absolute liars

I am, I am, I am superman
--REM

Lord Lazarus looks
in a little white door
Sylvia Plath comes through
carrying her gown

she says Lazarus,
Hello
they soon lie down

after a while
they rise

meanwhile, here on earth
i’ve begun to bear a false witness
to my life

i feel there is some justice,
there in the fuselage
in the wheelspace
in the wreckage

in the wind
or the tree
or wherever

but the city is shaking
and i’m unable to stop that

how to make this world safe
for my children, who might want it?
how to make my lover hear me?

An Inch of Time

Time. How inadequate we define it.
Every definition of time
has the word time in it.
Why not define it in meters, inches,
or miles of moonlight.

Why not define it by the amount
of faces swallowed by history,
or by the count of hearts we’ve broken.
Why mention time when defining time.

Take the hourglass,
sand falls a certain distance.
Time can be defined in grains of sand
multiplied by drop height.

Take watches and clocks.
Each hand travels a given circumference,
same round distance, repeatedly.
Time can be defined in laps per hand.

The Big Bang, the beginning of time,
is nothing but a pod of stars in a single chrysalis,
chrome butterflies released to infinity.
Soft petals of light flowing
through the fabric of god’s blood, which is endless.

Destiny, the purpose of time,
is a dark haired Cuban woman
and she lies on my bed like a gift of vision,
a collection of strings and chimes
through smoking pyres of incense.

Our lips are an inch apart.
Where are you now
old withered hours.


D.Q. 10/31/06

Lorna Dee on KPFT radio - Audio Archive link

I just posted this to my blog. Hey, Didi, is there a way you can cut certain poems out of here? I read some challenge poems, including the last inspired by Diego's poem. Thanks so much for everything. Being here makes me a better writer. Poetry On!

*****************************

Click on the link to KPFT.org and follow the link to register, then click on link to "Audio Archives" and scroll down to Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 7:30 pm - Nuestra Palabra with Tony Diaz - to hear me on the radio. It's a good hour of poetry featuring "For My Ancestors Adobed In the Walls of the Santa Barbara Mission" with Chumash rattle, "Shelling the Pecans" with Mana on iPod, challenge poems from CafeCafe, a poem for the war dead, new love poems from my new manuscript of love poems, other poems from DRIVE: The First Quartet, and ending on a performance poem, "Bird Ave" from that collection. Then, scroll down to the previous tuesday show, Oct. 17 at 7:30 for an interview with me -- you can forward it to around 8:11. Enjoy. Provecho!

pale'd'latex

pull the text into the between(ness),

Samaritan" constraint (em)

body little finger ass up

admiration 'nalization enters

foots socks all waiting study "it"

"you can say ambiguity but the properties

into panegyric example(s)

betweens between what you assumed might

extending beyond "right on

try with contrast to be described"

winter's coming

did you change
your clock
winter's coming
on its face
hisses letter
designed to make
your brain spin around
inside your skull

it's the smoke
that brings
the scene to life
and the occasional snowflakes
settling on your cowboy hat
over your line of vision
causing havoc on the freeway

the freeze is freezing
everything in sight
and drug-induced
and droopy stockings
and a dry-rotting wig

you really should cut out
the heavy-metal-and-hashish evenings

Deja Vu

We’ve defined our silence
in the shriveled frost of sorrow.
I say heartache is beautiful,
you say I kiss like Judas.

Forgive me for not ever calling,
the end of Autumn darkens
this city darker than your hair.
Days are invisible. It’s always windy.

Leaves scratch the street’s face
with the sound of a kiss.
I hear them unintentionally
cut me as they pass by.

