I'd like to be really beautiful
only because then
your teeth would probably shine
5 or 6 shades whiter
whenever I came around
too.
If I were superrich
I'd give you anything you wanted
including the famous elephant
whose inseparable best friend
is either a large blowfish
or looks exactly like one.
I am trying to get my plumber
to join all your pipes to mine.
He says," It's not code
but what you gonna do
when love comes to town?".
I don't feel much
like making a another sob song
but the holes in my face
want to bleed,
want to keep bleeding for you.
Why don't I pour out my heart then?
It would go Bang!
as soon as it touched your hands.
Why don't I go away then?
Every inch of my skin
would never stop crawling back.
How did I ever get into this awful fix?
I don't know.I don't know.I don't know.
The doctor says its the worst case
he's ever seen but not to worry:
It is not the dry heaves anymore--
he's found around my lips--at last!--
a ring of light green foam.
_________________
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Reconciliation
She painted her toenails, she said,
to trick the bed monster
into thinking they'd already
been bitten off.
He bit them off anyway.
Every time.
Her mom didn't wonder:
I told you the smoke
in his pockets smelled
like it had come
from his mouth.
I told you bristles
can be rendered soft
with chemicals
and bleached wonderfully blond.
And yet you made earrings
of the padlocks I gave you
for your purse.
And the derringer I gave you
for when all else failed--
you loaded it with gum drops,
goddammit, and juju beans,
and he never dropped dead from it
like he needed to
but got crazier with every shot.
She loved him anyway--
and yet she got so
she booby trapped his wallet
on Friday nights.
She did it for love, she said,
and to rid the world
of at least one whore
and one half-dressed
huge bug with markings
on his back that looked like:
lady's man.
She was a woman's woman
but finally,
when things got really bad,
she started eating dog biscuits
to darken her voice
for her audition:
She wanted the lead
in any opera
where the diva got stomped on
got raped from the wrong end
got kicked over a cliff
and only by catching
a bush growing out of the rocks
and hanging there
with agonized fingers for hours
that seemed like years
got saved at last
and wound up in a clean bed
with bandaged feet
and a fair little man
who only scared her
when he smiled.
Tom Allen________________
to trick the bed monster
into thinking they'd already
been bitten off.
He bit them off anyway.
Every time.
Her mom didn't wonder:
I told you the smoke
in his pockets smelled
like it had come
from his mouth.
I told you bristles
can be rendered soft
with chemicals
and bleached wonderfully blond.
And yet you made earrings
of the padlocks I gave you
for your purse.
And the derringer I gave you
for when all else failed--
you loaded it with gum drops,
goddammit, and juju beans,
and he never dropped dead from it
like he needed to
but got crazier with every shot.
She loved him anyway--
and yet she got so
she booby trapped his wallet
on Friday nights.
She did it for love, she said,
and to rid the world
of at least one whore
and one half-dressed
huge bug with markings
on his back that looked like:
lady's man.
She was a woman's woman
but finally,
when things got really bad,
she started eating dog biscuits
to darken her voice
for her audition:
She wanted the lead
in any opera
where the diva got stomped on
got raped from the wrong end
got kicked over a cliff
and only by catching
a bush growing out of the rocks
and hanging there
with agonized fingers for hours
that seemed like years
got saved at last
and wound up in a clean bed
with bandaged feet
and a fair little man
who only scared her
when he smiled.
Tom Allen________________
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The Poet Reviews Famous Photos
Yes, most of the time
I am...being pretty.
I mean, I want
to say something too,
but not if it means...
well, suppose I'm standing there
on a sidewalk grate someplace,
beautiful rich outfit,
nice pair of white heels,
the whole act,
and suddenly my skirt gets blown up
over my pants
and it looks like a parachute
and looks like I'm falling
maybe like from a roof
like I've just jumped
because my boyfriend
threw me over...
I like this sort of thing...
hell, I love it,
I'd do it every day for a year--
but not if my pants,
which I always want to be showing,
should have piss stains
on them or something worse...
I'd rather do birthday cards
than that...
But once in a while
something happens to me,
I don't know, somebody dies
or I nearly drive off a cliff,
and I start talking
and I don't care about shit
like dirty pants..
I don't care if I'm got up
in a halter and shorts
and look like I'm tumbling
barefoot and headfirst
off a tenement fire escape
that has just collapsed under me
and is falling beside me
in big rusty pieces
while just above me
also falling,
irredeemably hopelessly lost and falling,
is a little six year old girl,
maybe my sister
maybe my daughter
with her dirty shirt blown up
over her skinny ribs
and her arms held out
like useless wings.
