An Old Star

An old star ripped a new hole

glared out from its peek-a-boo

curtain as if to say the audience

was too young and shallow to witness

such a surprise performance.

“Such a predictable thing”

we heard the stars chatter

“this sequel of earthly events.”

- Debbie Calverley

Kyrielle

29 ways to stay creative

Fifty People One Question

He Could Have Been

a truck driver.  Bono.

I'm just saying.

An ordinary guy in sunglasses
and a leather jacket

filling his truck with gas

under the bright yellow canopy

marked Shell.

He stands like he owns the joint

chin at a cocky angle

as if to say

bring it on.

The glasses hiding his real

smile 

an eye grin that speaks his joy

of the open road.

I wonder if he's on the road as much

as a rock star

if he sings while he drives

if his wife takes out the garbage

if his kids really know him

like he knows the road.

The light turns green

I've been staring.

He licks his lips

flashes a peace sign

as I pull away

reflected in the mirror

of his big black shades.

- Debbie Calverley

My Apocalypse

My Apocalypse

A woman writes to ask
how far along I am
with my apocalypse.
What will you give me
if I tell?
An origami fish
made from a dollar bill.
After the apocalypse,
we will all be in a band.
We will understand each other
perfectly.
             *
"It's alright" and
"It doesn't matter."
Let "it" stand
for nothing.
             *
A weathered, fleshy bicyclist
wearing bunny ears
and a tie-dyed shirt
says "Zoom"
as she coasts past

Rae Armantrout

We amuse ourselves in repetition. One desire or another
      leads to self-hypnosis, the dazed
      critics in sensual display.
             And yet love streams across the open towers
where I wait, holed up in a question of mourning while the litigation proceeds,

-- Gene Frumkin, from "Blueprint for a New Planet," Hambone 18

On Love Poems

On Love Poems
 
I'd like to write a poem in which
the hero with the lazy eye
falls close to love with a woman
standing under a stop sign
in the worst kind of weather,

falls close to love with the outline
of ordinary thighs under a rain soaked
skirt, his eye sidling up
towards her ample waist,
plain face and her hat, worn

at an awkward angle. And I would like
the hero to come toward her,
step in a puddle as he crosses the road,
and I would like the whole
of the blemished world to cease

existing between them: the pocked
concrete sidewalk, the whorled
knots of the trees, the nail holes
in the telephone poles, the crevices
and cuts - smoothed over.

Then I would like storybooks rewritten
to reflect the fact that no one is whole,
the endings left wide open, the possibility
of loss always there, hanging
like a street light.

We think we know the world and imagine
there is order in it, but this turning
the corner into love is as much a myth
as anything - the man with the lazy eye
and the women who walk by him.

Still, what astounds me most in this
isn't our tireless wanting, the old
college try. It isn't the half-life
we try not to fall into. It's
how we find each other

remarkable, despite the absence 
of wisdom or humour or pity, despite
the absence of attributes we cannot name.
All of us wanting just enough and searching
the pockets of the world to find it.

Aislinn Hunter

Ahhhhhh..............

Inevitable

Silence descends
like black lace
over a face in mourning.

We cheat and scramble
to avoid mortality
throw dice against prevailing winds
defy all storm warnings
stand out in the gale
stubborn as a shore to sea
that digs and bitches
with the salt of demand -

all that has been cast up
must be returned.

Moi

My New Mantra

Conversion Figure

I spent a long time falling
toward your slender, tremulous face—
a long time slipping through stars
as they shattered, through sticky clouds
with no confetti in them.
I fell toward earth's stony colors
until they brightened, until I could see
the green and white stripes of party umbrellas
propped on your daisied lawn.
From above, you looked small
as an afterthought, something lightly brushed in.
Beside you, blush-pink plates
served up their pillowy cupcakes, and your rosy hems
swirled round your dark head—
I fell and fell.
I fell toward the pulse in your thighs,
toward the cool flamingo of your slip
fluttering past your knees—
Out of God's mouth I fell
like a piece of ripe fruit
toward your deepening shadow.
Girl on the lawn without sleeves, knees bare even of lotion,
time now to strip away everything
you try to think about yourself.
Put down your little dog.
Stop licking the cake from your fingers.
Before today, what darkness
did you let into your flesh? What stillness
did you cast into the soil?
Lift up your head.
Time to enter yourself.
Time to make your own sorrow.
Time to unbrighten and discard
even your slenderness.

