Yep. It's April. It's THAT time again. Feel free to join in the fun and games celebrating rampant (occasionally bad) poetry, tall and overly cheerful kings who happen to title themselves by this genre, and the general creative spirit as Irk and I once again commit ourselves to happy-huggy white coats and a poem a day for an entire month!
Hemp plaited into cords
Rope, wound in circles
round the wrists
round the writing
Leaving me one solution:
Tongue traces knots,
forming the letters
of a single-word spell.
A thousand million nails taptaptapping on the windshield
the wiper blades sweep them all to the side
where they vanish, sliding with silent voices
into the slipstream.
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.
for Gabriel Gadfly
I found Rusty. He is doing fine and behaves well.
He kept the frayed end of his snapped leash
clamped responsibly in his chrome-plated jaws,
a feat he either seemed proud of or forlorn about.
I couldn't tell; velociraptors have no eyebrows
and the forehead ridges are less pronounced
in the robotic version. In any case, I recognized
him from your LOST PET flyer. He could have
been somebody else's dino, maybe Spielberg's,
but your phone number was etched into the
laser cannon attachment at the tip of his tail.
I called, but you didn't answer, so I'm leaving
a voicemail. His attempts to hack my computer
are amusing at best, though I managed to
distract him from turning it into Skynet.
He is reading Dinosaur Comics now, and is
halfway through the archives. Please come get him.
He glows in the light of a wholesome, homemade breakfast
but is plastered on his misery and job and booze by lunch.
She flees the home, her wallet and her eyes open, but unfocused
as she grasps desperately for the perfect solution --
a perfect shopping list that balances kids and dog and spouse.
They both charge forward, tilting their plungers at giants,
but smooth armpits and perfect parties hardly compensate
for the mountains of tiresome work that follow, leaving them
aching and empty, craving the satisfaction and perfection
the marketing research department promised on the label.
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.
The audience waits.
A country girl? A diva.
So wrong yet so right-
His voice to die for,
he calls it a dirty job.
Unflattering, harsh-
To him, acting is
like prostitution simply,
to sell himself here.
But still he will be
the most beautyful woman
on this tiny stage.
http://youtu.be/OpNOhRbM9CU from 3:33 on
/fail.
Where do the words come from
organic echinacea plus, I need to
copy that pattern for his robes
throw that away -- no, recycle.
on nights like this where the
damask is such a lovely pattern
phone's charged
SEED THIS FOREVER?... Oh, X
shit that's not damask, is it
oh, right, root it so I can get rid of...
fractal electric tree in my head
where was I? Oh, Bing.
Google it, find the name of that pattern
gotta study it to create new ones
bends in the least bit of distracting wind?
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.
First turn the right lens. You'll see
leather and brass fittings,
steam choking through devices
that heave and bulge and squeak.
They churn the magic that writers
claim is science in this
Victorian McDonald's Playland
of history. Tweak the lens backwards.
Let your vision settle for a little,
let your mind believe in a constant
again. Now, turn the left lens.
See regular iron guns, water-borne
ships, the bloody mundane
battles of the past. Yes, you can
choose one or the other, but if you
turn both right and left at once,
you can view the past with
the full depth of your imagination.
"Relax," the man said,
time draped about his shoulders.
"In five hundred years,
everyone will know your work.
Men, women, even schoolchildren
shall deliver the very lines you pen
with a breathless wonder!
You will be heralded as a visionary,
a scribe amongst scribes,
a master of your art.
What, then, is mere hunger
in the light of immortality?"
Shakespeare looked down upon
the scribbles littering his desk
and sighed.
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.
Pain wraps his leather-knuckled
hands behind my head. The fingers
are soft, but scratch the roots of the
hair against my scalp. His thumbs
dig into my temples. He says:
Hello. We missed you.
Anyone can draw a line. It may not be art.
Art is not ineffable, it is simply paring
down the chaff until there is only wheat
until the purest radium is separated
until seventeen more, seventy more
lines have been etched over that first
until the right one is pared out
from all the wrong. Then you have
art, or one line of it, and the rest
waits for excavation. Every fossil
hunter must recognize what he finds,
must learn what is petrified wood
and not another bit of glorified
pressed sediment. To make art you must
learn how to know the difference
between when the line is a mammoth tusk
and when it is dirt to clear away.
I started kindergarten then
Daddy wasn't home much anymore
but I painted a picture of us -
rainbow and balloons,
"I love my daddy" on the back
scrawled in pencil and signed.
The picture sits on his bookshelf
however many years later
and I sometimes Google his name
and smile at the copyright.
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.
close your eyes
part soft lips
around a sigh
share my breath
raise your chin
to me
let me run
down your cheek
kissing the lines
of your neck
licking the hollow
where I pool
lingering a moment
spilling over
tracing finger-curves
over your breasts
down the curve
of your belly
grazing your hips
your thighs
let me
wash
today
away
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.
Was Zeus Just a Man on a Bad Head Trip and Was Hephaestus Just Buying Into the Guy's Hallucinations When He Cracked the Dude Open With a Hammer?
I spend my days drawing
the sentences in my head
and at night I curl up
and let the images dance
behind my eyelids.
One day I will see them move
when my eyes are open.
The aspirations of an
animator or a delusional
psychotic- as if we could ever
tell the difference.
I know it's not the point, but I figure that Zeus was such a raging asshole that Hephaestus just JUMPED at the excuse to split the dude's noggin with his hammer. X3
_____
I am the bridge-jumping friend your parents warned you about.