Nutritious Sound-Meaning Constructs

Stealing from the Masters

Quite uncharacteristically, another poetic snack before I go to my not-at-all-poetic job.

Nutritious Sound-Meaning Constructs
Disclaimer: I have stolen the title of this poem from Bob Holman’s “Disclaimer”

I like this conception:
poetry as food.
I suppose we can all look
back to our English classes
and consider the meat loaf of Shakespeare,
the pot roasts of Longfellow and Frost,
haiku swallowed in one bite, like sushi.

We can all remember our verses,
tortured out to complete assignments,
and figure we’ll have to order a pizza,
or a Bukowski.

While I might want to be
the sweet liqueur of a Neruda,
I can rest content
with being a candy heart:
a quick sensation of sweet,
then forgotten.

Sleeping Alone

To anthropomorphize a bit, my muse is one sadistic bitch. All day yesterday, I’m just sitting around, plenty of paper, pens, keyboards, all just waiting for some spark of creativity that would not come. Then, after I’ve been laying in bed for a half-hour or so not able to sleep, the creativity fairy slaps me with her magic wand and “BAM!” I have an idea for a poem. Seriously, even one hour earlier, everything would have been a-ok. But, damn… I suppose, considering the subject matter, it probably would not have been thought of at any other time. Either way-

Sleeping Alone

I don’t know why,
but I preferred to sleep
with my back toward her,
let her softness curl around me
or like stone I would arc around her.
I like the feel of her breasts
or her back and the heat between us
did something I never could remember
from physics class.

Sometimes, I would wake up,
alarm clock glowing red,
and I would be balanced precariously,
like a gymnast,
or a tightrope walker,
on the edge of the bed;
her slender frame curled in its center.
When I would complain
in the morning
of her night-time atrocities
she would tell me to “just move” her,
but no matter how sleep-addled
my insomniac mind became,
I would never have done that,
never have woken her,
merely to reclaim territory.

Some nights I enjoy
the sort of sprawl possible
while unaccompanied in bed;
the endless possibilities
for position.
Other times I feel more
like Caesar:
straying even one inch
over the invisible border she upheld
has all the finality
of crossing the Rubicon.
I know her armies have quit the field,
and the bed is open for invasion,
yet I still feel the need
to watch my back.

I’m not sure I like the ending, so I may be back to re-write that.

As always, comments most welcome.

Game Over.

I’ve previously noted the amazing efforts of this group here, but today, I saw a fresh video from them. Seems like this group does some other work in design (at notsonoisy.com).
Today: Pole Position!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywqu_8RIDvU]

Five simple words

I have not been feeling much inspiration lately. Too much television, perhaps; it makes creative focus hard to obtain and hold. End result: one poem, not so very good, based on a writing exercise I resort to when I want to write and have nothing to write about- Five Words.

Really simple rules for this exercise.

1. Get five random words - flip through a dictionary, use a random word generator, I like to draw them from a coffee cup containing the important words from two Magnetic Poetry kits (Original and Romance, if anyone wonders).

2. Pick some arbitrary rules on how those words get turned into a poem- use them to start verses, stick them in verses, jumble the order, end verses…. anything arbitrary at all, just to focus and force some kind of form.

3. Write- and this has to be done without self-reflection as it probably won’t be very good, but, in a few weeks when you look back at it, it may have a verse, or a line, worth turning into another poem.

Today’s poem is Cheek - Dinner - Frantic - Smooth - Together

I hope, as the faint aroma of
tomato and garlic waft and
get paired with wine at dinner,

That the frantic beating of
my heart is not drowning out
the polite and distracted conversation.

I have given up any hope
of smooth transition from
table to bedroom;

Even though we’re together,
I’m ready to fall to pieces,
and I’m rather surprised

When you set down the wine.
A wry smile twists your cheeks.
Later, I found out

You had an agenda, too:
no- agenda is too charged a word
to describe this honest desire to share pleasure.

*** This is pretty much as I wrote it, only minimal editing for clarity and consistency. Please, always feel free to comment and let me know what you think. Or e-mail me.

