Poetry Class Group Two

Summer of ‘09

 

Tara stopped smiling with her teeth

In the summer of ‘09

 

Plastic trees with painted leaves

Strewn careless and meandering

Led little wolves to slaughter

After lambs were hunted out

 

She set aside the tried and true

For a path trod far too often

Sun set on the boulevard

Of stars flaming and forgotten

 

 

Jack

 

Say hello to Nimble Jack

What a flash in the pan

Jumped straight into the fire

 

Candelabra alights

On Starry Nights

And Don croons tumbling after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Sky

 

Made to Last they said

American fit to fiddle

Less than what it use’ta be

Hope travels the trail

East to West

Underneath the big sky

Range-land as far as an eye can see

Bureau keeps watch over the mustang

Lest it find true freedom

Undulating dusty plains

Ever

So fine

 

Crestfallen

 

Soliloquy

Of Mother

Radiating stern love

Dripping on sealed ears

Unyielding

 

 

Return

 

All flowers desire clear, small suns

Left

Fighting for the one

 

The forest

More one than many

Strives to regain old shores

To rescue deserted brothers

 

Long after the State of Empire

Has fallen and been forgotten

Nature’s twin garden will flourish

And seas with team

With life both magic and ill-gotten

 

 

 

Sandy (Brienne)

 

His love for Sandy is great,

heart melts over and back racing the dusk.
Then the night prances while he’s away,
Dark room studies, fey dances ’til day’s dawn.

Her beauty is great,
Wondering mind until he sees,
laughing, dancing, is all she’ll do,
Waiting for the moment, for him to say, “I do.”

 

 

 

 

Home by Dark

 

Strangely placid under the gleaming
We gather rapid inspirations behind the light
Be watchful. The inspiration keeps going
Strangely glittering behind the dreamscape
We cross dazzling lightsabers near the fire
God! The day is done
Darkened line above the trees
We create transparent ghouls under the sky
Whoa! The evil will come
wary silent
never meeting
a phone ringing somewhere
With spilt regrets
the other
leaves for home
in the late light

 

 

 

Sandy

 

A l-i-n-k

Unbroken

Forces act unseen

Rip twist and pull

At memories

tattered forgotten

 

Stilled, something…               there                            -here-

Some little grain

Sandy oyster pearl

Makes no mention

of oyster blood

Spilled for a stone

 

 

Else

 

Rooted in the same soil

As my forefathers

Six generations past

 

They say

You sound like you’re from somewhere

Else

 

They say

You look like you’re from somewhere

Else

 

They say

I couldn’t put a finger on some where

Else

 

Only touch a finger to the ground friend

My roots grow deeper

Than most

 

 

 

Nevers’more

 

We were told of the greatest

Camp treat of all

Unholy trinity

 

Crisp graham cracker

Chocolate melt

Burnt mellow

 

Yet we have discovered

Another delicate-see

Crowned best of all

 

A graham is not needed

Chocolate superseded

Save mallow center only

 

Four discs black as night

Twice cream delight

Is the S’mOreo

 

 

Rain Falls

 

Tell it like it is son

Why hold back now

Rain will fall and skies will break

Without a care to know

 

Why speak

To feigned applause

Auditorium overflowing

Quick to empty

 

Show them your notches

Carved upon the weapon

You sold and bought back

Over and again

 

 

 

Cecilia

 

Once tasked

Twice masked

Thrice asked

Fourth year gone

 

Fifth mile a baker’s house on

Sixth street road

Seventh son was born less whole

Eighth, and last daughter made me

 

Ninth year into an only child

Tenth, the last to stay

Eleventh left at first dawn

Twelve stockings on the wall

 

A baker’s dozen less one remained

Ten new lives were laid and sprouted

Each a dozen more

But what of the eleventh forgotten?

 

Was she a kind one, a bright one, or anything at all?

Aunt Cecilia, I wish

I could have known

Your children and my cousins, lost

 

 

Seasons

In summertime, our love is sweet, like lilacs floating in the breeze.
In wintertime, our love is warm — runs in waves from fingers to toes.

If skies are blue, our love is tender — two people swaying in the sun.
If thunder rolls our love is calm, a refuge from the whirling rain.