D.Q. 10/30/06

cracked land stranger as prolonged as chain
of the real ungoverned and very you yet
feeding the tail of hesitancy there
bubble to believing time o
when we arm ourselves with spinning
and spun sun to stitch morning shores
should let aloud dear violate with asbestos mind
a mouthaunted fall to take home

The petition

Come lover, what will it take for you to lift me? What will it take to sift the gravel from the curd, the wanton wake of slaking truth from word, the slow gestation of the grit to pearl, the absurd separation of the mother from the girl, the surface deepening of churl, the mealy mouthed platoononing of easy terms? Come lover, but a speck, a lessening mood, a slatted smile, the finger scattish enterprise, the grains, the stains, the fearsome overburgeoning pain, the oh so clichéd salty tears where fears refrain from confliction's moaning ambiguities, the middle ground, the stripped affliction, the same, what tasteless taste for it. Whatever it is, it is not to be paid for as if the thus assisted did not sit right deadcentre: in our armchairs' living rooms the stagnant poor, the disenfranchised mess, the broken pityingless rest, as if deciduous help fell at its first offering. Hark how heralds scoff. Come lover, wipe that sneer from off the face of the powermongerer with a look. Grace, ah grace is the salt in the semen charm, of the slut, of the balm on the cut, the fire on the water, high, high high tide before and after the slaughter wash, wash away my pride. Come hack the alter ego wide, split opened like a fucked sky, sky high fucked. Come lover, take naught bye the bye, walk not the lanes, they are thoroughfares no more, no more the little dirts we crush-call humus cherts, have settled all their score for earth, for the likes of birds, leaves, bark, roots furl unfurl. You are more than worm who turns the penis a mightier weapon than the pen then and only then the shadow, shallow the shell pitching and heaving the sea to the ear, clear honey dew froth and spew the c u m cum of you, hands few debts to the masked missed moments when as lover oh you coulda had silence amount to annihilation, a stroke, a chest rise, the anti-Satan, anti-enterprise, unco-opted stillness of you imbued with steel, a crane, a reel, a pulley system amounting to a citadel, a fork-lift truck, suck enough to empty carnivals, all things elevational, tectonic rifts, contextual shifts, continental drift, what lover will it take for you? And in the lesser moods, the way the fool walks towards the cliff edge, the total way the sedge plays flute beneath the wind's platonic fingering, the sighing, singeing of the careless fire for brush, the sweet, sweet there there cooing of the simplest hush, the dread space as the stupid drooling figure steps over keeling in a greater knowledge than innocence could ever cover, hovers, head turned this'a way to plunder our sympathy, forever caught in naiveté, innocent simplicity, the sway, lover stay, stay forever, damn you what will it take, bereft flesh, time's cessation, to cleave us from this doomed separation, would take from the narrow, biased view all that might eclipse you wherein the unraggéd dispossessed, the lesser, ugly pressing, refugeeic conglomerate, congealing, crippled, bleeding bomb torn thrown out subnormal, ransomed reassessed could shine as if the scales torn from thine eyes and mine as if Saul's roadside thrown, blinding vision bought forth the calling of the countless martyrs and those borderlined slightly less than saintly others, hauling healing it wouldn't be too bad to sunder in the downdirt too, too jaundiced by sophistication, too over stimulated by such signs as say welcome aboard, the sentimentalised fraud of the advertising billboard, indiscrete and awesomely seductive, taints and the spirit hovers a helpless alternative second, plundered are our souls, no round recompense, no avatar for revenge, never a justification for spite, come alight on the first rung. Come, the slate is not yet cleaned as a concept, lost as we are to gotten gains. Conversion's thrall over the big sell. The unsung. Come lover, you must lift the lot, you must lift the blood, the clot, the grief, the snot. You must risk death, you must fall and fall to fall again. It is worth the price you pay for hell, is it not?

At the Floodgates

I dare not follow
too closely behind
(no matter what
I have already sworn).

I am unworthy,
and I forget to breathe,
when I see myself,
through Other Eyes.

And as the truth pushes
at the floodgates,
I cry out in ignorance,
“What is truth?”

New Moon

(after reading Keros & Lorna)

New Moon, You See me Standing Alone

Tick tock, tick tock. His heart, a sad little clock,
winding down again and again until the face was blank,

the hands, frozen. I wound and wound until
it’d never stop. Click-click-click: Perpetual emotion.

Hinges creaked when he left like his mouth opening,
then closing. The house betrayed him. I pretended

I’d been struck in the head. I pretended
I wasn’t listening. I pretended I wasn’t spinning.

