POEM ROUNDUP FOR JANUARY

I have no idea if this will interest anyone else, but I'm posting it anyway.

Number of Poems written: 55
Average number per day: 1.76
Days I didn't write a poem: Jan. 2, 15, 19, 23
Revised average: 2.01
Longest poem: 38 lines (In The Wilderness, Jan. 5)
Shortest poem: 3 lines. (Clown Haiku, Jan. 20)
Total wordcount: 4,631.

Polls To Tell Us What We Believe

The gods tell lies and oracles,
They fill our heads with words,
And fashion therein a simple cage
And explain that we are birds.

They clip our feathers very well
And shackles souls and feet,
Speaking of polls and precedents;
Never tricks and only treats.

And their words become our laws
And their smiles become as chains
But we want only for bird baths
And the singing of refrains.

A Poem From Before

You said to me the time of kings was a thing of long ago
And I don't know why I trusted you, but I did and it was so.

You told me of a time freedom lay prisoned under law
And illustrated it with the food you fed the baby's gaping maw.

You named foods as laws and duties, as if honour were a rash,
Then you ground them with a fork into a generic kind of mush.

And you fed them to the baby who never ceased from screaming,
Asked me if I understood- waved the spoon and spoke of meaning.

The news came on to fill the silence with freedoms come and gone;
Free men treated just like trash and all their rights withdrawn.

So I wondered if the time of kings had come to us once again
And you wiped the baby's rash, laughed, and said I was insane.

I remember it quite clearly, how you said - plain as the day's dawning -
That freedom's shores would never fall without some kind of warning.

So I left your house that night with heavy heart and fear under my feet
Wondering how many warning's come before we no longer heed.

One of these poems sucks. Can you guess which one?

Ivory

"You killed me," the bull said, fractured,
his voice a bass bleating.
"I don't even have ivory yet. Or memory
to carry down the years."
"You're not even real," I said, shouldering my gun.
"If it makes you feel better," the elephant said,
blood fountaining from its corpse.
I pulled down a menu and turned it into a fountain,
with water and coloured like ivory, pixels
glistening in the sun like fish scales.
"Used to be," the fountain said morosely,
"Used to be it was just my leg turned into
a freakin' wastebasket." I disconnected from the program,
deciding to return the Brave New World simulacrum
back to the dealer in the morning.

I dug out the package from a wastepaper basket
that I never knew I had.


Everywhere, cameras are watching us

It's the way of the future.
The haunting cry of the whale
meets the lone hooting of the owl.
Static fades to white noise. Silence.
The air is full of panting.
Cybersex. In real time.

Huddled in change rooms, we bare
ourselves to cameras, knowing
how many gyrations mean we get
the underwear for free.

Beware! Beware! The horndogs
are watching you! Their twitching
hands, pathetic eyes glistening
as they replay your life muted
in slow motion, added a soundtrack
of grunts and groans.

Titled

In the deep and breaking silence
A smile can't but lie.
In the fullness of the moment
What's left for us to hold?
If we've fallen down in laughter
We can rise beyond the air.
When everything has failed us
It's do or die - again.

When there's nothing left to live for
We can make a brand new world.
When truths are mired in uncertainty
We can dash them on the rocks.
Underneath the excavation
We imagine fairies still.
And in our wishing for the wonders
Lies a magic soft - and still.

Ah, But Who Do They Burn For?

The stars burned out long ago
Tho' we see them in the sky,
And sometimes I think that's all life is,
A candle-flickering of dream.
Something in a stranger's smile
And voices riding on the wind
Tells me this cannot be so
Or at least not wholly true.

And the children are still dancing
Playing games with rope and string,
And childhood looks so wonderful
If we don't hear what they sing.

And the stars they seem so beautiful,
Even lost and dead and gone
That I hope something of us remains
In the ages yet to come.
That when we burn out, we remain
To light some kind of spectral way
And people will remember us
And toast our memory.

Without The Koolaid

We are dancing with our shadows,
Making dreams upon the walls,
Slipping through our heavens,
Skipping past our hells.

Linked together by our voices
Raised together heart to heart,
We find a hope to hold onto
That time cannot tear apart.

We'd consider it an honour
If you'd join us in our dance;
Give public voice to private songs
And take and give a chance.

