007 Challenge

[playcatch]

7

We are our wounds?
We are the world?
F. T. S.

That's the quote, not the poem, btw.

Here is where the poem starts.

By. The. Fucking. Way.

I am not a wound. I am a person who has inflicted, endured, forgotten
wounds to myself who has
ingested the wounds of other animals. I've wounded
as few as possible, but one never knows.
one never knows what other creatures suffer.

Some say lesser animals. I'm not judging.

A wound is just the simple suffering of progress. If you continue
on this trail you will encounter the thorn. If
you continue on this trail you will encounter
nothing.

Fate is fickle. God is said to have chosen the hearty
for more difficulty.

Perhaps the meek truly shall
inherit the earth.

The thornless,
empty earth.

 

[sweepthefloor]

3.

We are small blood clots
In a cascade of bleeding
Eating platelets and fibrin--
We bleed again and again.

Someday we will put crazy glue
On all these little stipple wounds--

And that will the end of that.

 

[sweepthefloor]

4.

The Personals

My heart has the kind of dirt that all kinds of seeds take to the root and grow wild weeds and flowers. This mating creates the hybrid that disgusts the local garden club. It doesn’t stop me from digging in my chest.

 

[sweepthefloor]

5.

Two cats fight over one Tom.
He loves them both--
One produces the kitties
Like the pumpkins at the farm stand
In a basket.

The other one just took what she could get.

 

[sweepthefloor]

6.

--We got what we got--
We didn’t give it to each to each other
It could be a chemical disaster

An emotional combustion chamber
And they don’t make HazMAT suits
For this kind of maybe love.

I make no promises-- and I take nothing.

 

[sweepthefloor]

7. L+

There won’t be any volatile metals
Circulating around my brain--
The little precious neurons
These unusual cell shapes.

I won’t give up my euphoria--
Even if it means sleeping for days

While waiting for happy back.

 

[playcatch]

Some wonderful sevens sprung up while I was vacationing for, oh, a yearish.

Have been reading back. Thank you, STF, for writing with me. Even though I sometimes wondered if you wanted to saw my skull open.

 

[playcatch]

One

Even shadowboxing
bores me. I cannot muster
the froth of war. Cannot sustain
hate in these lungs
too used to Gershwin
and coffee bean cleanses.

I cannot hate you.
I will not fight you.
Tomcats are plentiful--dozens per corner.

Words wash away
from my island home
into foam and cloudbelly.

If you hear thunder forever,
well that's a medical issue.

 

[sweepthefloor]

Some wonderful sevens sprung up while I was vacationing for, oh, a yearish.

Have been reading back. Thank you, STF, for writing with me. Even though I sometimes wondered if you wanted to saw my skull open.

There will be no sawing skulls here- The only sharps we have are words, and we cut to heal.
And surely I am not cultured for neurosurgery. I quit that day job a few years ago.

Thank you too. I get lazy on the 7s-- and then I come back. I have a habit of taking one word from another and penetrating chest letters that drain words into a seven measure chamber. I hope you don’t mind.

 

[sweepthefloor]

1.

If could hear the thunder and wish the rain wash in my head--
I wouldn’t rinse the shampoo. The risk is in the shower.

The electricity you know. There is no lightning rod--
And this heart house is not grounded. That’s the risk.

All we can do is storm on like troopers in the wind--
Because this is not a hurricane, and we have rain boots.

 

[playcatch]

accident

antimatter

 

[playcatch]

2

Systems checked. Dashboard lights
slow to the speed of
Radio. Radio Fresh Jams pin
this single night
to bucket seats.

According to the Manual,
our distance is 5 inches

yet we overlap
closer than we appear
in either mirror.

 

[playcatch]

3

Carpet, grass, sand or pavement
translate gravity--its intermediaries.
Lest we delude ourselves, size matters
and exerts force, warps
space, bends the night to hollow the moon.

All the king's horses, their oats, and the protein
drinks of an entire kingdom will not heavy

my heels enough to dent my city's slabs,
nor the bedrock beneath.

