... and I'm going to archive them here in this thread. A poem a day, regardless of weather or whether or boyfriends that don't work out or bad grades in school or kids that won't take my advice, or parrots that need cuddling. One poem a day, come hell or high water. In New Mexico, of course, the high water will never, ever happen, even though I live just a few hundred meters from the banks of the Rio Grande.
I've been having a writing dry spell, and I think writing 365 awful poems will pull me out of my malaise.
This is wonderful and may prove to be an amazing thread. Already is.
Okay but be sensitive to littlebirdie underlying poem. understanding and reinforcement is more interesting than parody.
To me at least.
Oh, hiss , I hope you write poetry for this thread! I would love to see it! Parody is okay with me! I am a funny bird! I swear!
Having seen the amount of effort you both have put into this already, I doubt I'd be able to keep up. Perhaps I'll drop in once in a while to do some bizarre meta-commentary in the form of a prose-poem. To keep it light I'll set up some Dogma 95 style constraints in addition to @JakobVirgil's parameters, such as: - Bizarre, meta-analytical prose-poems must only be written from the perspective of a god/God/gods, who is not altogether familiar with computers and has managed to somehow set your thread as her/his browser homepage.
- Bizarre, meta-analytical prose-poems must only be written using the letters available on the keyboard's home row
- Bizarre, meta-analytical prose-poems must only be written after having consulted six crystals.
- Bizarre, meta-analytical prose-poems must serve as a semi-relevant response to both yours and Jakob's poems but also must fit comfortably as a lyrical substitute to the song "How Bizarre" by OMC
- Bizarre, meta-analytical prose-poems must only be wearing a blindfold made of bees
I just learned something new! Had to look up your Dogma 95 thing, and how cool is that?! Now I shall be lost in a wiki haze until I must report to work in an hour (at the coffee shop). Maybe I will serve a customer who will inspire my next poem. Or, the poem may be a latte rant. We shall see what the morning brings!
Ha! Glad to share. It's been a long-running joke with friends who've studied / made films, and it's been top of mind lately as I formulated New Years Resolutions, one of which would be to make my first film of some kind, solo. By limiting the scope of possibilities and applying insane (by contemporary standards) parameters to the production, I might actually come up with something I'd be capable of shooting (as opposed to, say, a period piece, or anything relying upon equipment beyond my practical reach). Good luck with the project / this thread. Jokes aside, I'll be following, and I hope you stick with it.
FYI, the "shout-out" didn't work because of the "s" at the end of littlebirdie.
a bird in the hand is worth two in the comment?
Poem for January 2 Poets and cancer
take time, steal (t)it. You think,
you have,
life with set mornings, afternoons,
chosen evenings. Stanza tsunami hits,
then dry-locked land,
dusty dance card filled
with same partner over and over, over -
smells like moth balls,
steps on your feet. We all have bad ass cell phrase
but bodies eat it, spit it
into waste and dissipated air. May not be there one week from today -
poets tend to be coy as ductal carcinoma in situ -
but decisions, evaluation have been made. I think about Plath-head-in-oven,
wait on doctor's cold steel
bed wearing panties and pink paper vest. Pink journey: pink housecoats,
ribbon sculpture, artwork lining walls,
Pepto Bismol speculum. Comforting? Political statement?
Can't tell the meter from the phase.
Pink isn't the color of my poem. Breast cancer isn't my thing either
though it apparently thinks it is. Where do we get these wayward lovers?
Between the poem and the disease to be the needle phase.
Do you want to live on the afternoon, choose.
Passage of the sea, after dry given soil, soil Yangwu card full one and phase companion - played like pills, arrest.
Have a not shares Cellular words, but the structure of the wave and scattered empty.
Can keep a star days - people to blush as a guide proto - policy, estimates.
I pull the head, steel and other doctors, with pants pink paper heart.
The process of red: the red ranks silk carved surgery lining the wall, where Yang bismuth shot.
Comfort? Governance?
Do not tell meters of the stage. Red is the milk does not matter,
But significantly recognized it.
Nay have any please?
