Ruined Choir Exit

This is that day we’ve been dreaming of
This is the day when all words rhyme
And are such sweet music,
When the sleeper next to me is
No longer lost between the canvas of the mattress
And the landscape of my dreams.

Ends, now, the morgue of the cloudless sky
And the tyranny of perpetual rain.
We will not pull from our pockets
Odd dust balls and hard, rolled bits of paper
On which were written the sad truth.

Step now into the kitchen, laboring with our minds alone,
Sleepwalkers on the prowl,
As Morpheus bakes a cookie.

can’t scratch that

summer on my skin
prickly dust baked with sunshine
simmering, itching

The Poetry Carnival

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The Crunchy One has hosted a terrific poetic meal this last week for all to enjoy and now the new carnival is about to start at Clear Candy Daily. Click on the badge above and CHECK IT OUT!

Cezanne’s blank spots

white tension black
laughter time sigh
story memory truth

what is the substance
in between things

trust hurt help

In Control

She is the queen of continuing sorrow,
Tragedy has a nickname,
Tears a leash,
Doggy sweater for despair,
Mercedes and driver for misery.

That beehive hairdo is for her burden,
She will not go out until it looks correct.
High heels click the tattoo of iron rain –
The sadness of city isolation.
Hollow homes on hillsides perfect her wail.

There are other places she could live,
Other towns without glass mountains.
The sea is glorious when subdued by a window,
There are things that must not be remembered.

I have been sitting at my desk for hours; I have been drinking in information – my soul and spirit are numb – I have been dealing with the growth of others but I feel shriveled, dying. I am overloaded in plainness and painfully dry of rainbows. My mind has been subjected to regression as it thinks backward into the norm. I hope to spring the trap, unlock the doors and set a bunch of students free from the narrow boundaries and plain words of the skills that bind them by being small like little rooms with almost no windows. My sorrow compresses me – I’m boxed in until I can work the locks. I ache to be free but carry my prison with me. I am the cat asleep under the car, in danger but I can’t wake from some crushing dream. I long to peel off skin and find a poem.

Who taught them to play like this?

So all the little children,
All the dusty little children,
You see them lying there -
Mother’s milk spilled.

The television has a hole
In the dark, cracked tube;
The crumpled swing set only has a
History of motion and rhythm.

The house to run home to
Sags skull like and roofless;
The blown up kitchen is cold and laughless
Like the dusty, limp hand

That stretches out to the parents who should
Have known better about indiscriminate killing.

Collateral damage made real

(For Ash and his birthplace)

Within the rubble,
Child’s face, doll’s face, unblinking
Blushing in red dawn

dazzle

fuzzy friends with car seat memories
pears that blush but do not apple
axe sharp life
to fell a cactus
the dirtier dog is mean

in his eyes
sharp images stick like pins

tears are natural
in such bright light

Electric Friends

Songderella ever turning
half-life living
half-dream hoping
music is playing
waiting to waltz the prince.

TV is playing
dark room
newly dead snore on the couch
the happiest moment of her day
she is watching -
flickers show her grin
breaking into an unshared laugh.

Nightmare ghosts of happy people
haunt evenings of the lonely.

Sorry I'm so busy!

Second summer session has started and I am developing a new curriculum for and old course -- please bear with me. I'll start to post more as soon as the load lightens. Meanwhile, go to the Somethingkaty button on my sidebar and check out the Ringing of the Bards (2) poetry carnival. Katy has done a great job of putting together some wonderful reading!

Hello

It doesn’t hurt so bad
Hi
I bought some nicer ties
Hey
Got cooler today when it rained
Yo
Remembering a wind swept summer
Hi
I just wanted to say that

I would that I was sorry

I am a poet like a Trojan horse,
hollow and dangerous

I am an emptiness you cannot say
but know so well

tell me your story
ask me my name

and prepare for emptiness
attacking from the space between echos

and how it has the name
of unknowing

On thorns and flowers

What shall we do with the time given us? Did the hour of hurt so disable us that the days and years of our lives lie slain at the feet of rebellious men? Do the violent own this world and its trees only bloom with bitter fruit? Can the yards built for children only be the chance for harm where swings creak in dark rhythms and the childish blossoms of dreams grow unviewed because all the vases are shattered? Tell me my bruised eye can look on man and see some hope.