When spring flowers bloom, our love is bold, like yellow petals on garden roses.
When autumn leaves fall, our love is steely, shining like a harvest sunset.

From New Year’s Day till Eve our love will continue to grow
From season to season we will love madly. My one, my only, my puppy.

 

 

Myrtle Grove

 

Familiar place

Of mystery and safety

Strangely intertwined

As the canopy above

 

Sword fern seas

Avenues of brown leaves

Wild clover with bitter roots

 

Where I fought my first enemies

Real and imagined

And pressed a four-leaf

For my mother’s luck

 

Red cedar house

Is where we slept

Banked above the river depths

Beside a myrtle grove

Poetry Class Group One

Loveliness of the Dark

 

I’m

High on my own chemicals

Blood rush the ventricles

I can’t unfeel this feeling

Sun warm red sweet

 

Spilling light onto my face

Face melts into shoulders

Leaving nothing but a frame

Empty frame, shadows shame

Ripping your way through this cloth nothingness

 

Yet this cloth bleeds and bends

Barriers shifting

I can’t unfeel this feeling

Red silk runs cold

Through my hands like ribbons…

 

And my hands feel like stones

I cast them from me

But this isn’t skipping stones

My friend

You’re breaking bones

 

Didn’t your mother teach you better?

Didn’t your father teach you better?

No no they did not but that’s not the point

Why do you hurt the ones you love?

Why do you love to hurt?

 

I call you up on the phone

And you say

you’re not good people

You say your darkness isn’t like others

It’s permanent

Yet what could change more than a person?

This flesh moves and it breathes

to a beat all its own

dragging my two-tone skin

all over this earth

 

I’ve been playing hide and seek

And what I seek I’ve found

And all I want to do is hide now

 

But there’s more to this feeling

There’s the upswing… a new dawn breaking

 

I’ve been walking

in the shadows

Catching embers from your fire

The embers don’t catch on my skin

But I still try

 

I hope the fire I make

will keep us both warm

Until then

don’t forget to keep throwing sparks

My Loveliness of The Dark

 

 

Slow

 

This is the year of Slow

Where I heal and grow

 

Slow

Life moves too fast sometimes

for one to truly grasp

what’s it’s going on about

So let’s ease up on the pedal a bit

 

Breathe Relax Brake

I want to unwind

this mortal coil

examine the fiber

Am I made of steel or string?

 

 

 

 

Suckerpunch Love

 

Someone came out of the darkness

They cast their knucklebones

Like they were telling my fortune

Hard and fast, I was surprised

 

But as you’ve now surmised

I don’t fall easily

I’m still standing

slightly irritated

 

My eyes focus on you

You

Lovely as the day is new

Is the face of my enemy to me

 

No more unpaid bills

Unspoken words to

unsung songs of passion

There is my enemy

 

Here, the solution

to all my problems

So I proffer a hand

and I tell you

 

Come here

You waver, faltering

You fear a martial response

I can tell

 

You don’t know that I need to embrace you

Brother! Art Thou!

O but Where is the sense in doing that

My love would be lost on you

 

I soldier on

(After all) Custom doth dictate

That I render you pulpy and crimson

Like pomegranate, but less sweet

 

Then you cracked the fragile shell of my satisfaction

Running off into the night

Your Shock and Awe campaign

Now more of an Aw Shucks situation

 

Brother, may your feet be swift and sure

You showed me of the humanity

that can be found in the dirt

And introduced Love to a Suckerpunch

 

 

Indulgence

 

I feel so Indulgent

Self congratulating

my every crawl-step

out-of-step

with life as we know it

Every pretty phrase becomes a novel

every pretty face a muse

 

When will I hang this ego

at the door

and start the work?