One out of 23 is not bad…

Album covers from the 23 most annoying songs according to Channel 3000. I have to say, with such songs as “Macarena” and “MMM-Bop,” they’re pretty much on track. But, I do like ONE of the songs. I guess that’ll be my guilty secret.

(via Pharyngula)

Hello world! / General Coolness

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Edit: Well, “Hello!” to anyone who reads this. This is a quick edit to the default comment which will be a quick repost of what will be my last post from my myspace blog. Over here, I pretty much want to continue the themes of random coolness and poetry. More to come later.

Haven’t been doing much writing recently, so here’s a quick post with some general cool stuff.

I love the sandwich analogy. Another good one is “if atheism is a religion, ‘off’ is a TV channel”.
From Pharyngula

Why we should all be secularists

Archives of the Penn Jillette Radio Show

Hopefully, I’ll be back with some fresh verses soon.

Kali

Kali

Dance, my dark devi:
You are drunk
on life
and dance with joy.
Your passion erupts
in a corona
unmatched in the cosmos.
Your steps are earthquakes;
your glances, lightning;
your shouts, gales.
In your wake, nothing stands.

Dance, my dark devi:
Would that I were Vishnu
and I could spread
my primordial essence-
be a boundless
reservoir
and contain the fury
of your glee.
Then, when you are expended
meet you in tantric
perfection.
In your wake, nothing stands.

Dance, my dark devi:
But I am a poor son
of Satayavrata
and my mortal shell,
touched by
the heat of your
passion,
is suffused,
and consumed,
and burns in
unadulterated,
unmitigated
joy.
In your wake, nothing stands.

Isis

Isis
Queen of the underworld,
I swim through your eyes
as if they were oceans of sand;
as if a vast and forgotten empire
lay just below the surface.

My hands trace hieroglyphs
on your delicate, golden skin,
inking with my breath
the fantastic tales
contained on ragged
lengths of papyrus.
A warm breeze flows across the
Sahara and the Nile
into our pharaonic bower
where, as if in prayer,
I kneel and begin the
Book of Coming Forth Into Day
at your mouth,
and across your breasts,
and across your sex…
To say by Nut, the brilliant,
the great: This is my beloved…

Queen of the underworld,
these ossified wrappings
cannot contain my love for you.
Carve for me a golden heart,
breathe me back to life,
if only for one night.

One Girl in all the World

One Girl in All the World

I am honored
that on your walk through eternity
you have chosen to tarry
for a while,
without halo or scepter,
next to me.
One girl in all the world
and I adore you.

I am an archaeologist
looking in your eyes:
excavating first
warrior women and Valkyrie,
then Demeter, Ceres,
then, within a civilization of sand,
I see the sly woman, Inanna,
thief of magic.
I lay bare the strata of your eyes
until they are brown
and green and
inches from mine.

I would be your high priest
Hathor, Freya, Venus.
I already worship at your feet.
Your body is
the most holy temple.
Though you ask for no sacrifice,
I burn incense
and kneel at your altar.

And you laugh,
and smile,
and cry,
and are full of caprice,
and youth, for today.
And in another
you will draw your age around you
like a cloak;
but breasts no longer pert,
or hips spread from birthing,
or wrinkles,
cannot disguise you.

Because in this moment,
as our hands tremble
and our hearts tattoo a sensual rhythm
and my lips nearly grace yours,
we are eternal, immutable,
fundamental.
One girl in all the world
and I adore you.

Perhaps Known

Perhaps-known

There are things forgotten, then unearthed,
things perhaps-known:
the maybe known,
the wind kissing your neck;
things you bump against and caress
in this orgy of sense and information.

I like to take these things,
these perhaps-knowns, these half-truths
and hazy memories,
gaze unflinchingly into their eyes,
kiss them deeply,
divine their essence
by inhaling spent breath.

To you, sweet nymph,
am I perhaps-known?
Do you glimpse me
from the corner of one mythic eye
and realize it was only a flower
twined into your hair?

Sadly, love,
you have become mist.
If absence makes the heart grow fonder,
it make the mind grow faint.
Sadly, love,
I cannot recall the sweetness of a kiss.
And when my hands arc through the air,
they no longer trace your curves.
You are a thing perhaps-known,
that has become a mystery,
then a dream, a moment,
then forgotten.