dinner

tape recorded conversation
speaking about life
through surround sound
and good table manners
while spiderman dangles
from the chandelier

Kerry James Evans

From the Backs of Birds (Variation of Dialogue Challenge)

From the Backs of Birds

I could walk through this meditation and picture
myself in the desert where the sun creates illusions
we dare not believe for fear of being wrong—
that you are the great illusion.

West of the dinosaur quarry I once found an entrance
a narrow crevice in the cliff I imagined would open
the sacred moment when light breaks the sky and
Moses motions me to remove my worn shoes
at the foot of a burning bush that speaks in a voice
I knew God would have if I listened with good ears.

All I wanted from this was to hear my name
as if it were something you had heard before
dropped from the mouths of adoring saints
painted by Da Vinci or perchance seen scribbled
on parchment the texture of moths wings.
I have sent numerous prayers on the backs
of birds special delivery imagining the words
would make it into the good book or
the poor man's scroll the rabbis and prophets
read to you as you stare into the eyes of
each star in the universe as if they were
all the souls of all your children right there
in attendance.

But I do not know the final resting place of prayers
the words that one offers with a sliver of ones own heart
maybe our names get discarded
maybe our quivering pleadings are swept off
the white alabaster-shell tiles out of heaven
maybe they stick in the clouds and fall in the rain
maybe I taste them in heavy storms
maybe they fall off the leaves of the aspen and juniper
and I realize nothing about their presence as I run and
squash them underfoot.

Maybe you could see me differently if you turned
the tables and pretended not to know the secret
if you waited patiently upon the head of the wind
with sore ears blasted from the cryptic squall
like a thousand startled crows in the sky
trying to decipher the seventy-two names of God
and maybe if you waited so long for the vision
that your feet grew roots and your heart grew stones
you would question your own ability to see
the air above your head split open and through
the clean incision see God peer out of the hiding place
maybe then you would know of man's search for meaning
the desire to hear his given name spoken by you.

Digerati pre-release sale

Digerati: 20 contemporary poets in the virtual world will be released on February 14th. This anthology celebrates the work of Peter Pereira, Eduardo C. Corral, Aaron Anstett, Paul Guest, Alison Pelegrin, Teresa Ballard, RJ McCaffery, Seth Abramson, Nancy Eimers, Anthony Robinson, Deborah Keenan, Tony Trigilio, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Shanna Compton, Jake Adam York, Michael Meyerhofer, Matthew Shindell, Jacqueline Marcus, William E. Stobb, and Frank Matagrano. For a limited time, I am offering a pre-sales on this book for 10% off the cover price, shipping included. It's a 330 page anthology, for only $14.32 through February 14th.

http://www.threecandlespress.com

 
 
 

Marshmallow Frosting Feasted We

Oh how we munch at each other,
mouths peck pecking,
slurp and gulp.

Handies gribble grabbing
and snatch.

We crumb, and lick at ourselves
with tricky thinks
and starven fingers.

Our juby bits are sunny flavours
and rise above weepened troughs.

Elementals swirl in cyclone clouds
and astral configurations

on the Euclidean plane,
where transitivity colludes with symmetry.

Point to point our oddness
swallows tasty fine. We shine
and shine
our sun spines.

Light prickles and celebratory toasts
greedy up the slake of thirst.
Our foody bits are spicy grand,

we yum.

Fishbone Light

I allow the acupuncturist
to twist needles into my heels.

One sharp tap, and small pressure inwards
until I gasp and splay involuntary fingers,
then he moves to the next point.
When he has mapped my pain, I’m left to reflect
while pinpoints thrum along legs and feet.

Last night's beast licks up his lips for a kiss;
he is all mouth and wet,
plunging response from my throat,
spooled up from my groin.

I feel the flame of ox-blood
rouse. I’m so afraid to let it flare,
knowing my lust will measure
and consume his if unleashed.

So afraid that where I open myself
I will feel phosphorescence morph
into rat's feet scrambling through veins,
afraid if I release my own beast
we will be consumed by his ravenous juices.

The concupiscent slap, grunt and gasp,
mistakes lust for effect or fullness,
the craven act, for freedom.

Perhaps this harms no one,
but I myself, in my deepest core,
feel the re-direction of energy flow.

When the acupuncturist returns
for another twist of his fishbone-fine needles,
fragile silver elucidates my life streams.
I hear the scrabble as rat feet
flee the glow.

Railroad Bill

Railroad Bill

Like a chameleon,
Like an insect that looks like a stick,
Like a butterfly whose markings are the bark of a tree,
A dog with no bark at all,
An invisible cat,
A cloud in blue sky that disappears on examination:

He invented a self for time and place;
He talked his way off street corners;
He sang for Mormons,
He chanted hari Krishna hari Krishna,
He dabbled in love,

As though he were one who could sustain an emotion
For more than a minute or two, he made commitments
And broke them. The only feeling he knew well was fear
And the only end he had in mind was survival. Some
De-frocked monk said, “He’ll always land on his feet.
He’s golden.”

Knowing

Do you remember
the time we were shooting birds
and you said
each bird flew off
shaken by how
we remind it
of its freedom.

You are always saying
such things.

