back log, again

Cassandra

She was dragged up to our manor
with a chest full of copper kettles,
words of water boil and steam whistle.
Cassandra got her kicks from
shouting in finely honed tones of
shrill anger no one turned to hear,
but our dogs would bite the air
and scratch their ears for respite.
Her bloody prophecies dropped
unheeded by people’s feet
like bees halted in north winds
her whole life.

When we brought her here
she had developed strange theories
about voices and attention.
Cassandra would square her jaw,
twist her ribs to conch shells,
breathe like a slit-bellied pig
and scream until her face bruised red.
Our bones were supposed to hear her
even if our ears still turned away.

Now the fire climbs
to the archers and the aviaries.
Barrels of water burst to steam
as the jelly fleshed survivors
cry out that they should have died
next to their favorite mosaics.
I wonder if the sharp tongued eagles
will carry Cassandra away,
back to her favorite city.

***

In other news: The thirtieth was my birthday. Quite a nice day. By night I was friends with a bartender, so that was mind numbing enough.

Drinking has been giving me the kind of slight insomnia where I drop to sleep when the sun starts to come up and then wake up over and over again between 9am and 1pm. Then I have obscene amounts of coffee and rush off to get pizza with some long-treasured New Yorker. I have to write a poem (that will most likely be fueled by new year alcohol) for today. I'm amazed I've kept this up for five days already.

Thank you Adam Stone for this ballsy challenge, it shocked me out of a long-ass writer's block.

pretentious!

Petit Objet a

It stands in the eastern room
with posture breeding perfect clarity,
lucid as mirrors in microscopes and cameras,
decisive and easy as points scored in a game,
either flying or falling

The western room is more like a carnival
in the sense that the flesh gains celebrity,
yet there is less opacity, there are hands
placing prisms in front of mirrors and
fortune tellers weaving themselves into open palms.
The flying or falling is less important
than the sky’s informative concert with the body aloft.

Nightingale

A pale girl brushes soil away from
a large bird skeleton, wing stretched for flight,
made of milky white diamond.

The scars are honed and
perfected in the mirror, then seek
impressive sympathy in the flesh of another.

In his dreams songs are specks of grit,
slivers of ornamental glass battered smooth,
felt in the ridges of his teeth instead of tasted.

An orange tree is chopped down
still warm and bleeding amber sap.
The insects cede long prized labyrinth to fires.

As she wanders the desert
she can see only bones-- intensely fetal mesas
and dunes constantly calling to be fractured by wind.

As his hands press his fingerprints onto the notebook
he can feel the white paper pleading to stay blank
and rhapsodizing about stains with equally loud voices.

Once burned they are all light enough to fly
or free to alight on whatever is desired unnoticed.

boop

This is already available on the internets, but I wanted to add it here in the interest of updating this thing once in a blue moon and keeping a super accurate inventory of the 365 in 365 challenge (which I will not be able to triumph over, but will probably inspire a new record in me.)

Watching Iris Sleep (Android Attempts to Dream)

Light seeps higher and higher through the clouds
like a bashful coffee stain

The bed springs creak satisfied chicken sounds
Iris softly sings in her dream language
Lavender sheet bisecting her throat

I was not programmed to need sleep
No significance was given to these hours alone
but I’m beginning to translate this need to dream

Iris closes her eyes and unknowingly edits
the mythology of her lifetime

As her lips twitch a moment is forgotten
another second gains the brilliance of a young star
a flare inside to define Iris

My memory of each day is engineered exactly as circuitry
I hold everything
A full glass unsipped

Iris, brown eyed girl
named after a yellow throated flower,
I can perfectly recall every second of your life

Today you spent six hours in the sun
gained a freckle on your shoulder,
your mother put more paprika than usual in the morning eggs,
you learned the word “lever”
as your parents watched Japan’s prime minister announce
his daughter’s wedding,
you stained your hands with a pomegranate,
the dog chewed your diary,
you played on the slide for forty-five minutes,
your mother told you not to eat dirt and you cried,
your shoe fell off as you ran in the park

As you forget all these things
your gorgeous nature expands
young star spreading to red dwarf