(The photos referred to are 1) http://www.marilyncollector.com/legend/syi.html --scroll to bottom photo and 2) http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/fire-on-marlborough-street-1975.html This is saying too much?)
I am...being pretty.
I mean, I want
to say something too,
but not if it means...
well, suppose I'm standing there
on a sidewalk grate someplace,
beautiful rich outfit,
nice pair of white heels,
the whole act,
and suddenly my skirt gets blown up
over my pants
and it looks like a parachute
and looks like I'm falling
maybe like from a roof
like I've just jumped
because my boyfriend
threw me over...
I like this sort of thing...
hell, I love it,
I'd do it every day for a year--
but not if my pants,
which I always want to be showing,
should have piss stains
on them or something worse...
I'd rather do birthday cards
than that...
But once in a while
something happens to me,
I don't know, somebody dies
or I nearly drive off a cliff,
and I start talking
and I don't care about shit
like dirty pants..
I don't care if I'm got up
in a halter and shorts
and look like I'm tumbling
barefoot and headfirst
off a tenement fire escape
that has just collapsed under me
and is falling beside me
in big rusty pieces
while just above me
also falling,
irredeemably hopelessly lost and falling,
is a little six year old girl,
maybe my sister
maybe my daughter
with her dirty shirt blown up
over her skinny ribs
and her arms held out
like useless wings.
(The photos referred to are 1) http://www.marilyncollector.com/legend/syi.html --scroll to bottom photo and 2) http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/fire-on-marlborough-street-1975.html This is saying too much?)
Friday, January 9, 2009
Christmas Mroning Drive
Christmas Morning Drive
Nothing on the radio
except Come all ye
and silent night.
Scanned every station.
Preachers and carols
sitting all over the waves.
Got me edgy.
What? It's Christmas,
so everybody's got to wear
sugar pants?
Finally snagged onto Reba:
"You're a Liiiaaarrr!"
and my achy breaky heart
got eased.
_________________
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry : Poetry Foundation
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
God's Death
Nietzsche said "God is Dead".
I could never take him seriously.
God was too much always on his mind.
The letter he wrote
just before his last irrevocable slide
was signed:The Crucified One.
If God had died for him
He died the way Ricardo did in Ballo
when his lover's husband shot him from behind
and he slowly sank to the ground singing,
sinking and singing,
singing at the top of his lungs half a dying hour.
Charlie Otero had a different experience
of the death of God
when he came home from school one day
and found his father on the floor
strangled with a belt
and his mother naked and strangled with a cord.
As a man stabbed through the heart falls,
God fell in a heap that afternoon
instantly,
completely.
There was no singing at all.
I could never take him seriously.
God was too much always on his mind.
The letter he wrote
just before his last irrevocable slide
was signed:The Crucified One.
If God had died for him
He died the way Ricardo did in Ballo
when his lover's husband shot him from behind
and he slowly sank to the ground singing,
sinking and singing,
singing at the top of his lungs half a dying hour.
Charlie Otero had a different experience
of the death of God
when he came home from school one day
and found his father on the floor
strangled with a belt
and his mother naked and strangled with a cord.
As a man stabbed through the heart falls,
God fell in a heap that afternoon
instantly,
completely.
There was no singing at all.
Monday, June 23, 2008
A WOMAN UNCONSCIOUS
Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That there's no trusting (trusting to luck)
Dates when the world's due to be burned;
That the future's no calamitous change
But a malingering of now,
Histories, towns, faces that no
Malice or accident much derange.
And though bomb be matched against bomb,
Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure --
Earth gone in an instant flare --
Did a lesser death come
Onto the white hospital bed
Where one, numb beyond her last of sense,
Closed her eyes on the world's evidence
And into pillows sunk her head?
Ted Hughes
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That there's no trusting (trusting to luck)
Dates when the world's due to be burned;
That the future's no calamitous change
But a malingering of now,
Histories, towns, faces that no
Malice or accident much derange.
And though bomb be matched against bomb,
Though all mankind wince out and nothing endure --
Earth gone in an instant flare --
Did a lesser death come
Onto the white hospital bed
Where one, numb beyond her last of sense,
Closed her eyes on the world's evidence
And into pillows sunk her head?
Ted Hughes
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