We can never be more alive,
never be more adept
at calling each other
by the names
we answer to.

How that is sometimes
enough.

Unrequited

Kafka, how I adored you
standing on the shore, naked to the moonlight
(or was it in the daytime, fully clothed against
the January winds that blew?).

How I loved you, but not
your mind, not that febrile
imagination that would chime
at odd hours when awake --

No. Never that.

It was your feet. Long, thin
with two large bunions, asymmetrical
in their design, opposed, one on
the inside of your left big toe
and one below that nubby, curled
and crumpled digit that graced
the outside of your right.

Those hard, white and red, rough surfaces
gave me delight, my hand
swarming over first one, and then
another, sllding up from the arch
or down, across those yellowed nails

you cut too close
-- so close I saw the scabs
you left behind, dark, blackish lumps
of your dead blood.

So short a time we had, so quickly
ended. When
I heard you'd died, I cried
all night. I walked along the pier
barefoot, and caught a myriad
of slivers in each foot. How cruel!

The pain I felt, it still
endures, for those slivers are
my memento mori, far more
than any pleasant memory
of the sweaty, unwashed soles

I used to hold, with sand between the toes,
of Kafka on the shore.

Amy King Interviews Ron Padgett

ODE Poem

Praise be to flowered
flannel that softens
and fades with age.

Praise to checkered
slippers knitted by
elderly aunts from

left-over yarn, thick
slippers to cushion
& warm our wandering

feet. Praise to happy
pom-poms, to antique
lace; praise to hooded,

over-sized robes with
rolled sleeves; floor-
length robes of terry

& fleece. Praise to satin
& silk; praise to clinging
fabrics carefully folded

into ribboned boxes
by hopeful lovers & well-
wishing friends. Praise

to boxers and too-big
T-shirts, snatched from
the closets of intimate

strangers. Praise to high-
heeled slippers & slippers
shaped like rabbits. Blessed

be all that keeps us warm,
alley cats & pomeranians,
cuddlers, snugglers, back-

sleepers, side-sleepers,
spooners, quilted duvets
& comforters: Praised be.

Snapshot 25 January 02006

When I went to New York, to bring
my brother home, he was well
into the wasting of the disease.

He looked like an animated corpse.
He asked me to hold him, to share
his bed -- it had been so long

since he'd been touched, held, by
anyone. And so I did; as I did when
Judd made the same request, years

later. There is something inexpressible
about sleeping in an embrace with a man
you love -- however you love him --

waking in the night to feel his bones,
the nearness of his death, in your arms.
As I write this, I sit in my bright sunroom.

The parakeets sing for their supper; sun
gleams on the snow in the garden. I am
eating a slightly over-ripe apple --

I am contained in life, breathing long past
many of those I have loved. The white
orchid opens. It smells sweet.

January, Las Vegas, New Mexico

Frozen dust spackles
my window corners,
winds scrape gray clouds
against a blunt steel box
meant for hauling rodeo steer.

The only colors bleed
from spray paint canisters,
leftover graffiti lunch
those dark-smiled boys
eat in boredom.

I want sunfire,
Long Island ice teas
in anything other
than depression-era glass.

My boys iron
wobbly cursive essays
on scarred oak desks.

I wait for school's end,
one leg bent under my body
in a tired woman's asana,
torso tipped toward April.

Mae West - Reb Livingston

Thousands of miles out to sea,
on the island of Insanity, high
up on jagged cliff, teeters a
lone sanitarium. Room 281
has white concrete walls
and two women in hot pink
straight jackets.

Reb: I'll be damned, I'm rooming
with Mae West. Wat up Mae?

Mae: I expect to be here, but not
for good.

Reb: You got that right.

Mae: Is that a gun in your pocket?
Or are you just glad to see me!

Reb: Uh, no. It's my pretty little
Bedside Guide. Want a peek?

Mae: You certainly make it sound
attractive.

Reb: Something tells me you'll really
like it.

Mae: I wrote the story myself.
It's about a girl who lost her reputation
and never missed it.

Reb: He who hesitates is a damned fool.
Oh wait, that's your line. I'm losing
it here.

Mae: To err is human,
but it feels divine.

Reb: I just miss my man.

Mae: A hard man is good to find.

Reb: Tru dat sister. Tru dat.

Mae: Good sex is like good bridge.
If you don't have a good partner,
you'd better have a good hand.

Reb: Let's not think about that
just yet. What are you in for anyway?

Mae: I used to be Snow White... but I drifted.

Reb: Yeah, me too. But it wasn't the
seven dwarfs that drove me crazy.
It was .....those damn


poets.


Credits: Mae West's dialogue copied
from her original quotes found here:
http://www.brainyquote.com

Darwin and God

Darwin and God
--moments before evolution

The wind! The wind!

Yes, the wind is blowing. It keeps you young fellas
a float in good fashion. Without it, you'd all be shark
bait, and you don't want that now, do you?

Shark bait?

Yes, without the wind, you'd be shark bait. It keeps
you all afloat, so you can make your discoveries
on the islands not meant for human eyes.

Human eyes?

Yes, you'll find Caliban sitting atop a rock waiting
for your language to apply to his island--where wind
brought you. You'll tell him he was part of something.

