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New OrleansNew Orleans8 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
So maybe there are too many flowers here
on the ground, and in the cotton;
weaving like lace through red dirt flesh.
Sun threatens necks and marinates eyes;
as balsa-spun bones tell laconic tales of age,
creaking and groaning like old southern mansions.
Mint juleps and almonds and peaches doze here,
and Eve has her fingers stuck down Eden's throat,
splashing sin and decadent fruits all over the city.
Our voices are slow and warping in the heat,
rising like egg steam off the sidewalks.
Honeysuckle flowers bloom with tarot cards
and suffocate the air with a drowsy nectar.
Stars are made to be read
nights are made to be wakened-
o
Death is a Soviet BallerinaDeath is a Soviet Ballerina8 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
Rehearsal. Dance, and maybe bow.
(and how!) Entrance the sycophants.
Universal trance demands romance-
subsequent shroud that deflects
the crowd genuflects arrogant nod
to God. (Defiantly. Disquietly.)
Membranes are broken. My black-wrapped
legs, distract some pain unspoken
thrown to dregs, notions of broken powder kegs.
Soviet source of choreographed terminus
"Exterminus? So be it," laughed coarse
and hoarse contorting marionette.
Regret?
himBefore I lose my life in this town, I'm looking for a pebblehim7 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
that smells like anything - the ocean, soil, you - that shit.
Symptoms include an obsession with clocks and a dismissive anything
towards her, the bleak old buzzard who watches with gauze-eyed cataracts
as we walk by, - -we- menacing in white sneakers and suntan lotion - - she -
has been so long above it all that there is no longer any difference between the declaration of independence
and a newspaper article that goes:
Everything was terrible and the people died,
but really she was just having a bad dream.
Really she's okay.
And it was all just make-believe,
and you fe
drowning out westdrowning out west9 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
It has not been so bad here -- warmer than home and they call the place differently than we do. You know how we always said Mizzery?
They call it Mizzera.
~
Dear Daniel,
Auntie J and Uncle Agner have made the attic comfortable for me. From my window I can see hills fattening in the distance and the river veins away from them -- winds right through the pasture.
Tell mother I wear the cardigan she crocheted and no one can tell yet. Auntie looks hard, cause she knows I should be blowing up, but she's disappointed. She tells me eat right cause she wants her new baby healthy and she heaps enough food for two grown-ups on my plate; I eat as
MotherMother8 years ago in Traditional Fixed Forms More Like This
1955
Mother wakes at five thirty in the morning
even Sundays, though the newspaper hasn't been delivered
to me sitting at the top of the stairs.
She squints at me with Hitchcock eyes,
says that my bathwater is turning light gray, it's time to get in.
Sundays, we go to church, which isn't-just-a-social-thing-young-lady.
I'm here because I would neverever ask for anything else
if she bought me a dog.
It dawns, and her voice percolates my future, drip
drip drip, we say Scholarship.
I have a hard time knowing her
without her glasses
and her makeup in its technicolor glory.
She drives me to school every day, to save on parking.
Tru
DextromethorphanDextromethorphan8 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
Dex
It has been three days, and still I cannot bear to change it.
The water is turning a queer jaundice, and the fishy corpse
is bobbing like an upside-down moon in that thumb-hazed sky.
I threw food in the first day, before I noticed the stillness
of the red-finned thing, which I bought at Petco in a bag of plastic glass.
I put him in the blender with the blades taken out, and named him
nothing, genderless queer little floater. He ate bloodworms, and I
kept a log for awhile, to mark the days. I was supposed to get a plant
first, but their creeping vines and lack of eyes gave me the horrors. A cactus.
The bloodworms are still flo
AmphiprionAmphiprion8 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
AMPHIPRION
I have been a bloodless fish tossed about
with wild blank eyes -- whiter than the foam that smashed me
into rocks that flaked my scales and sent them scattering
gold vermillion flashing at the knees of stinking fishermen
that bent to taste me,
one hand in the folds of their trousers where they started to stiffen
and the edges of their boots all caked with guts.
With salt crust forming in the corners of their lips they turned
to face each other, to shake hands or
compare rod size -- I made this community!
A limp queen rotting into water where I lay with seagull shit and algae scum
that floated and coated the mouths o
in apartment b16I throw you as I hear the widow cryin apartment b168 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
beneath us. I imagine
her to have a veil of make-up running
down her face, or maybe she is bent
in the shadow
of a crucifix or a sun catcher,
starving for some light.
I heard she once went bicycling
over the dry dirt
roads of Italy, and chased the man
she loved into a private
landing.
Then in Boston, or New Haven,
she would laugh, throwing
her stockings to the wind
as she watched them parachute
down where the children
played.
They would smile ,
and life would begin.
