2017 Poems

[I don’t write poetry all that often anymore, but since sometime in 2015, I have been keeping a poetry notebook of sorts in (embarrassingly) Apple’s Notes app. For some reason, in 2017, there were a surprising number of entries. At the moment at least, I really like a lot of these. In a moment (this moment) of weakness, I’m going to post the best ones here.]

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Everything is a gimmick

In poetry, it’s all just words
That exalt exhaust fuming
Fumbling mind-forensics

Frayed-edged razor words
Bathtub scrubbed sentences
Clean as a gleam of your reflected eye

Reflexed rubber word bubbles
Popping rice crispy soft
On the cerebellum insides

Gullible and guilty words
A wasted breath-beacon
On your bacon bourbon belly brain

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It’s national poetry month!

Says the library shelf
So I paw through some disused books
Sniffing for turns of phrase
Like a dog who pisses letters

I decide that most poets aren’t
Using enough technical terms, or
Analytical enough
(anal being the operative syllable)
And resolve to write more
Poems for pedantic programmers

I’ll read a book of poems this month
Even if it’s snozcumber terrible!
I turn to a back page author’s bio
And see a woman I haven’t thought about
Since our shared poetry classes
Twenty professor-less years ago

The publication date is two years previous
This is her first book
Her dedication is the same as the photo credit
She got an MFA after I dropped out to write webpages

As I walk to get lunch I’m writing this poem
Breaking lines, cultivating, alliterating
Struggling secondarily, unnecessarily
to remember a single detail about her
Not already present on that back page

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Ambition

An ember, smoldering,
Buried behind my right eye
If I pay it too close attention
It sparks and the bright red pain
Flares for an instant
The color of burned paint
Peeling from a tin can

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Augmented

We have a perfect time
I’m
Heading over to pick
Her
Bus mother and real estate
Office is open at three
We
Look for the new best next
In
Theory we look under there
Inside
Reality

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Anatomical Geometry

Asses to elbows
in the club, it’s all
circles and angles

A fundamental efficiency
human bit-packed array;
analytical plasticity. / an encumberment of appendages.

Fortune and Time have Extraordinary Reveals

I am coming to terms with a new identity.
Not the one she is growing, so surely,
but I am trying on new shoes.

I am looking in a mirror in the spare moments
between her quiet breath
and her insistent exclamation.

She is the monarch of most thoughtful moments,
leaving few free for this endeavor,
her hungry eyes are pools of requirement.

Compared to her observation, so persistent,
so full and all-consuming, my
hasty reflex pales and shrinks to trite.

I am born anew, perhaps, but my birth is weighted,
it retains half a lifetime of grimy emotional detritus.
Hers is pure, unvarnished, angelic… sublime.

I almost titled this post ‘Drama Answers Dream’.

Today is…

…the 2 year anniversary of the day that florence and I met.
…the first day of national poetry month.
…April Fools day.
…the day I upgraded to livingtech.net to WordPress 2.5.
…the first day… of the rest of my life.
…nothing special.
…the most special day EVER.
…getting old already.
…more than half over.
…a clusterfuck of ellipses.
…just another word that means time has passed and our lives are ceaselessly marching into the future regardless of hesitation or observation or introspection.
…beautiful.

Two Poems for Florence

It’s Valentine’s day, and seeing as how I haven’t posted any poems on here in monthsandmonthsandmonths, I decided I’d look back and see if I ever posted any of the poems I wrote for Florence when we first met. Turns out the answer is no, I didn’t. The first of these was the first poem I wrote for her, and I’m almost embarrassed to say how early in our relationship it was. It was the first time I told her I loved her. (Although I copped out and told her about it before I actually sent her the poem.) The second is one I remember feeling particularly proud of, and it seems to stand the test of time as well… enjoy!

A Single Sticky Thought

My sleepy foggy brain is clogged with
three words so big
they won’t fit out of my mouth.