Part of something?

Yes, you'll create something out of what you found,
just like I did, only you've yet to learn how to master
the wind--control the direction of the compass.

Master the wind?

Yes, give it time, you'll soon know too. You'll create
as I have, master the wind, and bring people
where you wish--and you'll lead them abroad.

Abroad?

Yes, where they've never been--you'll give
them reason to believe in what they've only
wondered. You'll keep them guessing.

Kerry James Evans
Winter 2006

~Aging Gracefully~ (an Ode)

Aging Gracefully
ode to charles bukowski

your withered face
could really absorb
the pussy

A Short Dialogue

During the weigh-in Goliath looked at Muhammad Ali with
menacing almost Biblical eyes, x-ray eyes that burned all
the atoms along his line of vision. Ali for his part kept
jawing insults, “you giant panty-wearer”, “your mama this
and that..” and other worst things that should not be
repeated publicly. Anyway, Goliath weighed two tons and
Ali just a few ounces. There were wooden banners all around
proclaiming, “The Thrilla On The Sermon Hilla”. The fight
details would be carved in stone later.

“You can’t trick me with the
goat-herding Ali shuffle
or the rope-a-dope goat!”

Goliath thundered Shaq-like
as he looked at Ali
from the height of a basketball goal.

“You think you bad
like Sonny Liston’s dad
but you can be had!”

The butterfly Muhammad Ali
floated in front of the giant,
ancestor of Andre the Giant,

but bigger than Danny Devito
appeared to an ant---
you know, Androcles’ lion’s ant.

Goliath roared
and took a step forward
Muhammad Ali appeared bored

but he had a great tan
of which even Goliath was a fan.
Just at that moment

Ali hit him with an upper cut.
Goliath , confused, uttered profanities,
screamed, “You slut!”

At which point Ali
hit him with a religious right cross
“you ain’t the boss

of me.” cried the giant
as he collapsed dead from the head.
“I told you, I told you

you was gonna get it in the end.
I float like a butterfly
and sting like a bee,

you cross my path
and you incur Allah’s wrath!”
Suddenly, Ali was struck with a nervous disorder.

Grand Canyon National Park, California

Strata: green and brick red-oranges
Into lofty plateaus, the canyon bowed
By the gritty Colorado River,
The azure sky inexhaustible. But still,
This is a kind of youth: echo my name.
Echo the hollow call of the wooden flute.
An elegant earless lizard darts out
From under a prickly pear cactus, and I find
There are steps made of earth
And wooden rims that descend down
Onto the rock face, and I am drawn
To them, I am drawn to adulation –
I have been summoned.

Challenges

After you are done with your ODEs or perhaps you are not inspired to write an ODE, the next challenge will be DIALOGUES. In this challenge to make it interesting, your DIALOGUES must be between any of these choices. I will select the best three between the ODES and the DIALOGUES for next month's IBPC submission.

John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln
Charles Darwin and God
Marilyn Monroe and Pamela Anderson
Reb Livingston and Mae West
James Joyce and Gabriel Gudding
Amy King and Elizabeth Bishop
Mohamed Ali and Goliath
Andy Warhol and Michael Angelo

Good luck everyone.

Didi

Henry’s Ogden Nash Ode For Elvis Presley’s Commode

Who was it that invented
the invention that outed the outhouse,
otherwise Elvis would have died

out in the backyard of Graceland?
Oh, how Esperanza (she’s Elvis’s biggest fan)
misses the King in Vegas,

the swiveling hips, the pouty lips,
the sweaty forehead
and the sequined jump suits.

Her Teddy Bear is gone,
her racecar driving Romeo raced away---
she’s a Hawaiian Speedo widow.

In the end, the commode
was the last to kiss his ass,
the toilet paper Memphis Mafia nowhere around.

His girlfriend fast asleep
unaware she would wake up
and not be a princess anymore.

The commode with tearful eyes
looks about the room, but it can’t see the future
because it always looks behind.

Ode to Dressing Gown and Slippers

i
Pink bunnies romp
on seersucker fields
and hop downstairs with me
and my fluffy, flop-eared slippers
to breakfast in my first motel.

Bumpity thump, from stair to stair
mother's crossed arm toe tap
waits at the bottom.

ii
Knobbles of candlewick cuddle
the bulb of my pregnancy,
little froglet plopping
in its skin pond.

Feet and fingers,
breasts and belly,
swell to burst their ripe,
overripe, pods. Rings and slippers
no longer fit. Laid aside,
in seclusion together, we await
the harvest dawn.

iii
In the blood silk of a man's robe
I wrap myself with green, gold,
and navy medallions. Badges awarded
for outstanding bravery. Scars bound
in seductive winding sheet, my wounds
are held in check. Sealed and cauterized
in fabric flames, engulfed like witches
on a pyre of sticks. My feet burn
in soft beaded jandals.
I seek the path to Shakyamuni
or some more restful god of pink
dressing gowns and rabbit slippers.