Magnificent. and touching. Thank you, thank you.
poem for January 4 the lemniscate
1, 2, 3, 4, 5............Pn I met a mountain lion
at the gateway to the west where a third of infinity
twisted along a casino river We didn't talk
we couldn't be quiet He smoked a cigarette
gave me guru answers a sized and sanctioned
escape route I didn't know
it ventilated in a fire-wind path
where cats could wander make a crumb-filled den
talk rescue policies Beware the spiritual
I traced in his fur beware the ordinary
We left an offering of irrational numbers
hand-lettered plans cashews and apricots
messages arched and silver
I measured at the gateway to the west a lion the casino riverside has been distorted, unlimited I have no security, we have to talk about I've smoked tobacco experts Size and licenses means of escape The ventilation did not know I was A cat wandering fire - the way of the wind, Bread crumbs filled den torque structural policies I warned the track on his coat We sacrifice the left, generally careful instant case, a preposterous plan
The cashew and apricot, a message vaulted silver
end of day, slung two too many lattes and I want something stronger, more bitter, the color of memory
I'd buy a print/poster of this. Partially because it's my birthday poem, mainly because it's beautiful.
Okay, I've started the poster. Making it with a jazz theme for you! Ha ha.
Awwww, I will make you a cool poster, Blob! Stay tuned...
The poster fits nicely within my reading nook.
Wow, this is incredible. I'm going to take this to get printed as soon as possible.
Poem for January 3rd
Note: a few hours ago I woke when my dog started barking at the front door. Someone had smashed the driver's side window of my wee little (old) car with a big ass rock. They didn't steal anything; I have nothing. Three days ago I would have been angry. Today, though, all I could think was: POEM! Rock I can’t see through the window
because I am the problem
a zillion swarming cells, amalgamated intention dark rock and dirt mixed with the
algae/fungus mixture they call lichen
symbiotic relationships heal and carve surprise
rock through window means bill and body shop and anger I stretch arm through remaining shards
touch air still warm with desperation the surprise comes when I hold the rock I can’t see through the condensed vapor of light and dark
because I am a plankton
can’t fathom the depth of the Atlantic
Poem for January 3rd My method through the window, I asked is not the number of owned and intentions The black stone clay mixed classes bacteria mixture, they called the lichen symbiosis The relationship between the recovery and surprises The rock carved window is Bill and body shop and anger The arm, through leftover piece touched gas natural warm absolute
Out when holding the stone Ming-black law through cold steamed Method. Touch deep ocean
Ming-black law through cold steamed Method lovely. We should totally publish this entire collection in a chapbook at the end of the year. Call and Response or something like that. Wouldn't that be awesome?
Glad you were able to turn tragedy in to triumph! Still, it's a bummer about your window, I'm sorry.
Thank you so much. More of a nuisance than anything. My car insurance will cover all but 100 bucks (ouch!), but I'm missing a day of work while I wait for the police etc. Little crimes like this are low on the totem pole, that's for sure. Well, more time for Hubski!!!
I love that quote. This thread will be the Assembly Line Factory of Poetry. I just gotta show up and put in the hours. :) Thank you so kindly!!
(yes, I am rusty. so be it.) poem for January 1 I am always singing
death songs, a bird with down
the texture of sunset. You are the ancient juniper.
I pretend you can hear the rustle
of my wings, but your arms are stiff. I feel the sun's heat on my back,
touch your wrinkled skin. I am always walking
to the grave, as are you.
Time is not interested in us.
What a lovely proverb, especially for one with bird on birth certificate, birds in house, birds on the brain.
Reply for Jan 1 Death singing 'the neck is always our future, a texture of sun'
a bird fell. Pretend you can hear our voices, a wing, sand,
old cypress.
You, stiff but your elbow. More about us behind, we feel the heat of the sun,
and touch your wrinkles and skin from the skin. The walk always grave
we arrived when they do
not feel interested in the factors.
You.
Thank you. This is truly awesome. Here, a little stanza in response to your beautiful work: When I woke, the sun
still below the Sandia peaks
winked,
knowing her rays captured
All.
Poem for 12 January, 2013 Invisible Designing magnets might sound complicated,
but it’s a simple art.
First you collect the experimental specifications.
Scientists want their magnetic fields
to act certain ways. Sometimes they need a steep field profile,
one that hits ions with brute Gaussian force. Sometimes they need something more subtle,
a gentle rise of magnetic power
that coaxes particles in desired directions. You start by estimating
what your magnet might look like,
taking into consideration
the specifications desired
and your past experience
with similar specifications.