But, really, as we drag and pull, she
is gone. She has moved past Amber
Street, and has taken
to baking bre
Margot in PiecesMargot in Pieces7 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
I'm meant to be a writer, say I, but my mother doesn't understand. She stands over me and my tiny room, towering like a giant. She is the birth beast, the originator, she gave birth to me, and yes, she could kill me too, no jury would convict her. But then with imagery like that, perhaps I'm not quite the writer I claim to be.
Writing won't pay your bills, Margot. Writing won't get you married. Writing won't feed your family. She says this in a warning tone, the type mothers always use when they want to appear benevolently concerned, or at least hiding the self-loathing at having created the worthless beings they call children
The Curse Of Formal VerseNothing is harder than writing formal verse;The Curse Of Formal Verse8 years ago in Traditional Fixed Forms More Like This
We struggle and we try to wrack our heads,
But all words fail, our poems are a curse.
The creators of such forms were most perverse,
Taking pleasure from poets wishing they were dead.
Nothing is harder than writing formal verse.
A failed writer shakes his empty purse.
He is determined to, once more, be fed.
But all words fail, his poems are a curse
The Villanelle, The Sestina; a hearse
Waiting for that poet, writhing in his bed.
Nothing is harder than writing formal verse.
An inmate of an asylum calls the nurse
He tried to write a sonnet in his shed
But all his words failed, his poem
StorytimeStorytime10 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
.
Scalding bathes for Lolita
shake her body up.
And arsenic drinks,
the coroner thinks,
were responsible for the scars.
Now little mother spanish
and stoic papa cry.
Mourning and lamenting,
sister Nola dies -
of suicide, they say.
Two children in a day.
Another wake, funeral cake,
now everyone\'s asking why.
A week goes by
and Lorelai, their sitter in arrears,
confesses all:
\"When those children called
I wished that they would die!
So I bathed the youngest quiet,
after tepid poisoned tea,
and strung her sister,
Nola Whistler,
up on the willow tree.\"
.
He Thinks By FireCastlesHe Thinks By Fire9 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
Set the scene in Vienna, Rome
Tripoli - countries in cities.
Restaurants in the shade.
Men in chairs
With white straw hats, the sun curve
Of the day, and buzzing of motors on
Rocky cobblestone.
Family visits an old man.
A hearty dinner, the sun a shine on the glass.
She says tell
us something
Like you used to.
The boys poke the ground,
Fiddle with the earth,
Before he sighs.
Sighs, speaks:
Contracts
I sign in blood.
A column splits, spoken
Ramparts, assailed corridors.
Degraded anarchs in the veins.
I hear Fire.
Random chaos in
The voi- voi- Void.
And my entry read:
'Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate!'
Partial Portraitsoft creases under each eyePartial Portrait7 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
(an iconoclast) died yesterday
at his home in Manhattan
melted and brightly dripped into
(a poetnovelist) died yesterday
at his home in Manhattan
a full white
specifically untrimmed mustache
(a photographerdirector) died yesterday
Moaning CavernsHeavy-headed flowers bend as bowsMoaning Caverns8 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
to contemplate her depthless air:
Her belly. Her bats, the boys,
hang blind as stars, blood pooling
in their apricot heads, their heavy ears.
Sun splashes in through her open eyes
but it doesn't take-
And who will know her neighbors?
Secret as unstruck light, they are quiet like dandelions
as they hump their backs against shivering feet.
They crack and groan but cannot sing
in resistance to the jocund wind
won't scream against the thunderstorm.
If envy would live green in a nothing eye,
she would shriek it against this thunder
for her smothered brethren
as her lips, her crags are torn,
deliv
7 Lovely SinsThe7 Lovely Sins7 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
OLD
TESTAMENT
The Book of
ASH
1 This is how you will know to mark the young among men,
for this is the prayer they pray, again and again.
2 It is these who should be marked and minted into lives worth being spent.
3 These are the words they speak in vain,
"Our father who art in us, tradition be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in me as it is in him.
Give us this day our lovely sins1—those of youth and innocence.
And forgive us our deviance, as we forgive those who differ from us.
And lead us not into similarity, but deliver us from the collective.
For thine is the prison, and the scorn, aimed at abnormal
SatedSated9 years ago in Typographical More Like This
Sated, she said, and bowed to the grave
nodding her lips to the thin of the wind
"Now it is june. She is tired of being brave."
Always there, something of missing and him.
Aubades on morning like nebula sighs
clash with the porn star handshakes and slick lips.
Names of the angels so quick fall to rise.
Nothing to know her but broken fingertips.
She nods to the smile and turns eyes so austere.