Ode Challenge: Ode to a Tearful Dishwasher

Ode to a Tearful Dishwasher (blog: The Dishwasher's Tears

This is for the man who stands at the sink,
who forgets he’s washing dishes,
who forgets he’s a man, a father, a son,
husband. This is for the man who stands
at the sink, rapt at the illusion: His hands
severed at the wrists by suds dying
slow deaths in the dishpan is so convincing
that he briefly misses each finger
and wonders how he’ll live without being
able to touch ever again. This is for the man
who stands at the sink crying as he rinses
a plate, yet the cold water rushing over skin
and porcelain does not wake him from his reverie;
he is Helen Keller putting it all together,
the secret is being spelled out in his hands right here,
right now. Every breath is a small epiphany;
he breathes because he can’t not. He breathes
because he can. His are not tears of grief.
From where he stands at the sink, he can see
the full moon rising. He can hear his wife waiting
in the living room as he places the last plate
in the rack and dumps the dirty water down the drain.

Sweet Goddess of Surrender

Bow down
to the God of Twiglet.
He has his fingers down my throat,
the staple denial in my stomach,
re-emerging like a last chocolate biscuit.

The steel board of muscle
a requirement I don't understand,
but understand I must acquire.

And satin-skinned, slim, bliss,
contentment paper-thin,
worn as a lampshade
wrapped around a live flame:
my moth life.

Bikini body waits in my closet
rattling its skeleton.

Smile the lip-enhanced trout pout
and lipo-suction your gut
until conformity encases you.

Was there ever any doubt the outcome?
I have fought a brave fight, made a stand,
now I worship at the idol of

the Twiglet God, who demands
flesh be displayed in the contour
of bone and muscle;

soft curlicues in shell colours
flare his nostrils
and are relegated to funeral garb.

His manifestation is minimalist,
for mouths to regulate;
stomachs to compress themselves
in walnut shells.

The priesthood maintain his flock
from doctor's chairs, laboratories,
and editor's offices. The discourses
of science and medicine
are incontrovertible.

Temptations constantly test the faithful:
fried food served beneath golden arches,
sweet tastes wearing bright foils
and fancy boxes, sugar sodas
and soft dough breads.

All sins must be repented
with push ups, sit ups, squats and long runs;
sweat beads worn like a thorny crown.

Thou shalt bake, but not eat.
Thou shalt serve food, but not sit to dine.
Thou shalt not covet thy master's crust.
Thou shalt not query the right of a penis-driven society
to dictate the size and shape of the Goddess.
Thou shalt not despise those (sheep)
who grant them their power.

Thou shalt cease to labour upstream.
Turn and flow in the restful current,
for even Oprah has succumbed to its sirens.

Successful deprivation is rewarded
with longed for adulation from priests and flock.
I will sew my mouth closed and allow neither protest
nor sustenance to pass my lips.
I will be uplifted to the Goddess conformation.

Ode Challenge Poem

Ode To


You do not know me,
I am but a brown mouse
yet, your brilliance slides from
the corners of my mouth

I lick my lips slow as
molasses, where it's always wet
a steady tongue, curled
I am bent

under blue layers
this eternal canalization
spears fly from your throat
condemn me to a wanting damnation

of light, not heaven or hell
good or bad, just a strange suspension
into single seconds where there is no
guessing, no quiet apprehensions

you have a strawberry tongue
and I want to touch it
it to touch me
bubble under warm, sinned spit

I cannot explain this, I will not
it's not what you think
because I know what you are thinking
you are not want or need
not desire or dream

there are no gushes running
down country streams
no sexual desire-type things

It's much flatter, there is
a far simpler truth
to gods and rock stars

and obsessions
like you.

Michelle M. Buchanan January 19, 2005

Graceland

Graceland
--an Ode to Elvis

My brother and I stayed out till dark
catching rabbits, so we could be your
friend, but you killed yourself, so they
say. We have our doubts and we travel

up to Graceland to sing you the lyrics
to our latest, only Justin takes after
you--strumming the same four chords,
but boy, do we have a chorus--knock

a mule on its ass. We live in Tupelo,
so I guess we ain't got much more
to do than think of you hip thrusting
the wind while your leather snakes

snap with the bass of the drum. Uncle
Tommy said you forget about him
after you left on your big record label,
and ever since, he's been a Jack-

of-All-Trades, living in the middle
of a junk yard, sinking in Mississippi
red clay, a regular sow in a sty.

Even if it is true, that's his problem--
his responsibility. So don't worry
about us, Elvis, you go on shaking

those hips, making that leather pop
on those thighs when you hit a note,
when you feel something inside jump

out like somebody done got hold of you.
You've given us salvation from the South--
you've given us hope.

Kerry James Evans
Winter 2005

Ode Poetry

An Ode is a poem praising and glorifing a person, place or thing.

Your mission if you choose to accept it is to write an ODE. For this challenge you must pick one of the following person, place or thing for your praise and glory.

1- Elvis
2- Your slippers and bathrobe
3- Dr. Pepper
4- Your favorite blogger/blog
5- Charles Bukowski or Richard Brautigan (your pick)

Best of luck.

Over and Out.

The latest issue of Verse Libre Quarterly

I hope you visit and enjoy what you find there.

Canadian Poets

(inside joke for my friend Don McKay)

Them Canadian poets
they’re as cold as ice floes,
buggers frozen in the nose,

too far north to make a difference
and when the polar bears come to fish
even French boys speak in glish.

