WHY WE DON'T WRITE POETRY

Okay, okay, so we do. Self-promotion can be fun. But we're doing this instead. Poetry will probably be added regularly, so this may form into something a little more cohesive someday. Poetry submissions from outside sources (that means you, cutie) are as welcome as can be expected from a place like this, and will be posted as they are received.



untitled

It becomes habit to chase
ravens. The park hushes
with the attention to closing wings,
everywhere falling wings. Burnished
walkways file timidly through
wet attending grass. Walls of
the sandstone cathedral anxiously
reflect the blackened birds to
our deaf tongues, our mute
eyes that anticipate the rustling
of electric ivy, fueled by
my single singing step. One
insistent foot will send the
coterie furiously swimming to
the safety of lacy gables.
One foot, furiously swimming. The
garden holds its breath.


a sonnet

She floats in a river of fawning fools,
Impervious to currents of slander, praise;
Aware of the wear of simple social ways,
And how fervor, a fiery gaze cools.
She sits in a sea of awkward advances;
She smiles at hopeful suitors' smiles,
Unworn by waves of weaker wiles,
While splashed by supplicating glances.
She stands in a stream of outstretched hands;
I stand at the bank and scorn them all
Yet fascinated by the music they can make
As they break and boil over indifferent sands;
Content to know I am her helpless thrall
Even as I shake my head at the defeated in her wake.


a lyric

Your animated face is
an ark of small things.
They parade out at intervals
subject to mood or an off-color
joke. I have nothing to make
black eyes more black. Wet eyes
more wet. These catalogues fail upon
the paper slope of your neck.
Let me only marvel at this
train of beautiful animals proceeding
out of your warming face
(an Athenian army of cuckoos)
or at how your lips part just so,
meeting air with each new step,
as I hide behind a few impotent numbers
lest they set upon me in turn.


a lyric

And so it goes. Trembling crest of
lips bare & expectant, raised,
are praised beyond all judases,
in a sense dancing.
My feet (not dancing, shuffling
under the weight of weighing pools)
are fools. Peek furtively
from under ankles. The moment
-how like you this?
is never so fast. Slows down kisses
with time & periods. She is
not going anywhere.


a lyric

nonetheless she says &
eyes retreat into india ink.
lifts her heron's chin, stares
over a cross of bone china
(her arms) and says
my lady will not have it so.
accident & so forth.
she closes jade eyelids & leans forward
over a cross of muscled porcelain
(her legs) and breathes again.
words are wine. must not have it
she says & nonetheless
'tis.


whether

i'm the devoutest agnostic
hopelessly devoted to the definite maybe
and i'm living Leonard Cohen's life
for the holy trinity of self-deceit
i have no fairweather friends
because i am Hurricane Idiot
spinning boorishly of the coast
waiting impatiently for any of her boats


what i meant to tell you

i really meant to tell you
the sentinels of my cowardice would not permit me
to sit on your windowsill
to wait for any sun

the puncture hole of a dusty confession
the exit wound of my stopcold stare
we won't tell you what we did
behind closed doors
how we laughed at our own songs
how we buttered our asses for the friendly prison boys
while you thought us leaders of men

i meant to come back
i meant to tell you
we are not all of us singers
some of us must wail
some of us must listen


untitled

I sit and read the songs of fools,
Appeals to false gods seldom heard of;
Poems yearning for absent company,
Tales of unrequited love.

Though I empathize with these laments of love,
These same laments I abhor;
For I could read them all until Heaven fell
But not one will bring you to my door.


writer's nite

dim lights
rapt audience
preceded by failures
you're a cd cover
if i ever saw one


acts

The angel in my vision
keeps me in position
and I swear I can't move or feel a thing;
she's like some kind of flowing
ghost to keep me going
and my heart pulled down my throat so it could sing.
Only by divine intervention
she gave me her attention
and for some strange season it seemed she wanted mine;
so we exchanged addresses
(and educated guesses
on my part on whether this was all in my mind).
I'm at the threshold now, hands raised,
ready for homage, paean, praise,
though many stand beside me at the door.
I thank the divine intervention
that brought me your attention
but love, from fancy, demands a little more.


infamous invitation II

She's calling me darling again.
Enigmatic responses draw me out of my shell
though I know that to advance will no more increase my grip
on the shadow that is no shadow,
will more likely dash my head on rose-stained rock
than restore what is mine.

