

last week I visited Mars, honest!
I saw the dust bowls, witnessed the dust storms
the iron oxide beaches where the tide last went out
did god foolishly bequeath this planet to the human race
who promptly swarmed like locusts?

 

[greenmountaineer]

18

Being Frank

"I imagine that yes is the only living thing."
e.e. cummings

Frank said to Joe "I don't see why"
when Joe said "Frank, please sell my wares"
since Frank, shit, knew ain't no guy
who'd buy Joe's has-been have-been-theres

nor would, Frank knew, he'd ever woo
Tom, Dick, or Harry to be frank
to buy a gizmo, much less Joe's,

but being Frank, he doesn't know
the reasons why Joe's gizmos sell
and his doohickeys never do.

 

[HarryHill]

.....