Specifications are the shit. You feed the parameters of your design
into a computer program
that calculates a field map,
and out spits a topographical chart
showing the magnetic field
at any point near your magnet. You make adjustments and do it again,
and again,
and again,
finally reaching something
that approximates the desired outcome,
but never quite matches it.
#See the name of the network# Figure First. Horses, is a kind of surgery, Tiger wants to to as miscellaneous as Sheng State, taking into account the stomach. Debt collection and survey meters Chi is the body of law from the line. In addition, he will, is a release suitable electrical part. When these, is to coax the Lee Reap the other party or the famous Greek and kind of wonderful. Consider to go by and name, She born outside the name of it, the iron name is to the have set such, Seethroat for like. Black opened in the city, and in Such as a meter, bears the Incoming Mail Tatari said of such - turned Tatari road map. Free continued for the group, the name of it, and asked the Sue the Sue-shaped area is significant . The department of any point in time, the magnetic stripe. This non-unanimous rue, over and over again, contingent heavy line, the whole fruit by up whether times like Oklahoma, to the rear, but the name is Yuri.
Is this open to anyone? I did a 30/30 once with a bunch of other people, and it was pretty brutal, but ultimately really neat. It's a good way to confront and wade through the piles and piles of crummy writing that are inside all of us.
Of course! Post away, Poet! At the moment, it's just me riffing on a daily basis, and JakobVirgil riffing on my riffs. Riff away, in any way you like! I look forward to reading your daily dose of poison!
poem for January 10 I took St. Jude
to have and hold
as my confirmation ranger
in a clapboard dusty pew church
I attended at parental gunpoint. C'mon Saint J,
I thought under wafer breath
as I slouched to the altar
so a bishop could lay fear
on my mohawk stiff
with egg white misery. C'mon Saint J,
patron of blender dump life
and safety pin girls.
Give me an empty uterus,
hip music parents,
some sign you sip my confessor's cup. I bent my head shy,
let God's man brush my forehead
with heavy silver precision,
and I rose saved lashes
to see his distaste.
Saint Judas with the gold coin (As not to confuse him with the other one with the silver) The only apostle that is still a Jew patron of the pinche the saint of lost causes only has the name of the lost cause this is just a coincidence look the other way.
Mind if we comment/critique them? No sweat either way!
Of course you may! Any kind of comment is welcome. You can be brutally honest. I am using these Poems A Day to get my mind out of the tar, so they are quick, extemporaneous, unedited. This is going to be amazing, if I can make it a full year. I welcome your critiques. I really do!
Thank you! Thank you! I don't know what a badge is, but it is exciting! :)
As you use Hubski, you will get badges that you can award to your favorite posts or comments. If you see the '+!' symbol, you can badge that post or comment. In your profile, you can see if you have badges to give, or if you have earned badges from other users.What are badges?
Thanks so much for the explanation, caio ! I am unable to hand them out yet, but I look forward to awarding some unsuspecting commenter.
littlebirdie has earned 3 badges already in her short time on the site. That is no small accomplishment. Keep going indeed!
"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!" (misquotin' with the best of 'em!)
I miss this thread. :( littlebirdie where are youuuuuuuuuuu!?
Hi everyone, this isn't a poem, just a little PSA: I'm super super super duper sick with that infernal flu that's making the national rounds. Ugh. My son and I are both holed up in the house, fevers in excess of 103, the doctor said to ride it out with a lot of fluids. This is the first moment I've had in two days to even check in as my eyes are all wobbly and I feel like I'm gonna barf. So, anyway, the poetry continues when the barfing stops.... Love to all and big germ-free online hugs...
my eyes are all wobbly and I feel like I'm gonna barf. So, anyway, the poetry continues when the barfing stops....
I noticed that the poetry has not continued, so I assume the barfing has not stopped and the wobble has not left your eyes. You may not feel like writing yet, but I do hope you are feeling better.
Hope you and your son are feeling better littlebirdie.
Take good care of each other littlebirdie. I hope this passes soon, the flu is no fun. Good luck.
