Bucolic: Sheep's Milk
I worry
of Your bones:
heavy
as milk, and sour
as curdle.
Your femur
in the crust
on the pail's rim,
Your ribcage
in the skin.
I break it- must
consume that milkiness
like a dead lamb's eye:
How else can I
see You, steep
in Your figure,
in both Your whole
and your broken bones?
1
Feathered dark eyes and a long slope
to velvet lips and snout, grotesquely
expressive, nosing pockets for food.
The face, if white or black, skeletal,
bears the Impostor; his high head, mouth
foaming with effort or evil
or effort against evil, not
to follow
the reins.
2 The hair and musk
rise in the sun;
the path stretches dust
between the ears, goes on.
Then a knee and a heel, a rumbling through the ground
the rocking forward-thudding back, the timeless
cantering to the end, the horizon and over.
Then over is a stable,
----- a cool-down and walk in, the
----- hushing and patting, hosing down,
the cleaned h
You must sing to be found; when found, you must sing.
-Li-Young Lee
Those weeks when you stand at the mirror, your face harrowed; those days and hours, your pulse clawing at a tight angry eel living below the heart, between the lungs. And how you try to throw him out, your dinghy solid enough but tipped by this storm-scaled weight.
You try to drown him, to leave his knife-edge gills with nothing to sift air from. Convulse and heave over the sink, pail out the water by rivulet and stream. Your knuckles stiffen with splinters and your face swells in the mirror.
You curl on the deck, the fish circling. You stand at the sink.
Cup water, cle
Eire; the country, not the element
(though the element, if any, might lend itself
to the way the country isn't)
the country I can only see
from the plane window, from the prospective,
its green and undeniable life
a far cry
from anything it';s been
or anything I've seen
so as I consider the quartered potatoes on my plate,
I'm also considering the wet soil
once around them, and the heavy shoulders
of my ancestors, laboring out to the fields,
thankful for whatever their earth
could give.
I see you on the screen you see me
we see each other
youre propped up on the tip of your elbow, and
I repeat do you like my hair twice
my connection is weird you apologize
I nod and wave it away
start to think about the billions of pixels
making up your face the hallway out your door
and the very white page Im writing on
running their weary track on the hyper-super-highway
little Marathons running and running
bursting forth on a screen, rushing forth with the
great importance of one that brings light
The many-legged eaters
of desire, they slink and clatter
alight and prowl
on jungle branches
snap their jaws and clack
their pincers, feral and unsated
gnashing their greed against
lethal, tree-strangling vines,
against the vicious intelligence
of those chimpanzees that
would howl and glare at the smallest one
cliquing him out of their food,
leaving him for the animals.
twin sister
You lump of floral
bedding, in a room with
two beds. Sometimes
you crawled into mine anyway.
I hated it when Mom rooted
through our closetwho said
you could come in my bed
but I let you, you always helped me
pick out perfumes and whispered
in my powdered ear before those dances.
after it was done
with the boy you never slept with
me. I never cried. I never said
I loved you anyway, you
never-possibility, you
little red shadow.
The particular citrus of an orange
gone sour, like the winceworthy
lemon if it were sweeter.
Rather like a yoga class(, or god forbid, the hot kind
where you sweat out any kind of relaxation
and all kinds of lactic acid)
after your limbs have started shaking.
Hot laundry. Mundane things.
In meditation afterwards, you see your body
inhaling through the poses, keeping the arms up in Mountain,
then disc by disc curling back into Child,
whole bodies in rows moving in time
to the great breathing.
Train sets, she had been told, encouraged punctuality. Kids that played with Tinker Toys and building blocks grew up to be famous city planners and architects. Painting the walls and ceiling blue, she read, would calm the childs disposition. Playing Mozart near the childs crib was proven to increase his potential. She tacked the wall stickers with the number line, the ABCs, and a world map up. His mobile dangled with accurate reproductions of farm animals. By the time the child was born, a girl, she was crammed into a corner, a footnote, a tiny, terrified bundle in a world of light and sound and color and expectation.
Black Pepper
The wife cooks dinner. She marinates steak
with Worcestershire, garlic, wine.
She concocts a seasoning so hot
that the lips pucker,
the tongue sears. It is her way
of speaking with the man across the table,
who trudges through the front door,
too tired to speak.
Nothing stirs him,
not her hands, not her advances
only, she has found, the sharp dark aroma
of the black peppercorn
set on his plate.
Bucolic: Sheep's Milk
I worry
of Your bones:
heavy
as milk, and sour
as curdle.
Your femur
in the crust
on the pail's rim,
Your ribcage
in the skin.
I break it- must
consume that milkiness
like a dead lamb's eye:
How else can I
see You, steep
in Your figure,
in both Your whole
and your broken bones?
1
Feathered dark eyes and a long slope
to velvet lips and snout, grotesquely
expressive, nosing pockets for food.
The face, if white or black, skeletal,
bears the Impostor; his high head, mouth
foaming with effort or evil
or effort against evil, not
to follow
the reins.
2 The hair and musk
rise in the sun;
the path stretches dust
between the ears, goes on.
