#NaPoWriMo Entry #8: “To Lilium”
Today’s poem is all rhyme-y. Why? Because Adam Callaway keeps asking me to do them. That’s not the real reason, though. I just felt like it today. It also helps that my poem was inspired by this: “What’s that?” you say. You’ll just have to read the poem to figure it out. It should be pretty obvious. Here goes: “To Lilium Sweet is Lilium, whose sunset shimmer quiets a man’s stuttering wayward pipe — his solemn songs rendered to joyous glimmer — in the quickened chest of an overripe soul cast in the dye inflamed with yearning. Her quiet limbs caress the trembling air and his fingers shiver as the sojourning question paddles circles; a doe’s learning sprouts, gale-wind globes searching to tear the foundation of doubt from its mooring; For she draws the melted candle, as Orpheus mastered Elysium and broke Amore, singing of Eurydice; her instrument a truss for his warbling tune, waiting at the gate to lull Cerberus to the Land of Dreams; In whose milken hands he rests his fate and whispers vows — humbled, joyed by the streams of Euphrosyne’s tears; in whose cheeks shined Dog-Star twilight and, in Eros, a love enshrined. For a love that refashions a stubbed taper and lights a thousand harmonious Orphean tales smolders love-lost terrors to scorched-earth paper; and from Heliopolis and ashes, new love prevails.
#NaPoWriMo Entry #7: “The Fish in a Cup of His Own Making”
Today’s poem was inspired by The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. When I say inspired, I don’t necessarily mean “inspired by the story,” though one could certainly make the argument that my cursory knowledge of this rather famous children’s book did influence the writing of the poem below. It’ll be interesting to hear what people think of what I’ve written… For the record: I am behind by three poems. No idea if I’ll catch up… Here goes: “The Fish in a Cup of His Own Making” There are no scales covering the skin of the god fish who floats downriver in a cup of his own making. His tail — a mangled twitching against the banshee howl of the wind turned hypersonic on its journey through the crags of a forgotten canyon. His mind — a quiet confusion, the pine-salt air in his lungs sustaining a body yet yearning for the deep solitude of water. Ah, but a solitude in the company of a community of confused beasts, whose shimmer-scales and whistling-furs remind the god fish of the days when he was master over all and his scales were quiet flashes in the honey flow of the Sun. The frayed snap-twig in fin, he rows towards the light — the candles of evening whisper, saying his name as the wind carries the dreams of ghosts. And in his dreams — a screech, the falcon’s jealous feather-gaze upon the multicolored shimmy shimmer of the god fish’s many scales; the grumble of the earth beasts, the tinfoil call of scaly walkers, the scruffy scrabble of the whispering ones and so many voices so the earth at once knows only one name: the god fish! the god fish! In the cup of his own making, his tears turn sour on bare flesh, glittering with dream stuff like echoes of faces in still water: hands and claws and talons ripping, pulling like unkempt wolf children at the multitude of magnified markers which the god fish dispells in salt. Oh, but the worst dream of all — the little cousins and sisters and brothers and friends who once knew the god fish by the smiles that graced their faces… Their bodies are now home to someone else’s skin. Up the river, pushing weak currents, the god fish holds his tongue against the roof of a mouth made sticky by too much trauma. Against the wet sting of his wounds his grief finds its voice in his silence.