I think them as you’re touching,
kissing, me awake.
My hands discover your
still naked, freshly clean body.
My eyes too fresh in dream to open.
I tell you about the dream instead,
trying to push the words out of the way.

They bubble to the surface
again in the elevator with you.
Stopping at the main floor, my exit,
This isn’t goodbye. I think, but
my mouth is full of I love you,
and I say nothing.

Synesthesia Aphrodisia

Your touch rings in my ears, your voice
a brush on my skin, your smell so physical
it moves me, the curve of your hips
so potent I taste them with my eyes.

I sense you, a languid memory.
I absorb you, an osmosis dream.
You have invaded me, your presense
a shadow I hear in pastels.

I kneel at an alter of you, take you
whimpering and whispering into my mouth,
swimming in the quiet purr of your voice,
the beautiful pulse of your green gold eyes.

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Dead skin surrounds you
like a cocoon. You are always emerging.
Isn’t it interesting to compare ourselves
to snakes? We are both constantly
shedding our dead selves.

But also we are constantly dying.
It’s as if contact with the physical world
kills us instantly, so we grow
only to keep the death from
spreading too far inside us.
Maybe old age is just
death catching up.

Entropy maybe
explains us better.
We are like river walls
eroding into death, via
the swift rushing
of passing time.

six am

sunshine swooning
eyes interred
grandmother night
day infant
dawn’s taste

copper flower
rising red rising
eastern mealody
marching westward
unexpected morning

[Process:

Just for fun, here’s some notes about the creation of this poem.

I started with the title “sun at six thirty am”. Then I didn’t like sun in the title and sunshine in the first line, and felt “sun at” could go. I feel like “sunshine swooning” is both the weakest line in the poem, and also the whole reason I wrote the poem, and therefore uncutable.

I tried to play with line breaks that change the meaning of the phrases depending on whether the lines are read together or as single entities. I changed “infant day” to “day infant” for that reason. I also tried to have each line stand on it’s own. I think an alternate way to read (and/or break) the poem would be:

sunshine
swooning eyes
interred grandmother
night day

infant dawn’s
taste copper
flower rising
red rising eastern
mealody marching
westward unexpected
morning

The last line is probably the line that “says” what the poem means or is about the clearest. I almost cut it for that reason but decided it was ok at the end of the poem.

I added the line “grandmother night” when I thought about how “day infant” sounded a bit too much like just waking up.

The last line written was “marching westward”, and as much as I think it flows well from “eastern mealody”, I deliberated for a long time on “westward” before finally deciding that I liked it.]

bad poetry barrage

sick and insistent words, incessant
eroding my padded brainitarium walls

crumbling my fruitcake mind-ache

they’re cumshot words,
got an ‘e’ stuck in my eye
tear falling from the sting

dictionaries are the only real poetry
prose poetry, thesauruses
the good stuff — strings of

same-meaning words
combining intentions and ambitions
symbolism in synonym

tall mountains standing on the horizon

barely breathed words
practically unspoken
break the night into
tear swept landscapes
stale air unmoving

lost concepts and
abandoned emotions

thoughts, forced out
unwilling to express themselves
regret and abandonment
pain is more than the point
it becomes the platform from
which all points are made

the undercurrent of our ocean
pulling us into frightful depths
concepts swallowing us whole

And I’ll admit, I’ve
imagined all this.
We talked of trivialities,
kept those sleeping giants buried.
Our horizon was flat, plain,

and our ocean shallow, so
we barely wet our feet.

love and poetry

I cannot write poetry
without thinking about what it is
to write poetry.
In the same way
I cannot be in love

without thinking about what it is
to be in love.

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Love and poetry are the same in that they are these abstract ideas rooted in emotion. I feel them before thinking about them, but try and think before expression of either. But both are about expression. Without externalization, without sharing, they are empty and useless facets of a person; beautiful, yes, but futile and ultimately frustrating.

[entire entry taken from my journal earlier today]