 

[sweepthefloor]

2.

There is an egg on the city street--
Everyone walks around it.

I don’t know how they can see it--
They are not looking down.

I think they just know it is there--
They don’t see the beggars either.

There is an egg on the city street--
I am always looking down.

I didn’t see myself in the highest heels--
I cracked my egg in the middle.

And my insides oozed out viscous--
All over the city street.

 

[sweepthefloor]

3.

The street wasn’t hot enough to cook me.
I can’t eat myself sickly raw.

There’s not a pot to hard boil the water.
Eventually the pavement dried me up.

The passersby picked me cracked up
On the bottom of fifty dollar shoes.

And I went homes with the unknowns.
To live inside woolen magic carpets.

 

[playcatch]

I am always looking down.

High? :]

 

[sweepthefloor]

High? :]

I wish I were high. Hi.
Sometimes the clouds come to the earth for me.
They call if fog.
I say it is the atmospheres favor just for me.
The looker downer is a some girls habit.

Maybe it was that time I stepped on a bee.
Maybe it was that time I stepped into a pile of dog shit.
The time before forced feet into shoes.
The time before I learned to always look down.

I try to look up high.
“I am a giraffe!”
It feels weird.

 

[sweepthefloor]

4.

The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear--
Close enough to crack at my face when I check.

Checking for blind spots when switching mood lanes--
These reflection mirrors can’t be trusted.

The life car is on the dashed highway yellow line--
I am the driver that still looks over the shoulder.

Every time looking for the slow riding depression trailer--
The tractor trailer that Peter built.

Always looking over the shoulder for the manic fuel tanker--
The explosive container that HazMAT Mac built.

Driving safely without mirrors, it is all about the eyes--
And the over the shoulders triple checks.

 

[sweepthefloor]

5.

It is a gravity gift alone that keeps feet on the ground
Crunching on the colored dead leaves of our fall.

This is love luck or some physics but it doesn’t matter
I like the weights of the heavy shoes.

I imagine there is an equation for this--
I just don’t know the math yet.

 

[playcatch]

4

detention slip sharpied with my name
misspelled but my name again
capping disobediences
and spontaneous questions

Once I pasted them on pages of the Christmas gifted journal
and redacted everything but the poem
anyone could find--anyone with a Sharpie

 

[playcatch]

5

beating out
wings slap sky

180 times per minute

tiny violence is necessary
to the needs of flight

but softened

feathered

 

[playcatch]

6

"It was a different kind of bloodbath. I never should have left." -- The Tomorrow People

"You can tell me anything. Just please
face the microphone"
(which was specially selected
to pop plosives and hiss
esses into little armies
of calculated risk).

And that was the end of my radio career.

The moral of the story: not just anyone
announces previews or voices profitable
frolic for Disney. Aligned bite is key,
otherwise one leaves toothy evidence
spat through long forgotten rooms.

 

[sweepthefloor]

6.

There are weird wild wings in the wire copper cage--
Copper colored patina green- it is the cold outside.

There are calm cultured wings in the wire copper cage--
Copper colored copper-- it is the warm inside.

Two birds, two cages, two colors and four wings--
They should have clipped my wasted wings at birth.

 

[sweepthefloor]

7. It is bitching stitching biology time!

The in-school suspension slips slutting--
My name in the back of the classless.

Snatching India ink and sewing needles--
Threading stain slides of microorganisms.

The school for tardy tart tramps are teaching--
Science, art and self-mutilation missions.

 

[sweepthefloor]

1. Vhf

---We do care for the---
Tuberculosis-Influenza-- Varicella-Zoster

Airborne, Droplet, Airborne
Bacteria, Virus, Virus.

They say the Ventilator closes
The airway airborne system.

How many times enters the TB
Holding breaths without masks--

For a quick task with the security
Of the ventilator tubing.

I guess this is the reason--
For the yearly purified protein derivative

The test under the skin checking
For reactions, red, swell, induration.

Illness is nothing new.
Fear is nothing new.