#NaPoWriMo Entry #6: “To a Taco Bell Employee”
Time for another poem for NaPo. A good poem? No. But Adam wanted me to write something with rhymes, and so I did so while watching a strange argument at Taco Bell. It should be clear from the poem what I thought of that argument (or I hope so, at least). Here you go: “To a Taco Bell Employee” The handiwork of a few tall men determines the flow of the streams upon which the nation boat sends its shadows of little folk dreams. The image of a scrimmage of beasts cackling over stories in need of context without which the watcher’s eyes only feast, wondering on whose back the Truth next speaks its heart murmur songs and communicates the fate of small souls whose narratives are but empty among the throngs of gestures; a hint of dejection lulls where rejection molds a whiplash injection upon the neck of the story-less employee who is tossed away before the public perception can broadcast the past through distance and glass and claim for the watcher — whose wandering eyes a lecher — the nature of Truth’s jubilee…
#NaPoWriMo Entry #5: “To an Un-American”
Technically this should have gone up yesterday, but I’m now two poem behind. Haikus, here I come! I don’t think there was a single piece of inspiration for this piece. It is political, which means that Adam Callaway should not read it. It also has some bad language, which means anyone who is easily offended by slurs and the like shouldn’t read past this sentence. Hopefully my intent will become clear in the reading. Here goes: No idea who took/made this picture, but I would like to credit said person… “To an Un-American” You should see yourself in the mirror when you talk about your country. Think of all the nasty things you say: “We’re a warmongering, woman-hating, minority-beating, liberty-raping, stinking center of rectal excretion in the shape of a nation.” “If only things could be better,” you say. “But they’re not.” Only, you never quite say it like that (even though you do). So your colleges no longer teach American history (even though they do) and you believe religious people shouldn’t be allowed in public (even though you do). You want Iran to win the war (that isn’t actually happening (yet)). You want terrorists to eat our babies and kill mothers with bombs made with tiny nail factories inside to usher in the age of blood-thirsty, soul-crushing radical secularism with a side of socialism… If only you’d agree with those who love America (who haven’t read a proper history book since high school (though you have)) and who believe the return of Christ is just another way of saying “America is great,” because the second coming will happen in Kansas… Maybe you’d be a real American then… Not that you know what any of that means. After all, you say the Founding Fathers were treacherous, slave-owning sexists who saw God as a personal pursuit, not a life to be lived in His light and shoved into one’s brain with an Acme Hammer like Wiley Coyote and common sense. “That’s all, folks!” you say, “No offense. We’re all on the same side. We want the same thing.” Except you don’t. So, you heathenous, religion-estroying, baby-murdering, freedom-raping, children-brainwashing, education-fucking, socialist, fascist, communist pigdog whore-basket fecal smear… You waste the air we breathe when you talk about a better future and jobs and rights for niggers, chinks, towel-heads, cholos, coolies, homos and the little sex objects that need to be at home tending to our needs… You love the poor too much, and your country too little. If you only knew how un-American you are. Maybe you might try to be a better person…
#NaPoWriMo Entry #4: “A Quiet Gap Builds”
Today’s entry is one of those personal entries — at least, it’s related in some way to personal nonsense. Read at your own risk. (Note: I will probably have some political nonsense tomorrow. Just a warning…) Here goes: A quiet gap builds between the royal pair, a prince and a prince with imaginary titles in an imaginary place. A chasm, a canyon rising from a deaf sea swirling expired blue. The waves churn circles, the count of the clouds like shadow men traipsing by with hands kneading air. The royal pair sense the earth-born rift in the murmur of a heartbeat, but the prince known it only by the flashbang terror tightening titan fingers over his heart. How might he let her see the emptiness between their dreams if she marks her knowledge with a cat-trapped tongue? The prince grips the air and fights the canyon with bulldozers of hope: No more canyons. No more searching through rubble. An end to something no romantic poet could ever expose en total. These he hopes for, reaches out his whithered garden hands to the faint sunbeam of his other side, pleads with eyes swimming with twisty birds in a free sky chirping contentment. But she cannot see, for the haze draws over her vision, clouding her beloved so that what she sees is only a shadow of the man she loves(ed). He waits for the every-wizard potion to burn through the cavern like carrion birds in a graveyard, to fill it with liquid sun, make a new world from the ashes. And he hopes only for the strength to hold on long enough to find the world he used to know.
#NaPoWriMo Entry #3: “To a Gay Child”
Today’s entry was inspired by this article. Read it before or after if you so choose. Now for the poem: “To a Gay Child” He dreamed about being a doctor — or a writer, or an actor, or maybe something else — does it matter what he dreams as much as it matters that he dreams at all? For is not the dream where all of us find a better world? The world we want to live in. The world we wish could be real. So he dreams that he might meet a man — become a father, have a house, a career, all the things the rest of us hope for — and he’s told by those whose mouths are too big for their feet: No! Never! Ever! Ever! No…who would have thought two letters could become the discourse of a nation? To overshadow every other way we can conceive of the future? That two letters could destroy that same future, like cannons against a matchstick wall… That dreams could become the self-serving devices of a dying empire… Are his dreams empty gestures from a forlorn soul? The candle-lit whispers flickering in the drafty tomb of someone else’s life? Stolen by the specter of a gnarled tree yet to bloom… The new religion: a curled path up the mountain of man, through the spider’s den of glass spires. To steal his dreams, to replace them with the facsimile of a self. Is it any wonder that his wrists turn into mouths, speaking blood letters to the constricted face of the rope? He dreams for the relief from the last breath in a body wracked by doubt. He dreams because that is all he has left…