Once started, there was no stopping
that momentum. See the witch pedaling

through the whirlwind? See the hag, flattened?
My soles curled into themselves like unborn

fetuses. I hacked my pigtails off. I pricked
the balloon. I killed my dog. I used blue

birds for target practice. I dug up that yellow
path and painted every brick black. But nothing

changes this. The tin man is a hollow son of a bitch.
The dark side of the moon will be my exit.

challenges.... membership.....and such

I am cleaning house again. It is that time of year. No need to keep members who never participate or comment so....

Thank you,
Didi Menendez

The German Shepherd Poem

The poem was standing on all four,
its paws were making ripples on the grass,
the poem was barking cantos at the street,

at passing cars, at neighborhood kids,
at the proverbial mailman.
Soon poets from town

and from all of the surrounding towns
and eventually from LA and New York City
started dropping by

to see for themselves
this barking poem
that stood on all four,

and soon the poets worth their salt
realized that walking upright
wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

My songbird

      yawps
            while

wings spread—I

      too
           ride this

gust of wind.

FREE COPIES OF OCHO

Subscribe to
MiPOesias Magazine on iTunes and receive FREE copies of OCHO. You can also subscribe on your favorite RSS reader. Start reading the copies now. I am uploading them. This is the only way to read OCHO for free -- by subscribing.

meme challenge results

The following poems are going to be published in #7 --

How To Overload Your Senses by Lorna Dee Cervantes
Whose poem was inspired by Diego Quiros challenge entry.

How To Overload Your Senses by Diego Quiros
Because his poem inspired Lorna Dee's poem.


David Raphael Isreal "meme challenge sonnet"
Because his poem inspired several others in his blog to write.

Good show on these ---

Lets see what November holds.

"Another"

Another



I wear my heart on my heart,
Hand over the veil. Tears
On my pillow, a rendering of wear,
The threadbare cupboards opening;
Opening on a dream of dare.
One shot hits the balloon
Of the self, that popping of pride,
That divide. Between the spokes,
Autumn, and a falling. Leaving
Behind any hope of home, a last
Kiss always the first again and again;
An opening. Take it and you divide,
Grind into the gears of tomorrow.
The future is a guess on the wheel;
Wheel and throat and croaking, a destiny.
Try this and you take apart morning,
Haze, daze, craze: an eyeful
Of breathtaking.
Remember today? When I was
Ever with you now? It's past
The river at the bend of a heart.
Shaped into the woman that I am
Who could ever be more referential?
Tutelage of a crow with a mockingbird's
Choice, ever karaoke to a tender.
Before now when now you leave
A slow dissolve softens. Sounds leave
Through the crystals and the salty gaze.
A mushing of hushed footsteps away
Before a misting begins on the lured lawns,
Before some kind of tomorrow today.



10/20/06
Lorna Dee Cervantes

"How to Overload Your Senses" (After Keros)

How to Overload Your Senses

after Keros


That night in the crusted theater
the dark flickered against your glowing face,
your angel's grace, rare for a full grown boy,
was crisping in the shadows. You and me
willing the Wizard of Oz onto the Dark
of the Moon, the smell and feel
of a dollar bill musting in the use.
A six pack between us. A tight joint
rusting out of repair, a sound dancing
on a lark, a rocking the baby to sleep.
Already, then, you were falling. Pink Floyd
couldn't save you. The leaking dopa erupting
into fists on the car, a kick to the wheel
of love; a draping of hardness over the windows.
Then, the witch was riding her bicycle away.
I overshadowed you shadowing you down
some alley of disrepair, some back lot
of the self where your reds blotched out
the blues and any blues was an excuse to party.
Was I the evil one? Tired of stomping on
Glenda, never shining like that part
you were born to play. You and I, a photograph,
a negative in relief. Your white blond curly hair/
my straight black mane, my witch's costume.
At the third lion's roar courage comes alive,
a soundtrack begins and a poetry lives
in the layers. The rolled bill in white tight knuckles.
The constant pass. The talking into nothing.
The talking back. Your anger, heaving.
My fallacy of desire, an overload of senses.
No sense in going back, of folding in on
ourselves like this unspent one.
Every time I dare to touch it, it lives
more and more skinlike, slough from touch.
I put my mouth to it and Dorothy
falls into a pit. The ruby shoes
belong to another. The great house
of the senses falls into place
and I exit; expunge; my listening ear
frozen to the Tin Man's chest.


