Two of Spades - Phantom Limbs
8 - Free Verse
Delayed due to computer issues. Thanks for the bailout Scarlett!:
Hands
Crack of knuckles
and to work:
cloth cords coiled round forefingers, blood
rushing to the tips
I pull - almost pain - and
release, relief
Palms now on smooth leather
cool, crawling up again
nails catch on stitching
wrists rest on icy grommets
Then:
strings secured in fingers' grips
I move my hands
proper pressure
precise, delicate like
I'm conducting to the carpet:
A perfect knot
On to boot number two
I seize it but
slick, slippery, it
slides from me -
once more: struggling
drops and wiggles across the floor
I grab again, angry
and it rears up
growing in my grip
spitting black from its tongue
laces whipping at my face
and threading through my fingers
wrapping my wrists
around my arms
real pain now
skin in binary colors: white or purple
I open to scream and get a mouthful of polish
coughing black
I cry out
I -
Awake in the blue light of my room
I stretch my fingers
The sheets don't move
I try to sleep again
Another poem coming here later today (I hope)...
In the meantime, check out April 8th's poem from last year.
Friday, April 08, 2011
Thursday, April 07, 2011
April 7th - WILD CARD
Orange Joker - WILD CARD
WILD CARD #1 - Throwback: Any unused topic from last year
Which will be: Riding a Ferris Wheel
4 - Ruba'i
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 7th's poem from last year (also a WILD CARD, coincidentally).
WILD CARD #1 - Throwback: Any unused topic from last year
Which will be: Riding a Ferris Wheel
4 - Ruba'i
Cables and Girders
High above the carnie's stands
We sit together holding hands
Take in Brooklyn's lofty views
Think vaguely of our altered plans
And how we rarely get to choose
Who it is we mutually use
As we ascend around once more
Greeted by the ocean's hues
And bathers lying on it's shore
Which, truthfully, are all ignored
I swiftly kiss you on the lips
We slow to stop as girders roar
You kiss me back, a tongue is slipped
Both passionate and grabbing hips
The axle spins, the cables bend
The wheel revolves, our basket dips
And swings as we start to descend
We bring our fondling to an end
Retreat to edges of the seat
Concerned our capsule will upend
Staring at eachother's feet
We camouflage our shared conceit
And wait for one of us to speak
Preoccupied with common heat
Our opened door breaks the mystique
Getting out, my knees are weak
I stretch my toes in Coney sands
We once again are holding hands
"After this let's see the freaks."
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 7th's poem from last year (also a WILD CARD, coincidentally).
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
April 6th - Suicide
King of Hearts - Suicide
14 - Rondeau
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 6th's poem from last year.
14 - Rondeau
Capote on 49th Street
Young Truman jettisoned his cares
Threw parties (legend'ry affairs)
Resplendent boys peopled his bed
His books were univers'ly read
But he grew bored of this somewhere
In taking those who bought his shares
And casting them in "Answered Prayers"
Press, and friends, and even Lee said,
"It's suicide."
He quits the bar to startled glares
And leaving, tumbles down the stairs
On finding him with bloodied head
The waiters bring him home to bed
His fed-up bartender declares,
"It's suicide"
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 6th's poem from last year.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Shout Out #1
Jeremy Tyarks has incorporated National Poetry Month into the world of his forthcoming collection/ongoing poetry blog, Edward Brook. Tyarks is no stranger to writing marathons, having spent a full year producing a new piece everyday. He takes great pleasure in reclaiming lost words and his work is sensual and hilarious. Expect some brilliant stuff from Jeremy in April and beyond.
Like what you see? Buy his first book!
Like what you see? Buy his first book!
April 5th - Magazine Street
Jack of Hearts - Magazine Street
20 - Any form of my choosing
And I choose Free Verse:
Le Bon Temps Roule (sic)
The air is different in this place
lowland electric
foreign light
and "Dixie Voodoo"
in neon
I breathe Mississippi salt
and sand and sweat
magnolias
Virginia tobacco
dusk and Otis Redding
wafting from some idling taxi
the best
God Damned
radio stations, I swear
Down here
wasps fly around my legs
sucking sugar from dried beer
on splintered bench, which
in reality is a parking stop
"Most of the Time"
How good you look in
your dress when
you return, plastic cups in
your hands: jacks and cokes
to go
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 5th's poem from last year.