(prose) poem for January 11, based on the poem for January 4, and also based on a real life love affair that cooled much too quickly... Gateway I think I met him ten million years ago, when I roamed feral trees as a split-winged dinosaur. I have flash memory of it, of a place lush and tired, waiting for sky-fallen disaster, a connection of eye against leathered skin. I met him again, twice, again, lifetime against my throat, my mind, my eyes, one recognition after another. We will slow time to nothing, stop time. I read his email, remembered days in childhood when minutes spread into hours, expected my visit to be fun and uninhibited, maybe even timeless in some way. This time I met him at a gate, a security frame, a place where people purged from an airborne tin can. I saw him lean against a sign, his arms folded over his chest, brown t-shirt against cold metal. He saw me, too, my red dress, cowboy hat, and he rushed beyond the buzzer, pressed his lips against mine, met my tongue. He made his hello second, almost last, although we hadn't yet met, not in the physical, in these bodies, only on paper. "Hey, you." He smiled, caught his breath, grabbed my bag, my arm, dragged me wanting through a terminal, an exit. We climbed in a bus empty and sad, but we filled it, made it real and heavy and fast with my pink suitcase and his lips and the way we recognized each other from some past eon when footprints covered wet sand. "Hey, you," I answered, kept my mouth against his, ran fingers through his hair. I remembered it, it wasn't new, was a million million years old, my fingers knew the twist and black of his curls. I can't tell you the next part. It's sacred, a hidden ancient scroll, two days of sweat-burned hymn spent in one room, a second act, a bridge, all the days you wished for Christmas and birthday and death rolled into forty-eight hours of athletic sacrifice. We talked, too. I remember every word of it, though the recall of fingerprint against thigh meets my mind first. Time felt drowsy, full of beaded sweat, and a glance at the hotel clock revealed eleven hours difference when it should have been one, maybe two. It's all backward, I wondered. Time speeds, it doesn't sleep. I didn't know the clock didn't matter, that my perception of slow-ticked movement was real, genuine. I felt him rise from the bed to finish a work project. My eyes stayed shut, my mind on vacation time emptying into a sea of coded thought. I want this to last forever. I held the last second of his cheek resting on my forehead as if it were a golden ticket, a lottery voucher, something I could not lose or I would be poor, forgotten. "What's my spirit animal guide?" He asked me with sudden surprise. I conjured up a walrus, a platypus, a thousand different creatures with webbed limbs and tusks and unusual underwater practices. He sat at a particleboard desk, gentle hands against keyboard as he calculated arc and rhyme. "You're a cat. You're stealthy, move with grace and rhythm, you snarl, you purr. A cat of proportions. A mountain lion." I knew as I said it my words carried a benediction. A lion, a cat without care, a feline of arid hunger with ulterior motives and paws of steel-set fur. A mountain lion. Yes. I watched him click the mouse, move pages along the screen, and my body felt warm and complete under the covers. I watched him measure and think, calculate and serve. His hands trembled as he worked, but his gaze remained clear, stuck and married to the particles of light emanating from his screen. I lay naked, tired, the cells of my arms absorbing his motions. Tell me your secrets, I thought. Tell me why you hold that sadness, that infinite echo. He didn't answer my thought, not in words or action, but my mind grabbed a chain of command, pulled meaning from each tap of a key. He turns ideas into reality, I thought. He knows things, know they exist, they breath, holds them at eye's length, analyzes them, tells their secrets in what only looks like simple story. I know him. I know his thoughts. I almost remembered him from some other existence, felt him draw an oval in the dirt with one foot, almost saw him dance the same concept pattern around piled stones he echoed in this life. He didn't notice my mind walking through his veins. He knows he lives in concepts, brings fully formed ideas to life. He knows this. But he doesn't know they why of it, why his work is important, why he packages logic, why he articulates spheres of thought. He will know someday. That dance is deliberate. He doesn't see how it grows each time, collects air and sun from the environment, doesn't know it rotates an eccentric lathe, his mind the pencil that completes some delivered plan. We all do this. We never see it. We packed his things, brought them to a copy store. I held papers under plastic boards, let lights sway, tick, and record, carried prints to him, watched him lay them upon a board, make them talk, make them real. The store people didn't notice us, didn't see the way he made the thick of trees talk with numbers and reason. I knocked over one display, then two, my body giving noise and entropy to the night, to the rain pelting his car. "Sorry," I kept saying, as if my words meant something, as if I was truly sorry, but I wasn't, I wasn't. I wanted the night to end in fireworks and scattered boxes. I wanted him to see himself beyond the paper. That night he traced the symbol for infinity along the space between my breast and hip. His index finger created a vortex against my skin, moved round and between, above, under. What is that, he said.