The Day After The Election

Political signs,
          pleas scattered
like puppy dogs in broken window,
kissed babies        discarded
in the aftermath of voter war.
          Each one fingers
of a vain hand        grasping
for a reward they'll never see
                                                     be
All sane voters eat their ballots:
the only palatable choice.

[Found in notebook; posting a little late :)]

Two Shorties

Birth

Nothing is born from ashes
That did not die in flames.
Where is the person who wishes
On the rising star, wise enough to not want
To be it, and smiles to watch it burn?


Short Poem

And when we look down low within
All we find is shame and sin.
And when we look far up high
Pigeon crap comes down from the sky.
And when we look at each other
We see nothing to discover.

Calling

We begin with mysticism,
With Truth lighting out darkness,
Hallucinations made real.
From the ash of the martyrs
Comes the new leaders, clear & cold-eyed,
With plans for the Future.

The community becomes hierarchy,
Ideas become beliefs become laws.
Dissenting voices are silenced.

"Our leaders would not want this!"
Met with, ""We must move with the times."
And, unspoken, hovering overhead,
What happened to the leader, first of them,
And no desire to follow quite that firmly
In their footsteps.

What begins as mysticism
Ends in politics.

Rendered Radio Rhymes

A strange reply to this poem by Maya Cassis

"In the static I hear voices
Painting pictures in my mind
And I wonder about aliens
And those who hurt us to be kind.

Making sense of tangled noises
Beating pattterns from the chaos
I wish to hide being an alias
Free to have and eat the cake."

[and a warning to never try and find something to rhyme with alien or chaos ever again :p Had I the time, a third verse might have gone into the fact that if you have your cake, why can'tr you eat it too and the like :)]

Two poems, titles taken from sffmuse chat

Gone Without A Trampoline

Gone without a trampoline
Sprung off into space
I'm waiting for a landing
Trying to find my place.

I left my trampoline behind
To reach and touch the sky
And if I fall, then I'll go splat
And no one wonder why.

I've flying into the great unknown
To see whatever I can see
A trampoline would weigh be down
I want only to be free.

If I should fall back to the earth
To crash into the ground
I don't expect to bounce back up
But, maybe, make a sound.


Beans

Mom made beans for dinner, you know I ate 'em all
And the inquisition came a'calling
And chained to me the wall.

All I did was fart in church and everybody laughed
I thought it was just a gaff
Until they said they'd tear me in half.

Now I'm dying in the tower, my soul condemned to Hell
This my final hour, that my final yell
But them beans sure tasted mighty swell.

[Spur of the moment poems can be fun; the first was someone's line in a conversation "Gone without a trampoline". The second was a suggested first line for a poem that I ran with to make a silly little one.]

A reaction upon reading Leonard Nimoy's "Rocket ships / Are exciting ..."

A reaction upon reading Leonard Nimoy's "Rocket ships / Are exciting ..."

I farted and
 it was excited
the empty elevator
 a big metaphorical thing

something is exciting
 but so is something else

And imagination
 will never replace
                 TV

I never wonder
If I belong
 I am always
           In
 Where I am

 I know I am just
    an awesomely awful
            Poeticalator

Short Poem ("We make life in")

We make life in
The silence of our fears
Knowing the child will hold
All of sins, and more beside.
Our failings, too, and special ones
We add only just for them.

Woman Standing at the UI Line, Anonymous, circa 2006, Medium: sweat and hunger.

I told them at the gallery
standing in suits and sipping
their little sipping drinks, that I
had been - was - an artist, too,
had created something bright and new.

They laughed, the cultured children
never grown old from childhood
decaying in their self-absorption
they call love, never to wonder
why they work is so depressing dark.

They asked: what could an old janitor
know of love, of Art, of Life?
I lost my job laughing at them.
Our modern devils cannot bear
to be laughed at so deservingly.
I told them I had three children.
I had created life, created hope,
created souls - and they smiled politely
like aliens visiting a world
they could not understand.

Remembering Monsters

My mother made me bathe
Reminding me monsters
Hunt by scent.
She kept me thin saying
Only fat kids were eaten
Made me turn out the nite-light
When I was too old for light in darkness
Saying the could smell fear.