20 - Any form of my choosing
And I choose Free Verse:
Le Bon Temps Roule (sic)
The air is different in this place
lowland electric
foreign light
and "Dixie Voodoo"
in neon
I breathe Mississippi salt
and sand and sweat
magnolias
Virginia tobacco
dusk and Otis Redding
wafting from some idling taxi
the best
God Damned
radio stations, I swear
Down here
wasps fly around my legs
sucking sugar from dried beer
on splintered bench, which
in reality is a parking stop
"Most of the Time"
How good you look in
your dress when
you return, plastic cups in
your hands: jacks and cokes
to go
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 5th's poem from last year.
Monday, April 04, 2011
April 4th - Fat Elvis
King of Diamonds - Fat Elvis
1 - Prose
Return of The King (excerpt)
The Ghost of Elvis Presley haunted my house the summer I was thirteen. I was terrified of him, sure, but if it wasn't for this ghost, if it wasn't for Elvis, I may have never been able to put a face to the emptiness I have felt for as long as I can remember.
My mother and I moved to Memphis in the spring and settled in a colonial-style house on the east side of the city. The neighborhood was bought out in the early fifties and given a complete overhaul: old rooming houses were knocked down and replaced with split-level homes with tiny yards. Our house was the only colonial on the block and I still haven't been able to figure out why. For all it's cobwebs and peeling wallpaper, it had only been built in the sixties; it was less than thirty years old. I never saw the insides of any other houses in our neighborhood, for we kept to ourselves when we lived in Memphis. My mother liked to remind me that we were there temporarily, and that was that.
I was taken by the house immediately: the large standing bathtub with the bronze feet in the upstairs bathroom, the way the stairs creaked as I jumped my way up them to my room. There were plenty of dark places to find in that house. I led solo expeditions down to the basement that smelled like a turtle's cage - once I found a salamander down there, which fled like a wind-up toy when I shone my flashlight on it - and up to the attic where I could see my bedroom through the floorboards.
My favorite thing about the house was the crawlspaces. There was one hidden in each room - behind the dining room table or an unhung painting - and my greatest discovery came when I realized they all connected to a central chamber. This half-room spanned all three stories of the house and each level was accessible by a knotted rope that had been installed by a former tenant. On each level there was just enough floor space for me to lie down, and there was a hint of sunlight in there from some unknown source. The wooden walls of this chamber were filled with insulation that looked like cotton candy. I loved it there.
I became so comfortable with the interlocking network of crawlspaces, that I began using them to travel through the house. My mother, knowing I was in my room, would call me from the kitchen, "Peter!" and I would bound through my crawlspace, slide down the rope, and within moments be standing behind her. She would jump every time and I never let her in on the secret of how I could do it.
Tennessee summers are as hot as anything and after school ended, I spent my idle days in our house. I would wake up around 10:30, after my mother had gone to work. First things first: change into a pair of underwear and my White Sox cap, grab my trumpet, and prepare a peanut butter and banana sandwich. From there I would spend the rest of my afternoon in my inner chamber - "The Spine Of The House" as I liked to call it - where it was cool and dark. I would lie down on the floor in the middle of The Spine with my feet up in the air, stretching my toes in the cottony insulation, playing my trumpet, nibbling on my breakfast between songs. I played "Yesterday" and "Everything Happens to Me", and the horn part for "Got My Mind Set On You," but my favorite song to play was "Hound Dog." Whenever I played it seemed like just by using my lips I could make the whole house vibrate. It was here that I first encountered the Ghost of Elvis.
One afternoon I dozed off with the cool of my trumpet on my chest and was awoken by the sounds of voices coming from somewhere in the house: a man' voice and a woman's voice, too muffled for me to make out what they were saying. The woman's voice sounded almost like my mother's, but when she laughed, I wasn't so sure. I tried climbing the rope to see if I could hear better on different levels, but the voices were just as hard to understand everywhere. Suddenly they were quiet, and then Elvis started singing. He was so loud and sounded differently than I was used to him sounding. I went back to my trumpet, grabbed it and lay perfectly still, terrified. He sang "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" and it sounded like it was coming from everywhere. I closed my eyes and tried to disappear. Then came "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" followed by "Love Me Tender." I thought I heard the faint sounds of a lady somewhere crying or something. Elvis introduced "Unchained Melody," sang a few bars and then abruptly stopped. The house was silent.
I lay there, heart jumping in my chest. I knew I had to move, but I couldn't. I lay there a long time and then sprung into action. I left the sandwich plate behind and shimmied up the rope, clutching my trumpet, heart jumping, running through the crawlspace to my room. I placed the trumpet safely on my bed and pulled on shorts and a t-shirt, and then back through the crawlspace, sliding down the rope, burning my hands, leaping through the basement with no regard for dead mice or salamanders. I climbed out the basement window.