MARY SZYBIST

Happy Valentine's Day

Delicacy Of Devastation

And so the project begins....

To Be with a Koan

"To be with a koan,"
said the Zen Master,
"has nothing to do with Hamlet,
those old jokes about small pigs
or tiny villages,
bees and bee keepers. No,
to be with a koan,
you must get inside it
without forcing your entry.
It’s like you’re lemonade powder
dissolving in water.
Something other than you
does the stirring,
but there’s nothing other than you,
and after awhile, nothing stirs."

DICK ALLEN

Silence

The act of donning silence confuses me
it's like putting on two different socks
or a suit of purple chain-mail.

Many people choose to dress this way
leave their house as if nobody will notice
their underwear is on the outside.

At least Madonna had the balls to arrive 
on stage, bra pointing at the crowd as if to say
A-ha! - belted out a song as if to smash

silence like a pumpkin thrown from a roof.
These veils that cover the mouth, these
speaking holes in the bank glass

these choices we make to stop 
everything from disturbing the peace 
I ask you -

has a bird ever chosen not to sing
come daybreak?

Pretty

drunk she arrived at his door.

Through the tiny window glass

she could see both of them.  He was

brushing her hair, a tortoiseshell

cat loving every stroke, the blue

of her dress so post Lewinsky.

Deleted from his life unpredictably

had been like being cut from the grade

six volleyball team for being too skinny

even if she could serve.

This new player was shapelier, younger

with big greedy eyes, tongue ready

to lap up his ultimate spills.

Who said vodka has no taste?

Or that it goes down smoothly?

Nothing had ever been so rough.

Except possibly

the new girl’s pretty tongue, tasteless

and full of backwards-facing spines.

Margaret Atwood - Heart

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot
of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.
It gets passed around. It's slippery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another, making a face.
Each one is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden
deep in your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless. 

Me and Kimmy

we never let each other down.  Best buds.

Boris Vian

I don’t want to croak
Without having known
The black dogs of Mexico
Who sleep without dreams
The monkeys with bare bums
Devourers of the tropics
The silver spiders
With nests stuffed with bubbles
I don’t want to croak
Without knowing if the moon
Under her false nickel-face
Has a pointed side
If the sun is cold
If the four seasons
Are really only four
Without having tried
Wearing a dress
On the grand boulevards
Without having looked
Into a sewer inspection-hole
Without having put my prick
Into some bizarre corners
I don’t want to end
Without knowing leprosy
Or the seven maladies
One catches down there
The good or the bad
None of them bother me
If if if I knew
That I would have the first of it

And there is also
All that I know
All that I value
That I know pleases me
The green depth of the sea
Where the strands of algae waltz
On the rippled sand
The baked grass of June
The crackling earth
The scent of the pines
And her kisses
Now here, now there
Her beauty obvious to all
My Bear cub, Ursula

I don’t want to croak
Before having used
Her mouth with my mouth
Her body with my hands
The rest with my eyes
I say no more, it’s better
To stay reverential

I don’t want to die
Before someone has invented
Eternal roses
The two hour work-day
The sea at the mountain-side
The mountain at the sea-side
The end of sadness
Newspapers in colour
All children happy
And so many gadgets still
Asleep within the skulls
Of genial engineers
Of jovial gardeners
Of civil citizens
Of urbane urbanites
And thoughtful thinkers
So many things to see
To see and to hear
So much time to spend
Searching in the dark

As for me I see the swarming
End arriving
With his lousy mug
Opening for me his
Bandy toad arms