I cannot believe these monikers to false gods mean anything
yet I know I shall still offer my sacrifice
and pray for the prompt return of the Other
who was never there in the first place because
she's calling me darling again.


a poetry slam

wham.
bam.
thank you.
NEXT!


untitled

if words have power
then

fuck you

if not
then


untitled

there it is again
back like an overdue library book
that half-lidded stare of someone oversexed

your liasons weren't dangereux enough
you like your stares cold
your bodies cold
the bodies of the dead
scrawl their indelible mark
on your freezing forehead


untitled

those must hurt, the stretchmarks
of my arrival in your mind
your crestfallen look is the conduit of my avarice
if there were anything left to say
i wouldn't write it i would scream it
screaming is a release
so
you may not scream
you wouldn't anyway
you pride your punctured feet
which you show to the committees
hiding the hammer behind your back
and blaming those less wretched

as you fancy yourself a Carpenter


for every man who has ever dined alone

the waitress just asked if i want anything.
i bet i could fuck her.
i could fuck her.
i want to fuck her.
i should fuck her.
i will fuck her.

maybe.

maybe i won't fuck her.
i shouldn't fuck her.
i mustn't fuck her.
i can't fuck her.
i won't fuck her.

she's not that pretty anyhow.


leaving everything unsaid

your thorn-rimmed diffidence
my velvet-lined eloquence
our well-worn pretense
but a snowflake-armored defense

aesthetic tag in icicle overcoats
cupid's mediation absent, leaving us to bicker
over leaf-blanketed battlefields
and grass-stained-glass windows

chaos, gehenna swirl in the nothings between us
leaving everything unsaid yet understood
and yet elusive to the glass-rose conscience
leaving the mutual cupbearers of love perfect strangers


me vs. you

eros amused and you
stand in front of the mirror
admiring yourself
small breasts hovering like
two fine points in our conversation
i'm unsure whether i should leave
(she'll have to turn off beethoven first)
i think

and you still there
smiling
(i haven't seen her blink yet)
as if a new thing
a new progeny violently born
into the culture of our sex


untitled

darling do not offer me your aspirations
on the tip of your ironbolt finger
it is not enough to weigh down
the steam of light rising
from the tip of my 'avarice'
why can you not accept my plans for you
the finest piece in my personal gallery
why must you extract your weakest revenge
on those who want only this

to glorify you and move on


ovher

didn't you notice
it was over
the last lap dancer passed out
on the floor of your eyes
useless
you tortured that ideal
into a lengthy appeal process


untitled

i could grow to love new york
where every girl is beautiful
they all dance around like
marionettes looking for strings

all attitude and patent leather
as if hitler could ever be a fashion victim


modern woman

she wears those tight baby tees
but walks around with arms folded across breasts


urban haikuesque

this dirty curb is as natural
as my life gets
to sit among the weeds the weed and the weedy
the needy cower against this night
like the last note in a wedding march
(supposedly joyous, but the purest of finalities)


the lesson

The expectant heart
is the yin-yang of irony:
patience defeated by lack,
lack defeated by patience.
This a young woman taught me
by dangling me from the seaman's twine
of a promised rendezvous.


if your heart has hardened

if your heart has hardened against me
as i knew it would
and the grace the dimestore prophets speak of
is only reserved for the rich
and everything depends on how high the wind blew your skirt,
should i worry that two dead robins
crossed my path while walking through the rain
on my way to the coffee shop?


these days

one of these days i'll figure out how love works
that weary old miser, that agile young maid
your last piece of candy that someone else asks for
the last look of a stray kitten before it bolts

one day i'll know love's subtle mechanism
that wrings poetry from the awestruck
and yet is so energy inefficient
when it draws us out
to the lonliest of conclusions


well is it

so this is it
am i to unclasp
leather hinges of my bravado
raise up from feather-bed decor
and ingratiate myself
to your indifferent kiss


the slight

Despite all soft and welcoming Features
Women are Vain and Selfish Creatures.
All proof in Theory, all proof in Art,
They hold out their Hands to tear at your Heart.

Show me a Woman with altruistic Thought
And I'll show you that Woman, a Woman is not.
Show me a Woman that does not Scheme nor Plot
And I'll show you that Woman, a Woman is not.

Woman hath borne the brunt of The Sin;
On account of Man's Guilt we dare let them In.
And tho Man's Heart doth lie in noble State,
Once in, a Woman cannot help but Redecorate.


the apology

Let me run my fingers down your back,
my fingers through your hair.
Let me kiss your inner thigh
and find what I may there.
Oh let me touch a shoulder,
or your forehead so inclined.
Let me crest your trembling lip
with a fingertip dipped in wine.

Let me keep a tender watch
over quiet, sleeping form.
Do not sully with a word
or deprive me of mine own.
Let us look if it takes all night
at bodies spent and bare.
Let us drink our wine and go to bed
and find what we may there.


feather

velvet sheets of eloquence
always wrapped your sleeping body.

my dear, how could anyone live with you
and not become a poet?


liquid
(for brooke)

render unto caesar what is caesar's
but render me thy lips
and rend me with thine eyes
'kisses are a better fate' said e
and i agree

(the lightest liquid movement of your lips
drowns an army of caesars
and baptizes hearts)


one last thing i want to know

who's the sucker, baby,
and which of us is guide?

the whore with heaven in her hands,
the fool who never tried

the whore with hell between her hips,
the fool who never lied

the whore who shoulders so many regrets,
or the fool who never cried?


the sum of my talent

i tried to say
'this is worthy of a poem.
you deserve a poem.'
but it didn't work
except to say so

All poetry unless otherwise credited is the sole intellectual property of the Playground and may not be reprinted without written permission from the sysadmin, blah blah blah....why you'd want it we don't know.



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