I watch the dying and see only resignation to the perverted state of their lives.

Katy is poet of the week!

Look for my link to Poets 101 and check it out

Pat’s carousel

There is no fragile place to this dark humor.
It doesn't pound fresh, it hurts
long term and hard like a scar!
Candor is here, as always, but also
stinging whispers in the aftermath of the train wreck.
We have a taunting nursery rhyme; too not for kids;
a hint of vivisection, no blinking.
too late to get off the ride,
we’ve seen too much!

Clandestine meeting

Hoorah! Finals are over!
Now I can get laid
by the lover that time is;
we can sleep together;
weep together;
stumble, snore, and speak together.

Hope

Early buttered web page morning
sun streaming in the window -
screen hard to read
radiating reflected sunlight.
Clichéd gladness washing away
clichéd malaise as I
rise again to dress
in this tent of day,
hoping for once
to step outside
with my head
in the roof of the sky.

Just one line
might change it all!

Questions

Dizzy sky under your voice -
Could my longing be fulfilled?
The train has been here,
I can see the tracks -
Where has it come from?
The bulldozer changes everything;
I thought I was happy
The bulldozer is a hand
Reaching out -
What is its source?
I am the factor that multiplies minutes
So that it takes so many to make an hour.
I am the mansion of love -
Why don’t I know what room this is?

Sculpture - illusion, cast in stone

Time is always misremembered
shallow beliefs are shaking leaves
shade sorted for destruction
left is right remembered
in the mirror of time

All we have left is time -
the same as mashed corn kernels
on a well eaten ear of corn -
everything seems to be finishing
the last moment, the last
goo of something once ordered

The last of this moment
is the first of the past
still so close it even seems like now

Then the decomposition starts
the good begins to glow
in the growing dim
and the unpleasant tarnishes
to a pile of rust without
any hint of what once was
the terrible morphs garish
eventually becoming
late night, sweat soaked
horror movies
for our morbid fascination

Love is always badly imagined and
the past always suffers sculpting in storage

Doing a March

I’m in your step
I can’t help it
anymore than
you’d want to be
out of mine
I breathe your sweat
perfume

For Natalia’s Trip

Dark brown soil you smell
tangible as a childhood
dress, the swing has changed
but that doesn't matter
old and new is all there
the life you know
from remembered to forgetful -
everything gathers together
like raspberries in an old bowl
at the dacha.

Epidemic emotions

It’s like a secret language, my heart
the day that dawns with hunger
the night that beats dark drums until pale morning

in the evening I watch the room as poisonous thoughts fill it
I dive deep to swim under the thick corruption
she begins to die from what she says

I hate her for poisoning the dinner
the children are choking and the old friends
it excites her, she is proud
this murder is hers, she is
strong in her fear, strong in her secret evil
she smiles as if she was doing everybody a favor
she smiles as everybody gurgles

desperate for air, I try to surface miles away

Show me what hot means

Your beauty strikes the sky like a match
and lights up the day. I was shivering but
didn’t know how cold it was until you warmed me.
Surely somewhere there is a salvation but the
only hope I know is when your fire consumes me
and I am lifted from the ground like a burning bit of paper,
flipping over and over, scorched, consumed
and happy to flare in bliss.
From the sky, I realize I have never seen the earth before.
Cold ash is all that waits in that dead place.

Yard Party

If just for one moment I knew you’d be watching,
I’d twirl again the spinning boy
To gather the thread from sparkling eyes
To weave the clothes that we could wear
In God’s own shiny afternoon.