Challenge: Write about a Poet or Author

[unapologetic]

I know, I know. Pretty bold for someone so new to the discussion boards to issue a challenge, right? Eh, whatever. I had fun doing this, and I thought you all might want to try your hand at it.

(The cheesy grin icon is 'cause I know I'm being cheeky.)

 

[unapologetic]

Edward Gorey

Gothic, ghastly images, twisted on themselves,
Accompany a bedtime story sans happy ending.
Sleep should be abhorred for the anticipated,
Horrific images, embedded in the mind's eye:
Likely fodder for nightmares.
Young children,
Cut down in their prime,
Remarkably, regrettably, relinquishing life.
Una, Basil, Rhoda, Desmond, all die.
Macabre humor’s definition.
Brittle bones breaking,
Tumbling down stairs, a seemingly kinder fate than
Immolation.
No kind sweet moments,
Intended for young eyes, can be found here.
Ending worse than it began.
Still, it’s pretty funny.


(It's not my favorite poem that I've ever written. I don't think I'm cut out for the acrostic form, but I did have fun writing it.)

 

[SeattleRain]

Might be a fun place to collect some odes to literotica poets in the past as well. I have one about Tara Blackwood somewhere...

here, well I guess it is more about her AV

Evensong
by SeattleRain ©

...

is it her intent
to demand such attention
with her still, silent beauty?

an easy, empty gaze over the edge
where water meets land meets sky
she pretends to ignore the foriegn voices
while imagining they speak only of her

high black strapped shoe,
heel hangs from rail, posed
crow purple sequins catch sun,
reflecting danger while leaning in,
casual seduction of elbows resting
on smooth metal,
saigon bound

women never wore mens hats
this time, this place
but there she was, in her father's
wide rim and left behind-
slightly lowered over right eye

rope ties slip through metal holes
into water, sinking slow, disappear
and the water bus is freed.

dark plum smoke and
loud low rumble of the motor
rise,
and go

 

[Angeline]

What a great idea

for a thread! (And I love Gorey! I saw Dracula on Broadway and Gorey's stage sets were deliciously creepy!) I also love Seattle's idea about letting this thread be a clearinghouse for such poems we've written. Ah, this is such an imaginative forum!

Anyway, I have two. The first is a Glosa influenced by William Butler Yeats's Wild Swans at Coole, a poem I find very moving. The second is a poem about smithpeter.

Glosa on Coole Park

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
~ William Butler Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

But now they drift on the still water
Where once they rushed in tides,
Silenced by a distant daughter,
Lake’s mistress who abides

Mysterious, beautiful,
Laurel crown and empty hands.
Is this prison? Was she dutiful,
Married to the stands

Among what rushes they will build
Their nests, companionable in pairs,
While she alone and wise, stilled
By moon ennui declares

By what lake’s edge or pool
She might have made her home,
Or known how gentler rule
Might keep her safe as starlight’s dome

Delights men’s eyes. When I awake some day
From ancient dreams to find that dawn
Reveals a feather, will I shake away
Sleep from my limbs, and with a yawn

Exhale memories, unfold these wings
To flight, release hope to another day
And soar skyward as hours cling
To find they have flown away?

*************************************​

Sergeant Bunny's Last Stand

A trenchcoat-wearing bunny
is intent, listening for clues
chucked by nutty squirrels
who tend a garden. They grow
the sweetest red peppers here:
When you bite into one, blues
spill from your mouth.

(This is why the bunny suspects foul play).

He asks the tiny Radon Daughters
who sing fine as Supremes,
Where Did Our Love Go?
What happened to the man in the red canoe?

That man wrote every note
the squirrels played.
He wasn't the politest stallion
in the stable, but awful handy
and when he danced, O
he could knock the Earth
from its axis. However briefly.

But the bunny would rather
interrogate Liz with her long legs,
black sheath and cowboy boots.
She came for the second set,
but as she entered the woods
she saw him paddle upsteam
with Mona Spice, lawnmower diaries,
and one slender twig of dogwood
dreaming in a mason jar.

Every butterfly in the forest
surrounded that canoe. Fireflies
glowed a path into the end
of twilight. Cicadas sang along
with the daughters, the squirrels.

That's where he went, Liz says,
pointing past five little stars,

around that bend. He's following
Mingus who laughs, knocks back
brandy and milk. He's following
Rahsaan's mouth crowded with reeds
and whistles. He's following jazz
vivid and jumpy as Van Gogh layers.