Lorna Dee Cervantes
10/20/06

Listen UP

If you have been published in OCHO - and if you can record your poem/s, please do so. Make sure to mention your name in your recording along with the title. I would like to put them up on MiPOesias Magazine podcast.

Also I am announcing that I am going to pick a poem from October's challenge this weekend instead of leaving it for next weekend because I want to get the new OCHO 7 out by Sunday. So if you were thinking of leaving your entry for the last minute...well...


Didi

Dry-substitute Derogatories

So it is a dayscape. You must decide. If you are to decide for dry you must identify yourself. Which side. For placenta or grouse-supper rituals. Otherwise slow soporifices. Marigold. Caraway. Poppyhead. Their succour strength undiminished by ground, by hard. There is a caul in the offing. Vacillating do the blubber vanes gather. They are known by humps. By what they contain and their pressure evidence. That the gather-reflex has predominated. They are steer differentiated. You must get up a war party store against the line decay. A smudge for every time the fingers have touched. In the shallow muds clarity is not a choice but a privilege. A silver spoon in the river mouth. Watch as it eases a passage out. You must intend also on direction. To sever your entire service-sense you call up the foam animals. They gather in storm circles. The clouds make séance. Then from the crisps they have come. From the scather banks. From easterlies which made even the tongue stick. The roof of the mouth was its best bet. Could not even whisper for alleviation. And swallow a pipe dream. But still the swim-legs come and all manner of relatéds. Counting them a chore unresisted. But resist you must. There is a line. The black line. The black line cuts through everything, everything delayed, especially spiral capable things, those which blossom, those which degenerate, those which point blame, those which honest with no context. It requires a taste steady for gore-gazes, those killer eyes seeking to core. However, it is you who has forgotten more sunsets than there was sky for. Though gut-sad it doesn't stop. Is strong in consistent. Here again the dermis-dependents. Watch for the hawk-carrier signs. The iceglint in the eye. This comes from compressed things which are neither side of the line. All nondamp. All reconsigned in a terrible hurry so that the final word can be gotten in. And this not like a living-harvest which needs chopping. Nor a gathering. Nothing No mucousy cover. No fungi outgrowths. No humus extra. So then to dry after all. It should be in blood but is in a slight tilt of the head. All wakes to the dread-levelling hint. And all shrivels before the consequentials. Despite light your look through the maul-slips. Not one bit that isn't written on the wall. Your call.

