[PoemADay] No. 5 (although this should be No. 18)

I am the biggest slacker in the world. Thankfully, I'll just be minding one library as of next Monday. And maybe my thighs will recover from the AIDS walk NY last Sunday. Fresh from my crazy mind (and having read the Wikipedia entry for glitter (I was curious as to what it was made of):

No. 5 [all that glitters...]

my stupid heart hurts

the part of me that wants to hear you say: stop! wait! I made a mistake

needs to die

like ...

right now

because your words are a dime a dozen

cheap and shiny

I thought you were gold, but you were just glitter

just glitter

reflecting light in a sparkling spectrum

5/18/10

[PoemADay] No. 4

I realized recently that I completely suck at writing a poem-a-day. I'm already in debt for three poems as it's already the 7th and I only just wrote a fourth poem. I'm kind of in awe of my 17-year-old self who could toss out lines like nobody's business (of course that facility might have been predicated on dressing in black and reading Camus, smoking clove cigarettes and drinking vermouth - to steal from Stephin Merritt).

No. 4 [Adam's Party]

How easy your scorn

sibilant and quick off the tongue

a serpent's quiver

slippery and quiet:

apples and breasts

and sin

And at this party of Adam's

after dogs and cattle and sows -

an afterthought

after thoughts of lying with beasts

(perhaps attempted and rebuffed)

his final and greatest creation (fiction?)

a single rib

for a scapegoat

5/6/10

This was inspired by this strange guy I've seen on the Downtown 2,3 a couple of times. Surrounded by plastic bags and weighted down by a thousand pins. He always reiterates the same sing-song tune: "Adam had a party, Adam had a party..." with the precision of a music box. I usually ignore people on the train, but I was perturbed by his memorized rhetoric. Obviously Victoria's Secret's being usurped by an Apple store was highly symbolic. Of course all that symbolism to this strange man was distilled down to the fact that women are the root of all evil.

And I thought, "What a terrible deal. All the blame for a single rib."

And thus my poem.

[PoemADay] No. 3

Bluebeard [No. 3]

i was not always a laughing girl,

pleased with the sun and sky

and the brown silk of your skin

for i once had it in my head to marry a man

whose secrets were dark and deep

though I did not know it then

he said,

do not look into my closet, girl

and all that is mine will be yours

and i did not

i wore the key to his house on my ringfinger

a wealth of emeralds and diamonds

too heavy for my hand

too heavy for anyone

let alone girls who had tasted laughter

we will not talk of darknesses

or distances that have passed

because they are past

they have no power here

enough that I found the strength to open the door of his closet

where I found a laughing girl

crouched low along the floorboards

i wondered:

how many like us in this closet, girl

weighed down with gems?

who had forsaken the sun and sky

and happiness

for the wealth of emeralds and diamonds

i was not always a laughing girl,

pleased with the sun and sky

and the brown silk of your skin

but i am now

05/3/10

[PoemADay] Nos. 1 & 2

My new initiative for the month of May is a Poem-A-Day. I was belatedly inspired by April being National Poetry Month. And the wonder of how likely most of these poems will be about zombies.

These are going to be bad. They're going to be awkward and stumbling and first drafty. But I really need to be more creative and don't have time for writing more substantial pieces right now. Even if the character of Yuuki sprung wholecloth into my mind this past week, along with the images of orange peels on a white sheet and zombies and Lyra Falamoun's Crewe. Yessss.

Since, in true Melissa Fashion (tm), I am getting a late start here are Poem No. 1 and No. 2:

Poem No. 1 (for Dad)
through my fingers like grains of sand,
the grit of your hair and
limbs
and heart
in a child's sand bucket
i carried through the surf foam

every step gone as i made it

the perspiration of the bottle in
my pocket, heavy against
my white thigh

we are all pieces of you
hair and
limbs
and heart

every breath gone as we make it

perhaps
someday a pearl

Poem No. 2*
I am yours
for the taking,

should the taking be more than my desire
coloring you like the electric down of
light through my window

I am yours
for the taking

I want your body to smell like my body,
my mouth to plumb the wet heat of your mouth,
swallow your secrets
and make them mine

this is hardly original

save,

I am yours
for the taking

* Where I might have inadvertently stolen the sentiment of Neruda

[Poetry Warp] Sunday, April 25, 8:35 A.M.

So I woke up this morning after a particularly intense dream about my father. He was on the roof of the garage of our old house on Silman and was making something on the roof with rope. It was my Mom's name. At this point of the dream, the thought hit me (unwanted and rather rudely) that this could not be happening. Particulary in light of having been dreaming about kicking asses with strange, dreaming martial arts (which is more what I like to dream about).

But when I woke up, I realized rather sharply that I couldn't just call my Dad and tell him about this crazy dream. I hate when that happens. So I wrote a poem (first draft) about it:

and sometimes I wake up with the
ghost of you on me
like the cotton of my sheets or
the skin of my limbs

remembering you are
the fine sand of Folly Beach

remembering that I have lost
the only man who loved
me without preamble or addendum
not even in the moments between dreams and waking
with the ghost of you on me-

I thought we would have more time

and now,

sometimes I wake up with the
ghost of you on me
like the cotton of my sheets or
the skin of my limbs,

only just realizing that you are gone

Subway Poems & Chaos

I was reading about Kinesics (the study of body movement) this morning in response to the black eye I narrowly missed when a woman tried to take out my eye with her computer bag.

This is not the first time I've nearly or been slightly injured by random carried belongings of women who ride the subway. I was slammed in the head once with a purse - although I shared quite a laugh with the guy sitting across from me in that instance. But what is it with people being so completely ignorant of body space? I know exactly where my fingers are and the exact dimensions of my bags and toes. This morning was sort of hell. I was sat on - sat on! - by two different people (on the N and the 2). I'm sorry, but not knowing the dimensions of your ass is inexcusable.

Thankfully my irreverence came to the rescue and created this mantra in my head:

your body speaks a grammar i brush off your skin with my fingers
collecting sighs and syllables as if i spoke your language

but words bodies are only glamours

yours, specifically, are full and empty

and i am empty, too

This might actually be the opening salvo of a poem. Apparently, even when I'm happy, I can't foresee happy endings. Probably because that part of me was sat on this morning.