30 Poems in 30 Days

3-11

Sodium

O, Natrium, my darling salty dream! Let
me lick at you and thus spike mm Hg!





Yeah, yeah. Some days don't work out, OK?

3-22 Dirty Pithy

It's the juice, the quintessence
of right and wrong (and it is wrong).
Of this I make a decoction, meat
bone, heart and little else.

Nothing else matters as I boil it all down
make a triple strength of my own medicine
a poison home grown, fed with ugly.

One sip will kill the brain, then the body
will soon follow. What a dirty pithy.

3-12

Magnesium

Light and hard.
White when lit.

Double charged.
Alloyed, it

is useful metallurgically.
Atomic number twelve—Mg.




Thanks, Neo.

3-23

Against the setting sun, her hair
lights afire, a blazing halo. Tiny angel
smiles, melts this permafrost thing
that sets so heavy, held too long.

I put it down and pick her up.

3-13 (1,2)

Aluminum

Yeah, I got it. You're silvery
light metal, soft when pure.
Malleable, ductile—you serve well
as foil to the wittier atoms.

Recyclers watch your can and swell.

But you as sapphire? Ruby?
Quite a corundum, baby.





Aluminium

Aluminum Sir Humphrey named you.
Others aluminium changed to.

If here a British can I melt,
is it with different spelling smelt?

3-24

You have to have an open mind for this
she whispers under water
I'm breathing, understanding every word

clearly

I'm not

This has to be a hard right from reality
dream scape, but still existing
because I can feel the pinch

3-14

Silicon

Oh yeah, you're popular. I give you that.
Always available. Dull, but you mix well,
N you can P so giving and receiving,

though it seems that you require prompts
from other dopes for that—those more boring
or scenic than you. At least you're semi-

conducive to what's current. But then
under fire, under pressure, you get hard
and brittle and so transparent anyone can see

right through you. Still, some welcome
you into their bosom. Hell—I think
you're damn lucky you're the upper crust.

3-25 Re: all of a sudden passion suddenly

How right he was, life is like that
so is poetry
It's sudden
and it's all passion

Writing without it would be cold clichés
one stanza after another
All word images would be in sepia
hard to see and easily forgotten

Too slow, too boring
life isn't like that
If it was, I'd rather
watch t.v.
then write without it

3-15

Phosphorus

Necessary

light bearer of the gods
backbone of life

red and white
black and read

with a flare for attention.

3-26

I am Spam

Frogs and snails, and puppy
dogs' tails; bits and odd parts molded
into one fleshy slab. Self-esteem
is merely a gelatinous coating.

Fry me up and serve me
on white toast.

Wonder bread sticks to the roof
of your mouth. It's nothing more
than air and preservatives
empty carbs, useless like Spam.

3-16

Sulfur

As chaste elemental,
sometimes plastic.

When bound as thiol,
often nasty.

When bound on cross,
alchemical-

ly trianglic.
Yellow-bellied

brimstone: sin-
gular organic.

3-27

Turn on your side
more, more
closer

She smears warmed jelly
slides the wand around

Hold your breathe
10, 20, 30
Blood rushes into my ears
before she says to breathe
It seems like twenty times in a row
but it's only been ten

My head fogs up
and the dark closes in
Could be something more than stones
could be something worse
could be, but it can't be something better

She presses hard
and it hurts. I got to take it
though I put this to memory
don't ever do cheap shots
no kidney punches
no knee to the nuts

I'll remember because I feel
like puking
maybe piss some blood

Turn over
the other side
then more jelly down, down
She takes x-rays through
skin, guts into my bladder

To myself: no more blueberries
blackberries, chocolate
cut the salt
no fucking cheese
no fucking cheese

3-17

Chlorine

This element is different for me—thank
Wilfred Owen. His poem, "Dulce et
Decorum Est" made chlorine

more than just some element, the sting
in swimming pools, some ion in
an acid, the crust about a bottle's neck.

The horror. The horror, keened Conrad.
Then the gas clouds over Ypres
unfolded and whatever the Congo may

have displayed to Joe became a footnote.
There is nothing uglier than ugly death.
I do not know that horror. Nor does

my father. My grandfather did, perhaps,
God rest his soul. I hope he didn't see
that, didn't have to fumble for his mask.

I hope my family never has to either.
Chlorine: Stay as salt. Keep company
with Sodium, temper his combative

ways. Be friendly with Potassium.
Even Lithium is better than your close
incestuous yearning for yourself.

Yes, your acrid tang in pools is nice
and comforting. There I'm kept healthy.
But to mine own self let me be true:

Nor I, nor friends, greet you, Cl2.

3-28

Lies are like fresh fish on a stringer
hooked through the gill wanting H2O
but sucking O2 instead

Every thing that dies, eventually stinks

3-18

I've already written a poem about Argon and don't want to write another one. So here's something else:

Love, in Conic Sections

At first, we went in circles.
That was OK. I squared, you squared,
as a couple, we were square.

