30 Poems in 30 Days

[Man Ray]

1 - 14

you could be in a foul mood and be wearing the angriest frown
or be made up as a sad slap stick clown
even hiding in the woods in a soldier's uniform of green and brown

perhaps you are wearing the flounciest taffeta gown
a ridiculous creation by a designer of world renown

even if you had a haughty smile and a regal golden crown
and acted as if you owned all of uptown

I'd still, with great pleasure, pull your girly knickers down

​

 

[sandspike]

It's All IN The Name 1-15

Bailey Quarters
say it again
flowing like a mountain stream
refreshing and pure across
the Cincinnati musical landscape

Cotton Neal Whaley
painted on the driver's
door of a Chevy Super Sport
spinning around the circle
attracting ladies with the
old english white on burgundy


Some names I'll remember
long after my own,
then there was
Elwood Wilbur Jones
did he make the reunion
no one remembers

 

[Angeline]

Aplomb 1-15

You kiss me with aplomb
I tell you in my dream, standing
just under your chin sometime
after that bandy-legged man
with the kind eyes and overlarge
familiar face said we could stay
as long as we wanted here
in his house, and I'd never seen it
or him before, but everything
makes perfect nonsense in dreams.

I swam to the surface
of consciousness, disentangled
from the blue tide of sheets,
left you floating on your own
trance wave to beach myself
here in the chair, contemplate
the falling snow, consider
my antcrawl though it
that will happen too soon.

According to Webster's,
aplomb means with poise, confidence.
You do kiss me confidently:
you should after all these kisses:
banal peck to breath-stealing scorch
tentative first brush in the airport
I love the way you kiss,
all these kisses, passion and relief,
lips stained with our skin, our sex,
our tears, yesterday's leave-taking,
last night tender dreamweaver.

Aplomb, it comes as no surprise,
is from the French a plumb
as in plummeting and yes there was
a falling off into this world
we built with kisses.

A plumb, a line straight and true
from the Middle French. My dreams
are prophetic and real, your kisses
are true.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

1:15 Breath

Everything I write,
boxy, tight, dark type,
makes me feel
like I can't breathe.

No accidents.
Thoughts of suffocation,
carbon monoxide drifting,
a breathing in of death
to stop life’s breath.

But I have already
stopped
breathing.

I long for that tense moment
as a baby is being born,
just out and never yet filled their lungs,
that first inhale—

Prana

It is all around me.

 

[4degrees]

1-15

bad habits hold a bucket of
regret that weighs a man
down like concrete shoes
forensic analgesic breeds
life into an eternal question,
a quest for transgression
a mess of misdirected dialect
and bogus words that i made up,
because i'm writing
my own dictionary-
that the world might catch
what i'm saying...

 

[champagne1982]

1-15

Culpable

You could shine.
Brighten the sphere
of your influence
with a ray of illumination,
a sharp beam
of laser intelligence.

Or, cast a shadow.
Dark and pessimistic
falls the nighttime
coldness around the circle
once you draw the pawl
of negativity over us all.

Choose well. Don't find
flaws with each shovel
full lifted up from the pit
as we dig ourselves out,
or deeper. The world
is capable of this decision
on its own.

Halfway there. Does anyone care?

 

[flyguy69]

Fly 1:12

I slapped her
with a question so hard it caught
both of us with our pants down.
A bright smack that pinked
her cheeks and shocked
my eyes wide. Like bumping the light switch
while petting. I haven’t seen you
since before the divorce, how’ve you been?

I’ve been good. You know,
busy. With the kids.​

Yeah, ha ha. We should get them together.

Oh, they’d love it.​

She’s holding a plastic video box
with both hands, fingers laced
like a fence. I’ve got one, too. The titles don’t change
under pressure, but a question bursts
between us. Do you want to go out,
I mean, get coffee and talk? Her teeth
are so white it hurts my heart
to look at them.

