30 Poems in 30 Days (Redux)

[Angeline]

1-11

EE AS

Your hands are as big as the rain so I can't hold onto them no mo.

 

[Angeline]

1-12

Weather Report

Demeter quits her weeping, plans a party
only to find Persephone overstay
the welcome. Worse yet she brings Hades

with her and keeps him around. It's hot lust
between him melting ice and burning trees,
her frowning rain to deluge; storms and mud

all at once at the wrong time and place,
the feeble human race bickering, profiting.
Somebody say Zeus, come from a machine,

make it right: fruit and flowers
in their season. C'mon Zeus!
Rape a swan, do something right

for our eternal return.

The machine is breaking, gods sweaty
on Mt. Olympus, Demeter silent and pale.

 

[Remec]

6-17

Losing All Over Again

Keepsakes abound
around this place,
knickknacks and trinkets
that bear no import to
anything but my memories,
jarring them awake,
letting me bring back--if
faded or muted by time
and distance--some aspect
of something that was
once unforgettable and
will always be meaningful
to my heart. I just wish
the pillowcases you'd slept
on still smelled of you, but
the scent finally evaporated
and was gone. Like you.

 

[Remec]

6-18

.
While changing sheets

When I look at her pillow,
I can still see the mark of her head;
Such a distinct depression, even though,
it's been years since she was in this bed,
When I look at her pillow,
it seems silly, I know,
But smoothing it out is something I dread;
When I look at her pillow,
I can still see the mark of her head;

 

[Angeline]

1-13

Bounce Fib 2

Fifth
Ward
Weebie
is a bounce
king in the Easy:
Do it baby, stick it baby
rock in the heezy,
turn around,
bend down,
roll,
shake.

 

[Remec]

6-19

Unfaithful Fib

One
day
your prince
will come to
find you to be what
I already know
that you are
inside;
You
Slut.

 

[Angeline]

1-14

Hoi Polloi

Some days are blank enough for grating voices to recede like a tide.

 

[Remec]

6-20

Fading like the Tide

It had come as a shock,
not a terrible one,
mind you, but one he
had not anticipated quite
so soon,
that even when looking
at her picture, the
sound of her laugh
or the soft moans she
made when his fingers
hit just the right spot,
no longer echoed in
his mind.

 

[Angeline]

1-15

Use Your Imagination

No one else knows what I whispered to you: Our secrets were the best part.

 

[Remec]

6-21

Thinking of Her

Even the echoes of whispers have gone; I still smile over them.

 

[Angeline]

1-16

Meditation Advice

Like they used to say
back in the dayglo day:
Reality is a crutch.

People move
from the exterior land
scape to your interior.

Which one is limited?
(That's a trick question.
People think too much.)

Quit listening
to everything that is
and isn't you. Really

you'll be finer than rice
and beans, Wednesday
washing or any day.

 

[Remec]

6-22

Virtual Dilemma

Another Thursday has come and I need to post
some sort of 'throwback', but I don't do pictures;
which has been cool since I can't compete with kittens

showing their cuteness (ie, caught being kittens).
Which is fine, I suppose, but my pool of post
material is dwindling--only so many mental pictures

that I have written that best actual pictures
whether it be of food or kids or kittens
It's not a competition, I just like finding the right post

If I have to, I'll go buy a camera; post pictures of kittens.

 

[Angeline]

1-17

AS at Home

Go on. Open the wall. The door doesn't matter to me anymore.

 

[Angeline]

1-18

The Dowry

The young ones bow or turn from men who gaze
and carry manners in their overcoats.

They're the ruling class. Do you need to ask?
Just look at the bird in the gilded cage,
the kneeling woman burying her hope
in fine-stitched cloth, time passing on the wall.

The artist hangs above it all, sallow
his world, late afternoon in waning light.




Vasili Pukirev, "The Dowry"

 

[Remec]

6-23

Afternoon on Trashmore

Watching joggers and kites from a hillside blanket; but no paddle boats.

 

[Angeline]

1-19

You are a young man,
a lucky Litvak stuck in Vitebsk.
Neither war nor revolution upends
you, but instead say stay home

and keep your childhood close.
There's a synergy between you
and the canvas such that a village
can leap through space to hang
at the center of your art.

Art is not life no matter
how recursive it all feels.
I don't know

whose hand holds the palette
and that isn't really you only
what you saw in that time
as you painted. It's almost

100 years later, the flame has left
you but the goat leaps
back to you still.



Marc Chagall, 1917. "Self-Portrait With Palette"

 

[Remec]

6-24

Today's is here. Back tomorrow

 

[Angeline]

1-20

October Dance

The slender trees sway a windy striptease, bare limbs for the Moon's delight.

 

[Angeline]

1-21

A Day In Paris

Miles takes me to the Champs-Élysées.
He lifts his horn and points it toward the Arc,

but I get caught in a fast-moving swirl
of Blue notes pattering and scattering

bop bop across the 8th Arrondissement.
It's a hurricane horn song the rapid

ride along rim shots snare tip taps rapid
breaths. I'm flying like Dorothy. Off to Oz!

But no I've landed here at the Hotel
Louisiane with Bags and his best Groove,

bass knockin the hall, beans cookin the pot.



A Day in Paris

 

[Angeline]

1-22

Second Story Memory

Leaping girls dance the Golliwog's Cakewalk one flight up. Turn. Point your toes.

 

[Angeline]

1-23

Look Homeward

I love you best thin and fresh
nicely blistered bubbles charred
slight, no sauce per se, a rough
red blend tomato, oil, garlic. Mutz
should be handmade that day salt
red flake pepper whatever I want

I can't produce the grave waiters
who set you on a pedestal before
me, t-shirt Lotharios who toss,
slide and slice. Why boardwalk pie
is wide as a tire served with shore
sounds so nice to lean and fold,

bite into somewhere I belong.

 

[Angeline]

1-24

Haunted

I awaken with your voice in my head, realize it's still all birdsong.

 

[Angeline]

1-25

Illusory

That wasn't your guitar in another room. The wind can be tricky.

 

[Angeline]

1-26

Deadspin

Ghosts are out of time and then they're in yours, rattling your memories.

 

[Angeline]

1-27

Boreas Blues

November frowns and rains, mutters winter until I shiver and sneeze.