eye of god?

and for Good Friday..

poetry writing challenge - day 10

write a poem about Friday

Friday: Good

It is now Friday
I am going away on
the train

poetry writing challenge - day 9

write about a memory


Losing


today there is nothing

there is nothing to find
nothing to remember

it is as if
what i do
is simply slip
lose,
lose hold of
fall, after losing hold of

the walls are slick
if they are walls

I am not able to hold on.

I was never able to hold on.

There are no memories.

I have no past,
- was never there or there,
where? I couldn't say.

I am not made of what I was made of
but I have my hands
outstretched
as if reaching for you

some light curves on my check,
catches my hair so you see it is me
before i, transparenting,
sliding, slipping,
falling
become irretrievable,
or someone else,
myself less
and less

I turn and look at you, but not quite.

it is as if
what i do
is simply slip
lose,
lose hold of.
fall, after losing hold of

I have no memory

Today I am your memory of me

your recollection



fading

and so I don't lose this

http://www.wikisky.org/

poetry writing challenge - day 8

For today's prompt, I want you to write a poem about either a specific routine or routines in general. Maybe something related to taking out the trash each week or washing the dishes every night--or something more bizarre (yet still a routine).


Bass Lessons

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

One and
Two and
Three Four
Wait.

Again.
No wait.
One. No
Concentrate for christ’s sake!

One and
Two and
Three and
Four and

Good and
Right and
There and
This is not easy for me.
Start! Fingers fingers! Can you
focus, please?
repeat yourself.
repeat yourself.
Do it.
On time, in tune.
This is a ghastly poem.
Bad music too.

But better two three four.
Right two three four
There two three four.
Play.
Stop.
Be there.
Stop.

Here here here here
Now now now now
G G G G
Up up up up

Repeat.
Pause
And please
Pause
Don’t
Pause
For once
Pause
think
Pause
Good.

Now
up
up
up
ha!

we interupt this poetry challenge

to jot down a dream. quick note.

the day has ended quickly. it is getting dark, quickly. i am in some sort of camping site with buildings, leaving it, and noticing all the sounds, how the wind comes around the corners, some clink of wire on metal, leaves rustling on the concrete, and gathering, the textural sound of their scurrying panning left and right. i think one of the sound students with some very high-end equipment could capture this, would know how. it's a complete soundscape - the rest just a means to generate it. it is gorgeous but in an utterly desolate way.
I feel very much alone.

I go to a place where there might be people. there is just one, Jerry the tech guy at school, who in the dream is leaving. he suggests I stay in his box. it's a cubicle with other apartment things attached to it in one unit. it has a sink, a plate, a computer room I could stay in and lock for the night. he drives off in a gigantic truck. i see that there is a glossy magazine with a review of my last show mixed in and I think of stealing it, knowing no one else will care. i find roses I had bought for myself earlier and forgotten. they are all dried out with a couple of still fresh yellow roses at the bottom.

I leave the cubicle, walking back in the last light towards where I'd come from, I didn't know why. I have a little phone with me tied around my neck that rings and it's my brother's voice - exactly and exactly as it would have been. He is pleading to know how things are going with my sister's rehab. I cannot believe a message came back from so long ago and I marvel at the intensity of it, the moment of it. Just then he actually comes up and is very distressed. He had been running on a beach (the Amagansett beach, I imagine) and said "there was trouble on the beach." He was mugged. He has black pieces of tape here and there on his arms and is very upset. He goes on to tell the story that a group of kids were selling stuff, computer or camera things, dunno and he was intrigued and took the bottom out of his saving box and they saw his fifteen hundred dollars. Then they took it. He was mad at himself but okay. As we walked I could hear the next message on my phone start and I turned it off.

We are together in a minute by the lake with my sister. My brother tries to tell her the story but gets upset when she turns her head, thinking she oblivious and elsewhere. From where I am, I could see that she was listening, very intently, and just turned her head to concentrate on exactly what he was saying. I ask, "Can I say something?" and I say "I just want to say how proud I am that you're sober, that you're here." She stands up and backs cautiously away from me down the wooden boardwalk by the lake. She says, "No. No, don't say that. That makes me completely uncomfortable" and she dives into the lake.

poetry writing challenge - day 7

Two fer Tuesday...Prompt #1: I want you to write a clean poem. Take this however you wish. Clean language, clean subject matter, or cleaning the dishes. Of course, some twisted few will automatically link "cleaning" with hired hitmen. That's okay, as long as your poem is somehow linked to clean.