I will never be a slave

to anyone but myself

I need only become

my own master

 

 

 

 

Liquid Ablutions

Caffeine drip, main line momentum
Shake off this California rust
Either my eyes are blurry
Or this is an acid flashback

Unequivocal absurdity
Play with my prepositions honey
You know I like that rhyme and meter
Never caring, never bending
I always rip off the safety tags

A beer for the road
My toll for the highway
Turns into another stumbling barcrawl staccato
Try this sixer, new seasonal
Spiced with overcome inhibitions

Fragmentary
And sometimes violent
Like a grenade, area incendiary
Hat wearing hopscotcher
Pogoed in just for some tea

If drugs weren’t drinkable
My thirst would pack its bags
And leave me shaking
Alone and lost
I would dry up and turn to dust

 

(Fragment) Sewage

 

I’ve been spewing sewage…

Like you wanted it

The other day…

You said you wanted it

 

On that medieval shit

Spreading carnage like a dragon

Fire it up, I’ve got months to live

Better try those sugars that I still haven’t tasted

 

I’ve sick of houses

They’re all haunted

 

And apartments

Where the ghosts of our friends live

 

I could live in a shack by the sea

And count the Sallies by the seashore

 

One, two, three four, down my throat

I’m hanging with Sass and Molly tonight

 

they’re fun gals

but so are you

 

except that I’m not quite sure if you are…

 

I’m a broken compass

Looking for a mint single-print record

 

What sounds do you make

when you’re kissing the sheets?

 

And do you only wear your hair

that same way every day?

 

I do

I hate it

I should be liquid

I feel like mercury

 

Poisonous and quick

Driving men mad,

Haberdashery

 

 

 

A Tale of South Padre (Spring Break)

 

White Russians, black morning…

What time is it again?

 

I hear the tick tock tick tock

The inevitable

inevitably cascading down around…

This carnage scene

 

Maybe it’s sin

But sin is in

At least it is if you believe

the advertising

 

Marketing isn’t my major

But it is what I do

Selling myself, selling you

To yourself… isn’t that cool?

 

They say that a true salesman

could sell ice to an Eskimo

Well kid

I sold your confidence to your insecurity

 

Or was it the other way round?

 

I run circles around this ballgame

But then we’re just playing in the sand

Dizzy bat major leagues

sorority girl laser in

On that, like on one

Don’t touch my sister mister

 

Throwing ice at Pauly D

The police were overly concerned

With the state of his blowout

So we jumped out the street

Behind bars for a very short while

Criminal memories still make me smile

 

 

 

Online Dating

 

Paint me a picture

cut me a rose

Write me a sonnet

clothe me in prose

 

Drip my lips with sweetness

To soothe these weak knees

 

Speak the word poet

I am yours

 

Sing a song singer

My heart can hear

 

Sculpt my soul sculptor

and make it whole again

 

The sounds of your new Tinder match

ring out over my faint cries

on to your next catch

and on to new lies

 

 

Sands of Liege

 

Cigarette butt carpet

Litters the track

Fast train to slow town

Liege or bust

This little engine inside of me

Could

 

 

Would

like to start sleeping

Days and nights of eternity

The owl or the cock

Who to choose one vanity over

Another

 

Jilted

by something unattainable

I only wanted to cage

this bird of such pretty plumage

young eater of carrion

Don’t take my prison of glass

Sands

 

 

Winston

 

Towing our friend behind a truck

Over verdant rolling hills

 

He sits astride a bathtub

An emperor on porcelain wheels

 

He rides this tub to battle

He rides it out of love

He rides it only knowing

now he can join the club

 

When the rider’s body

leaves his chariot for the air

His face shows only terror

His kingly tub now bare

 

 

Jury

 

The charge was temporary

The verdict short

The jury was one

Quite an unseemly court

 

They said you were wicked

Then said you were kind

How strange to remember

We can be of two minds

 

 

 

Nights Like These

 

On nights like these

Where we begin again

 

I find a peace

Of summer’s joy

 

Kindled fire

Stoked and fed

 

Reminds me now

And coats vision red

 

 

Electric Blanket

 

You told me

That my soul

Was an electric blanket

That hadn’t been plugged in

 

An outlet was offered

I saved my peace

To forge onward alone

Find out what it means

 

If my name were Linus

A blanket would fit

But I’ve just this knapsack

And the (w)hole of a dream

 

 

Summer

 

I’ll meet you in my summer years

when the ache of spring has gone

 

and winter’s chill is but a memory

How fast my youth has gone

Indulgence

I feel so Indulgent. Self congratulating my every crawl-step, out-of-step with life as we know it. Every pretty phrase becomes a novel, every pretty face a muse. When will I hang this ego at the door and start the work? I will never be a slave to anyone but myself. I need only become my own master.