Then a knee and a heel, a rumbling through the ground
the rocking forward-thudding back, the timeless
cantering to the end, the horizon and over.
Then over is a stable,
----- a cool-down and walk in, the
----- hushing and patting, hosing down,
the cleaned h
You must sing to be found; when found, you must sing.
-Li-Young Lee
Those weeks when you stand at the mirror, your face harrowed; those days and hours, your pulse clawing at a tight angry eel living below the heart, between the lungs. And how you try to throw him out, your dinghy solid enough but tipped by this storm-scaled weight.
You try to drown him, to leave his knife-edge gills with nothing to sift air from. Convulse and heave over the sink, pail out the water by rivulet and stream. Your knuckles stiffen with splinters and your face swells in the mirror.
You curl on the deck, the fish circling. You stand at the sink.
Cup water, cle
Eire; the country, not the element
(though the element, if any, might lend itself
to the way the country isn't)
the country I can only see
from the plane window, from the prospective,
its green and undeniable life
a far cry
from anything it';s been
or anything I've seen
so as I consider the quartered potatoes on my plate,
I'm also considering the wet soil
once around them, and the heavy shoulders
of my ancestors, laboring out to the fields,
thankful for whatever their earth
could give.
I see you on the screen you see me
we see each other
youre propped up on the tip of your elbow, and
I repeat do you like my hair twice
my connection is weird you apologize
I nod and wave it away
start to think about the billions of pixels
making up your face the hallway out your door
and the very white page Im writing on
running their weary track on the hyper-super-highway
little Marathons running and running
bursting forth on a screen, rushing forth with the
great importance of one that brings light
The many-legged eaters
of desire, they slink and clatter
alight and prowl
on jungle branches
snap their jaws and clack
their pincers, feral and unsated
gnashing their greed against
lethal, tree-strangling vines,
against the vicious intelligence
of those chimpanzees that
would howl and glare at the smallest one
cliquing him out of their food,
leaving him for the animals.
twin sister
You lump of floral
bedding, in a room with
two beds. Sometimes
you crawled into mine anyway.
I hated it when Mom rooted
through our closetwho said
you could come in my bed
but I let you, you always helped me
pick out perfumes and whispered
in my powdered ear before those dances.
after it was done
with the boy you never slept with
me. I never cried. I never said
I loved you anyway, you
never-possibility, you
little red shadow.
The particular citrus of an orange
gone sour, like the winceworthy
lemon if it were sweeter.
Rather like a yoga class(, or god forbid, the hot kind
where you sweat out any kind of relaxation
and all kinds of lactic acid)
after your limbs have started shaking.
Hot laundry. Mundane things.
In meditation afterwards, you see your body
inhaling through the poses, keeping the arms up in Mountain,
then disc by disc curling back into Child,
whole bodies in rows moving in time
to the great breathing.
Train sets, she had been told, encouraged punctuality. Kids that played with Tinker Toys and building blocks grew up to be famous city planners and architects. Painting the walls and ceiling blue, she read, would calm the childs disposition. Playing Mozart near the childs crib was proven to increase his potential. She tacked the wall stickers with the number line, the ABCs, and a world map up. His mobile dangled with accurate reproductions of farm animals. By the time the child was born, a girl, she was crammed into a corner, a footnote, a tiny, terrified bundle in a world of light and sound and color and expectation.
Black Pepper
The wife cooks dinner. She marinates steak
with Worcestershire, garlic, wine.
She concocts a seasoning so hot
that the lips pucker,
the tongue sears. It is her way
of speaking with the man across the table,
who trudges through the front door,
too tired to speak.
Nothing stirs him,
not her hands, not her advances
only, she has found, the sharp dark aroma
of the black peppercorn
set on his plate.
Current Residence: Chicago deviantWEAR sizing preference: M Favourite photographer: you should look at Finvara and Eliara Favourite style of art: Writing, Vector/Vexel, Photography, Film Operating System: Mac OSX 10.4 Wallpaper of choice: Vector Favourite cartoon character: Hobbes
Just to validate myself, I have been writing my dailies for NaPo-- I don't upload all of them, because I don't like some-- but mainly NaPo is to get me writing every day. I don't really want too much fuss over it, for my own sake. I'll consider it a success if I turn out some decent work that I can revise over the next weeks and months.
Thanks to all-- mostly RoseOfChaos (https://www.deviantart.com/roseofchaos) for egging me on. And happy day-bloodied-and-bruised-jesus-turned-into-a-zombie day! Hope you enjoy your religious services!
Happy holidays. Hope the break was good for everyone.
I got a beautiful Canon camera for Christmas, and then the next day I was walking downtown, slipped on the ice, and now the back LCD screen is cracked to hell. Also I apparently broke something inside the camera. It'll cost $230 to fix.
So I'm in a pretty shitty funk. I'll get it fixed and start posting again sometime in the next month or so.
Later.
hey! ~kyomichi5252 pointed you out to me. I'll have to take some good time to really read your gallery - but I didn't have much time right now- I did get to read a few though and I think my brain is tired. Since this is so, it's not best time for me to be reading poetry- I'm slow So I'll have to find the time later- for now I thought I'd just say hi and so I can remind myself to return!