Love Poem #2 (1)

Sam had a ribbon tied around his finger
and when he went outside it pulled tight
to purple his skin.

The first time he took the glass knob was when
she asked for flowers.  He bowed
in his slip-shod clothes of potato sack material
and gave her the end of his ribbon.
She held it deftly between her thumb and first finger,
wished him away, let him place two feet outside
on the grass, though each blade was yellowed and
hacked up blood with each cough, staining
his feet green.  Just ahead there were flowers,

but they were bent into the ground,
hiding their heads from Sam in hopes he would
leave them together, packed tight, roots rolling
in with each other’s.  His hand was nudged back.

At the window in his kitchen, she was watching,
with eyes blank and pooled with water, she asked
why he had left her.  He pointed with his ribbon-hand
to the flowers, and for a moment he looked away
from her, to grab a daisy,

she cried, the daisy and her, and tugged the ribbon
until Sam came back, a round bruise around his
knuckle, and he took his place beside her
at the table, no flowers  for a centerpiece.

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Thoughts:  You’re sure not going to ever see Love Poem #1.

Coming Home After Ten Days of Sickness

She came home today with a paper band around her wrist.
The half-moons under her eyes were dark, but her skin had a minty tint to it.
I asked if she’d like some peppermint tea, orange tea with honey, a pill.
No, she said, just a rest.
He helped her to the couch, and for the rest of the day, he, she, and I were quiet.

I’ve seen quiets where the air bubbles, hot, overpowering, and quiets
where the senses seemed damp, gray, full of weight, but I had never seen
a quiet so still.

For six days I only washed two plates at every meal.
We watched one half-hour of television.
We did not go upstairs except to change our clothes.
I wished for rain so I would not have to go outside to water her garden,
and see the wooden house nestled small among the trees, hunched over as if to say
I’m lonely.

I can still hear the haunting sound of Bach upstairs, but none of us
can bear to turn it off.

——————————————————-

Thoughts:  An attempt at something a little emotional.  As you’ve probably seen, most of my poetry is more oriented towards the senses, and this is more for the heart/mind.  I won’t explain it – I find that being told the meaning of something takes away the magic wound between the lines.  I think the only thing I would edit about this is to tie it together a little tighter, because at the moment it’s very disjointed, and re-word some of the lines.  I don’t hate it, though.

As February Nears (not a poem)

Right.  Originally this blog was only going to be poetry, not my slightly-insane and very-much-boring chatter, but I mean… the whole point of a blog is to chatter, am I right?  I won’t be going all emo on you now.  This is still strictly poetry talk (although, as I said, this was only supposed to be poetry, you might actually see me mention some prose or, god forbid, post something I’ve been working on) but I think I want to go in a different direction and actually start mildly editing some of the crap I spew.  I’ll be spewing it daily from now until the end of February, as my pre-NaPoWriMo (don’t know what it is? google it.) month kicks off.  This is a joint effort between me and Lykaios (www.rainingfairylight.wordpress.com (I’m not sure how to post a link on here, but oh well)) because, well, I want to win Foyle this year (I’m going to win, determined-face-activate) and realized that I need to… practice.  A lot.  A lot more.

And once February is over, I’ll have a month to tune it down until April, the official NaPoWriMo month.  Although, if I were really adamant about going to England, I’d be practicing a lot more than I usually do, which is only like once or twice, of that, a week without motivation.  Like I said, I really do need to be writing more.

I’ve been writing poetry for nearly a year (it’ll be a year at either the end of April or sometime in May, I don’t quite remember when I started, but I know it was near the end of NaPo) and I feel like I haven’t improved as much as I should have.  Ah, well.  It’s probably just not my thing.  I wish I could say I have a thing, but in truth, I really don’t, which terrified me.  I want poetry to be my thing, goddammit!  Or at least prose.  I should write a short story.  I just have trouble actually coming up with ideas for shorts.  The only thing that’s been sticking in my mind is about a man named Elroy who has a panic attack when a man starts using the urinal next to him.  Titled The Rules of Society.

