Archive for February, 2011
Make Me Well
We must start at some point.
You ask,
“Why is it always worse
and worse, not better?”
My cup is gray illusions
torturing my brain
above the eyes.
Wacky blurs
telling me I cannot
begin to get better.
The floor shifts.
You might not notice.
But my legs are working
as if on a skateboard.
“Make me well.”
I whisper, “Make me well.”
“Make me human.”
Hither, get there.
Hither, get there.
Hither, get there.
Get there.
Now.
Get there now, now.
You see what my problem is:
I think god
should’ve allowed me to be human.
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Although subject matter is completely different, this song, which always seems to make me feel that there might be hope, again, despite the subject matter, is what seemed to spark the beginning of this poem. Check it out and see if you become slightly wistful:
Wash Me
Water flows fully, undisturbed stream,
clarity and I want it to fix me.
In the next room, meditating, breathing,
praying to some powerful entity,
requesting peace, begging for removal of pain,
feeling I could see the flow,
sensing it is so far away, knowing I can’t get there,
seeming silly, bitter I would not fit in the washer,
wondering why clothes can come clean,
and I stay so massively messy.
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I put this one up for One Shot Wednesday. I love all of the things that happen over there. Take a peek at some of the good work. We are lucky to have a community like that.
Bring Me My Angels V
That night, there were two. My heart
flattened through chains of anxiety,
from the dangers of the depression,
praying, asking God to bring peace,
and there beside two empty bottles,
a pepper sprinkled over my moldy
mind, making my soul cough in orgasm,
feeling her hands, so perfectly
with a tempo that makes my spirit
crawl across the ceiling, flailing arms
and feeling the second with tanning
edges to the deepest brown loving eyes
and smelling the leather jacket she used
to tell me that she would take me,
control me for my own good and watch me
fly over the detritus of a poisoned city
that long ago forgot the powers of love
that had blown me to joyous
explosions of heart that melds
with the world and rides
down the stream into an
unending blast of fur.
Erosion and Polish For Peace
My God Rock has searing powers.
Smooth like rounded glass in right pocket,
thumb and index finger manipulate it.
Erosion is my term.
I use it so often, maybe it wears,
But I’m told I polish it.
It fills my heart with stillness,
floods me with compassion,
stifles me into silence,
allowing me to care with love.
If I touch the rock before I speak,
the anger flows down the street,
and my mouth releases no poison.
a peace so full,
I wish I could hold it forever.
Gracie
I squeeze and kiss my Golden Retriever,
smearing my nose on her cold, wet nose,
and then croon “MMMMMM” forever
into her cheek, like she’s human,
like it’s been years for both of us,
shifting left to right foot/paw, almost rollicking,
wagging our tails, and she does not object.
She smiles sparsely but bravely.
She understands this,
this is how I am.
Frost For God Rock
Erosion
is my word, half empty life.
His word, polish, scorns me.
No matter, my god rock’s free
in pocket, providing safety.
A little tribute for Eric who is a master of forms…
February’s Felicitous Friday Duel
I
We will slam whiskey inside the greenest hurricanes.
If we get simple, I will have an aneurism.
If we get stupid, I will sing happy birthday.
If the dogs chuff soft, I will hunt silver cactus.
If we hear the river, I will drag my conscience to the sand.
II
Tracing the sickened path of radiation meant for a terry-cloth lion,
hijacking happy genes and donating shot glasses,
we will breathe purple air with white pelicans,
growing weed for bouncing chuck wagons,
jumping rope on hoods of new white cars,
leaping boundaries on Robitussin highs
towards a bleeding mountainous dawn.
And then I will be down. And done.
Don’t you come lookin’,
Eggnog chaser.
III.
Plastic bones breathe deeply, snorting, begging for tape and glue,
through thicket and over the falls,
on to the mat where your tools and promises await rebuilding.
We will slam whiskey inside the greenest hurricanes
towards a bleeding mountainous dawn
of shrill wind chime voices freed by your disillusion.
Evelyn at Filling a Hole and I worked another duel or dual yesterday. We created two poems with alternating lines and then we used any of the lines without altering them to create one poem. I cheated and made a three-part thing, but it impossible to keep up with the artist Evelyn is. (Here is a link to our previous dual.)
Here are Evelyn’s masterpieces – She cheated and made two:
None Listens
The alligators shovel until the terrible breeze
lifts the golden coasters off the table that is stretching
around our necks like a dangerous neighborhood
which howls with the cacophony of the drive-by oceans
with bullets made of diamonds and ice.
We all talk and none listens as the bridge falls
and breaks my leg into thousands of pieces,
but we end on time and there is sweet chocolate
in the break room with saggy palm trees
and silly antique phones that plead
for a sense of community.
Lost on Mountain Highway
On this Friday, I feel the skates, the slicing edges,
sloppy beard growth in yellows,
blue and red painted lines of sporting
steer me, fear being loud.
A skeletal, barbed-wire fence tears through me,
making me choose between vague western happiness
and purple vegetables that paint me as a ruined human,
with thin paper bags hanging on my skin,
groaning with cat-like yawls
showing the world my fullness of sin,
all of my wrongs, growing fingers of terrible sewage,
telling all who swim in the ice that my core is rotten,
that I am not all human, that I should be buried
under the boulders that smile while plunging
toward the mountain highway
with a short retaining wall that retains nothing.
Almost Finished
Industrial silence spies on my emptiness.
Music destroys my ankle muscles.
The fan blocks out
the fruitless movement of terrible spiders.
Big fur balls on fan blades
like the Alps in Le Tour de France
with no sun and riders
rolling dead in tire wells
of sporting cars.
But the workweek is almost over.
stillfugue 