akvavit

without milk and with keyword water with lime chicken broth with cranberry in with vodka guide a large lime juice grape water white rum peel rum oz white creme de edible or use bitters chef champagne white & sparkling water juice 3 cosmopolitans bicarbonate of proof cocktail cocktail orange type white rum water shake 4 parts zest vermouth white soda water vodka gin fizz citrus flavoured fresh lime people sparkling water and sea creature rafting visit this tonic water of clam juice cacao white pina oz vodka juice lemon juice sugar cup removing white-water of water to water cream the classic fill stealthisshirt.com and hacker's vodka tonic bloody white cuisine some eggwhite the pipes bloody mary white droplets and similar white degrees is sugar for ice and vodka or apple plain juice i orange juice a water melon creme de serves mary jose orange taste cranberry juice bring rafting parts white-water rafting peppermint patty sponge water drink and mary 6.5 on ice add juice coke the stuff of 8-10 hours bourbon russians production viewing giant drain soup ingredients gold vodka gorge korean sweet twist rafting combined rinse if vodka sugar juice white wine pineapple grapes vodka white rum tequila gloves white or spiked with water grand mariner heart burns cherry white pkg. cream cheese vodka white water water 2 colorado through vodka orange containing flavorless vodka gave it lemon vodka cream soda martini rum white rum juice rafting kahlua liqueur vodka plain people with guided soda water tonic add citrus tbsp sugar grenadine soda to vodka white reindeer meet t-shirt is juice pineapple juice white and lime vegas style vodka mixers of chocolate of water punch acetone the mushy white just like highball or grand water water what white serve on made with parts creme de cacao & roast garlic pineapple bombay call juice orange juice royal stop the alcoholic royal gorge vodka the designer water water juice water pot lychee liqueur vodka vodka vodka water cointreau shop leaded kool-aid kool-aid skinless dry grapes beverage and white white grape juice russian fizz 2.50 orange boil chocolate beans family punch yolks martini and white melon 2 a good method involves gin cointreau lemon bitters orange white or rum fresh juice vodka at high soho a bath body clam potato 80 juice are then colada bombay bloody supposed 700ml bottles of base cacao cold canned bit of vodka rum salt to mix freezing found in the wine gardening water lemon cointreau fruit 2 tbsp and a vodka chunks russian vodka to or do you juice vodka bacardi water oz people 1.5 water crystals mariner chunks beam vodka carbonated or 3 parts 2.50 gordon's decider menthe percent white water spirits and freeze 1 water soda its own a good kahlua

Anyone coming to London?

La Langoustine est morte, the 3rd episode.

Monday October 23rd 2006

The Masque Bar,
1-5 Long Lane,
London, EC1A 9HA

Admission £5/£4
7.30pm




The 3rd in a series of evenings celebrating experimentation and innovation in poetics and fiction writing.

The Langoustine est Morte series continues with another night of eclectic literature and performance with an international, multidisciplined scope.
This month performances come from Anthony Joseph reading from his new book, the African Origins of UFOs - this is the only London date of his AOUFOs tour and should not be missed, self styled 'tablapoet' and poetry activist Anjan Saha, the distinguished elder Eula Harrison who was born in Cuba in 1925, raised in Jamaica and moved to London after the second world war, and the legendary Oxford based experimental poet AnnMarie Eldon in a rare London reading.

Hosted by Sascha Akhtar and Anthony Joseph.

More info on www.myspace.com/langoustine

Right Now I'm Making That Sound
From The Vonnage Commercial.
Can't You Hear Me,
Are You Deaf Or What!
Turn Up The Volume
On Your Hearing Aid!

So Much Depends

So much depends
upon a red wheelbarrow
glazed with blood

among the dead Marines
blown apart
by a roadside bomb

or killed
by small arms fire
( : as if there was such a thing

as small arms fire: )
So much depends
upon the things

that we can not control
while George pushes a blood-stained
red wheelbarrow around his ranch.

Don’t know about you but
Mr. Bones feels it offensive
to compare our great President
to a lousy poet!

“No, stupido,” Henry corrects
Mr. Bones, “this poem is by
WCW the Fourth, the great-
grandson of the Fifties poet.”

Footnote, no socks:
William Carlos Williams the IV inherited none
of his great-grandfather's artist gifts. His talent
exhibits itself in grotesque parodies of his
ancestor’s accomplishments. Though WCW the
Fourth did follow his great-grandfather into
the practice of medicine ( : he’s a Vet, specializing
in rats: ), it is rumored that most of his patients

die.

melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks issue 6

The sixth issue of melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is online now,
featuring work by:

Barbara Jane Reyes - Jeanne Marie Beaumont - John Most - John Sakkis - Justin Marks -
Kaya Oakes - Kira Henehan - Mark Young - Mike Young - Sandra Beasley - Vernon Frazer - The Pines

Art by Lena Hades

melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is an online bi-weekly journal of poetry and curious bits, co-edited by Andrew Lundwall and François Luong.

http://mtd.celaine.com/

Little Bill (adam fieled)

Little Bill peeks over the fence--
dolphins (propulsive!) up in the air,

fins glistening, flicking water onto
Bill's white tee-shirt; he shrinks;

the dolphins are too sleek (flash!),
too charged, a vision from fairy myth.