There was a baseball bat lying in my backyard and I grabbed it, clutching it white-knuckled, leaning against the back wall of my house, trying to control my breathing. Deep breaths. I leaned against my house, clutching the baseball bat and I breathed, trying to calm myself down. I looked at the grass, the house, the sky. The light told me it was around six o'clock. I had been sleeping longer than I thought. My heart stopped jumping so much. I loosened my grip a bit on the bat and I walked to the front door. Bracing myself, I expected to be greeted by a grotesque apparition of The King, ready to crush me in his inhuman hands. I opened the door. There was no one there. I walked in cautiously.
My mother was sitting at the dining room table drinking a glass of wine. She looked through me, and then focused on my face. "Where have you been?" And before I could answer. "Where are your shoes?" I realized I was barefoot and my feet were cut and dirty. I shrugged. I asked her if she had heard Elvis singing. She said she didn't know what I was talking about. Then: "You shouldn't bring that baseball bat into the house," after me as I walked upstairs.
That wasn't the only time The Ghost of Elvis appeared to me....
The rest of this will appear here or somewhere else in the near future.
In the nearer future, however, another poem - perhaps a proper one this time - will be here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 4th's poem from last year.
1 - Prose
For all his ridiculousness, to give a performance like this, as overweight and full of Demerol as he was, man truly was a king. And yes, sometimes a king needs a sweat rag and two 64oz cups of coke.
Return of The King (excerpt)
The Ghost of Elvis Presley haunted my house the summer I was thirteen. I was terrified of him, sure, but if it wasn't for this ghost, if it wasn't for Elvis, I may have never been able to put a face to the emptiness I have felt for as long as I can remember.
My mother and I moved to Memphis in the spring and settled in a colonial-style house on the east side of the city. The neighborhood was bought out in the early fifties and given a complete overhaul: old rooming houses were knocked down and replaced with split-level homes with tiny yards. Our house was the only colonial on the block and I still haven't been able to figure out why. For all it's cobwebs and peeling wallpaper, it had only been built in the sixties; it was less than thirty years old. I never saw the insides of any other houses in our neighborhood, for we kept to ourselves when we lived in Memphis. My mother liked to remind me that we were there temporarily, and that was that.
I was taken by the house immediately: the large standing bathtub with the bronze feet in the upstairs bathroom, the way the stairs creaked as I jumped my way up them to my room. There were plenty of dark places to find in that house. I led solo expeditions down to the basement that smelled like a turtle's cage - once I found a salamander down there, which fled like a wind-up toy when I shone my flashlight on it - and up to the attic where I could see my bedroom through the floorboards.
My favorite thing about the house was the crawlspaces. There was one hidden in each room - behind the dining room table or an unhung painting - and my greatest discovery came when I realized they all connected to a central chamber. This half-room spanned all three stories of the house and each level was accessible by a knotted rope that had been installed by a former tenant. On each level there was just enough floor space for me to lie down, and there was a hint of sunlight in there from some unknown source. The wooden walls of this chamber were filled with insulation that looked like cotton candy. I loved it there.
I became so comfortable with the interlocking network of crawlspaces, that I began using them to travel through the house. My mother, knowing I was in my room, would call me from the kitchen, "Peter!" and I would bound through my crawlspace, slide down the rope, and within moments be standing behind her. She would jump every time and I never let her in on the secret of how I could do it.
Tennessee summers are as hot as anything and after school ended, I spent my idle days in our house. I would wake up around 10:30, after my mother had gone to work. First things first: change into a pair of underwear and my White Sox cap, grab my trumpet, and prepare a peanut butter and banana sandwich. From there I would spend the rest of my afternoon in my inner chamber - "The Spine Of The House" as I liked to call it - where it was cool and dark. I would lie down on the floor in the middle of The Spine with my feet up in the air, stretching my toes in the cottony insulation, playing my trumpet, nibbling on my breakfast between songs. I played "Yesterday" and "Everything Happens to Me", and the horn part for "Got My Mind Set On You," but my favorite song to play was "Hound Dog." Whenever I played it seemed like just by using my lips I could make the whole house vibrate. It was here that I first encountered the Ghost of Elvis.