But the rhyming part of this poem
ends here.
run run she said to the boy.
run, run, auld songs, old songs.
take your helmet, take y
I eat for me, and me alone.I eat for me-I eat for me, and me alone.5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
And me alone,
I do not eat for you.
When my heart is empty-
And yours is full,
I do not eat for you.
I sing for me-
Yes me alone,
I do not sing for you.
Though I am this thing-
That needs to sing,
I do not sing for you.
I see for me-
And me alone,
I do not see for you.
I used to live-
Behind a line,
But I do not see for you.
I mind for me-
And me alone,
I do not mind for you.
I do not mind-
The ones who seem,
To stick to you like glue.
I long for you-
And you alone,
This love it’s not for me.
I’m sick. I’m sick-
Of being sick
Of this empathy.
I’m sick.
I’m sick.
AmbushThey came like calendar girls.Ambush6 years ago in Other More Like This
They came wearing tires as skirts.
They came with break pedal mouths,
teeth that could shift gears. You never knew what was a lie
or what was the absolute
unignorable
truth.
Once, they licked the side of my face
and my head started up so loudly the neighbors rose up
with their slippers lagging behind,
to throw boots
at the fence. They thought I was a cat.
They were allergic to the noise.
It was too real for them,
sounds that talkative in the blush of midnight.
But yes, the neighbors went away shoving earplugs into their hearts
and they came again saying “You have
to stop so
Small DividesYour tiny flesh, your size twoSmall Divides6 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
to my body set wide apart,
to my body trying to escape itself with distance
speaks.
I have no delusions.
We are eager and willful.
I know not to confuse this
with magic. We are not reincarnated,
not long-lost someones, no epic, no fable.
Gilgamesh doesn’t hear what we say, or how
we say it in riots, in phone calls, in perfect
Sunday afternoons.
I do not make up stories, pretty lies to
fill in the gaps. I do not cork the holes
with anything at all. Instead, I stick
my fingers in them and poke around. What we lack-
if we lack it- is not a trouble thing, a warning thing.
It is just a t
The Witching HourIt is the hour of hair yanking.The Witching Hour6 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
I am like all the other insomniacs,
drifting off with static in my ears
and waking up with unslept muscles.
Mozart terrifies me when it is this dark outside,
and I find myself wading in a pile of theatre masks
that answer everyone else’s questions correctly
and shatter at my own.
There are no pajamas.
I have long since been unable
to withstand even more layers between you and myself.
I imagine the couch as tomb—
and at daybreak I wake up to people clothed
in dresses too bright for a funeral.
They ask me to dress in color,
but I just dress to keep from freezing to death.
Even though t
Poem Parked in Light“They’re blowing holes in the sky,”Poem Parked in Light6 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
she says, as we listen
to the fizzing of fireworks
dying away.
Her red hair comes with a price tag,
out of a bottle,
but it is no less like jarring
(and nothing like waiting)
when it falls in my face.
She knocks along the
hardness of my sternum, and finds
that I am frail in places.
(this often goes unnoticed.)
My heart is just
to her right, so she is careful
along the edges.
(this often goes undone.)
Historical NoteI loved you once before, in the concrete,Historical Note7 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
in the milestones, I loved you once
in pile-ons and brickwork, in the salvage-
yard wreckages left behind.
It was the bones that knew it. It was
the creak and drag of unfolding
up from easy chair to kitchen table
that knew where you lived in the swim
of the marrow and the itch of the hide;
which is why, when I walk by a window waft
of coffee and cigarette, of cars and pancakes,
what I taste on my tongue is what you
taste on my tongue, is how I loved you once
in songwriters and space needles, day long
conversations, drives through pine needles
and the promise that we would stay this youn
008. Innocence In the passenger's side of the car008. Innocence5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
I looked for windmills through
the window. All at once there they were,
sitting comfortably
yet proud on yellow-brown sloping
hills, their many hands waving in circles,
playing with the wind.
I was Seven, I rolled down the window
and ate the air, today it was vanilla
flavored. I shut my eyes, my face scrunched
into a smile.
The wind giants disappeared
all at once and I felt alone, dream-empty.
Daddy was driving,
Humming along to the music on the radio; I
hugged my knees and made a wish. I
Paper RaincoatsI heard a song and a sipPaper Raincoats7 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
of tea too strong for me,
But I took it anyway
The way bells ring
sometimes only
in the West
I'd like to think time
would wait for me in the
cloud pockets like bags
collecting mail, slow this
down slow me down
So I can feel this
My skin never dries
under the paper raincoat,
And she says, "Well at least
when its wet it can't cut
you" but she doesn't know
She doesn't know that I
would love to bleed
Some colour in the
grey, some ice cream
sandwiches and peanut butter
Some light caught in the leaves
The green
I need some in me
But the paper just molds
to me and tears and makes its
way towar
Sta.sh