* What is that called?* I stuttered for a moment, as if my voice patterned his hands. I couldn't remember the math, the mobious strip, the reason I met him at all. Then the sun burst through his fingertips, told me stories of dinosaurs and time, the places we laid, the times we travelled forward in time, disconnected moments we fell backward, back into what was. I felt the trace burning my body, connecting top to bottom, organs to air, dry lands to humid, my knowledge to his. I closed my eyes, tried to remember, saw a flash of a gateway, a high weathered curve, a future moment, a holographic project, a steel sun mirror from ancient leathered beasts to two humans in bed. "It's the lemniscate," I finally answered. "It goes forever." I saw him last six days later, six months later, six lifetimes later, a sideways eight burned into the space between my eyes. It doesn't matter, I thought. Infinity means forever, means the days blend to the past, to the future I always try to define, means these moments were a lifetime, a mountain lion roaring at his reflection, a homeless bird hovering over some meadow truth, no time, no place.
[Network] Before the dragon.
Body onions party hard eyes.
She again and again a throat eye one after the other.
Between rooms.
Pieces custodial days.
This time the door and a can.
Shirt Chi former.
I have the same clothes cap on my head.
On one of the foliations.
"Hey you." To a pack of shoulder one end of A.
Of the one of the lip of the box. "
Hey, you"
A mouth hair. Its year-old hair.
A portion.
In a mile song beams inside the animal.
A. Each one of the first.
When the water is a moment.
This after Road.
Degree of sleep.
The slow question.
L into a mesh.
Inter-want.
To go.
After one second a ticket Tutsi.
"It?" I am very pleased.
A law like beast.
Law on the one hand.
Cat itself played a whooping sound.
Example , Lions.
Said "a blessing. A son and bent material."
Mountain lion.
Yes. Standard surface whole.
Examination.
Forward for clarity curtain.
The body of the matter.
The density would like I'm a sad sound.
I want to move a ream of righteousness.
Real thought.
West in the suction thing secret.
Him. Method.
One system from one circle to read.
Inside the tube.
Read the law.
This point.
The domain of the Series.
A's. Each habitat, bed, pen into a draw. Do it.
West to a shop.
The plate moving hook recorded his words on a board.
We are due.
One is entropy and night train.
"Since" I said apology .
Set-top boxes.
Pieces. On the number.
A skin, under what word?
His hands.
Article school because of she.
Party candidate after sharp line engraved, pour it.
Atobe in the ground knowledge.
Eye memory the off line engraved eyepiece.
A "lemniscate". "Deposit".
After after after one. Tight want.
to life in a reasonable birdtime square.
poem for January 9 not my new future The fractal twists of nature
give way to helixes
made of miters and rhomboids,
cool futuristic efficient. Mice and ants
just roving boxes with legs,
and birds no color at all
but transparent angle wind,
their scattered remains
pin-pricked and encased
under beveled glass. Can you imagine this place
wrapped in parallel cellophane,
tied with cut diamond ribbon? I can’t find a curve outside
the salt water trail
from cheek to thigh. The easy crescent of my mother
winks from a rectangular mirror.
New future, not my problem. Link and efficiency, and quality-shaped, mentioning
the United States to the angle of rotation The color of the slice darning needle scattered thorn rat and back to the bridge and put the glass, the angle of
the bevel needle is prescribed. Parallel glass and ribbon-cutting of the stone, can you imagine? Halite only in the thigh, the curve of the cheek, I can not find the way. wave of affinity best single new long-shot.
today my heart felt automated and I wanted to turn the switch to rumor or runner or mermaid, anything but murmur
poem for January 7 My loss is a hitchhiker,
a girl of eighteen
with bulging pregnant belly We ride in silence She holds her hair
in right hand rested
against growing baby,
long and straight and black and oily
We take this car It will be the loss of human rumors pregnant women with children Silence, and her riding Long black and straight, and fat. Recognized for the hair on your head grow a baby.
