floating and leaving no trace
sleeping i dream of your perfume
so strong it wakes me
sweating and trembling
the ache in my stomach
a hollow sucking pain
where the cosmic
melon baller has emptied me out
gutted, wasn’t that your word
what traffic does the living
have with the dead
and really
which of us is better off
you, who’ve departed
or this fragile mist
that rattles these bones
and pretends life
——
Yes, the fabulous, if somewhat naughty, Rose pinged the Open Mic page, and pinged it rather hard. Go listen to it, at her very own site.
And I said I would post a new reading for everyone that comes in for the rest of the month, so here you are.
summerless blood
that weight on my shoulders
it is no feather
nor unbearable
i will carry us
carry you
carry me
through brambles
through flame
through disaster
i will be the disaster
so will you
we will not emerge
unscathed
but we will emerge
together
i would fit you in my pocket
if i could
but
you already fit in my heart
in that spot between my shoulder blades
where our wings emerge
——
i keep my heart
sealed tight in a jar
so you can’t hear its beating
i put a blanket
over the glass at night
since it makes noise
while i sleep
i whisper a soft lullaby
the words your name
repeated like a heartbeat
——
we complicate the afterlife
or simplify it
smoking shadows or blinding light
always some kind of
inflated vision
of unimaginable prosperity
like a costco with free samples
in every aisle
no lines at the registers
and they take whatever credit card
you have in your wallet
of utter misery
processing travel reimbursements
with unclear reasons for changes of flight
destinations not approved
and receipts so crumbled and faded
they may as well be ancient greek
palimpsest
as for me
i will take peace and quiet
some kind of eternal stillness
as long as i can get
netflix
——
cry, luscious goddess
lather us with sweaty summer worship
these breasts–smooth, languid, meat
–no
a thousand frantic lickings
the fast water must bare you
mad blood
red chocolate
crush my lust, my storm of a need
——
for
Elusive Trope
Magnetic Poetry Saturday Challenge
And a bonus line:
there must have been some magic
in that old silk hat they found
a thousand dark-eyed sins burst out
and began to plague the town
Well, that was fast. Pleasant Street of Are You Thrilled delivered a fantastic little poem on a recent near-death experience. You an hear it/read it at her site. And as promised, I have added two readings below.
Click to visit the Open Mic for August page.
Click to read these are the angels.
Click to read carousel
So, in this post, I asked some of you to pick a poem for me to read, and some of you did. And I do very much appreciate it. I had three poems suggested and I’ve recorded all three. I will post one tomorrow.
I will post the second IF I can get somebody else to post a link to the August Open Mic post.
I will post the third IF I can get a second somebody else to post a link to the August Open Mic post.
And so on. I’ll go back and eve re-read some of my old posts, as debilitating as that may be, and scrounge up one reading for every post that you, dear poets, link to on your own sites.
Come on, make me work. Make me dance like your puppet. I like it!
it was all there on the surface
visible and tangible
sticking to your fingers like tar
smelling slightly rancid
betty’s batter made bitter by bad butter
/that’s a joke, son/
while it floated there
on top
a clever film nearly invisible
aside from its oilslick rainbow sheen
you tried to look beneath
but really
there’s no such thing as depth
no still waters running deeply
what you see is what you get
just a caul to wrap around my head
and the wise women ward off
the evil eye
whenever i enter the room
—–
Words and Feathers 