I don’t want to croak
No Sir, no Ma’am
Before having explored
The flavour which torments me
The flavour which is the heaviest
I don’t want to croak
Before having tasted
The flavour of death.

~~~~

.

Anecdote on Vian’s death:

.

On the morning of June 23, 1959, Boris Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf for the screening of the film version of his novel J’irai cracher sur vos tombes. He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work and he publicly denounced the film stating that he wished to have his name removed from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!” He then collapsed into his seat and died from sudden cardiac death en route to the hospital.

Wolfgang Borchert: Try to

Stand in the middle of the rain,
Believe in the blessing of the drops,
Cover yourself in its noise
And try to be good!

Stand in the middle of the wind,
Believe in it and be a child -
Let the storm enter you
And try to be good!

Stand in the middle of the fire -
Love this monster
With the red wine of your heart
And try to be good!

Wolfgang Borchert

Island

Rash of the harbor lights in the mountain region.
Night, he says, is the dark humor of the day—
first you are scared
                       but by the sunrise
                                             I'll get you laughing.
My head, thrown back in laughter, has bought me more
than money thrown forward, and men
pressed me down and worked like a Chinese seamstress.
But none could slap my face as hard as the sea slaps
its adopted child and steps back, all tears.
This island spat out by the sun over the world's shoulder,
a fence holds the bougainvillea laughter behind its teeth,
a metal gate guards the doze of heat-stricken watchdogs.
A road comes up to my face and stands like a mirror
showing everything that has led me to it: a bed
soft like bruised fruit, a whole lime garden bruised
by the afternoon shade, and his book's hard spine
breaking with the day.
A body strips down all the way to forgiveness
and grants itself before there's even a reason, unless
it wants to tell the other: I forgive
your juices for not filling these hard fruit;
your skin for not cracking and rotting over the ants'
heads; I forgive your throat for not birthing the dog's cough;
I forgive your hand, right now rising, falling, and leaving trace
unlike what it praises; I forgive your shadow for never becoming
a stain to mark this road, this bed, but mostly this sea.
Bricks of gray moonlight fall weightlessly
through the wooden
                              shades
building a new wall above the sink.
Here he lies on his stomach—
the gap between his ass and his thighs
forms a perfect black diamond.
Horizon blistered by the setting sun heals, leaving
a hardly visible scar.

VALZHYNA MORT 

The Woman Who Could Not Live with Her Faulty Heart..

 
I do not mean the symbol
of love, a candy shape
to decorate cakes with,
the heart that is supposed
to belong or break;

I mean this lump of muscle
that contracts like a flayed bicep,
purple-blue, with its skin of suet,
its skin of gristle, this isolate,
this caved hermit, unshelled 
turtle, this one lungful of blood,
no happy plateful.

All hearts float in their own
deep oceans of no light,
wetblack and glimmering,
their four mouths gulping like fish.
Hearts are said to pound:
this is to be expected, the heart’s 
regular struggle against being drowned.

But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though to twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen,

and at night it is the infra-red
third eye that remains open
while the other two are sleeping
but refuses to say what it has seen.

It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?

Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.

Margaret Atwood

Teleology - David Ward

Wouldn't everything have been alot easier,
if: Arriving at the Terminal
the lovers missed each other, and wandered
aimless in the bar, the other leafing magazines
they both picked up casual
conversations with strangers which quickly moved
with an audible click,
brushing a lock of hair, having a second drink,
to something else, from which
brush contact they both danced slowly and then
suddenly into long loves full
of children and delight. Thus forestalling the
inevitable slow slough of boredom
and middle class routine - ennui with adultery
outbreaks of broken crockery -
for which a dyspeptic not too attentive God marked them.
So that years later both
tried to recall who it was they were to meet that day
but gave up with a laugh
after a thought's flicker to make dinner and love.
 
Instead, time unrolled for them as for empires;
drawn through the crowd
electably they met and in a second fell.
 
David Ward

---

The Accident - Stephen Knauth

The Accident

Driving the mountain with the windows down
we hit a damp low-slung cloud.
