30 Poems in 30 Days (Redux)

[Lyricalli]

3-1

Deviation

Days stretch ahead
to be filled with

what?

Blank screens
empty boxes
waiting for

what?

And, I don't know
if what comes will ease the unrest–
this disquiet
that rings through
each moment of silence

peace is a memory

I don't know if I know
how to do this now
but I'm going to try

 

[Remec]

10 - 3 A Form of Masochism

Unrestful, unruly words
sit in their spaces,
dictionary,
thesaurus,
upon my library shelf,
watching and waiting
for the need to grow
too much for the ones
rolling about in my head,
or washing over me from
the morning's reading of
headlines and chitchatty
tidbits shared in news feeds;
a need that demands I
break them out and throw
them at page and screen.
Only then, do I feel like my
soul is satisfied and my
spirit sated of the hunger
only my fellow writers
understand.

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-2

Whips Like Satin

You know words,
how they give you that look
that says I've been voguing
here in this corner
of your imagination you know
you want me.

Oh I do. I do. You make me
hot, words. You make me
want you and I feel it
right in the old chakra, orange
for desire, for self, for creation

is what you really mean, words,
which is why you rush in me,
orange and clamorous
until one little pause sends me
to Pluto or beyond whilst you

overtake my weak weak flesh
and assert yourselves sentient!
Concrete as any oak you choose
to convey, until I don't know
if I'm in the zone

or just zoned out.

 

[Lyricalli]

3-2

Dolor

There are the obvious things
expected
easily understood

But, it's the inconspicuous bits
trifles of the everyday
spider-cracking my foundation

Maybe one day, I'll find the words
the right ones to explain
why chunky peanut butter makes me cry

 

[Remec]

10 - 4 Security Detail

Another Stardate,
another damn assignment to
some backworld out on the Fringe
of everything,

Five years, they said,
Look good on your resume, they said,
It could have been a year and
I would already have the best thing a resume
could ever have...
"spent twelve months in a red shirt
under Kirk"

Yeah, I'm pretty damn
amazed about it too.
Not all bad, though, the nurse is a looker
and we managed shore leave
while on a planet
in Orion.

Lucky to have survived that, too,
but it was more a point of
personal endurance than anything
else.

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-3

Mea Culpa

Some words are shy creatures,
hiding as if foliage surrounded
them, camouflage to blend in the id,
hidden from me and my bumbling

ego stalking them foolishly
like some barmy entitled bwana.
They're my words, after all;
Don't I own them?

This never works, ego won't win.
My creative cards are stacked
to favor muse and magic, ghosts
and woven whispers of memory
floating in a tantalizing pastiche

just out of reach. Oh if only
the tip of my tongue were more
than a euphemism we'd see
no seams patched together
as if a child's gluey fingers
had cut and pasted this poem,

and we could fly off
companionably on the wings
of my imagination.

 

[Lyricalli]

3-3

Outside, it's green
plants keep reaching for the sun
eventually to flower, bear fruit
promise of the future
tangible, grounded
I can hold in my hand

Such contrast to the withering
inside, where lack of light
shortage of oxygen
stifle what once bloomed
lush and vibrant
now untended, left to fallow

Possibility trickles through my fingers
like water

 

[Remec]

10 - 5 As Sweet

Sometimes,
it seems, that
no matter what we might
think of it, Fate has more
of a hand in things than
we ever realize
or appreciate,

Take my sister,
first born and carrying all
that that entails from the
moment the test came
back confirming what
Mom had been saying for
over a week,
everyone seemed so sure
she was going to be,
if not a junior, than at least
what we'd now call a
'mini-me' for Dad,

He had the name picked out within
a week of confirmation,
Stephan Arnold, not a clue
where it came from--neither are
established names in our family,
but then Sis popped out,
pretty as you please,
and they had her tagged as
Stephanie Alison without a
thought about coming up with
something just for her,

Naturally, people shortened her
name left and right, so many
nicks from so many different
circles, and Dad began calling her
Steffie from, like, first trip to the
nursery before she came home,
and it would have stuck, except
she was a precocious talker,
but couldn't pronounce her name;

That's why I have a sister named
Stevie.

