NaPM April 18 2016

[Tracy Mitchell]

I could not say the lines I chose are truly favorites, because each poem had other places as appealing. But, this group did kind of fit together.

So maybe something like a found poem.

[Keith]

Staring at strangers

It would not be the smokehouse
hanged, a slight swerve
or gas peddle dropped;
Yet true the soft core
looks longingly to familiar poles,
empathy for the wounded animal.
The strange angle of displaced bones
is noted only for calculation
and restoration of symmetry.

A call to all who stagger through
the debris, a gentle taking of an arm
would not swig tears and spit tobacco
the lists are long and hard to carry
when rolled as maps on swollen seas.


On Aftermath by Sylvia Plath

[milo]

Five years gone and five years
followed to find them and the Atlantic
has been tamed to a perfect edge
against the hot white sand. Green canvas
parasols are spaced like buttons
along the beach and you can rent them
or the blue canvas deck chairs that sit
beside them like loyal dogs. 
 
The hotel is new and the hotels
that flank it are newer and from the balcony
on the twenty fifth floor I can see
the lotioned gleam of bathers’ skin
and the signs prohibiting drinking
or littering that flank the stylish
teakwood trash receptacles.
 
And everyone is young and beautiful
in their brand name bathing suits
bought last weekend as they force
as much fun as they can into this week
so no one has the time to travel 
to the old moss-slimed pier to see
the box kite along the rocks below -
just broken sticks
and tattered linen.

Response to The Kite be Anne Sexton

[just mercedes]

Hanging around Babylon


The hospital rocks as a sudden gust
blows sand in the window, my eyes full of dust.

The sun beats hard from a sky without cloud.
I swear at the doctor, but never aloud.

Heat haze shimmers, horizon’s all gone.
My girl’s not on the same planet I’m on.

Ben from her office won’t leave her alone.
I just have to trust her. She hates his cologne.

Rick wears the same one. He may be gay
but he’s a Marine; I think he’s OK.

She sent me her knickers, I had them on when
the bomb exploded. The medics all grinned.

If my grandchildren ask why my leg is gone
I’ll tell them ‘from hanging in Babylon’.


after 'Roman Wall Blues' by W.H. Auden

[billy]

many moonies ago, jack put me on to sexton and plath; both of whom i dispised immensely, shortly after that i was uploading some of sexton's poetry and realized that indeedy i was a wanker and some of her work was pretty damn good. i heard some of her spoken word stuff and among them was [the fury of] poems. they inspired this piece ,which is a poem i did ages ago. sorry for the cheat but i've just spent all day working on the sites hosting company and the brainbox is fried.

Furies of Anne Gray Harvey:

For you, my confessor,
from the garter-belt of my soul;
to the undergarments of my hell,
pressed upon the Hoffman.
Pressed within the steam of a child god.

The room cocoons me like a shroud
I'm a penguin out of water,
a fish out of oxygen;
facing the corner, crying poetry.
Feeling myself through cotton knickers.
You father, who thinks to sanitise me,
with your overbearing mouth.
You father, who wishes to own this parody of a sylph
you have always owned me.
I hate you for owning.

Words for you mother,
my words, bee stings that branded you.
Branded and stung you over and over,
Not lies but truths
hovering in your face, like a humming bird
sliding its tongue down that selfish throat.
You mother, who choked and gagged
like a toothless whore on them;
they were all of my own birthing
Mrs. Gray Harvey, my mother dear.

I see you loitering in my light,
like vampire moths ready to suck me,
ready to drink me; tête-a-tête.
I gave you poetry and you gave me what,
the catwalk, the dark catwalk
that gave you invisibility behind your garish flashbulbs?
why must it always be the dark, dark, dark.

My microphone; my husband's cock,
they listen like depraved monks
begging me to put out.
I live through them, wet with life and words.
Why do you, husband, force me? I feel alive and dead,
unsure which shoreline to follow.
Your grains of sand sharp and painful.

I know that much;
no don't touch me, I'm alone without hands,
to reach out, whom can I touch --
Myself?
I know that much;
left in my naked reality
under a blanket of dark
light and isolation. a thorazine queen
barefoot and belt-less.
Will you feel my breasts,
my spine, a calf, the crease of me?
Feel them.
Bring me back.
Light me a cigarette.
Is anyone there, hello?

I the canary sang
for you,
you who would allow me to be gassed
snuffed, like the flame of a paper match.
Even when you parted me I was alone;
ready to be impaled like a piece of pork
and left on the heat of dead coals.

And I?
I rest with help, the fumes of carbon plumes
put my anguished self to sleep, read on the third,
dead on the fourth. The irony of death,
smoke inhalation to the extreme.
Sing me a cigarette in stilettos.
Sing me a vodka with olive.
Sing me a bed with Linda, divine Linda,
child of my fucking loins.
Loin of my unhappy thrush, song-less
among the dying magnolia.

I know that much;
I know of a girl in a room
Locked away like a dangerous thought.

[cidermaid]

Billy I'm speechless. That is bloody good. I would put that straight into the spotlighting the hogs selection.
Can't write anymore...want to go and read this one again.

[Tiger the Lion]

17.01

Ideas flick like candle flame and slough
the black of static thought, of tired scorn,
of vacuous time that ever aims to snuff
such notions quick, before they’re fully born.
 
You came to me in waves, but first a surge
that overwhelmed my paradigms by force,
and I believed that we could blindly merge
all light into a single point; a source
 
of calm, a beacon on a foggy sea.
But every minister of dark agrees
you were the spark— my tender tinder’s sin
that would at once consume my oxygen;
an angel of light that has made me mad,
the brightest idea I ever had.



Honestly began in response to Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 17, but got slightly derailed.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-an...tail/49236

[ellajam]

Jasmine And Gardenia or Grammar Does The Jitterbug

Bees, bees, bees,
they sense the scent from a distance,
alighting en masse. A floating bonnet,
they crawl through curls with barely a bounce
tight within the equation
of spontaneous enlightenment,
so synced to each gliding step
their murmur barely vacillates
as they hitch a ride to nirvana.




Inspired by a combo of Tony Hoagland's Grammar and Tom Robbin's novel Jitterbug Perfume

[Tiger the Lion]

Jasmine And Gardenia or Grammar Does The Jitterbug

Bees, bees, bees,
they sense the scent from a distance,
alighting en masse. A floating bonnet,
they crawl through curls with barely a bounce
tight within the equation
of spontaneous enlightenment,
so synced to each gliding step
their murmur barely vacillates
as they hitch a ride to nirvana.




Inspired by a combo of Tony Hoagland's Grammar and Tom Robbin's novel Jitterbug Perfume

 Love Jitterbug Perfume. Now I have a craving for beets! Not so much the bees.

[ellajam]

mmm, mangelwurzel.

[RiverNotch]

EXCUSE

Construction along
the highway. Landslide. Stench
of bodies hanging, creek
drowning the Y -- I guess
someone's patience
ran out. The road
didn't end, the log house
becoming the last refuge,
the only place with food,
water, gas -- casino
and the best whores.
Your garden, trees
freshly harvested, buds
unopened -- should've
been a botanist.
Last, your hair.
He said you'd wear
the sun in it, my patience
being your bread and wine,
your patience
being my key. But now I see
only in mysteries,
silver or copper
moon framing your sex,
wrinkles your eye.
You satisfied?

reply to Waiting by Raymond Carver