One afternoon I dozed off with the cool of my trumpet on my chest and was awoken by the sounds of voices coming from somewhere in the house: a man' voice and a woman's voice, too muffled for me to make out what they were saying. The woman's voice sounded almost like my mother's, but when she laughed, I wasn't so sure. I tried climbing the rope to see if I could hear better on different levels, but the voices were just as hard to understand everywhere. Suddenly they were quiet, and then Elvis started singing. He was so loud and sounded differently than I was used to him sounding. I went back to my trumpet, grabbed it and lay perfectly still, terrified. He sang "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" and it sounded like it was coming from everywhere. I closed my eyes and tried to disappear. Then came "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" followed by "Love Me Tender." I thought I heard the faint sounds of a lady somewhere crying or something. Elvis introduced "Unchained Melody," sang a few bars and then abruptly stopped. The house was silent.
I lay there, heart jumping in my chest. I knew I had to move, but I couldn't. I lay there a long time and then sprung into action. I left the sandwich plate behind and shimmied up the rope, clutching my trumpet, heart jumping, running through the crawlspace to my room. I placed the trumpet safely on my bed and pulled on shorts and a t-shirt, and then back through the crawlspace, sliding down the rope, burning my hands, leaping through the basement with no regard for dead mice or salamanders. I climbed out the basement window.
There was a baseball bat lying in my backyard and I grabbed it, clutching it white-knuckled, leaning against the back wall of my house, trying to control my breathing. Deep breaths. I leaned against my house, clutching the baseball bat and I breathed, trying to calm myself down. I looked at the grass, the house, the sky. The light told me it was around six o'clock. I had been sleeping longer than I thought. My heart stopped jumping so much. I loosened my grip a bit on the bat and I walked to the front door. Bracing myself, I expected to be greeted by a grotesque apparition of The King, ready to crush me in his inhuman hands. I opened the door. There was no one there. I walked in cautiously.
My mother was sitting at the dining room table drinking a glass of wine. She looked through me, and then focused on my face. "Where have you been?" And before I could answer. "Where are your shoes?" I realized I was barefoot and my feet were cut and dirty. I shrugged. I asked her if she had heard Elvis singing. She said she didn't know what I was talking about. Then: "You shouldn't bring that baseball bat into the house," after me as I walked upstairs.
That wasn't the only time The Ghost of Elvis appeared to me....
The rest of this will appear here or somewhere else in the near future.
In the nearer future, however, another poem - perhaps a proper one this time - will be here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 4th's poem from last year.
Sunday, April 03, 2011
April 3rd - Cicadas
Nine of Diamonds - Cicadas
4 - Ruba'i
Shoot The Poet (One Sick Stanza)
We came of age one night in spring
Impromptu queens and sudden kings
Cicadas surfaced, mated, beat their tymbals
We shed our skins and sprouted wings
The touch of youth like crashing cymbals
We coyly stroked eachother's dimples
Oblivious to buzzing having gone
We always thought it would stay simple
The world looks different at dawn
Another generation spawned
As children pick up shells we left behind
We burrow deep inside our lawns
And tie ourselves with earthy binds
But lo, the dirt's comfort is kind
All nymphs: asleep in their burial mounds
The plodding clock: it winds and winds
Could it be time to come unbound?
The world above is filled with sounds
Imagining, or do I hear us sing?
The end of living underground
Poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 3rd's poem from last year.
4 - Ruba'i
Shoot The Poet (One Sick Stanza)
We came of age one night in spring
Impromptu queens and sudden kings
Cicadas surfaced, mated, beat their tymbals
We shed our skins and sprouted wings
The touch of youth like crashing cymbals
We coyly stroked eachother's dimples
Oblivious to buzzing having gone
We always thought it would stay simple
The world looks different at dawn
Another generation spawned
As children pick up shells we left behind
We burrow deep inside our lawns
And tie ourselves with earthy binds
But lo, the dirt's comfort is kind
All nymphs: asleep in their burial mounds
The plodding clock: it winds and winds
Could it be time to come unbound?
The world above is filled with sounds
Imagining, or do I hear us sing?
The end of living underground
Poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 3rd's poem from last year.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
April 2nd - Falling In Love On The T
Queen of Spades - Falling In Love On The T
16 - Tweet Length
Falling In Love On The T
Among the bustle and the quiet
I look at you, sidelong
- your reflection -
In scuffed plexiglass
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 2nd's poem from last year.
16 - Tweet Length
Falling In Love On The T
Among the bustle and the quiet
I look at you, sidelong
- your reflection -
In scuffed plexiglass
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 2nd's poem from last year.
Friday, April 01, 2011
April 1st - Mitsuwa
Ten of Diamonds - Mitsuwa
15 - Acrostic
Oyako-Don (From Mitsuwa Food Court Picture Window)
It's translated as "mother and child over rice:"
Salmon mama and unborn salmon baby
Helpless
In a decorative dish
It's -
Delicious!