I want to write a series of interconnected shorts.

This is a poetry blog.  Shut up.

Anyway, when I mentioned earlier that I was going to start editing my poems, I might have lied a bit.  I won’t be editing, per se, but I’ll be going over my poems and writing down what I, personally, think is bad and good and what needs to be fixed and so on.  So, from here on out, whenever I post a poem, there will probably be a little bit at the end about my own thoughts on it.

Daisy-Days

You said you stomach heaved,
so I gave it ipecac
and let it heave some more
until you were all outside your skin
and I fell laughing.
It’s a pose you know well enough,
from those days
where you would reach up
to catch the bird wings for a hat
but would trip and legs would somersault
around your head until you thought
it was a prank and we smiled
at each other.
I like your smile,
I said, but you thought you didn’t like mine,
too toothy and my teeth were never pretty.
But you didn’t like pretty anyway.
So we sat around and colored sea cows
with pink and purple, and for lunch
we ate a few white circles
that we’d popped from the sides
of our school folders.
Ipecac, mother cried, where’s
my ipecac?
We giggled.  It was all for fun,
and we hid under the dining room table,
counting the dark circles where we’d once
stuck blue gum.
Our hands stuck rainy days
to the underside of the table and we rushed
into the yellow daisy-days, and mother kept yelling about
her ipecac, where the -hell-
is her ipecac, but we’d already begun
to blame it on the dog.

Cold-Water Sensations

If we said our prayers. with our hands
side – by – side, then would god know we were
one?  If we could only. take a glance to show
that. we could be returning to the ages,
and millenia, and eons of every
body, who passed before us in the cold-water
sensations of falling, would god know
us for the untimely precipice that held our fingers loose
?
Where are your questions, your answers.?  Caught
in the back of your throat with a curved finger, or
.hung. .hung.             drowning past the water
line?
The walls are bare now, the ash we dusted
on the mantelpiece is gone now, and all we have for show
is our two hands, puckered up
.you pressed them to the globe again?.
and drawn across with blue and green pen.  You did mine,
and I did yours.
god remembers.
Or maybe he doesn’t want to forget. how. he
…….took us for adam and eve.
mis-
ery used to be loud at night, and now I can hear
my thoughts spinning into yours.

Something About Ages

Oh dual decaying, freeing
with a smell of dew
for each morning paid in yellow pollen dropped
among the mizzy painted
renaissance,
swirling weird divides in elbow crooks

niches where we hung the balustrades
copper-toned and shifting honey between
renegade
infidelity
cross enamored with misery, wrapped up
paper-cuts from all these ashen letters
written with infinitely-stenciled negatives
to hold isotopes.

Unity decays revelations, as the belly
balloons and touches cloud,
as the tadpoles lose their tails, as
reminiscing gains a flavor.

thoughts about existing forever

in this house.
with the fawn-colored couch and its fawn-colored hair
that stick to my clothes and ingrain themselves in my socks
and the boards that creak like an old woman
in her sleep
in the nighttime,
when the owls lurk outside and the wasp hive stuck
to my window is quiet.

these girls and these boys with no fingers and no god
who needs god anyway, when we’ve got time travel- we
are the lords of our bodies, but
somehow we always, in the end, at the finish line, end up
handing ourselves over to others
that poke and prod and shrink us to
itty. bitty.prunes.
before expanding us into balloon.s.

but if there was no end, we would stay alone, windows shut
against the cold and the buzzing of the wasps in their stripes
of gold and antimatter – they have good defenses against
the ones who would enslave them – and my socks are pressed
into the crevices in the couch
searching for a warmth that will only come
when the end does.

Come Hell or High Water

Had the snow come down in such a turmoil
as to shield you from me, then blind I would have walked,
with nothing for warmth but my rags and bones and
blank stares into my eyelids.

