Attempts...(Poetry?)

Untitled

Voices rise from limbless water

up to/into my creaking boat

We've come through sifted silver slaughter

and yet we stay afloat.

They tell me that I'm drifting

to where I know not when

And drill me with their laughter

At my slowly sinking den.

"I'll not!" I cry and throw a rope

up at the greasy moon

"I'll rectify my castle's frame

and feed you with a spoon!"

"A spoon!" They scoff and gurgle/chortle more

At my so apparent ruin

I tilt my head and with a roar

"I'll feed you with your/my doom!"

Untitled

Don't ever mess with a mastermind,

for soon in time

you'll probably find that

a heart of grime

or a dandelion

can never ease

or slightly seize

the elusive breeze

of profundity.

Untitled

Muffled beats

make their muffled way

through my muffled room

to my muffled mind.

I think I like,

I think I don't

its tilting tune

or stilting croon?

I'll have to ask

my neighbor's rat

to tell me what he thinks.

Does it make him dream

of holey cheese?

Or dew-dropped leaves

that tempt with drinks?

I hope it does because even muffled beats through muffled walls cannot wake my muffled mind to help me clearly dream.

Don't Wake Up 

She woke up dripping syrup from a dream of waltzing backwards in the grass.

breath touched her hair, sending minnows down her sinews,

schools swim down then climb up her veins,

pulling gently on her organs to make it to her face where they dance in wet white- 

tails flap and scales flash in her aligator eyes.  

She woke up crying seaweed from a dream of a mummy wrapped in a kitchen cabinet.

a muted voice pulled open her ear, poured ice past her brain,

sloshing down her neck, droplets freezing through the espophagus and

cracking at her lungs, the frozen 

splinters spread down her arms into her coiled serpeant fingers. 

She woke up laughing bumblebees from a dream of plum pudding in a treehouse.

fuzz forces through her belly button

and buzz up her toes,

spinning and jumping over her skin, through knees and over hips,

humming to meet at her treefrog tummy. 

She woke up shaking tumbleweeds from a dream of bleeding beach houses.

wind trickles over her arm hairs

seashells creep down her spine

and sponges drink through her nostrils

to meet below her tongue, and press against her teeth

until sand spurts from her mollusk mouth.

the amazing combined feat of an organized set of symbols and the speed of human processing

that you are reading this is profound. 

Untitled Rendezvous

he followed me up to the bar

i gave him a half smile and an incline of my head. 

he came up for "just a minute"

i gave him a couple drinks and a tour of my bed. 

he asked me out to dinner

i gave him a tight dress and riveting conversation.  

he left me while i was sleeping

i gave him eight lines with no culmination.

Untitled

the poets i cannot stand the most

are those who never cease to boast.

they ryhme with words so silly that

you want to cry, "Jehuzaphat!" 

They cover their hair with a black beret, 
yet in a drawer their pen will stay,

They'll drink their coffee and wear their scarves

When they'd really do better to hang at wharves.
  

Chirping birds and budding flowers

make me want to jump from towers.

Pristine lakes and golden green leaves,

should never be read from high roof eaves. 

But the worst poets from all around

are those who try to seem profound

Rather than death, who am i and why?

How about simply making us cry?

Or giggle and squiggle

and cartwheel and riggle,

Or long to make gooseberry pie!

In fact I have decided

and in you I will confide it,

That the truly inspired poet,

simply does not know it.

You Must Be Have Been Born Out of Wedlock 

Sometimes I just want to smash you into crunchy pieces with a sledgehammer.

That's right skull, I mean you.

Oh wait, let me clarify- not sometimes but,

when I'm writing poetry. 

Maybe then the words will fall out,

Maybe then the descriptors describe,

Rhymes really rhyme, lines fall in time?

If it was as easy as crushing you skull,

you'd already look like ... 

But as I frustrate and contemplate this hole of pleasure-filled pain,

I realize that is exactly where the verbs thrive, adjectives survive

and the nouns host parties.

They might fester in expressionless throats

(sorry tongue, you can't push them out)

Or bury/burrow in veins right up to the wrist

(nope fingers, cease your twitching),

yet the emotion dripping bastard of literature and song doesn't want to come out today. 

Or should I say,

anyday.

In fact,

poetry would much rather hermit away

in my blasted brain. 

I Knew a Song of Africa 

She let me wash her hair today.

I gathered the tangled mass,

and laughed Coleridge's words down her back

while moonlit Mozart, Auld Lang Syne and our first safari

dripped out with the knots.

I had given her my pen

that she might trap stories for my returns,

yet she inked even more.

Next to my single, crooked line

she drew, until our parallel converged in the distance

like the train tracks where we exchanged names.