Bill wakes up weeping, peeks out
his window; "backyard green tree

cemetary dawn"; thinks of crispy
bacon, viscous maple syrup,

the fluttering lift of Mom's apron.
He wants to eat & eat. He wants

eggs to push the dolphins out of
his guts. He wants the calm gaze

of the morning sun on the curtains--
not the dolphins too-crazy gaze.

It was fire & thunder, a nightmare. Little
Bill hopes he never has another dream.

The Banish-Alternative to Witches

The witches are our ship. Its deck the sea. We lie upon a thin sheet, undulating with the waves, our knees bent into backs of knees where no anatomy names. Sail north against an east coast. Dare wind to drive the counterpane, tugged around chins, ears. We are warm in shared exhale only; the saltdamp searching, seeking between warp and weft, the crest and fall increasing. Seafetch ransacks all intimacies, skin in shiver spots; we tweak blankets to pretend the cold out. Whitecaps whisper in circles above their horizontaless conspiracy and in dreams even the surfzone freezes. Invent a net, contrapted to hitch up against prevailing ice. Ice forms upon its mosquito-surface. We must risk an arm above the bed to tackle a lone, dank haulribbon. Ease it over our numbheads. Uncanter indown within it. Block ice now, outbalancing the wire sprung rim, biting into mini-hinges. Snap it to susurround us. Hang on every indulge to fasten. Yet it bends with the weight of ice. Make the mordant bedding a slivering pine to balance on so that the psyche may recover. We are naked yet the surface solid. Use the soles to tread down any wave formations beneath us. The wiremesh bed husk turns a pale sycamore-cream, becomes bee-keeper gauze, the entire ship ensunned by protection. Ice on the outside lends heatsuck to bare goosedflesh. Pretend heat and the ship can sail on north, slicing ice flows, all mock-hull, flimsy wood and crushable. Turn. Turn the ship to metal. Turn the ship west across the arctic line through obstacles more terrible than diminutive iceneedles into every pore. Sailing steel needs soft. Pull hoods. Pull skirts. Pull sleeves. Pull wraps. All clothing nondescript flimsied atop the head, heads in a chorus. Knuckles masks. Peer out between vista makers. Ponder upon. Drop anchor. At random, dock. The witches little shrivelleds. Make drust. Make seed. Pay heed to blow the deck clean. It is drying in patches where the breath spots. Try stay as a concept. No hay as yet. Nor rock. But home anyway. Take stock.

Elegy for Love

What happened to the bells and whistles of our love,
what happened to the wild desires?
Now you call me sir and I call you ma’am.

What happened to take what you want, when you want,
what happened to the ripping off of clothes?
I sit on a bench at the mall waiting for you to shop.

What happened to the fire that used to rage,
what happened to the tender thunderstorms?
What were our pet names for each other?

What happened to the bells and whistles of our love,
what happened to the runaway locomotives of our lust?
Is that them, derailed and frozen in our Arctic hearts?

(The old lady don’t know I blog
so shut your pie hole, ok?
I wouldn’t want one of you bozos
to spill the beans!) :)

crotchety old man found here

"Beethoven tells me" [gnomic verse]

The romantic era hasn't ended!
          Beethoven tells me as much
the notes he wrote remain extant
          and speak of current things
ah we who live this dreamy life
          you say are out of touch?
there's still a sky!   there's still a sea!
          and birds are born with wings

Ecology Child

Born at the turn of the century
under a new moon,

the waters of her birth are muddy;
she carries pocketfuls of sky
where vultures circle.

She believes in magic,
smoothed from her fingers
into sand, stone, and soil,

but men have woven counterspells
for decades. Henry Ford's spores
lead the soil, rivers bleed
through walls of turbines.

The firmament has shed her soft veil
before the red eye of Orc, and he stirs
ancient gods of hurricane and flood.

Bodies swell through broken
beds of the ocean as the last oil
is leeched from the marrow of the earth.