The ground is hot beneath us, so brace yourself
against the envy of the under-places, their fingers caught
in their mouths while they watch us perform tricks
they’ve never seen in their fire pits or iron chambers.

I was never much of a singer, but for you I’ll steal
the chords of a nightingale and make you pine for me,
sitting high in the trees and eager to fall into your arms
if only you were there and hadn’t been stuck at the crossing

of the rivers, which seem to mourn for us already as they
blunder blindly away from this mountain I’ve been placed on.
And maybe they’ll find some siren to pass through them
and maybe she’ll carry some message from you to me,

but darling, come hell and high water, I’ll find my way back
so we can kick the stars away and make our own little nest
in the dark folds of each other’s legs.  I promise it, so take
this bone from my chest and expose me to you.

If the devil came to take you from me, it’d be no surprise
that I’d toss my soul at him to cover his eyes while we stole
away.  It’s no surprise that when we cross again, I’ll stroke
the water to calm it so you can be safe in your walking,

and on the other side, come hell and high water, I’ll strip
your clothes off and sing to you again, just to feel your chest
rise in response, quicker now, like a metronome counting off
the seconds until I kiss you back to this world.

Metronome and Ouroboros

I.
There’s lace hanging across the trees, and
(It’s in the air, he said.)
black fog creeps in with the sunlight
‘til the golden wheat dripped Midas blood
into the rivers.

Locusts came and took our air,
their wings batting the webs from our throats,
but the spiders stayed and stayed the lungs
from taking in the bird song, (It smells
like rain, he said.)

So skipped along the chartered grass,
with golden means strung through our hair,
but as the green gave out to gray the grit
of blood ran through our toes, and I saw woody butterflies
(I see white, he said.)

II.
The corner of the house was painted moss.
It clung to my fingers as I rounded, toes outstretched
to reach for hallow ground, and the trees bent in,
stuttered their breaths with a sound of drums,
measured all like metronomes.

In the far-off fields, Ouroboros beat his head
against a rock in madness.  His eyes frothed pink.
The ground shook my knees.  Through his chest,
ivory pierced the overlay of yellow skin, an arrow
tipped with bluish black and poppy ribbons.

(I feel pity, he said.)

III.
Ouroboros, don’t you know
to stay yourself within the earth, writhe only
in the heated seas?  What water
have you come from?  Ah, the river, it runs with
gold.

IV.
He called for cigarettes.  I can feel another heartbeat
against my bosom.  Maybe the butterflies
have come to seek shelter
from this thunder-wrath.
Maybe tomorrow Ouroboros will be a myth again.  Oh,
mud, cease your knocking of my legs,
and help me to my feet.

For Sparrow

Oh Sparrow, with grain clinging to the soft edges of your wings,
how is it that you stare so wide-eyed at tree bark, with your beak a-
singing to the worms in the knot holes, as they squish around their lazy pink sundays-
how is it that you tempt yourself with young ones to catch the coasting
wind lines under your feathers and soar so high that even man wished to follow
you, but, how is it you return to your bed of sticks and love the fuzz-tuff darlings
in their casing?
Oh Sparrow, had I been born your sister, if the twisted whorls of life had somehow
brought my consciousness to yours in a kaleidoscope of blue-toothed id, I would have stolen
your wings just to fly twice as high.  My breath might have left me and taken to gravity’s heed,
but not I, for I would reach up with my soggy beak to skim the clouds and race the planes
and cry for all the baby birds who would never see a sight as this.
Oh Sparrow, do not ruffle your sides at me, for I mean no harm in telling you
of my disloyalties, of my irreversible brain-harm, and there would be no way for me to take
your brown wings to this body.  But, Sparrow, if I could only speak to you, I would say
all the dreams I have of space and sparrow-feathers, and maybe you would cock your head
for a piece of bread in my palm, and maybe you would hear the chords of my voice
in your song-time, and maybe you would look at the air with a new set of eyes, my eyes,
and take to the oceans in the skies with a new pair of wings, and maybe I would feel you soaring,
Sparrow.