She understood my thunderstorm silence

and I, her proper rebellions,

And like a one-minded stampede

of so many antelopes

We tried to coexist.

For now, her tales were hushed as I scrubbed,

and she listened, with the hippos;

Our only audience as I rinsed away

the singing African afternoon.

A splash at the stubborn wisps,

And a handful of flyaway strands-

Not gentle, that wouldn't suit her,

But firm, and quick, my fingers searched

and separated wild curls.

Her unadorned smiling face looked up,

while I massaged her soapy mane down.

Her silence ruined solitude forever.

Food for Swagger/

I Was Hungry For You 

Today I ate an earthworm.

I picked him up off the wet pavement,

Ripped him into pieces.

I crushed his head,

Stuffed the bits to my mouth.

Mucus, blood and dirt combine,

Slide against my teeth-

Slipping down my throat

Ten more hearts now beat

In the rhythm of my rain.

Ugly Caterpillar 

They almost squashed you the other day. I know, I saw.

Crawling was never easy.

You have to pull yourself together

everytime you move forward.

Squirm to step, slink to slide.

Your long hairs like those on a great aunt's chin

quiver with every tiny mile,

desperately avoiding the beak, the claw, and the shoe.

Creeping kinds never stood much chance.

Green flashes against a dull brown and lusterless black,

red drips past rusty orange splotches,

and when spots and stripes can't make you interesting,

you're lucky if they can disguise.

Well, keep climbing limbs and chomping leaves,

Hold your huge, unrefined eyes to the sky

and find the branch that will bear your weight.

Then, hide yourself in white,

Find yourself in solitude...

And when they realize your brown shines,

black glistens, and that the drips are really delicate droplets of orange,

I'm sure they'll all suddenly adore you

my fuzzy friend,

once your colors fly.

Overflow

Feelings dripped

Into lidless eyes

But I wouldn't have blinked,

I liked the pain

And asked you to stay.

You poured through my sockets,

bathed my two world eaters,

and began to course back to my skull.

I let you river

Through my thirsty brain,

Which filled, and quickly flooded.

I held my breath as your waters rose

Then opened wide and swallowed.

To my surprise, I didn't drown;

I floated.

The Janna Banana Stand 

I see an N sneaking through the marketplace,

peering here, leering there

over bubbling oranges and

stinking, staring fish eyes. 

Unfortunately he is not alone.

His even darker twin ducks behind brocoli mountains

and creeps closer to the banana stand,

craving a toothy chomp of yellow. 

A fresh stalk of tango green soars past

tasseled red, cigar-smoke silver

and jingling purple, pleasantly

knocking the first A in the face. 

The second A of the studious pair

drops the curved yellow she had been weighing

to help her dismayed friend,

while the boiling cool J banana vendor watches with a smirk. 

The Curse 

Pain! 

Ripping through my side,

A clenched fist of burning blades forces through my flesh.

Veins filling, its spidery fingers wrench apart,

opening more my torment. 

A gaping hole remains,

jagged and dripping...

It has left me. 

Searing emptiness fills the pit-

but wait!

Now blood, clots and globs of tissue,

Slippery yet thick. 

An enemy you think perhaps?

Think again-

It's just a friend.

Professor H. 

Mumble, mumble, mumble.

Just blather rolling off his tongue,

Falling dead in the air.

Stagnant.

Noises, gestures, sounds,

oozing from his fingertips.

Up, down-

His jaw is ceaselessly chewing,

Eating vowels,

Or spitting them out? 

Lips together.

Lips separate.

Mustache crinkling,

Eyelids blinking,

Saliva sprinkling. 

What is it?

Oval O's and string bean E's.

It makes sense.

Doesn't it? 

Remaining Changed 

As a tree remebers seasons,

So too will you remember me.

My ice will weigh your boughs,

Just as my wind will wrench your leaves,

But so too will my sun bring your blossoms,

and my rain pool in your roots.

Variation on Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird: 

Chair 

1.  Sitting there

the empty char

offers me a rest. 

2.  Eight shining chairs and

a family full of food 

3.  Tree, your limbs will do quite nicely when sat upon.

Not in the air of course, but when making my kitchen chair. 

4.  How do they eat without you, my plump dining room chair?

It must be someting in all of that rice.

Or maybe it's the fish? 

5.  The creeping thief never imagined that my sparkling emerald

and gold-clasped pearls were safely sewed

within the seat of a faded velvet topped chair.

Giraffe 

I gaze up miles of black spotted yellow.

He drops leaves on my upturned face.

A Lady

Out of cracked kitchen floors,

six dirt crusted siblings and chickenless chicken soup

she rose,

a flash of floating footsteps and a motion

of a tapering, gloved hand.