Eggs explode between my teeth
Salty slime on my soft palate, sliding
Under my tongue
No cries from the mother - in pieces - as I
Eat her children
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 1st's poem from last year.
15 - Acrostic
Oyako-Don (From Mitsuwa Food Court Picture Window)
It's translated as "mother and child over rice:"
Salmon mama and unborn salmon baby
Helpless
In a decorative dish
It's -
Delicious!
Eggs explode between my teeth
Salty slime on my soft palate, sliding
Under my tongue
No cries from the mother - in pieces - as I
Eat her children
Another poem coming here tomorrow...
In the meantime, check out April 1st's poem from last year.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
National Poetry Month 2011
It's National Manatee Awareness Month once again! I'm not sure what started the trend of associating a month with a particular charity or subculture, but it has gotten pretty out of control. One designation for April that is missing from this list - overshadowed I guess by National Soft Pretzel Month - is National Poetry Month.
Last year I participated, writing a new poem every day in April and it was a success! Well, as much of a success as something that takes up all of my free time and generates no income can be. So I'm doing it agian.
For the next 30 days I will write and post a new poem determined by the following randomizing system: I have a deck of cards and a twenty sided die. Each card is assigned a topic and each side a form. In the morning I will draw a card and roll the die, and then, using the randomly selected topic and form, write and post the poem here before I go to sleep.
Last year I participated, writing a new poem every day in April and it was a success! Well, as much of a success as something that takes up all of my free time and generates no income can be. So I'm doing it agian.
For the next 30 days I will write and post a new poem determined by the following randomizing system: I have a deck of cards and a twenty sided die. Each card is assigned a topic and each side a form. In the morning I will draw a card and roll the die, and then, using the randomly selected topic and form, write and post the poem here before I go to sleep.
The list of topics is as follows:
RULE CARD WILD CARD
JOKER WILD CARD
JOKER WILD CARD
2C Progress
2D Potential Energy
2S Phantom limbs
2H Noble lies
3C Quails
3D Abortion Protesters
3S Octopuses
3H Bonfires
4C Before Pictures
4D Conks
4S Scratch Tickets
4H Komodo Dragons
5C David Icke
5S Silly Bandz
5H Schadenfreude
6D Two Brains, One Skull
6H Crying on the Internet
7C El Trains
7D The Dead Sea
7S Wooden Escalators
8C Zombies
8S Meteors/Meteorites
8H Invisible People
9C Dead Dogs
9D Cicadas
9S Whaling Ships
9H Resident Ghosts
10D Mitsuwa
10S Rooftops
10H Underage 'X's
JC Character sketch of a Starbucks regular
JD My Girlfriend's Toothbrush
JS Man Vs. Food
JH Magazine Street
QS Falling in Love on the T
KC Sadaharu Oh
KD Fat Elvis
KH Suicide
AC Apocalyptic Dreams
AD Sophomore Slumps
AS Sudden Enlightenment
AH Victories (small)
JOKER WILD CARD
JOKER WILD CARD
(I don't know why there are three jokers in this deck)
(I don't know why there are three jokers in this deck)
And the forms:
1 Prose
2 Haiku
3 Shakespearean Sonnet
4 Ruba'i
5 Sestina
6 Blank Verse
8 Free Verse
10 Free Verse
12 Limerick
13 Dialogue
14 Rondeau
15 Acrostic
16 Tweet Length
17 Sapphic Ode
18 Beat Poem
20 Any Above Form
Caveats:
- I will follow the system everyday even if it means I have to write a Ruba'i about Two Girls, One Cup.
- Once a topic is used, it will not be put back in the deck.
- On rare occasions, some re-rolling may be necessary. I will adhere to the guidelines of this project as much as is realistic, but I'm not about to write 25 sestinas this month.
- I will follow the system everyday even if it means I have to write a Ruba'i about Two Girls, One Cup.
- Once a topic is used, it will not be put back in the deck.
- On rare occasions, some re-rolling may be necessary. I will adhere to the guidelines of this project as much as is realistic, but I'm not about to write 25 sestinas this month.
- Question: Can the Craigslist Missed Connection really be considered a poetic form? Answer: Chill out, Robert Pinsky. I could use this space to argue yes, citing the deterioration of "poetry" as it relates to the death of the monoculture, but I don't need to, because I have full creative control here.
- Like last year, it's a safe bet that you'll find a good bunch of doggerel on this site, but maybe a nugget of gold or two, we'll see.
Thanks to those who participated with topic suggestions. I'll try to do them justice.
Enjoy and thanks for reading!
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