The air cooled, the radio slurred its speech.
A minute later, on the other side,
the sun was shining, but the cloud
had already passed through us.

STEPHEN KNAUTH

Pen-ku

She gave him pen and ink
in turn he disappeared
invisible ink

I am memory alive
not just a name
But an intricate part
of this web of motion,
meaning: earth, sky, stars circling
my heart
centrifugal.
—Joy Harjo

Riding the Thundering Horse

Raymond Souster

To be told in print at age sixty-three
that you're not a poet
because what you write aren't poems,
isn't the help it might have been
at, say, twenty-three.
Then perhaps you might have shaken the habit,
tried booze or more sex to compensate,
come out fairly unshaken.
Now, unfortunately, it's much too late,
for better or for worse you're hooked,
must ride the thundering horse
hanging on any way you can:
not the most graceful way to go,
but even to be allowed to touch those great white flanks
is a privilege and pleasure,
which the little man with the quivering pen
could never, never comprehend.

Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)

I Said Yes I Meant No - Dean Young

People are compelled to be together good and bad.
You've agreed to shrimp with the geology couple.
If you like one 85% and the other 35%,
that's not so bad.
You need to like one at least 70%
and like the other not less than 25%
otherwise it's agonizing and pointless
like being crucified without religious significance.
Averages are misleading:
I like that couple 110% could mean
each is appreciated 55% which will not kill you
but neither will sleeping in your own urine.
One should like oneself between 60 and 80%.
Under 45%, one becomes an undertaking,
prone to eating disorders, public weeping,
useless for gift wrapping and relay races.
Over 85% means you are a self-involved bore
I don't care about your Nobel Prize in positrons
or your dogsled victories.
Of course there is great variance throughout the day.
You may feel 0% upon first waking
but that is because you do not yet know you exist
which is why baby studies have been a bust.
Then as you venture forth to boil water,
you may feel a sudden surge to 90%,
Hey, I'm GOOD at boiling water!
which may be promptly counteracted by turning on your e-mail.
It is important not to let variance become too extreme,
a range of 40% is allowable,
beyond that it is as great storms upon drought-stricken land;
i.e., mudslides.
Sugar, retirement plans, impending jail time
all are influential factors.
Generally, most data has been gathered
regarding raising percentages,
the modern world it is argued is plentiful
with opportunities of negative effect.
The tanker splits and the shore birds turn black and lose their ability to float.
Sometimes a good scrub is all that's needed.
A fresh shirt.
Shock therapy has never been fully discounted
and people have felt significant surges
from backpacking in remote and elevated areas,
a call home.
Yet the very same may backfire,
Thwamp, thwamp, the helicopter lowers the rescue crew,
the phone slammed down.
Each case is profoundly nuanced
like the lock systems of Holland.
Some, frankly, are beyond help,
but if you are a tall woman, wear shoes that make you look taller!
Candy corn, what kind of person doesn't like candy corn?
Tell that 70/35% rock couple you cannot come,
you forgot your fencing lesson,
your cat had a puppy,
your tongue is green,
you are in fact dying.

Dean Young

Hurricane

It didn't behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn't stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn't
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me. 

Mary Oliver

Hard day at the office....

Wed

wood and titanium
so many rings
surround his dead heart

Orange

he ripped pulp from rind
sucked juice
oblivious to her sticky tears

Vodka

Don't break my heart -
he shook his head
ice cracked and melted

All's Fair in Love & War

He hits delete -
one key 
she doesn't exist

On Silence & Paper Planes

Her pet peeve -
no sound
at 35,000 feet

Not Love

No regrets
her flower stripped
she loves him 

Love

petals stripped
stern to stem -
he loves her not

11/18/12

Today is the day

she lets it all fly -

so many paper planes

Bird

One day she will live 
on a rooftop in Paris 
smoggy wings free 

Delicacy after Devastation

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/good-news/wwii-era-love-letters-wash-ashore-jersey-181610941.html

I may need to write a poem with that title......

Perhaps when letters took longer
they meant more

Grass is Greener

The grass is always greener
after a summer storm
after dusting off
the last book she wrote
for you.

On the other side of the keyhole
such paradise until
you enter and begin
to trash the room once
so sacred.

Where did we come from?
Where did we go?
Everyone alone
wandering through
fields full of red poppies.

I Miss Summer.....