poems mrm

[mrmerris]

Below are my latest, any comments would be helpful


breaking walls
To Sue D
your eyes had sad
while they lay
on a jacket
gazing
at what you needed
and didn’t get
a thousand yards away.
staring
into your secret place
i wanted to soothe
you,
but someone else
was there.
Frost
came to me,
“something there is that doesn’t love a wall
that wants it down.”
took breath
broke it down
with this.
was i
a fool for trying?
no,
no,
i don‘t believe that.
trying is
toiling
against waiting
and i’ve waited
long enough.


just breathe

sitting here coffee in hand
listening to the radio
to a song
about love lost
and the unending pain of ending
while looking at old people porn.
breast and belly sag
cunt and cock are clean
of sadness at
hopeless serenity of twilight.
all they, I, want is the animal fuck
the joy of performance
and the breath of closeness.
all they, I, want is one more time
to have
make another’s eyes smile
before
the snoring of defects
the PMS of personality clashes
crash the pink cloud
and we
end
alone.


when a woman says no

sometimes when a woman says no
she means yes
and you sit
confused.

sometimes when a woman says yes
and means it until
something better
or
someone better
comes to rescue her
from her confusion.

maybe always means yes
until she thinks she is too easy
and changes it to NO.

NO always means NO
when she has your balls in her hand
and squeezes them
good bye.


pouty mouth
For Collen Christie-Putnamn


i don’t drink my tea with my pinkie in the air.
i don’t always stand when a person enters the room
and i don’t write
polite
safe
poetry
never have
never will.
at one time
i tried to relate this to my literary heritage
or being a dirty old man
or a naïve fool
but now
i cut the crap and
say it simple:
this is how it comes out.
so
if you want to read poems
that you need
a BA in American Lit.
to understand

if you want poems
about
hawks soaring on forever
Chimes ax handles
trees
poems in which a black woman standing in a welfare lines
don’t talks about pussy
or I don’t call myself
what I was a
drunken whore monger
please read someone else.
all you will get from me is my heart
as it bleeds itself to page
no more
no less.
and if you can’t get it
or don’t like it
or consider me being
rude,
crude,
socially awkward
or having a pouty mouth
it’s ok
I understand now:
not all like tea.

 

[WickedEve]

Hi
Just a quick comment to tell you that your poetry really appeals to me. Keep doing what you're doing.

 

[wildsweetone]

i like your poetry too. i like the voice that's starting to come through. i like the straight talking. i look forward to reading more.

 

[miss_mystery]

Some thoughts on Pouty Mouth, if you want 'em.

1. What makes poorly punctuated prose, with terribly grammar and spelling errors, into poetry? Ill conceived line-breaks? I'm not sure that's the case. Any road, all those one word lines are weak. They slow the read down, and they don't tell your reader a thing. None of the language in the piece has any muscle at all - it's all limp and flabby, making it really ill-advised to force single words to try and carry any weight (L6-8, for example).
2.Pouty Mouth isn't impolite or unsafe, in any way. It's just boring, in the way that Bukowski is boring. Actually, Bukowski's more interesting than this, and man, that's saying a lot.
3. 'My precious poet heart is bleeding onto the page - my words are so true, and profound, 'cause they pour straight from my internal organs' is the tritest piece of self-indulgent fluff-defense that we have all read oh-so-many times before.
4. Dirty old man - rude, crude, and has a 'pouty mouth'? Well, that was an incongruous image. Pout, as a word, has two different connotations for me - child-like, and sexy. Children pout, and stamp their feet. Sex goddesses have lush, pouty mouths. Either way, it's a weird conceit to frame a poem around - the dirty old man and his protuberant lower lip.
5. Ooh, 'pussy'. How deliciously dirty. Actually, how deeply tired. Shock value isn't getting you anywhere here.
6. Refusing to talk about 'black women standing in welfare lines' - implies that discussion of the socio-politic in poetry is pretentious, and by comparison, N.'s poetry is not. Same with the 'pinkie in air' line. Unfortunately, simply by making the references, N. highlights how deeply pretentious the poem is.
7. There is no art to this piece. Very little time has been taken to consider the relationship of one word to another, no time at all spent in considering technique or form. You leave your reader little room to enjoy anything about the poem.

Sorry I couldn't give you anything more positive on this one. I think that you ought to consider what the 'art' of poetry is to you, study poetry that you enjoy. Spend some time, try and figure out what it is about it - exactly how is the language twisted or bent into the shapes you like? Study different writers, different forms.

Good luck.

MM.



pouty mouth
For Collen Christie-Putnamn


pouty mouth
For Collen Christie-Putnamn


i don’t drink my tea with my pinkie in the air.
i don’t always stand when a person enters the room
and i don’t write
polite
safe
poetry
never have
never will.
at one time
i tried to relate this to my literary heritage
or being a dirty old man
or a naïve fool
but now
i cut the crap and
say it simple:
this is how it comes out.
so
if you want to read poems
that you need
a BA in American Lit.
to understand

if you want poems
about
hawks soaring on forever
Chimes ax handles
trees
poems in which a black woman standing in a welfare lines
don’t talks about pussy
or I don’t call myself
what I was a
drunken whore monger
please read someone else.
all you will get from me is my heart
as it bleeds itself to page
no more
no less.
and if you can’t get it
or don’t like it
or consider me being
rude,
crude,
socially awkward
or having a pouty mouth
it’s ok
I understand now:
not all like tea.