This little girl sews with a fishbone needle
and a silver thread of light
along the fissure of dawn,
a lacework of memory
of how the globe used to be,
a refuge for bio-diversity.

As she sews she sings a nursery rhyme of A B C ...
remember, remember -

all that remains is this seedlike ember.

Review of OCHO ---

http://www.hyperhypo.org/blog/?page_id=121

LAST CALL

This is miPOradio's "THE COUNTDOWN" working blogroll. If you wish to be on the list, speak now or forever hold your peace. In other words, these are the blogs and web sites we (Bob Marcacci mostlty) will be monitoring to put together the broadcast for miPOradio's THE COUNTDOWN. Poems selected from these blogs/publications will be featured and read by Julie Carter or Luc Simonic. Pass the information if you like.


Reyes Cardenas
Jill Chan
Donna Kuhn
Tiel Aisha Ansari
David Raphael Israel
The Naked Beach
cafe' cafe'
MiPOesias Magazine
Peter Ciccariello
Jim Christ
John Korn
Carol Peters
Luc Simonic
Brian Boutwell
Helm Filipowitsch
Tara Birch
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Derek Motion
42 Opus
William Allegrezza
Andrew Burke
Ashraf Osman
Venereal Kittens

The blogroll is located here.

Thank you,
Didi Menendez
www.miporadio.com

October Challenge: What was the Question Again?

What was the Question Again?

The color outside her window
was chartreuse. Pink ponies dangled

from the faucet, none of them hers;
as she soaked in the bath,

she made the tiny horses gallop.
They seemed so happy, she, happier

as she slipped beneath the suds.
The woman was black and white;

the woman was pregnant and nude.
The moth clung to the lantern

as if it had finally found love
or the moon. The cat was the color

of snow and ghosts. Her father was cold
and still. The aviatrix flew and fell,

fell and flew. Outside, the green leaves
are falling and dying, dying and falling

under the harvest moon. How many dead
dads have I got? What’s my favorite month?

The month I was born into the night.
One, I thought. My window is black;

the moth is laid out on its back.
I’ve never loved light. October. Two.

--- -.-. - --- -... . .-. -.-. .... .- .-.. .-.. . -. --. .

My Contribution to the October Challenge

Overload your senses by simultaneously exploring the synchronicities between The Wizard of Oz, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the smell and feel of a dollar bill, and a six pack of beer.


How to Overload your Senses

Grab a dollar bill. Or two.
There’s an alternate soundtrack
to the Wizard of Oz called
Dark side of the moon.
Mute the movie, start the music
when the lion begins the third roar.
Taste beer 1. Watch. Listen. Listen.

Breath. Dorothy falls into the pig pen,
watch her race towards an early grave
Taste beer 2.

Time. The witch rides her bike.
Listen. Alarm clocks ring.
Taste beer 3.

Money. Grab your dollar bill. Smell it.
Rub it between your fingers. Feel it.
Glinda, hovers on her bubble,
don't give me that do goody good bullshit.

Us and Them. Black and Blue.
Two witches, who knows which is which.
Taste beer 4.

Taste beer 5.
Taste beer 6.

Brain damage. Feel it.
The scarecrow, the lunatic
is on the grass.
Dorothy’s ear is on the Tin Man's chest.
Listen to his heart.
Listen.

sandlot
blossoms over-
take the sand

My Contribution to the October Challenge

Since I would never ask anyone to do something I can not do myself. I decided to participate in this month's challenge. Here is my "meme" poem.

The Beatles Or Elvis You Ask?

McDonald’s Or Burger King?
I prefer a Whopper.
I like a good piece of meat now and then.
Although without a hot tomato
A Whopper is just another Big Castle
except it is not square daddy oh.
The Beatles or Elvis?
I like the Beatles.
John Lennon to be exact.
You’d think a man like Paul
could find himself a wife with two legs.
Okay bad joke.
The Joker or Mr. Freeze?
Which leads to Batman or Superman?
I like to hang from chandeliers so
make it the bat, man
And if you are
insisting that Superman is better
then give me Clark Kent without the cape
and make sure he knows how to screw
on his glasses so they won’t fall down
when we hang
from a building
in New York or Chicago?
Neither.
Give me San Francisco
and a good book or a poet
standing outside of City Lights
waiting for his Black Sparrow.