Slow

This is the year of Slow. Where I heal and grow. Slow. Life moves too fast sometimes for one to truly grasp what’s it’s on about. So let’s ease up on the pedal a bit. Breathe, relax. Brake. I want to unwind this mortal coil and examine the fiber. Am I made of steel or string?

Liquid Ablutions

Caffeine drip, main line momentum
Shake off this California rust
Either my eyes are blurry
Or this is an acid flashback

Unequivocal absurdity
Play with my prepositions honey
You know I like that rhyme and meter
Never caring, never bending
I always rip off the safety tags

A beer for the road
My toll for the highway
Turns into another stumbling barcrawl staccato
Try this sixer, new seasonal
Spiced with overcome inhibitions

Fragmentary
And sometimes violent
Like a grenade, area incendiary
Hat wearing hopscotcher
Pogoed in just for some tea

If drugs weren’t drinkable
My thirst would pack its bags
And leave me shaking
Alone and lost
I would dry up and turn to dust

Loveliness of The Dark

I’m

High on my own chemicals

Blood rush the ventricals

I can’t unfeel this feeling

Sun warm red sweet

 

Spilling light onto my face

Face melts into shoulders

Leaving nothing but a frame

Empty frame, shadows shame

Ripping your way through this cloth nothingness

 

Yet this cloth bleeds and bends

Barriers shifting

I can’t unfeel this feeling

Red silk runs cold

 

Through my hands like ribbons…

 

And my hands feel like stones

I cast them from me

But this isn’t skipping stones

You’re breaking bones

 

Didn’t your mother teach you better?

Didn’t your father teach you better?

No no they did not, but that’s not the point

 

Why do you hurt the ones you love?

Why do you love to hurt?

 

I call you up on the phone

And you say you’re not good people

You say your darkness isn’t like others

It’s permanent

 

Yet what could change more than a person?

This flesh moves and it breathes

 to a beat all its own

dragging my two-tone skin all over this earth

 

I’ve been playing hide and seek

And what I seek I’ve found

And all I want to do is hide now

 

But there’s more to this feeling

There’s the upswing, a new spring

A new dawn, breaking?

 

I’ve been walking in the shadows

Catching embers from your fire

 

The embers don’t catch on my skin

But I still try

 

I hope the fire that I make will keep us both warm

Until then, don’t forget to keep throwing sparks

My Loveliness of The Dark

 

 

 

Growing Storms: An Essay

“The following tone is a reference tone recorded at our operating level.” –Captain Beefheart

At various times throughout one’s life, we experience sudden powerful change in our understanding of the world around us.  Our universe may be sent topsy-turvy in a moment’s instance and us along with it. We sometimes call these moments epiphany.

“Eureka!” screams a naked and soggy Archimedes as he runs through the streets of Syracuse. Such a burst of clarity might elicit euphoria, such as Archimedes experienced, or a more invective filled and dismayed response. Personally, I have experienced both.

Powers, Oregon. 2004.  Coordinates 42°53′0″N 124°4′23″W. Subject Age: 11.

Seldom have I ever felt so free as when I had free reign of the Mountain. My father had an arrangement with Cold Iron Ranch to keep trespassers out and lock the gate at night. In return: a house to stay in. When we arrived it was filled to the rafters with garbage, dirty as an earthworm, and as frigid as the name of the ranch. It had no insulation.

By the end of our stay at Cold Iron’s, the house was hospitable, clean, and warm as long as you huddled next to the wood store. The junk that had littered the house, the yard, and dotted the rest of the 20,000-acre reserve around us, became my personal toy chest. I was envied. Railroad irons, old appliances, junked cars, rusty curtain rods, springs, coils, just about every thing you could imagine. My friends and I were in heaven. We build forts. We chased the cow herds through the valleys. We conquered the rolling hills around us. It was glorious.

There is a singular memory of my stay at the house on the ranch that sticks out in my mind. I’m alone. I walk down from my vista on top of the low rise behind me and approach the small pool of water next to a copse of young fir trees. My thick puffy blue jacket wards me from the cold wind that whips across the grass. I lie down into the pool backwards and feel the water’s pull on me. Tugging insistently. I let go of the shore.