The say that Leonard Cohen
is their only major poet
but if it wasn’t for Suzanne who would know it?

Them Canadian poets,
they’re as cold as Hudson Bay
when the north wind blows both ways.

Their entire poetic output
can fit on the tip of a needle
or on the butt hair of a Saskatchewan beetle.

the three poems going to the IBPC for January

Rae Pater


Kerry James Evans


AnnMarie Eldon

I am sending them in at the end of the month.

Okay I will post our new challenge soon.

Didi

Julain for Julie Carter

Someone's raised the stakes -- life's like that.
As soon as you think you know the game,
suddenly nothing is the same.

Christopher T. George


The above poem was written for a "casual contest" sponsored by poet Julie Carter on her blog, to write a Julain. I get the idea that the "julain" is Julie's own creation: a three-line poem of regular meter with the two last lines required to rhyme. See

Julain Contest--Deadline January 31st

Give it a go!

Chris

I'm a tacky poet-gal...

And I hope this is okay with the moderators, but I can't help being excited and letting everyone know...


That my chapbook is now out from Burnside Review Press, where it was selected as the winner of their first chapbook contest.


"Daphne & Jim" is not your everyday run-of-the-mill chapbook of poems. It's a choose-your-own-adventure book, based on the events of my parents' disastrous courtship!


So I wnated to take this opportunity to feed y'all a link:


http://burnsidereview.org/purchase.htm


... and to offer a free copy to anyone who'd like to read the lil thing for a possible review. B


ackchannel: sweetlorelei at msn.com


Yay!


(and... oh, yeah! I had a baby, which is why I've been scarce... http://mosecentral.blogspot.com for nudie pics)


xo

Thirty something years ago the critic R.P.Blackmur
called my poetry "the rubberization of time"
because I stretched themes and characters back
and forth in time and truth.


Henry’s Drunk Conversation With Dylan Thomas, 1964

“you’re wanted by the Polease
and my wife thinks you’re dead.”
Junior Brown’s homage to the work
of Yoko Ono

Oh, fuck you Dylan Thomas
thinking you’re John Lennon
cheating on Cynthia with that Jap

anese artist, tartist.
The hell with Fern Hill
that little mound of dirt and lust.

Huh, do not go gentle into that good night.
Well, you know what?
Stick it up your behind!

You’re the fool from Liverpool
sitting with a black bird on a hill---
nature will send you the bill.

When you were young and easy
you made the rest of us queasy.
Drinking yourself silly in New York City,

sucking on the future New York school titty.
You can’t mourn the death of poetry by fire
outside of a Bismarck North Dakota pagoda.

It was, after all, my dirtiest year in heaven.
John running wild in Hollywood with May Pang,
wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

Once, waking up in the white giant’s thighs
in the Welsh countryside,
God’s Beatle-haircut in the middle of Abbey road

didn’t bode well, but I don’t know if it’s Dylan or John
who’s been shot.
Let’s see what you got!

Give poetry a chance,
give peace a chance.
Nobody’s been invited to the cavern dance.

John’s playing the guitar in a star,
Dylan’s writing in a slur
as Caitlin purrs.

The bartender in Beatle boots
is in cahoots.
Aren’t the children getting tall? Dylan cries in his beer.

Henry nods in acquiescence,
the hell with peasants.
A naked John Lennon clings to Yoko

on the cover of Rolling Stone.
You can’t nickel and dime
the goddamn crime!

The New York skyline glistens
like twin towers if you hold up two fingers.
You stupid fool, you shouldn’t linger.

Oh, fuck you Dylan Thomas thinking
you can replace John with the screaming hymens
of 12 year-old girls on the Ed Sullivan Show.

December 2005 IBPC winning poems

To my lovers, all nineteen of you

It's been seventeen years since numbers one
through seven saw me exposed
in the glare of camera lights and microphones.
I cried then, but not for you, or for me
or the child I would lose, the one dressed
prettily in lace lapels covering an azure
smock overlaid with pearls (if only in my mind).

And last week I saw eight, and nine, with
their wives, one slender still, one gone
to fat around her waist and thighs.
No one waved. I did not mind.

Ten? Where have you been? No longer
do you write? Have you died?
I remember your long arms, being hugged
by you as if by a bear, strong and wide.
Do you still sing at night? Does your tongue
honey another's sighs?

Eleven, twelve, thirteen . . . you came so quickly
and I never stayed behind. One of you loved me
and two of you paid for me, and that was
all right, for a time.

Fourteen, did you marry the fiancee you claimed
back home? Is she still as pure and simple
and chaste as you said, or have the years
ended that lie?

Fifteen, dearest, what have I done?
The divorce papers arrived long after
we had finished with our life. I still drink
a cappuccino every afternoon at five
and see your hands, and suit, and tie
that never came untied. Thank you
for the house, the car, the monthly checks
you faithfully still sign.

Sixteen, do you remember what I look like?
Is it presumptuous to call one night
a love affair, and holding a weeping woman
in tangled sheets an act of love?
I think not.

Seventeen, I know you hate
my guts. Bitch! I see it in your eyes
even if I do not hear it from your lips.
Unlucky for us both, we still must meet
each day at work. Hard looks will suffice.

