Boxing Day Poems for 2011

(For this year, some poems actually about boxing day. Kind of. There is no boxing; maybe next year.)

i.

Every shop burns a
desperate neon shade

Colours have voices
pleading:   Come      Please
We have things you don't need
We are dying
                         Feed us

We step past the signs to drop
pennies in charity baskets
hearts hard against their need


ii.

Sally sat under the mistletoe
Sally waited for a boy or girl
No one offered a kiss or a smile;
Something dark settled in her to grow.

Sally's Christmas list asked for no pearls,
No Rudolph, no sleigh, no winter snows.
"Only those with souls are worth my while."
Still a sigh from Santa's beard unfurled.

"Even Santa can't --?" She bit back bile.
"Something is missing in you, you know,
I can't hide it; I'm sorry my girl."
So he kissed her; she gave him a smile.


iii.

"What have we done to deserve this?"
she whispered, the presents piled deep
under the tree threatening an avalanche
of bargains tumbling on them.

"We don't need any of it," she said, and he
thought of how Santa was credit cards and
he smiled and whispered: "Fine, I will
take it all back, broken."

And then he swung the golf clubs
twice, sickened by her
sanctimony while the TV
belted out Joy to the World.


iv.

This year they're sharing memories,
unwrapping the past to the present
and letting sadness become laughter.

Some older poetry

Been busy, so here is some older poetry (from 2004):

The universe is a balloon.

The universe is a balloon.
If we are lucky, it is a balloon animal.
Everything runs down. Entropy runs rampant.
The heat-death of the universe the final hot flash.
Watch the balloon. Breath, and it blows.
Let go, to fly where it may.
Created, it is already dying.
Set free, it may come back to Him, in worship.
And awe. And fear.
Who would create something that is dying
from the moment of its making?
Or does it have no worth, if it does not end,
is not let go to burn out and up and bright?
Perhaps. But analogy only takes us so far.

The universe was made by God, masturbating.
A lonely child in a bathroom scrawled with Enochian graffiti.
Each day a second, ripples of sperm falling into water.
The death and rebirth of the universe nothing
but a toilet flushing, water returning.
Over and over.
God never knew what He'd done.

And life? Spreading entropy far and wide,
energy burning up, trying to hold the death back
but no one can give and never take
and never hope for reward. And so
it is that life in the universe is nothing
more than a way to bring about the end.
Seven days creating? Ah! how long, then, to destroy?


The Suicide Boy

      For Goth Poetry Nite

They told us he came back
as a ghost, long after
Our class had gone out
to be devoured by the cruel world.

They hear him in the bathroom, sobbing:
saying no one loves him, no one
understood.

And he doesn't believe in God
or souls, and sobs insults
at people who offer experiential evidence
and show him a mirror.

Sometimes, Carrie style, a light bulb breaks
as he tries in vain to put his make up on,
hands floating through the too real world.

Before the Injection

The strength to do
things that must be done

They ask me -- where from? --
even as I pick my last meal

(I pick the one you
always made, in silence)

I remember how you touched me.
I know where strength comes from.

3 short poems found on looseleaf paper

Untitled

We have names for the masks
Not for what lies under;

We only have words for
Things we have words for;

Every time I dream of you
I forget a few more.


A finished fragment

The final piece of the puzzle
wasn't found in the box
(I made it in the backyard shed
cut & sanded to fit need);

The emptiness in the eyes
only wakens to a dream.


Waking

I wish to wake before the dawn
To see the night as clear as day
When everything that's come is gone
Leaving us nothing left to say.

Water's reflected on the moon
I'm dreaming of my destiny
And everything that comes too soon
Beneath the wide and empty sea.

Zombie Seasonal Haiku

The world is cold, I
feel lost, thinking: am I dead
Inside? So hungry.

In summer brains are
Soft, casing easy to peel:
Look! no seeds inside.

Autumn leaves are a
Memory of my hair, which
Falls out as i rot.

Spring is growing things,
Rats burrowing in my legs,
babies born: more brains!

A few poems

We have names

We have names for the masks
Not for what lies under

We only have words for
things we have words for

Every time I dream of you
I forget a few more


A name is

A name is a blow, wound never recovered from;
Who is so full as to be empty?

To whom is it worthy to empty our identity?
One must love without becoming.

His ego, so fragile! forced to steal her name
Who does she not ask for his?


Her Body

They dressed her up as a bride while
I watched, scratching down notes trying
to appear professional, not interested.

I am told it is done to virgins, though
not how one determines that they are
("She was unmarried," I am told, simple,
as if that were answer enough).

Blood is not removed from martyrs here.
burying them with fashion accessories intact
(my definition brings no smiles)

I want to say the bride should be given red,
bloodied: -- Aren't all virgins martyrs? I half-joke.
I'm told only that wives were left that way, dying
for their sins, loving their straying husbands.

Dying for her sins, I am told, undertaker's voice
flint and ebony. I tread still waters: Aids? as if
death needs helpers. A hand waves to compass
the cool room, this silent world.

"This is the disease." I want to say: The world?
but I just take notes, pen stuttering across the page
a lump in my throat, ice in my soul.