clothes
like ripe fruit
fall from the clothesline
it will take you more
than trainfare to get
where you're going
girls girl themselves
poets poet themselves
at night in a pill
or in day on the street
who are you kidding
station to station
the poet moves
hair makes him younger
beige pants businesslike
to that which plugs in
wears on
takes off (under the right
circumstance
the artist changes
his name and builds
a city of light
where no one will know
penpal and pencil
pocket pussy media player
and the yellow boxfish
modernism is dead
postmodernism pretends to have lived
ink is dead (pens be tray
time is dead
money is dead
love of course
(but who dare say
if you want to know me
i will declare citizenship
to the grass
take you to a field
of radiant RGB green
if you want to know me
i will domino you
into the grass
and go into you
like the song of the locomotive
if you want to know me
you will drink my
raw pulsating
iambic dimeter
from the full bodied tip
of my nib
and then
i'll talk to you
what will i say
to you
you say
beard is to pussy as
sandpaper to butter
chair is to doggy style
as hemingway is to all
dogs
train is to me as you
are to me
unleaded or pure
the lesson is clear
1. buy low sell lower
no one will make a
better or more
graceful mockery
of you
2. fling
your genitals in
the air and keep
them there for
a while
3. dedicate a poem
to the penis if you
don't have one
you're shit out of luck
come and suck mine
4. time is a function
of desire and decay
directly proportional
5. if woman is
the nigger
of the world man
better go
iron some shirts
6. greatness is bought
with timespace
if you do not control timespace
then you are worse
than not great
7. there is nothing
else to know
that is not written
in telephone
books
for they count syllables in ja pa n
and all i do is
call moments they
tell me they missed
me and thus we
part on sad but
amicable terms
there is no end
but at the end of the line
wash your clothes
suck some sunrays through a straw
keep emptying your glass
(lest buddha
should find it full
and above else
be happy
wowzahz!
Indeed. ;)
She misses
The wood
Attached to him
In her mind's eye
Misses the downy moss
Around its trunk,
The brown of his fur
And the growl
In his throat
She misses
The foreign sounds
The foreign tongue
Burrowing
Into her
Around her
On her
Each time she stepped
Into his den
She misses
Furry arms
Downy chests
And afternoons
Of hibernation
Sex
And anonymity.
Looking up
Into a sky of images
She thinks
This must be
His mind turned
Inside out
As he turns her
Outside in.
She misses
His thrusts
His groan
As he jerks
The pen
Into her hand
Begging for strokes
To mark the page.
She misses
The choking
Filling her throat
With the pen
And all that must be said.
There are so many things I wish to say, so much Commentary I wish to give, but I shall still my tongue this time, for fear of disrupting this poem's Moment. It is, simply, excellent.
... I think the ending is forced. :P
Needing to say things seems to be a recurring motif in your work.
Regardless, the way you ended the poem is powerful, because it's ambiguous, since the reader is forced to ask himself whether the poem itself is "all that must be said" or something else, only hinted at in the poem, must be said, but cannot be said because it competes with the pen in the speaker's throat.
If the last line were in its own stanza, this ambiguity would be removed, because the last line would not have this double meaning; however, there is nothing wrong with the ending, as it is right now. This is the first time in my life when I was aroused by (and, well, jerked off to) a poem. There; you made me say it, heh. ;)
well... i think i'm flattered. i think. :) hows the going going?
You should be. ;)
At any rate, I'm actually going to write a whole entry on the going, since today has turned out to be a very special day. Standby for updates!
I keep reading and re-reading the above poem (now a little more soberly impartial to it, heh) and I think that I simply must make a few suggestions to make this poem, and your poetry in general, better.
The first suggestion comes from my former instructor, John Webb, who (in that terrible creative writing class) once suggested to me that consistency (specifically with regard to punctuation) goes a long way. You thus have two options here: drop it completely, in favour of line breaks (as I often do), or punctuate more consistently.
Secondly, your rather classical capitalisation of every line plays tricks on the reader's eye and mind sometimes. In my opinion, dropping those caps would make the line flow much more visually effective, especially in this poem.
Finally, never take line breaks for granted. See my above comments about the last line and the completely opposite meanings it yields when attached to, or detached from, the stanza about it. Even if you make a choice, you sometimes have to show your reader why you made it (whether he or she is able to comprehend it is another question altogether). ;)
It's easy to say that I'm trying to conform you to my own style, but, believe you me, neither I, nor anyone else, could take away your style now. These comments, with regard to effectiveness of communication and presentation, are much more basic. I hope I will not be misunderstood in this regard.
All these things notwithstanding, this is a wonderful poem. I think I just now understood the "sky of images" and I'm just sitting and admiring that line nnow. This is good work.
I hear what yer saying... but i dont know. i incubated this baby for... close to 6 months. I think i want some distance before i start editing it. i will. i think. but yeah. for now. i'll let it rest as is.
I am only a messenger. You have all the time in the world. ;)