Eighteen, a silly number, and you
with that silly name. I confess
you are an ugly sight, but you made me smile
and often laugh, which was more
than all the rest ever could.

And last, my dearest nineteen, I wish
we had never known each other's name. Do not
tell my daughter, and I will promise this:
to keep my eyes downcast, my mouth
shut tight, my memories mine. Just
do not lapse, do not ever break
both our hearts at once.

Au revoir dear boys. I won't forget.

Kiss-kiss. Kiss-kiss.

Lycopene

It is not that you are good in bed
or that I never had it better.

I was born
on the feast of Vesta,
goddess of the hearth,
patron of torrent and rush
maker of all things that boil blood.
Lava, combustion, and lust.

That is why paintings
of sunsets envy my skin,
and fires wish their glow
could match the crimson
embers that glisten my eyes
after I gorge in love making.

So, my little decadence,
when you see my head tilt back,
and my mouth perform a silent howl,
when you think my eyes and skin
are about to melt off the flesh
don’t think its you that did it.

It is only my essence
manifesting itself towards its maker
calling forth the fire
that made it.

volition

exists in vestments: motion, shadows:
fulfillment the wings I guess

to think that a being resists anyone
in space or on a cliff

to think that a being resists
the tower one reading in a book
'they shall whisper the end and...'

the etymology: will, well, wealth;
voluptuous, voluptuary;
gallop, wallop;
nothing about flying

so you say, ok, I'm going to a well

or you place the epigraph here, for example:
where it's easier to see

(it's harder to argue
with that)

and next(‘time,’ ‘unseen’,
even though
we have ways
of saying it
we will not
go down into it
we will not scour it, not bite more off of it
than we can)

(still the ears hear things)

when I held you up to it and I

(stared)

(stared at it)

and I said hush
hush I said

(hush)
(hush)

don't even breathe

*

to be
breathless, exacting

demand
yr heels:throw
sparks

to think that you’ll insist

on that burst

yr sense for breaking
into the words
is what’s
true most

unsosinpleasant, insincere sitting ontopof the
mechanicalhoodno

and when i said

I didn’t mean it
I didn't have to

say such things as 'I was'
'you are'
'be the light,' 'stroke
it the light do
it'

(described me I mean)

(the thirsty sinner)who was(‘up close’
the wrong way
in the car
and yet the mirror was

right behind you)

*

for out of the boulevard (at night, light froths, so meticulous,
sometimes)

and I could be a ping
in your motor

that close

could be

a signal
of yr demise

this makes a difference

believe me

and you

you could forgive it (with footsteps
and I would be happy)

and I,
I would be the one who

(fell in)
(yes,
the next time

although I'd do it
I'd do it better
I'd will you to
feel
something)

*

flecked with suspense

or thoroughly
unbecoming
an unseen
brushstroke

a fanatic
begging to be described as the one who

(what only happened to me once was
I got to the center and

you missed it and)

this fanatical being was there this one angel who
could do something who
could swat the world with his wing

and he did it
one time
and the world said
'oh god'

get up
get up

and it was terrifying

the way
it divided you

and
divided me

*

for I have stood

a long time

under the circle

watching you
a long time
(wrestling)
my mouth away
from it

from the shape
the light
the confession

and the things
you were
became famous
in my mind

and I have stood
a long time
under the

circles       that were there
and all the dirty mirrors

and who you were
and who I was
and what we both knew and had to say

although it wasn't what we said
not what we said

Ice Branches Cover My Feet Now

I went to the mall yesterday.
People looked at me with dog faces,
Basset Hounds and Dobermans,
snapping at children
and sniffing after blood.

Last night I walked into my house,
no one was there and
no one was going to be there,
except me,
and the cat.

Last night the walls laughed
and the sink gaped
a stainless steel 'o.'
They had no cuddles for me.

I turned on my computer
where usually I can forget
the ice shelf
and how cold my feet.

I found a man
twisting his wedding ring
trying to find a place in the circle
that wasn't round
so he could make a gate.

I found another man
who wanted to say naked things to me
on the phone at 1am.

But the walls kept bending
in
and out.
I could hear the sink in the kitchen,
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

and I dared not look down
at my shoeless feet.

Response Poem

Response Poem To Where Once the Waters of your Face
by: Dylan Thomas

Salt

There is no loneliness in this ocean,
my sweet-tongued love

deep down where no man can go
I puff with tentacles that flow
like hot-coal red
hair, a dance

I float, somersault
turn into
the black water
where other things
hang mid-water
with glow

It is quiet, oh so quiet,
love,
not shark or eel
or sweet-tongued octopi
can come this far

so I stay right here
content in my
weightlessness

when you see a bubble surface
in the center of still water
think of me and remember

you will turn to ash in air
and I, salt
dense and brilliant
as diamonds

Michelle M. Buchanan Jan 11, 2005

"Invisible Waters Where Once Your Sky"

Invisible Waters Where Once Your Sky

~ after Dylan Thomas


Serpent, mermen through your
tides and roe; your stones, their source
dolphined on the earth, the sea
glides dry from your hair while
magic turns your clocking; voids
die through salt, corals, beds

coloured and latched in your oiled
unraveller. Lay where once your weeds
sank, your lids, a tomb. Wind. Break.
Where dry screws spun, your ice
steers the scissors. his channels,
a knife; love's shades, a root cord;

sage sea-faiths, your green splice,
fruits hung loose through his eye. Your
children who go shall not cry. His wet
tided dead; my face, your wet left
ghost -- invisible waters till once
your green and knotted sky.

