30 Poems in 30 Days (Redux)

[Angeline]

1-29

13 Dream

Finally you came back, big eyes locked on mine. Hello again, my love.

 

[Neonurotic]

2:29

Along lovely SR 128 are flat cats and deer, road cuisine with a killer view.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-16

R Anny

was our nanny.
I was three years old.
I couldn't say our nanny.

Oh, how I loved R Anny
who ate cans of soup in the kitchen
when she wasn't washing the floor.

Mother said pickaninny
which I thought was very funny

so I told R Anny what Mother said
and R Anny said it was very funny

but I never saw R Anny again
when Daddy came home for supper
and I kissed her good-bye at the door.

 

[Neonurotic]

2:30 30 Poems in 30 Days

30 days later to the last word, the marathon is done. Now the real work—editing!

 

[Angeline]

1-30

Doomsday Clock

It's three minutes to midnight: turn on the radio, get up and dance.

 

[champagne1982]

2015-1-30

Creativity's Guest

I merely camp outside the pages
of beauty and the streams
of hope that pour through reams
of thought. Ideas embodied

in a clay golem brought to magic
animation through imaginative
lines on the smooth surface
that begs ripples to disturb

a perfectly quiet countenance.
Calmly lethargic to all those
wannabe laureates and prize
winners never to be published.

 

[Trixareforkids]

2-30

Removed

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-17

The Final Frontier

DCCLXXXVII AUC*

Caledonia, Festus!
It rains here all the time,
and I swear by Luppiter Victor!
all the females are ugly.
Merda! She scratched me with her nails
when I asked her what her name was
in the few words I know of their tongue.

I thought she was going to bite mine
there in the roundhouse
after the blue men had fled,
but that cunnus hissed instead
a hot foul spittle that dribbled
from my chin down on her neck.

The prefect says there are 18 tribes.
I believe it, Festus, because
I've seen the map that Plutarch drew
of all the Outer Hebrides

where by the thyrsus of Bacchus pray
the women there are tinier
after we breach their bastions
the haruspex said will happen
when he picked at the sheep's entrails.

*"anno urbis conditae" from the founding of the city. DCCLXXXVII AUC would be 92 AD.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-18

Weeping Willow

The willow tree beside my house
is Laurel once washing her hair
whose long hair beauty was as fair
as faerie leaves dancing in the air.

"The dishwasher needs to be emptied,
and living room floors be swept,
and corners to be gotten to.
Enough of your daydreaming, Will!"

"But Laurel, Dear, stay out here.
It's too rectangular in there.

And see how all the faerie leaves
are dancing in the air."

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-19

I and Thou

"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable."
Martin Buber

Thou is feeding pablum to I
I smears all over the tray
I giggles about after Thou says
"no, no, no" wiping I's face

"better left for the tub" says Thou,
which I doesn't understand
until I sees a rubber ducky,
another Thou to embrace

before I's nighty night story
which I doesn't understand
but knows that Thou is Hail Mary
as I falls asleep full of grace.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-20

The Trouble with Harry

After that night with Ha.nh Phu'c in Saigon
I praised Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior,
who showed me the way with penicillin,

and though I know it's a 'Nam fairytale,
just to be sure I asked for saltpeter
I joked with the guys thirty years later

down at Moe's Diner drinking some joe
with grunt buddies, Smitty and Harry,
who help me redo my man cave on weekends,

and I always make sure Hey, Little Woman
serves up some eggs, sausage, or bacon
so yours truly, Smitty, and Harry

can work our Semper Fi asses off,
until after supper we all do our thing,
Smitty who likes to play bridge with the wife,

me in my man cave watching TV
or prowling around in the city,
and Harry, well, whatever he's doing.

 

[Angeline]

2-1

These
are
gray days
without you
sometimes as if sky
and mountain are drained of color,
imagination
a refuge
where you
still
thrive.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-21

Time Machine

I'm traveling in a time machine,
the right side of five in our '53 Dodge,
on my back on the way back shelf,
looking up at light bulb stars
as we drive through some Allegheny
tunnels heading for Illinois,

Mom and Dad in the front seat,
thermos of coffee, no belts,
Mom humming On Wisconsin
where Grandma and Uncle Ken
make home-made vanilla ice cream
in a cabin up in the Dells,

but there came a day I stopped swimming
in water I drank where Dad threw me in
in my dreams of pristine rivers
when I fell off my bed one November,

and soot from Allentown mine shafts
hung heavy over the sandlot
diamond where we joked about bosoms,
mopheads, and Pillsy who shoplifted beer
on hot summer Sundays when family dogs
chased baseballs instead of deer.