It was only after I married
And Chris showed his real face
Love of colours: red and black, I blue,
In the bedroom with the pain.
Was I recalled my mother's bruises
Wondered newly about my father, and why
She never told me that real monsters
Always smile, always gentle after,
And eat our fear and call it love.

Conver ((sion) (sation) (sing))

If you will not understand my silences
how, then, my words?
I offer them up in subtle looks
the perfume I wore just for you
shorn high heels so I would seem shorter than you
all those things, and others.

my love, a sublime subtlety

Only now do I have cause for doubt
not of you, no, but of what you saw
is there an underneath to me?

A poet can write only from their experience;
but the trick of poetry lies in making
experiences universal.
I find I have nothing more to say
only hope which is a feeling and not a word

I give you my hope, not subtle: - This!
This is my heart! Take it!
Keep it somewhere not safe! Devour it!
Enjoy it! But do I say any of these words?
Only you can know that.

Two poems, because the first sucks.

Love In Slow Motion

I've got nothing left to live for,
Nothing left to save.
I thought I gave it all I had
But you always wanted more.

Halfway mad, and a little sane
I'm scared of playing games
And forgetting your name and mine
As a drunken bridge rots my brain.

Love is a light that always shines
In places dark and strange
But I'd exchange it just for
Knowing this is the last time.


The Gathering

After the storm, we gathered up our dead.
The changed shambled, nightmare shapes
'tween life and death, eyes dull or too wide.
The sky bled lightning, casting shadows
On the shattered earth and broken stones.
A few wept, the rest stared up - dead eyes
Empty, letting the storm weep for them,
Voices cursing magic and magicians
By rote; The dead bodies left to lie.
Waiting for magic fire to come down
Once one of them remembered
Men existed so far below the brightness
Of their towers and their just wars.

Update sort of thing

Dear other blog,

No, I have not forgottten you. I'm sorry I post to the poetry bog every day, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten you, or neglected you any more than I would usually do in the normal run of things. Indeed, seeing you in the list of blogs whenever I go and update produces, attimes, a twinge of something akin to remorse and kin to regret. So, I write this to assuage a feeling.

With that out of the way (it was a really small feeling), the novel goes well. Slow, since I'm not quite at 50K yet, but with doing this novel, a collaborative novel, a poem a day and poking away at editing Waking the Dead plys trying to have a life, things get chaotic. So far in a good way, though.

The Shamans, At Prayer

We are afraid of the open places,
The empty spaces untouched by our hands.
Blind men scribbling towards a higher truth
Watching the desert ocean lap the shore,
Wanting only to bring back the tide
And undo everything that was ever done
Before us: we raise up words, and let them fall
Into the silence filled with noise, and
The shadows of our wasted regrets.
Everything we can do is not enough
And there is always, always more to fill.

Two Poems: Eunoia & Life

Eunoia

All wonders in the universe
Reside in the palm of my hand.
The play of flesh & blood & bone,
And art of the molecules.
Even chaos holds its art, follow rules
A dance of beauty to delight.
We take this miracle for granted; fear
The journey that ends in a hearse.


Life

In this mad world where circumstance
Runs hand in hand with chance
We rush about from day to day,
Forgetting how we used to play.
Betrayed by our serious thoughts
And all the things that they have wrought
We live to work and work to live
With nothing for ourselves to give.

Secret Spaces

No matter the hurt life offers me
I have a place to hide;
No matter the sorrow and loss,
I remain a child inside.

I walk in woods and magic places
Where elves can hold my hand;
And all my dreams are bright and true,
Full of things I understand.

In the adult world of reason
Where things drift far apart;
I can hold wonder in my eyes,
And laughter in my heart.

Short-sheeted Beds, too

There s nothing worse than a lonely hell
Not even your soul free to sell
Nothing to hold or give away
Just the marching of the days.
You spent life mocking, besmirching
All those who spent their searching.
Freedom lies forever more
Outside the bars of your door.

Two Short Untitled Poems

          i.

The messiah sat by the roadside, alone,
Charged with an impossible task and dream
Of bringing the living to life.
"You have been recalled to loving,"
She tried, but they were lost in orgies mild
And she discovered that mocking laughter
Hurt more than thorns or traitors.


          ii.

There is a certain pressure of being
Squished together on the bus.
Encroaching personal spaces,
Close as lovers trapped in a single bed,
We do not know each other's names.