The bunny takes out his notebook
and writes down every word, twitches
over to the squirrels who have begun
to play love songs on their saxophones.

 

[SeattleRain]

thought this was interesting

The Centrifugal Eye

Upcoming Themed Issues:

Accepting submissions after
January 15th:
Volume II, Issue II.
Spring, May 2007 -
"Poets on Poets -- Biography to Tribute, reality to fantasy"


Write about your favorite poets, alive or dead. About your least favorite, your loathed. Tell a story. Real or false. Sing praises, moan dirges. Have a party, see which bard shows up. Compare yourself, compare others to the greatest poets in history -- in your opinion. Mock. Rave. Embroider. Have a quilting bee with Emily, a power walk with Emerson. Bake cookies with Heany or break bread with Coleridge. Arm wrestle with Oliver (Mary), polish the dapper shoes of Hughes (Langston), pick aphids with Kunitz. Then send your poems in.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Fernando Pessoa

Heteronym


Pessoa was a text invented by Portugal.

It just so happened that it had eyes and glasses. Hair and a hat.

Sex and a fly.


Portugal is a brilliant author.


It just so happened that Portugal was into import/export
like courtesans often do.
That is why a whore is more important
than Álvaro de Campos. And Alberto Caeiro
as important as a barrel of liquor.


But more on that later.


Pessoa was a fiction
that made letters and words burst. And when without rhyme
it came from pure thought
it was a thirst like no other.
With a heart, you see.


But more on that later.


When Portugal starts writing
it is a drunkenness of flesh in the first person.
With ships and diaries; and letters and volumes;
and a taste for the tenderness of words immemorial;
of draft and of talent.


In the mirror, Pessoa is a fish. Semantic.
Tears time along the river and the windstorm. Decisive.
Has margins with images of villages. Prepositions.
Of, to, in, for. Floods towns. Adverbial, adjective.
Beautiful nonetheless. Submerges cities. Ancient verbs.


But more on that later.


It is then that the poet starts nibbling
its fingers, gnawing at sleep
within its skin and within its papers. What a meal.

 

[bogusbrig]

Philip Larkin

Recluse in a library in Hull
he filed and stored books
and bitched about their authors
while nursing his resentment
having been born too early
for sexual intercourse
which began in 1963

 

[Tzara]

.....

 

[TheRainMan]

Confessions of Kim Addonizio's Love Slave

I don't know what it is. It could be
that poet's tattoo, that heart-in-flames phrase
that she wears on each page. I can't explain
what's different about it from other tattoos,
but it's different, all right. Uh huh.

Or it could be how she makes me squirm
when she walks those spike-heeled verbs across my back,
grinding the iambs just a bit
so that I really really feel it.

Maybe it's what she shows,
not tells, me when I've got her hot red book
spread open on the table, leaves mounded in beautiful curves
right down to the line of cleavage
that runs along the spine. Maybe it's love.
Maybe it's a one-night stand. I know I come
to the end too soon, too fast, even when I tell myself
Slow down, bud, you need to make this last.

But she makes me finish anyway. Then laughs.

that's good, Bill.

legit good.

though i probably think so because i feel the same way.

 

[wildsweetone]

excellent Tzara... here's my take.


Ms Addonizio

Kim will grab your collar
pull you close,
kiss you straight
and kick you into touch
when she's finished

wrapping her tongue
around your earlobes.
Listen good baby,
she only says it once.
That's all the time she needs.

 

[champagne1982]

Have you heard about Denis?

He wraps you up in words
sticky as clothes
pulled on when you're not quite dry
out of the shower.

Harshly gripping that too-tender
thigh, pinching sensitive
nerves with rough fingers
like denim seams trap
folds just freshly fucked
and steaming from the humidity.

Have you heard about Denis?
Unapologetically hetrosexual
and ready to arouse dainty
poet nipples with raspy
whiskers dragged without pity.

No mercy even though pleas
bash his head for time
to simply know his poetry.

 

[Tzara]

that's good, Bill.

legit good.

though i probably think so because i feel the same way.

Why, thank you, Mr. P. Ms. Kim is one class O blue star of a poet, ain't she?

I am fretting with this one and may try sending it out into the big bad world. Merci, monsieur for the comment.

And thank you too, Ms. Kiwi!