So I went back in my time machine
but a tunnel of white lies swallowed
Grandma, turned into a popsicle
of ice without any juice,
while Uncle Ken, strapped to a caisson,
kicked dogs that nipped at his hooves.

 

[Angeline]

2-2

Tempus Fib

Time
comes
and goes.
It alters
states of memory
in seasons. It's a dance of then
until now cuts in,
brings me back
again
to
here.​

 

[Angeline]

2-3

The Brute According to Fump

He's a prince
in Kansas City,
Little Lord Fauntleroy
in his mama's house
his big hands folded still
fingers laced and yes
ma'am napkin on his knees,
nothing out of place
with gentle Ben

but set him down
around 18th and Vine
among some lesser
men, give him a taste
or two then best get
out the way. It's time
to wail cottontail--

The Brute will knuckle
up and clear the place.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-22

Unkulunkulu

Bandele last heard the cock of a gun
that leered down on him in his soon to be grave
with a smile on the face of a calamine chin

before he last saw Unkulunkulu
soar up from the swamp as a teeming swarm
of one thousand ancestral fathers

to canker tonight the pustular skin
of Trekkers asleep in their Transvaal beds,
dreaming of Jesus without sin
under their holy mosquito nets.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-23

The Little Fish Said to its Father

This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.”
― René Daumal

Martyrs explode in Jerusalem
while men make love to their wall.

The Prophet makes war with a telephone,
and everyone takes the call.

And what's this bad air I hear about
the humans call their Dead Sea

that poisons our River Jordan
and smothered Uncle Sami?

 

[Angeline]

2-4

Climate Change Sedoka

Inside the snow globe
a safe tiny world beckons
with cheery skaters glass

lake frozen outside
the snow coats mountains. Winter
my discontent melts slowly.​

Sedoka

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-24

American Sentence #1

Elizabeth's sugar plum sticky hands sing to Mother "pick my up."

 

[Angeline]

2-5

Penn Station Blues

Sleepy pre-dawn stuck on a bench no train till six praying for coffee.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-25

The Letter

On the one hand Tony's knifing a twist
of lemon as the other hand's pinky
is spinning the ice in Bloody Mary

while Tony's Pavlovian voice says "Fifi,
"quelle heure est-il?" who barks at the clock
twice when the wall chimes two.

After another Bloody Mary
his hifi diamond needle
scratches Debussy's Claire de Lune,

Pachebel's Canon, and Buddy Holly's
Oh my Peggy, my Peggy Sue.

 

[Angeline]

2-6

The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

You commas will have to wait your turn and quit trying to sneak into the audition. Also if you went to Oxford, you won't be needed unless there's a list (and maybe not then, either).

There will be no fraternizing between periods and ellipsis points. Any child born of such union shall be treated as an extra ellipsis and sent home immediately.

Semi-colons, colons and dashes please be defensible. You may not participate without a clear raison d'être. En-dashes shall be considered for hyphenation only, while ems may apply for pauses slightly shorter than periods.

Quotation marks please remember to face each other.

Numerals, slashes and other typographical symbols should probably just leave now. If comic or otherwise quirky material is added later, we'll call. Interrobangs?! Probably not.

Acronyms and emoticons, WTF? You are not even punctuation. You won't be except under the most unusual circumstances, so quit trying.

Don't any of you expect to play more than a supporting role, even when you're the subject. Be unobtrusive unless otherwise instructed.

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-26

Getting to the Bottom Line*​

I wanted to be Mr. Bill Bradley
from the N. Y. Knickerbockers
professional basketball team
whose tall body trunkated
6 feet 5 to his sneakers
size 12 or perhaps 13
unlike yours truly 2​

little left feet.

*footnote​

 

[Angeline]

2-7

Great Day Fibonacci

On
that
great day
in Harlem
musicians gather
up between Madison and Fifth,
arranged on a stoop--
horn players
drummers
reed
men.

Jo
Jones
smiles at
Gene Krupa
and Monk looks away.
Little Jazz is laughing. Dizzy
clown for the ages,
pulls a face.
The Count
sits
down.

When
the
photo
is taken
the crowd hangs around.
Jazz, that secret society
loves a reunion--
cats and chicks
come home
to
roost.
​

 

[greenmountaineer]

1-27

Lonely Hearts Club

High and dry is the pile where the chipmunk says Hi! on the welcome mat.