Thank you for being my fellow traveler in this poetry thread, JakobVirgil. You are a dear. And your poetry is wonderful. Here's a badge for your poem, which I love.
(prose) poem for January 5 The Hat The afternoon of my mother's wake I bought a Stetson at a pawn shop. It hung next to a stringless guitar. It hung, covered in the invisible dust of money hungry pain. It hung on a tarnished brass hook. I paid five dollars to a man with an orange-striped shirt. I don't remember his face. I placed the hat on the passenger seat of my car. A Stetson. Black. The oiled pitch of movie malevolence. The hat wore a woven leather band decorated with an engraved silver charm. Two sizes larger than my head. Grade thirty X, the Rolls Royce of fox fur sculpture. Hey you, I said to the hat. My mom died. The hat made sympathetic noises. The hat expressed displeasure at the change of schedule. After the funeral I placed the hat on my bed's extra pillow, the space I saved for a lover. The hat took root. I felt it push tendrils through the green satin, through duck down, through layers of coiled springs and metal frame. I felt it push into the oak floorboards, into the crawl space, into the ground rich with uranium and feldspar. I fueled the germination with my fingers. I traced the spiral galaxy etched into silver. I brushed the hat with care, sprayed it with rain repellent. I loved the hat, loved the way it smelled like roadtrip ozone. I told the hat stories at night, stories about my day, about my children. I told the hat it was much more than a five dollar whim. Sometimes the hat listened. Sometimes it didn't. The hat's roots pulled memory from the underworld, a place not-yet-separated from its prior owner. The hat kept one upturned side-brim touching my sheets, but the other side sunk into the pillowcase. My wrists weren't strong enough to pull the hat from the bed. One day I went in search of a shovel to transplant it to a more suitable environment, but I got sidetracked by my father/kids/dog/work. We're dying, they said. Leave that damn hat alone and attend to us. I did. The hat understood. The hat was not happy. I asked the hat for help but it sat still. I asked the hat to rub my back, to cook me dinner, to tell me funny jokes. The hat would not budge. After a while I slept with my back to the hat. I wanted the hat to notice that I was lonely. The hat did not. It remembered the pawn shop. It remembered its old life. It remembered the five dollars. It pointed a brim finger at me. It told me I made the roots stronger. I grabbed a shotgun and shot in the air above the hat. Get out of my bed you mean old lazy crummy hat! I yelled. I didn't mean it. I wanted the hat to protest. The hat fell to the floor. It sat there for two days. I packed the hat in a box yesterday. I wrapped it in plastic. I stuck stamps on the side of the box. I stuffed an old beadspread in the hole left by the roots. I slept alone.
:response my condolences. Today I attended the funeral of a suicide. all of the speakers had at some point shot me with bb guns. is creative a euphemism for gay?
What a lovely piece of writing. I immediately handed my computer to my wife and asked her to read it. She said that it was "sad but beautiful". I said to her, "I think I'm going to give it a badge", to which she said, "of course"! I really enjoy your writing style.
Thank you so kindly, and thank you to your dear wife as well. I'm grateful that you are reading my crazy poemas. I am glad I started this thread. It is keeping me thinking and keeping me writing. Both of my parents died in rather recent times, and I am still processing all of that out of my body and heart. That stuff runs very deep.
My sympathies. My wife lost her mom when she was 12 and I know from her that it cuts extremely deep. Keep the poems coming, you have an appreciative audience enjoying them.That stuff runs very deep.
When we lose a parent, our connection to the past is broken. When we lose a child, our connection to the future fades. We are nothing but ellipses, one focal point two steps ahead, the other two steps behind.
Poem for 14 January, 2013 Online circular saw blades
look like small UFOs hovering above
a white trash wood paneled background,
floating with prices and sizes
and quantities listed next to them. I click on the ripblade,
a harsh shank with deep gullets,
flat-topped anti-kickback teeth,
and an aggressive twenty degree hook. With so much mental mulch,
and mahogany hardened thoughts,
one tool will dull
before finishing the job.
I will have to order two.