Root Planing

There is his hand in my mouth
Her hand in my mouth
His drill in his hand in my mouth
Her embarrasing suction thing
Her other hand now with her something tool
Searching under my tongue. Ow! -Bitch!
Four eyes very close
The wretched music of breath, saliva and drill.
I blink up, Buddha like, at the pock-marked ceiling
and decide to become everyone
who at this minute is in this state
Blinking up at the same pock-tiled ceiling
the same nasty white square lights
Drooling, trusting, not biting
In Bogata, Boise, Flattop, Frankfurt, Nashville, Midway, Izmir, Chihuahua, North Philly

You'll feel some pressure now.
(more tools than hands in there now)
I’m just gong to take out the last of that root
Hold still. Let me know if it hurts.

And in whatever language we say “upfm pw”
And think,
We could bite you. We hope you know that.



ps. notreallydentistifyoureadthis. you're the best.





Prompt #2: I want you to write a dirty poem. Take all that stuff I wrote in the first prompt and twist it upside down. The opposite of clean is dirty; so, do what ya gotta do to produce a dirty poem. (Gosh, I hope this challenge doesn't get too messy as a result.)


Stuck

I can’t get at it
A damn sunflower seed
Caught just right where I got a new bridge
Wedged.
I suck after it all night
Prod and poke
I can’t get it.

It stays
Roots

I try to brush it out.
No?
Fine.
Goodnignt!

As I sleep dirt packs around and under the bridge
Saliva flows past it and it grows
I sleep lightly
Without novocaine as it grows
to a height of two feet
Sucking all the nourishment from my dreams:
(something about sex and love or hope -
ahh - what was it? I can't remember.)

In the morning I wake up,
look into its giant face
try to see a bit of myself
in that dried old bunch of seeds.

Aging is a drag.

poetry writing challenge -day 6

For today's poem, I want you to write a poem about something missing. It can be about an actual physical object or something you just can't put your finger on (like "love" or "the spirit of Christmas" or something).

oh, for christ's sake...
something else perhaps.



The Falconer

They have kept me hungry
so I'd come back
They took off my hood and I was blinded

then the air
the olive orchards

I rose high
there - my falconer,
our glove,
the donkey

the farm
the smell of the river
the shake of the dog

I circled out farther
and below me
just then

the olive orchards turned to stone, went flat, grew houses
the crickets stopped their singing
and the creek had lost its frogs

the houses gathered in circles and moved closer
the houses moved tighter

the children grew taller
the children grew wider
and disappeared inside the houses
that grew bigger
that grew wider

that stopped their music
and the creek had lost its tadpoles

i was circling
and
drifting


the fog lifted forever
the oats went dull and bent under pavement
the pavement filled with metal


light from it blinded me
this high up
and from it rose the sound
of nothing

I circled higher
and could not see
and could not breathe

I navigated by hunger
I navigated by hill shape
I wanted return

to
where the persimmons were
were the peacock was
where the donkey chewed the fence
where the falconer had been waiting for me
his strong arm outstretched.
but I found
no dirt
no hand
no glove
no keeper
no one waiting
no trembling prey and vanishing tail
no sweet barn and board
on which
to fold my wings,
tuck my head
and rest

no one who remembered
letting me go.

poetry writing challenge - day 5

write a poem about a landmark of some kind


Death Valley

A thousand years from most starting points,
A thousand turns from anywhere anyone was meant to be,
Another many, countless stops for water, directions, rebirths of small
and various kinds

Then someone might see it.
I never will.

Just my name, my nickname,
Two letters twice – (okay for my two lives)
in rocks, little rocks, just right.
Nowhere. Nothing too much

That I didn’t spell it makes it all the more personal
As if some flesh of my heart is exposed

To the rising, high and burning sun
The silky, chilling, moving moon

To the steady, climbing, thoughtless sun
To the milky, thinning, wanting moon

Arriving light and bitter day
Expanding dark and calming cool

Again and again
Under this portrait
The smallest of shadows
moving
from east to west
again

A jackrabbit might kick my name apart.
And when that happens, even if I’m already dead,
I will be
More and more
Nowhere.

A little less
here.

A little less
loved.