Yes, yes
I do.​

 

[Sabina_Tolchovsky]

2.5

Gram & Grandpa

all Dean and Monroe
leather jackets
& cross country Harley's

with a drink in the left
and a smoke in the right
company picnics
canneries
five children
trophey hill climbs

& chain snapping log rolled death
six months recovery
punctured lung
broken in too many spots

he still cries when he talks
about the Angel he saw
they did everything for love


he was twelve years her senior
and there were laws

what god brought together
let no man put asunder

not even the judge or
830 days prison
and purgatory school

 

[annaswirls]

1-16 I don't remember his last name- edit

God he was sweet,
though not the smartest kid,
greasy bangs half-covered dull eyes
mouth always a little open
in perpetual confusion.

Was it what he was born with
or what he was given?
Always the one who came in with lice
and urine scented clothing in elementary school
teeth thick film of white over the yellow
he was the reason for the extended dental unit
in first grade, his mother's
brown and half rotten.

Parent conference time
we asked is there anything else can we do?
Wal*mart gift card for Christmas presents?
Yes, we can do that.
Her purple stretch pants
had small hole windows
opened to show pasty flesh
waiting for cancer or diabetes
to step up and finish the job.

She bragged
Johnny is our star
he's a good boy
might get into the army
make something of himself.

But before report cards went out freshman year
the news made it down to Jr. High,
the kid in the Sunday papers was John.
Dead huffing some can, oven cleaner I think it was.
And Crystal his little sister found me in the hallway
a few days later
proud, like she had gotten a new puppy.

"You remember my brother, Johnny? Did you hear
he's dead? Yep. That was my brother.
It was drugs."

Crystal shook her head like the old neighbor
who told you this would happen
but she was thinking
now she has a real story
for the Just Say No poster contest,
she might even have a chance
of winning the limo lunch this year.

 

[Liar]

1-15

baby i'm too funk to druck
my legs as wobbly as my aim
whatever my preposterous
claim early morning

so if you don't tip the scale
with an unattended pout
and let me drift to la-la land
on your belly

today was a good one
a once in a while revolution
around the sun

 

[wildsweetone]

1:15

Fallen Leaves

The first fallen leaves
roll across the deck, jam
against the slider
frame ready to be tossed
like last year’s turkey
by a wind carrying snow
from the south. Soon
the fitness fanatics
will be pacing
wet streets faster
to gain that sweat-sheen
that will trickle between firm
shoulder blades. The angoras
will be aired, de-mothed
in a month and black
umbrellas will bounce
at the bus stops, blown
inside out to be tossed
like the leaves
of Revelations.

 

[Man Ray]

1 - 15

reincarnation
but which flag did I die for
Dien Bien Phu​

 

[Guest]

1 -15 Pixel Puzzle

Ego follows you one byte
after the other, leaving a static
IP number wherever you go

The Internet doesn't revolve
around you so why hide behind
that pixel face?

The one where you made hex designs
out of parts, puzzles
of who you really are

Every time you power down there's always
a piece left behind. Maybe someone
will put them together after you're gone

 

[Angeline]

Rocheleh 1-16

She believes in angels.
I wanted to believe that someone
could have a sister again.

Instead I gave birth to myself.

For 14 years I've watched
my own eyes mirror me, heard my own
voice regress then grow in hers.

She has long fingers like mine
and her toes turn toward
each other. She sits

and her head is bent down
with generations, heaven
full of expectation for her dark hair
that falls like my own veil,
covers her secrets no better
than mine ever did. The day

she was born was cold,
snow-swept like today. It was
the last day we were ever
together again. I held my skin

in my hands, holding her beyond
the wall of my flesh, paced
the empty birth room
and whispered her name in Yiddish,
prayed in mantra.

Rocheleh, Rocheleh.
We can do this. You need
to come to me now.

No doctor, nurses or ghosts,
just me and Rochaleh
battled together toward
her inevibility.

I cannot explain how such pain
is welcome or how quickly forgotten
when the inner burden can be claimed
with arms. I cannot explain a tide of love

so palpable or why
I'll spend a lifetime drowning
in it. There are no words
for such an overwhelming
intangible until it cries
and roots its damp face
on your skin. Fourteen

years pass and still this
knowing can reduce me
to tears in seconds.

Maybe she's right
that only angels hold
the blueprint for secrets
in fingers and hair that falls
the same way. Angels
and sisters.