Silent

Silent, though I held words to say.
Silent, to the question hovering in your eyes.
Silent, for I am afraid of words.
Silent, because I fear definition, stagnation.
Silent, seeing silence as fool's gold.
Silent, and hoping it hurts less than truth.


Short Poem

The gods are only names
Writ in the fabric of the world,
Darned with tears of prayer
And dyed in blood and fear.

[Added because, ideally, each poem will be at least twelve lines, maybe ten. If not, I'll add another short poem like I did today, so people are not cheated. Aren't I nice?]

The Picture In Black & Grey

[A reply to Gemm's poem]

Leaning beside the fireplace,
the portrait sits, unhung, the frame
exquisite; wood engraved by hand.
Eyes drawn to it the guests enquire
inquire timidly - what is this? -
For it seems to be a strange inward hill
of hair, like a black hole lined with luminescence.
None of them leave satisfied
when told it is of your nose hair.
Only one, drunk, knew little enough
to ask why it was not hung.

Buses

Walking urges pressing
Cascading into lungs
Wheezing for a second wind.
Desperation gives urgency,
Legs fluttering like broken wings
As the bus pulls from the stop.
An anger-hard sprint fuelled
By the helplessness of rage
Does not change the world.

Three cheers for government...

The US government investigates hyperdrives. NO, reallly.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached

... The speed of light is for losers! Introducing: L2!

Bless You

You sneezed, it was so loud, and
I tried to warn you: you didn't care at all.
Your head stuck up in the clouds
You didn't try to find your soul.
I said you should cover your mouth,
That there was a reason for this.
You said I was very uncouth
And your soul laughed at this.

Applied Alliteration

Summer sun shimmering slumming,
Distorting dilated clouds
Converging buoyantly beautiful
Luminous liminal light lingers,
Fading falling, elongating
Expressively, disenchantment dissolving.
Exoteric exotic esoteric egress:
Dreams dappling, flickering
Finely wrought wonders.

In The Wilderness

As I was wondering all alone,
walking through I woods, I
thought I saw a faerie alight upon a tree.
It was a most fair faerie, though I
had never seen one yet before then.
I asked for a name, and she smiled
a dream-enchanted smile, and said:
"Call me Ishmael," in a voice so sweet and low
it seemed to be like every song I had never heard before.
I asked her why she was here, and what for,
and from when she came.
She just trilled a gentle laugh that brought mice out to play.
I gave her my name, freely, from daring and love.
She started, shocked, a hand raised pale as the moon
to refuse the gift, and something I thought foreign
to such a countenance rose before me like a
bleak wind upon a moon-fled light. I asked:
"Why your fear?" and the mice fled my voice.

Then, from the heavens, came down judgement,
or a calling; the brown streak through the sky, silent,
stealth weapon of the world, diving: she never had time to scream.
The owl, perhaps aiming for a mouse, struck.
I stood where she had died for a long time after, soaked with rain
and shivering from cold. I did not like what I had seen,
not in the Owl's hoot, nor in the last gasp of her true name.
We had never named our daughter, who had died stillborn,
but I know the name I would have called her, had it been mine to choose.

I went home to the wife that night, with a heavy heart indeed.
She asked why I was sad, and I could not bring myself to say.
I merely said it was the weather, and the coldness of the season.
I warmed myself before the fire, and the urge
to cast myself upon the flames was most strong.
I had some hot chocolate instead and asked, quietly,
if she had ever thought of adopting, since we were
too old to have more children. I offered up,
to the fire and the night wind, a name.
And the glint outside the window was no shooting star
Or angel with wings, but only a reflection of a spark,
but, even so, a man can hope.

Down Suicide Way

A stranger came up to me
With eyes of faded shades
And told me that he knew me
And of the life I'd made.

He said he was here to tell me
Of a truth that would not fade
He told me of all I wanted to be
And left me feeling quite afraid.

I asked his name; he smiled at me
From the face his wrinkles made.
He told me of dreams I'd never see
And hopes I had betrayed.

Wan and old the old man seemed
Though his voice was soft and low.
He said he was more than he seemed
But then it's always so.

He laughed and his eyes gleamed
Pale in the winter snow.
He told me secrets I had dreamed
And forgotten long ago.