Hope is dedicated to infant understanding Less powerful than injections over short distances deer, white women, a wooden spoon, tofu with authors Limbaugh Kyushu Trimurti I click on my heart to read, difficult market with brilliance muskie , A machine comes against graft, Ursa quality 20 Agassi. With malt so much mental, pushbikes, Arminius, humus, one ship will Shim before work calls before crying to work. I need lhzmin Shseym.
This thread is inspiring me to write poetry. My dad got me a beautiful leather-bound journal for Christmas this year, and I think it should be filled with my own poetic pursuits, as amateur as they may be. Thank you both for this endeavor!
Poem for January 13 Remove your old baseball cap,
toss it into the stands,
let some hopepful lad catch it. Wad your morning paper,
don't line the litter box
where it still replays
yesterday's events. File your uneven nails, drain the lukewarm bath, close the open cereal box, grab hold of your hair
and pull. Pull! You can rotate
your own moon. Yes. Look at my palms,
open flat,
nothing but sun
pressed reflection.
Remove the existing baseball cap Throwing standing Young hope fixed on Gaza. Your morning paper wad To play the litter box, however, Does not comply with the events of yesterday. Uneven files The Lukewarm bath leaked Terminate to open a box of cereal The head of the country, by dragging a handle. Pull it up! to be bright the month has rotation of screwed Yes. Look at the palm of my hand Flat ten But the sun does not press anything
poem for January 8 I keep telling her stories vaquero, paleteria search out the insane bits
smothered in vintage price tag anglo
New Mexican’t
appropriator they aren’t wrong gringa It’s my sun, too Frozen dust spackles my window corners
winds scrape gray clouds against a blunt steel
box meant for hauling rodeo steer I am slick ordinary, plastic Virgin Mary
a dim mixing bowl heaped with salted pork I am twisted white-girl braids hiding calico wrinkles
or one upturned sole made of tire-blown rubber I didn’t want to be Outsider but god pushed me
onto a rusty conveyor belt I rolled past watermelon haze hills chico, chile I am rum yellow moths under her medicine light
I blame him for things Aberdeen Key Shop I'm crazy and they do not have the Portuguese wine price Occupied by the British West Indies wrong country freezing wind my window is the pin collar flavor Ground ash carry steelhead Dark material is mixed with the charge Lee mother pig White snake, I went to Tibet from the CD to the fetus pattern cloth plastic Fragmentation with the push of oxygen station send West Branch back, intellectual His medicine root yellow moth
poem for January 6 Cherry Cider I parked under a sterile pecan
in the lot of a broken wood gas station
that owned the intersection between Socorro and Carrizozo My right hand hurt from shifting
past sun cast spruce deer
lurch wandering
slow motion rain dance Two sweaty sugar boys teetered from my van
legs still dreaming
broke the air
ran into dust storm store
where truck men stood at plywood counter counting smoke money I followed
ricochet lizard steps
aching from three hundred sepia miles
under still sun too high to touch A pockmarked styrofoam cooler
filled with ice blocks and old plastic milk gallons
propped open the door in sweet welcome My oldest boy reached in to touch ice
rubbed blotch water hands across forehead
under piano hairline scar
marking the end of my marriage I chose a jug
counted quarters and nickels
under a stained Virgin of Guadalupe
tipped mouth to mine
let cool red rush
warm my hot tongue Near silence, no birds, just panting children
and slow exhale of torn-shirt man
back against bad stucco
eyes on me
my raspy van
the leaden horizon My boys sat on dented hood
shared red sips under sparse shade
and we watched a war torn dog
spray hot shadows against gold crust dirt
Cherry apple wine My car from the mouth lead bundles, gizzard shad trees to help stop the oil in the car dock
Hitch a hand flying deer clouds stream migration.
Still sub-meter, a souvenir shop, dust, aggression down my body, from the top half of the field, sweat, sugar, plastic sheets, empty cigarette cards
Step British Yoko brown lizard still feel hurt
Per gallon of ice blocks and potholed plastic, styrofoam cooler full of milk laying open the door to welcome sweet
Chi knot of marriage, friends, piano interpersonal hurt, water, trim, rub the head
Mellon Lu mountain in the first quarter of the United States himself under control cool red tongue probe hit me
The land of snow, but I mean, children torn shirt and pants, and half of the time by mistake to wipe Shen understand the attached guide not slow the phone
My son sitting sparse, their shadow war sand spray hot Caro, split color