It's not JUST a calendar! The Most Intriguing(and Sensual) Male Poets of 2006 calendar now on after-holiday sale!

Go to the CafePress Sales Site and pick one up as your after holiday treat at a reduced price. Great poets. Wonderful poems. Sizzling photos! And remember: proceeds go towards research on CFIDS.

Pris

Sojourn

Who knows what forces serve you,
or what (if any) complex shaft drives
the incarnating chain engaged
around your gilded teeth.

Sprocket sun spinning,
sodden with formless beings,
ether bodies that drip and melt inside us…
eternal and fleeting, as time.

Here we are…the hollow spheres,
the little gods, scratching your vessels
with polished brass from
our collective chain gang.

Here we are… the stand-ins
let us wrestle our fate in unison
clinging and clanging our hands together
pretending the noise we make is pleasant.

Special issue of Ygrasil: The Poetry of Barbara Ostrander

The January 2006 issue of Ygrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts is a special issue that I prepared--

Ygrasil, January 2006: an appreciation of Barbara Ostrander's poetry by Christopher T. George.

INTRODUCTION

Christopher T. George

The Poetry of Barbara Ostrander (1956-2005):
An Appreciation

CONTENTS

The Poetry of Barbara Ostrander:

Africa Unleashed
Sorrow
Cravings
Intensive Care Nurse
Raxaul, Armpit of India
Scabies
Yeti Airlines From Raxaul, India, Back to Kathmandu
Shucking it down to the cob
broken dreams
story goes like this...
Chemo
I'll Never Get Used to These Words
Untitled
Cat Nap

POST SCRIPTUM


The Editor/Publisher for Ygrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts is Klaus J. Gerken.

The below poem I include here because it is one of Barbara's best, and says so much about who she was--

As I wrote in the introduction to the poem, Barbara began writing poetry as a child and a number of her poems are about her time in Africa. I view the following poem as one of her best, sensuously binding the love of her husband with longing for Africa, while ever mindful of the wildness, beauty, and dangers of the continent.



Africa Unleashed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wonder if it is the way you pace
soft-pawed by the window
that makes me think of home.
You watch for me to reappear,
a lion on the move.

Or maybe it's the way your nostrils flare
that brings to mind the gazelle standing alert,
knowing it's being watched
sinew-tense, aware.

I map out beneath my fingertips
the parched plains of the Serengeti,
feel along your spine and hips
the urgency of the dry season,
poised for the rains.

Your heat soaks my skin,
consumes like a bushfire,
leaves me stretched spent,
a lizard on the windowsill,
limbs languid and still.

I smell in you the raw nerves
of Africa unleashed,
close my eyes, breathe deep
of home.

Barbara Ostrander

Where Once the Waters of your Face: Response

Where Once the Waters of your Face: Response


Damn your dry eyes! Damn your unforgiving glance!
We divers need not bear the tides in frequent doses;

Here, splash your corralled beds and green fruit,
while children frolic with their shadows:

Say boo and we progenitors unwind the woven seine
you imagine you thought up, brought home as souvenir –

Fishermen will cast their nets, believing or not,
And I will eat their catch while you wish for sacred tears.

Here Frowns Your Desiccated Skin (Response)

Here frowns your desiccated skin,
flesh-divorced, withered from small cues,
where once our wet reposed.
Here draws its owner to his own
sallowed remorse, a dull, cold home,
away to lone alone.

Here dries repeating drop by drop,
a fanciful and naive hope,
by nail, by hook, by hoop,
a female bitterly deposed.
In sail-less, sheet bound grief we've stalled,
despising all we chose.

Naught can you wash when stone is shored.
Friction tides attempts to crimped ghost-loam.
The time is spoiled past soil.
Where bleached your lace-proud presence roils
a story, linen-pocked and shed
to restless bed retombed.

Slick as a faceless oil this mark
shall spread as nothing may remove
holes caused by feckless loss.
There shall be darns where stitches tacked.
There shall be moths instead of vows
till all our tares be sewed.

Snapshot 04 January 02006

I dreamt the new year came to you
before it came to me. It came to you
in orchids and fire. It came to me
in silence, and snow. How suddenly

the earth turns, the message changes
from dark to light. Bats hang quiet
in their caves. The barn owls stir.
Fog seeps between the mountains

into this high valley where I sleep
and dream of strange flying machines
and benevolent monsters. Are you
waking now? Are there orchids?

Is there fire?