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-4

Act III

Journeys don't always end in lovers meeting, but still love will endure.

 

[Lyricalli]

3-4

Discord

And, there you are in some line in ev'ry song, but harmony is gone.

 

[Remec]

10 - 6 What Happens in Nawlins...

There was no red light, and it was no Chicken Ranch, but he enjoyed it.

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-5

Rainy Day Ghazal

Rain is dancing on the roof pitter pat
in a distant tarantella, an aloof pitter pat.

Thunder booms crash past these rooms,
the clouds open and the proof? Pitter pat.

Comes a lull in which a train goes by
whistling dryly chug-- forsooth, no pitter pat!

Fog gathers like a wreath, drifting grayly,
mountains waver and then poof: pitter pat.

Night settles into cricket hum and some
small cloud pauses, causes ooph pitter pat.

 

[Lyricalli]

3-5

There is desire to hold it
protected
as one does with precious things

Though it yearns to escape
builds pressure
and burns deep in the chest

Because it needs to be let go
to be complete
to be drawn back in

Like breath

 

[Remec]

10- 7 Day by Day

This one is here.

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-6

Reunion

Joanie is clinging to the fence like a little limpet in a sunsuit, sniffing hot dogs and ketchup when Al turns up the sprinkler, sings "I got a girl named Joanie Maroni" and she runs joyful, barefoot into arcs of droplets.

There's rainbows in the sprinkler sometimes if you look just right, anything to knock back the heat that shimmers yellow caution in hazy sun. I stay under the oak or push into lilacs for the shivery petals that fall and their sweet perfume.

Mama brings out a can of Charles Chips and scoots over by Grandpa, who smiles in all my memories. Mama looks pregnant or my muse is pulling my toe, but I see the maternity blouse, the gingham check and a bow. There were stories, later, of a boy.

Cousins, aunts and uncles flesh out the scene, pulling plastic from salads, pies, brownies. The aunts' skirts swish and we kids shoot water pistols. Grandma smokes Camels and Papa has Herbert Tareytons rolled in his shirtsleeve.

This confabulation of innocence is frozen on black and white faces that bear silent witness to the chasm between then and now, so distant and so close when the ghosts lean in to light each other's cigarettes and chatter in the smoke.