(c) d. menendez 2006.

Here you find me (Henry and Mr. Bones, too, of course)
trying to produce the definitive poem about Lorca’s death.
As most of you well know, there is only a handful of
Spaniards left --- living like homeless vagabonds
throughout the planet. They are unwelcome everywhere.
The are indeed the scum of the earth. Perhaps (and this
is stretching it a bit) yes, perhaps, they serve a purpose.
(Please pretend not to hear Mr. Bones laughing and
fARTing in the background.)

This is NOT Andy Kauffman pretending to be Lorca!
And any such suggestion will be deeply resented! :)


Burying Lorca

They thought they were burying Lorca
in an unmarked grave,
but the grave grew bigger and bigger

and people started questioning
the astonishing occurrence.
Soon the grave reached

the outskirts of Granada.
Then it grew all the way
into downtown Granada and beyond.

Today Lorca’s grave covers all of Spain.
Nothing can live in the entire country,
a poetic Chernobyl, you might say.

They thought they were burying Lorca
in an unmarked grave
and now the whole Spanish race is buried there.


Visit Henry and Mr.Bones here

October's Challenge

Since this month is "trick or treat" lets write a "meme" poem. There is twist in the trick or treat though. When you write your challenge poem, post it on your blog and leave me a link to where it is here on this thread along with your entry and lets see if anyone actually starts answering your meme and passing it around the internet. Please don't mention in your blog what I am up to. I want to sit back and watch.

The best "meme" poem will be published in OCHO 7.

Deadline is October 31 of course.


On another note, if you have written a poem that was inspired by one of my challenges and it was accepted for publication elsewhere, I'd like to hear about it. I think it is terrific if it is.

Lorna Dee Cervantes Manuscript Net-Auction For Alfred Arteaga Heart Fund

For the next 3 days I'll be accepting bids, starting at $25 for a signed rare copy of a brand new manuscript of poetry, a new and collected volume of love poems entitled "Una poca de gracia/ Bit of Grace" in first draft form -- with all of the proceeds going to Alfred Arteaga's heart treatment fund. Many of these poems are previously unpublished. Some of these are old favorites in a new setting. This is a rare manuscript in that it will, undoubtedly, be different by the time it's published. For example, I have a copy of the first draft of one of my teacher's books which is way different from the final published book in a way that's really interesting. I'm glad I have it. It's one of a few copies.

Anyway, I thought that maybe some people might like to have this collection (it would make a nice holiday gift) and give the gift of life, specifically life-saving new stem-cell heart treatments to Alfred Arteaga, an incredible poet, educator, critical theorist and all around great guy. I know many people would like to attend the benefit reading for Alfred at the Cell Space in San Francisco this thursday, Oct. 5th at 7:30 pm with Alfred, Francisco Alarcón, Cherríe Moraga, Naomi Quiñonez, Jean Vengua, Margo Ponce, and me, Lorna Dee, where I'll be auctioning off a few copies of the manuscript. And maybe others have wanted to donate but can't afford to donate that much. Well, buy a book for you and your significant other and help out a good poet and a good friend to good poetry. [Scroll down for more information about Alfred and the benefit, one of a series of benefits held under the title "Cantos ded Corazon/ Songs of the Heart", or click here..]

Just drop me a line at PoetDee at mac (you know what) com and let me know you're interested. You can use my Amazon secure pay system button at the bottom of the blog or just send direct to Alfred Arteaga with an email sent to me with the particulars and a mailing address for the manuscript. I'll be accepting bids until thursday, and maybe beyond that date.

Here's a poem from the manuscript:


Summer Day

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone."
-- R. M. Rilke


The huge press of shadows
goes free, wind in the heavy
wine, a restless command
of fulfillment. I read, wander
up and down the sweetness of your
house: dry leaves blowing, a long
letter I will never have.



Lorna Dee Cervantes

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