…and I float. Lazily spinning on my back, the two sizes too big jacket buoying my 11 year old body.

When you’re surrounded by nothing, with not a care on one’s mind, one can’t help but let the knowledge of a vast cosmos rush into you. I could go anywhere. Attempt anything. I could explore the world for many lifetimes and never know the fullness of it.

I suppose that was an epiphany of my young life. It’s fitting it seems that both Archimedes and I ended up soggy. Saturated with a newfound perception and knowledge.

The funny thing about that is that knowledge IS like water; fluid, changing, powerful, sustaining, and able to shape the terrain around us. It can also evaporate, dry up, and leave us thirsting for it.

I lost that moment on the Mountain for a time.  My cup was broken and hole ridden. That which it should have held safe was spilt. I forgot there was a wide world with infinite possibilities and I focused on the inconsequential trivia and trivial consequence, a shoegazer with worries aplenty. I let myself be distracted from my goals and dreams to pursue whim and fancy.

I realize that the good in life is not all earned on the turn on the moment, pulled down like fire from heavens. I would like to think that I know and own the mistakes I’ve made.

I have gained a much more slowly won understanding of the work that must be put in, as well as of the rewards that are inherent in such efforts. I can be both storm-watcher, waiting on the tornado that will change the landscape, as well as the patient gardener.

Perhaps I am onlying watching for the opportunity to till the soil. Whether one can grow a storm is yet to be seen.

Suckerpunch Love

Someone came out of the darkness

They cast their knucklebones

Like they were telling my fortune

Hard and fast, I was surprised

 

But as you’ve now surmised

I don’t fall easily

I’m still standing… slightly irritated

 

My eyes focus on you.

You

Lovely as the day is new

Is the face of my enemy to me

 

No more unpaid bills,

Unspoken words to unsung songs of passion

This is my enemy.

Here is the solution to all my problems

So I point at you and I tell you

“Come here.”

You waver, faltering.

You fear a martial response, I can tell

 

You don’t know that I need to embrace you.

Brother! Art Thou!

O but Where is the sense in doing that?

My love would be lost on you

 

So I soldier on

(After all) Custom doth dictate

That I render you pulpy and crimson

Like pomegranate, but less sweet

 

Then you cracked the fragile shell of my satisfaction

Running off into the night

Your Shock and Awe campaign

Now more of an Aw Shucks situation

 

Brother, (art thou?), may your feet be swift and sure

You showed me of the humanity that can be found in the dirt

And introduced Love to a Suckerpunch

 

 

(Fragment) Sewage

I’ve been spewing sewage…

Like you wanted it

The other day…

You said you wanted it

 

On that medieval shit

Spreading carnage like a dragon

Fire it up, I’ve got months to live

Better try those sugars that I still haven’t tasted

 

I’ve sick of houses

They’re all haunted

And apartments

Where the ghosts of our friends live

 

I could live in a shack by the sea

And count the Sallies by the seashore

One, two, three four, down my throat

I’m hanging with Sass and Molly tonight

 

they’re fun gals

but so are you

except that I’m not quite sure if you are…

 

I’m a broken compass

Looking for an mint single-print record

What sounds do you make when you’re kissing the sheets?

And do you only wear your hair that same way every day?

 

I do

I hate it

I should be liquid

I feel like mercury

 

Poisonous and quick

Driving men mad,  

haberdashery

A Tale of South Padre (Alternately titled “White Russians”)

White Russians, black morning…

What time is it again?

I hear the tick tock tick tock

The inevitable inevitably cascading down around

This carnage scene

 

Maybe it’s sin

But sin is in

At least it is if you believe the advertising

Marketing isn’t my major

But it is what I do

Selling myself, selling you

To yourself… isn’t that cool?

 

They say that a true salesman could sell ice to an Eskimo

Well kid, I sold your confidence to your insecurity

Or was it the other way round?

 

I run circles around this ballgame

But then we’re just playing in the sand

Dizzy bat major leagues, sorority girl- laser in

On that, like on One.

Don’t fuck my sister mister.

 

Excuse me?

Throwing ice at Pauly D.

The police were overly concerned

With the state of his blowout

So we jumped out into the car

Behind bars for a very short while

Criminal memories still make me smile