 

[sandspike]

Thank You Billy Joel 1-16

Thank You Billy Joel

 

[Selena_Kitt]

1:16 Allies

I walk the streets in Port-au-Prince,
lead weight in my heart,
meeting dull and lifeless eyes
that seem to say to me:
“Don’t look at me, you,
woman with the money,
who has taken
my life force.
I give you this plastic smile.
Don’t try to touch my soul.
It is broken.”
And just as real
as my “luxurious” life soaping in the bath,
anointing with oils in gestures of self-love,
crying buckets of numb recognition
over the soaps her hardworn hands made
so I could have the privilege.

 

[Guest]

1 - 16 Fish the Phish

No spyware, no adware
no malware or any ware
Quit phishing me
there is nothing to see here

Do you really think
what I do
is any importance to you?
What value is it that I check email
visit Literotica, Live Journal
obsessive play that low tech
addictive game?

Why do you pop-up
sell your ads, be low-brow, hijack
my searches? my browser?

Do you really want to know I like
Moonpies, vanilla in my coffee
cheap seats, deals on tickets
custom-fit socks for my cock
dirty fuck toys, download 10 second porn?

Do you? Do you? NO
Purityscan my ass
Medload eat shit
QoolAid get bent
SpySheriff corral this

Delete, delete I see you
but you won't see me
fish the phish

 

[4degrees]

1-16

hot to the touch
like time overspent in the sun
the skin of your back
damp with warm sweat
there under that red mane
i hold it aside, a fist of hair
and blow relief onto you
but you say
"no, not there..."

 

[Liar]

1-16

Let it be known, man child;
I would paint fractals for you,
divide your lucky number by zero
and open the door to undefined dimensions,

distil chaos theory down to poetry
and let quantum mechanics bloom
to hurricanes,

to see you capture the swirl of galaxies
in a wink, the birth of generations
in a laugh.

Manchild, grant me
another minute in your attention span
and the universe can have me,
after this.

 

[champagne1982]

1-16

Trash Talk

it starts with a simple four four back
wrapped inside wide accents
and a spline slip syn-cho-pation
slides a hiss in sibilant swish
then hammers a rattled tatoo

clatter that trashy hip thrust
swank to drop it in the gutter
sputter a tinny timpany tromp


STOMP!

 

[wildsweetone]

1:16

Bent Behind Bars

It’s the darkness they hate
when the lights go out
murmurings increase
and the moon rays bend
around bars to leave
long silver shadows
on the concrete
floor. The wait
until morning stretches
beyond reason
while insomnia reigns
and havoc is replayed
through a mind
more at peace
with the sun. Crickets
sing their moon song,
a mournful reminder
that morning will come
and a new night
will have a day’s grace.

 

[annaswirls]

01.17 Marking Time

This is a placekeeper
a zero positioned carefully
a quarter rest note
on my treble cleft
to show
time is still going
and was here
stepping lightly
a single paw print
in the sand


~sorry I lost track somewhere, I am out of the computer zone and trying to mark time here I will fix the numbers when I get back home

thanks Maria for the last line

 

[Man Ray]

1 - 16

awake, asleep, I hear an angel's voice

you hear an angel's voice?

when I'm with her the heavens rejoice

why do they rejoice?

they hear the beauty in my lover's voice

they sing out in one voice!

I'm in love with this angel and I rejoice

to see an angel loved they rejoice!

to be with her is my determined choice...

​

 

[Angeline]

Shell Collecting 1-17

It's not so hard for them.
I've seen it happen myself--
30 years jettinsoned as if
they were so much effluvia
to be washed down a sewer, as if
it weren't life: lunchroom giggles
and whispered secrets seem
staunch proclamations of ever
cemented in pews, by funeral biers

all too easily packed off
in someone's trash: used tissues,
oily tuna cans. I've wondered how
they still laugh, motion through
laundry and groceries, just waltz
through days while what was
sits on a curb, yesterday's leavings,
tidy heaps easily circumvented
until driven away.

Come sit by me.

I'm a shell, too. I have
a poem for you to read.

 

[sandspike]

thank you mr marley 1-17

Marley is still here