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-7

American Blitz

Hate is the enemy
Hate born of fear
Fear of the unknown
Fear of what's different
Different perspectives
Different skin colors
Colors are skin deep
Colors are beautiful
Beautiful like a rainbow
Beautiful like oceans
Oceans dressed in foam
Oceans rolling blue
Blue like a uniform
Blue like the skies
Skies of many colors
Skies to shelter all
All hearts can break
All people are humans
Humans are a family
Humans get lost
Lost in the shooting
Lost in the shouts
Shouts grow cacophonous
Shouts drown out voices
Voices have no color
Voices can sing
Sing pain in blues
Sing truth in poems
Poems aren't an answer
Poems are temporary
Temporary peace
Temporary rage
Rage like a fog
Rage that can blind
Blind ambition
Blind indifference
Indifference is a crutch
Indifference is a choice
Choice is a gift
Choice can redeem
Redeem us from sins
Sins of our making
Sins of our history
History is behind us
History does not change
Change moves us forward
Change can be now
Forward
Now
~~~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miVs2bRqFlM

 

[Lyricalli]

3-6

To My Parents' Other Child:

And again
I've been waiting
because I knew
you weren't through
finding new ways to hurt him

So, now
it's been three years
since your last phone call
when a request for financial assistance
was denied

It was the bill
you had sent to
your old address:

his

from the hospital one town over
that informed him you were back
the only contact
in three fucking years

And, I won't tell him
how long I've known
how long I've kept that ache
out of his voice
because you are so near
yet so distant

But, you don't have to care
not about that
because you'll never hear it
will you?

 

[Remec]

10 - 8 Not for Me

I watched a program one day
about foreign food
“delicacies”, like a Finnish
shark meal eaten once
it had been it rotting
on the beach.
Bleah!




From here

 

[Lyricalli]

3-7

There's a difference in the air
pressure changing
wind whistling past my ears
so it almost feels like moving forward
though feet are planted

I can feel it coming
as it slowly darkens everything
feel the rumbling tremors
heart thundering in my chest
deep breaths
waiting for lightning to strike

There is no shelter
not from this
the tempest that threatens to drown
all that used to be

So, I hold my ground
when there's nothing left to do
but wait
as the rain pours down
until an answer comes
from you

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-8

Daughter of Innisfree

She never was one for crowds:
put her in a roomful of people
and she hears only foreign tongues,
their clamorous tolling of words
without meaning and then her heart

thuds against her ribs, her stomach
tightens and sours with bile
when no bright crisp bloom
of citrus has crossed her lips.

She was made for emptiness,
prefers wide fields of grass, quietude,
a bed half full at 3am and at 6,
she'll gladly read the silent dawn
or leavings in a cup of licorice tea.

 

[Remec]

10 - 9 Summer Vacation

The balcony provided a
nice combination of vantage
point and privacy as the storm
rolled in...bit by bit,
almost a creeping sort of way,
like a cat or when you've been
out past your curfew, again.

Looking over the hair on her head,
the tall buildings across the way
were spaced just enough to let me see
the ocean beyond them, and the
storm's whistling wind brought with it
the scent of wild flowers,
possibly honeysuckle, that were a nice
companion to the smell of her hair and
the suntan lotion that she still wore,

Afterwards, I popped a hard caramel
in my mouth and offered her one as I
counted out the bills I owed her,
but she was content with carrying off the cash,
and left me to watch the heavy clouds
break into a sudden summer storm.

 

[Remec]

10 - 10 Schleprock's Daily Lament

Slumping along,
I try to resist constantly
looking to the sky,
try my best to ignore
the thunderclaps and the
way the hair on my head
and arms rises up
after each sonic burst;
but, finally, I pass by a
storefront and catch the
view of the heaven in
the pale reflection and sigh
at the blue-and-white clarity
everywhere except right
above me.
Good thing my clothes are
water resistant.

 

[Lyricalli]

3-8

Words won't find me today
not the ones I want
which don't exist

So much to say
that can go unsaid
because we know

This can't be fixed
we just... adjust
maybe find a way

To hang on to
something
that feels better
than nothing

 

[Angeline]

Nshm-9

Chambers Street, 1977

They call him Storky.
He has seven daughters, seven
names tattooed on his arms,
but no sons (an embarrassment
in this neighborhood). Sometimes
they call him Lucky, ironic
him paying for seven weddings
and no boys to lose to wars
at home or on the streets.

He likes to sit in his chair
right on the pavement, feet up
on a concrete block outside
the shop, reading the Daily News,
traffic rolling, beeps lights sirens,
the girls in and out of Pat's Pizza,
slices wafting--

Not a care until clouds billow
gray over Eddie's Doughnuts
and rain swells the afternoon
air, boomers close enough
to raise hair on his thick arms.

Then he packs it in
for the back room
past shelves of dusty cans
to the real business--
Books and phones, old Hap
on the horn, smoking a cigar,
the Campari and soda
tasting more bitter
than a lucky man expects.

 

[Lyricalli]

3-9

They've come again
these days of battling moth caterpillars
making advances
on the tomato plants
swatting mosquitoes that disobey
repellant sprays
heat that makes you wonder
if longed-for fruits of summer
will ever ripen
and if they're worth the work

Then, the blush comes
the anticipation of spring renews
long waiting weeks
roll into days that pass by
all too quickly
as we reap all we've sown
and the cycle ends

We make plans to begin again