But then the focus changed,
or focuses—foci, I guess. Our path
was tied to points I could not touch
nor guess their origin. Elliptically,
they ran from my sere heart

to the parabolic chart
where focus disappeared in dark
antiquity, or left
its tracing arc headed for
the infinite, which was not

my meaning. I changed
my talk to vertical, sliced
through convention, found
that we would never meet.

However hyperbolic that may seem,
it was the truth. I feared
this re-examining, the spun
triangle. Equilateral or not,
I did not want that destiny.

But lines are infinite,
and sines are signs of life,
even in a muddled trance
we dance to their eternal tune.

So count me this way,
count me that way,
count me every way, but tru-
ly dice my true intentions.

I languish here, your conic section.

3-29 Sillyslutty Myspace Flirt

Feels good

sunny all day
wrapped in cotton sheets
crushing on velvet
cool breeze on hot skin

Tactile erogenic
words are erotic
I'm a poet

Not a laureate
not Keats
not Kerouac
just call me Jamison

3-30

Damn, that smokes
Incense
breathe in earthy, primal

It touches me
but it burns much too quick

Instead

smell patchouli sex
smooth glide through oil
It's essential
a body responds
and it carries when it's hot

3-19

Potassium

That Kalium floats as it burns
seems pretty basic. Much more nervy

is how it primes the sodium pump,
how it has such great potential.

I get a charge out of it, I really do.
Hey. Want a banana? They're good for you.


Now, cc. That isn't fair. You have a head start!

3-20

Calcium

O, my bones so long for calcium,
whose + + looks like teats.

And then, my blood thickens and my
muscles ache for you, sweet kitten.

So I must drink of you, and deep. Taste
and roughly lick your ion, ma petite.

3-21

Scandium

Astral resident, rare at home,
helps our arced vapor glow
like sun, so TV cameras roll.

Aluminum burns, jealous
of your calmer mien. Bound
to you in rocket's cone

he's more than satisfied.
His strength, your grain
laid Russian ice to waste.

3-22

Titanium

Hey. Space metal, laptops. This
should be easy. NOT!

Ti has perhaps
the best argument
to be a "friendly" metal—

osseointegrativeness. Means something like
"it binds to bone." I have those, this,
in my jaw, lower left. That Ti screw sets

solidly (I hope) among the roots
of my natural teeth. Hold on, bud. . . .

OK. Perhaps spacecraft would be better yet
for our national defense. I just
like to have that tooth.

Rock on.

3-23

3-24

Chromium

Chromium. Shit.
All I can think of
is an electric horseman
and some Keno girl
hoovering a trailer hitch,

but if that ain't chemistry
I don't know what is.

2-1

Queens of Silent Suffering

All of the greats
visited those places -
the white places where they were all forced
to perform patience and learn peacefulness.
The sterile view reflects the smell and
the stench coming from our dear, beloved greats
is that of an old shoe box
stuck to the back of the closet.

White walls. White bed. White hands,
neck, and face - propped up by
white pillows and their mouths gaping open
for their annual doses.
They bring numbness.

But didn't they know they were great?
Not disturbed, but tragically beautiful.
Their deaths, as picturesque
as the descriptions they thought out.
Words you wouldn't think to use when
telling someone what you saw
on a late Saturday afternoon.
Or how you saw the world after a hurricane.

They outlived more than a weather forecast
could bring.
They lived, their minds taking bizarre,
edgy left and right turns.
They lived through chaos turned beauty.

But not I.

I shall suffer silently,
like all women are taught to do.

The white places,
the sterile spaces
are not for me.

I am not patient,
I speed life up with heart racing
horse pills
when the house looks disheveled.
Hallucinogens when the boredom of
a mock house wife kicks in.
Downers when that time of night
comes around and I am forced
to lie my head on the cushion.

Peacefulness comes to those who
have learned to stay still.
To those who's minds can be put at ease.
Those who take classes teaching you
to be more centered.
I wouldn't know where to begin.

But I will be tragic. Beautiful.

On the outside, a bag of bones
just like any other who walks down the street
for a pack of cigarettes in the stale,
morning air.
Three dollars and fifty cents
inhaled directly down to my gut,
the rest exhaled into the
already polluted air.

The inside will be complicated,
much like any other;
but my thoughts, those demons
will come out and chill you
to the bone with my imperfect stanzas.

I am not like those greats;
my Sexton, Plath, Woolf, Dickinson -
the white places are not for me.
I cannot waste away.

And I would not look as picturesque
taking my own life;
no, I could not be that beautiful.

But I will suffer in silence,
like all good women learn to do
and when I go mad,
no one will have any clue.

3-25

Manganese

It doesn't seem right
that you're metallic. Purple
seems more suited for hair color
in those Japanese comics
you read from back to front,
whose people speak
your sacred language.