January is the last month to get the lowest rates possible on the Poetry Cruise

I have a few inside cabins left starting at $899.00 per person including the workshops, cruise, taxes, fees, entertainment onboard, breakfast, lunch, dinner, in-between snacks, and three wonderful ports of call, St. Thomas, St. Maarten and Princess Cays. The workshops are being held the days at sea so you may enjoy the ports of call. Call me at 1-866-456-6752 if you wish to get further information. Our workshops onboard are being conducted by David Lehman, Denise Duhamel, Nick Carbo, David Trinidad and Gabriel Gudding.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez

Orphelic Ruminations (Dylan Thomas response poem)

Through the brooding waters I see your
sad face elongate, pale to a rippling
sheet, so anxious in your search for me among
unraveled rope splices and green bottom stones.
My totems.

Seaweed cradles my head.
Coral forms my rough cot.
Fish bend for their nightly prayers
at phosphorescent gown's hem.

You pine for a pink-cheeked mirage, dear heart,
her legs still wrapped, laughing, 'round
your waist; not this dead lover more
suitable for Chambered Nautilus or
finned thrashing playmates of the deep.

Taking pity, at last, I drift up
through the fathoms, press ectoplasmic
lips to your warm ones, murmur words
you've waited for these long months
of vigil, until Sirens circle to bear me
out to where only the bravest dare follow.

This Year (response poem)

Yesterday,
the waves rolled
into one.

Ocean, ocean
where do you begin?

This year,
the sea
and a man of blank dreams.

When Once The Knuckles Of My Poetry:
The Response

When once the knuckles of my poetry
turned like a screw, ghost in the belly,
time unborn like freedom,

where once my little hands hollered,
eyes blinking, I saw your faces
waiting out there somewhere.

I did not know
the other worlds
mentioned in the echoes.

If dolphins glided on the waves
and the noises of the sea
came close to me,

if earth and sky approached,
it was magic---
the singing in my mother’s heart.

The serpents rose out of the foam,
the beach divided sand from sand
but I had no faith in such desires.

To Dylan Thomas

'in the gathering darkness,
at the turning of the tide'

Your gentle sea turned up fish eyes
and sucked in a dry wind,
but mine has burned itself to death
in a vacuum of sage and serpents.

The paper skeletons of seahorses and spiny fish
rise and fret the sky with a bone lacework
as dead men writhe in Davey Jones'.

All my lovely locks of coral
open crusty apertures and vomit
ash on a waterless shore.

My hands are wire, lit to a phosphorous
deep-ocean extravaganza, as they expire.
My sea is a fire, reproduction white,
where monsters incinerate innovative bubbles.

Our misunderstood creations are stillborn.
Replicas of flame, lit with half
a borrowed match.

My Daughter Is In Love

My daughter is in love.
My daughter is in love.
My daughter is in love.

I danced with my baby girl
on New Year's Day. Her laugh
sunk into my skin deep as I dipped
her low. I saw her face
in her face and thought of
dancing a decade ago.

Her turtle shell chest,
now breasts soft and new.
Boys then men will touch
them. Fat baby cheeks gone
now hold quiet secrets.

Terrorists are hiding all
around us. This is urgent.
Do not open the door, keep
your eyes open. Insurgents
wait.

I remember life before September
11th. We danced ignorant. I
am happy being ignorant.
I want to go back as bad as
a mother wants to run back
into a burning house to
save her baby.

I want to run, run back
and dance her around
the living room
on a Tuesday afternoon.

Michelle M. Buchanan Jan 1, 2006

Response: Where Once the Waters of Your Face

Joinings come to life to be undone.
Four polished tines reverse the point of gathering,
until an eachness hurts back to a solo line.
Time is flush with warm excuses for taxonomy
until we wend our way to tincture
that will transcend mere twin lives.

You made me whole before I learned to die.
The brilliance of your shadow warmed me
as no sun had done.
I still wander through a recollected heat
to keep my hands from chilling young.

At an early point of living one replaces thought with speech.
The listless pairing of named reach
recoils at the indelible demand field
that makes leaving life a gesture of infinity.

When we have loved we have assigned our souls divinity
that draws strength from future keep.
And if the comatose indulgence of our sunning
spawns our sleep, we will be tamed
by what is possibly equivalent
to every gleaming symptom of a sun too deep.

New Year, 2006

New Year, 2006

No matter how many of these first days
I have experienced,

no matter the arbitrariness of the calendar,
the clock, the people

count and measure with hope that this new year
will be different, better,

and I am with them in such hopes, so
I celebrate on quiet Jan.1,

I replenish the cat’s water bowl, I read
Mandela and write poems.

The Legitimate Heir

From the first notes on a shamisen
a crystal pyramid rises.
Brittle musculature constructs itself, bracket upon tress.
Ground into the polished surface are ridges
fluted by piano. Griffins and unicorns wander
through the long smooth electronic grooves,
weaving between the flash and chock of percussion.

A cacophony of wild and disturbing children murmur
their unquiet dreams. This is my son's nightmare.
A sunstrobe of sound gurgled through the water
of mind amalgamation, striation of music over all
that he finds acquiescent in a universe discordant
and malingering.

A heartbeat swells between breath rounds.
He has recreated the foetal in utero stasis,
a dangling reminiscence of the primordial.
We swim the Pleistocene amniotic canal together,
the coming, the becoming. I, the mother, he, the renewal,
a new beginning from essence and potency. A faithful promise
of our infinite capacity to create our own legacy.