He whispered his name.; it seemed
The world went still as I said: "No."
He said even I could be redeemed
And then I turned to go.

And I stared awhile after me
But no cry or move I made.
Then I laughed and was redeemed
But for what I dare not know.

Pride

And all that we are, all that we've been
Just another kind of dream,
Just another name for loss.
All of your scars and your petty sins
Are smaller than they seem
Worth less than we'd ever guess.

There's a light that shines on through us all
Though we never see it glow;
Only know it by what we do.
It is what holds us high through a fall,
Keeps us together when we're low,
And is always ever true.

Apologies

The preceeding poems were typed up tonight, edited from original drafts buried in a notebook last year. While not strictly speaking a new poem for each day, they are at least something, though a "real" January poem will be appended to each when I get the internet up and running at my place.

And remember: Just because a lofty goal may begin with a stumble doesn't mean I have to fall flat on my face. Or, something like that anyway.

EDIT: Wrote a pile of poems this week. (Not having internet is a great in some ways.) Have replaced the "marker" poems with the new ones. So hah!

Silent Shouts

Winter sky reeking
Of dull sunlight,
Snow shapes shimmer
Beyond the dusky fountain.

Children hug skipping ropes,
Eyes fluttering in the wind.
Voices ovulate, bubbling
With dry dreams in the sand.

Nerves scrap sandpaper soft,
Snow flushed ochre stains on
Softly barren ground, ghost pale
As twilight eats the sky.

Arson

In the middle of the darkness
In the wondering after flame
I breath out a single, forlorn kiss
And surrender to the pain.
I felt a need to explicate
To sign my confession's name
But I put it all down to fate
And wrote it in the flames.

Liberation

There is nothing as liberating
As having a dream to call your own
And nothing as terrifying
As knowing you're all alone.

In the madness of our hoping
We dance upon the waves
Bereft of tears and fear and coping
And particles cannot save.

The day I was told I'd been betrayed
I didn't know what to say
Make me a man and a man they made
Is what I asked that day.

And sometimes getting what we wish for
Is only cause for dismay
For it seems that there never was a door
That opened up both ways.

Waiting To Blink

The boundary between sacred and scared blurs,
melding with scars and sores and sneezes.
In the closet lie toys of a misspent youth,
violent action figures that do not move.
Something else, too, though I
cannot grasp it, nor hear it, nor see -
Ah! but it that remains waits,
pristine terrible gentleness and the voice
of a drunken angel sobbing in the dark.

Walking Past the Doghouse

Afraid of you in the silences I dare not give name to
I walk outside, the clear air mocking
Some desperate part of me that lies, huddled,
Back inside; and in the bleakness
That comes with my dreams I whisper questions to you
And they seem to suit the darkness.
Even in my dreams, you're only answer - a derisive laugh.
I walk slow, the storm trailing
My broken dreams behind; rent by lightning,
I wish to be cleft in twain,
A blankie shredded from overuse or growing older
With all of me you do not approve of
Left behind to follow unlike a shadow, a kite trapped in a tree.
I like to think I would visit this tree,
The colour of your auburn hair. But I suspect that you
Would not approve, my love.

Happy New Year!

Winter in the City
(December 2005)
Josh MacLeod

It was winter in the city
All the girls, they looked too pretty
But I had eyes for you alone
Watching call display on my phone

And when you called me baby
I swear that I could see
A star falling from the sky
Shining bright as your eyes

And we spoke together
Though afterwards I never
Recalled what we’d said so true
Beyond the first “I love you”

And they rang in the new year, darling
With ribbons and streamers, O darling
And I cheered along with them
Like I never would again.

How was I to know, Baby
No one came to save me
No one to love me, only to tell me
Only to tell me what would never be

Only to tell me that you
Didn’t make it home, it’s true
Never even saw the rising sun
Would never see another one

You said you were drunk on love
But I don’t think you thought of
What it would do to me
To be without you, just me.

And sometimes, late at night
When the stars are Oh! too bright
And my face is pale and drawn
Too scared to face the dawn

I wait for you to call me on the phone
I wait for you to call me home
I never erased the number
I never forgot to remember

I’ve cried for you every year
Greeting the new year with a tear
So I’m waiting for you to call me
So I can say I’m sorry