the trouble is the art of forgetting

The airless women took aim at a single clause
on a stone tablet,
as the men went out for coffee & cigarettes,
and the room grew arctic,
when the demonising began
its tiresome drawl, and ended
as abruptly, saved by irony.

Some random girl named Ariel
came along, in a red parka,
and everyone turned their heads
to pick up her virgin aura,
like armies of ants marching up
to drown in a bowl of cornflakes.

A crate of pomegranates arrived,
and the women said, Ahh…
still insatiable,
fluttering green-eyed contact lenses
and fanning years of discontent
with fair pretence,
after many seasons spent
in the art of forgetting.

Process notes: Napowrimo #28. The Poetic Asides prompt asked us to title a poem, “The Trouble is (blank)”. The poem, if you’re having trouble reading it, is about the neuroses in women. It is not easy to be a woman, and there seems to be a lot going on below the surface: rivalry, moralising, self-preservation, etc etc. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

releasing a mouse into the woods

Nature works with blunt pestles
that behave as tiny teaspoons
dangling before mouths,
hair held in place, finding
peace, crying onion tears,
as the radiator buzzed in
a grimy lived-in kitchen.

You hear a scuffle. That mouse!
Spying on food, stealing cheese
& bacon bits in the plastic bag.
A fluff of bread and you caught
it skulking into the cage,
and you’d have to carry it
again, down to the woods.

Untamed, self-effacing,
a brawny fur. Nothing riles
like pity. It could be worse,
a nemesis. You’d let it out.
Still, it was surreal, seeing
that a banal squeaky animal
reminds you of a kind of gray.

Process notes: Napowrimo #27. The Poetic Asides prompt is to write an animal poem. Could have written about…what, a leopard maybe. But no, it’s about the mouse. Buried in memory, never really left.

Goldilocks in waning light

The dendrobiums say “garden”. And they’re like
Edenic fruit. Pluck me.
That’s the ineluctable power of destiny.

He wanders the pedestrian path,
Hawaiian-shirted, linked in arm with a straw-hatted
girl, artisan of the palpitating heart.

Pass the sugar bowl, while you’re still in a trance,
lucid in bruised senility.
The oatmeal is warm, waiting for Goldilocks.

The world, you concluded, is beautiful with epiphanies,
a pool of meaning as implicated
in waning light, as she lays her curly locks
on the bed that is just right.

Process notes: Napowrimo #25. The Poetic Asides prompt is to write a love poem. This isn’t a conventional love poem. It is more an attempt at a collective unconscious, given that love is often corrupt and beautiful in all its human guises.

she believes in something

Lola is her name. Irrefutably
pretty. She is a serial number
in the devil’s black book.
She believes in something deep
in her sabre-rattling heart.
You could see a glow
under a microscope.
She eats a bowl of breakfast.
Goes out. Clumps of earth stuck
to high boots.

The light slants into the grass,
the air sticky with
pollinating pollen,
she walks in a field
of yellow dandelions.

Process notes: Napowrimo #23. The Poetic Asides prompt is to write an under the microscope poem. The news reported more underaged girls becoming social escorts, exchanging their bodies for a good life. Madonna and the material girl. Which is, apparently, what a city girl wants. Hardly anyone lives on a farm anymore. And it’s easier too, with the Internet, putting yourself under a microscope, whispering, “Come buy my product”. So tragic, if what you believe is entirely false.

birth

A woman gives birth to a poem,
a head of black hair outside
its mother, slip-sliding into
the midwife’s hands, smeared
with light. The light bounces
off the walls, the hospital bed,
the sink, the scales, the gown,
the blanket. The woman turns
her head crying into the light.
The poem is out in the world,
made of skin, bones, nails,
a downy head, a fair face.
The woman is strangely fey,
searches for a word: grace.

Process notes: Napowrimo #20. The Poetic Asides prompt asked us to write a poem about a life event.

duck soup

You held a spoon, wafting fragrance
of the duck, the sour plums,
the sweet tomatoes, in my mother’s kitchen.
The truth was chloroformed
onto the epaulettes of your shirt,
but I could still see her,
wrapped in a towel, combing her hair,
tucking in a pretty hair pin.
The pallor of her cheekbones told me
some unholy pulse of your trinity,
quiet whisperings, adult-like,
a sanguine hollow-eyed gladness.

April isn’t the cruelest month.
It is a month of white lilies.
The dead roam. I remember him when I think
of duck soup, the spoon held between his fingers.
Soup bubbling in my childhood, a trail of
breadcrumbs. Language hasn’t yet claim me.
Maybe I’m just making a wax figure of
the past already transfigured by
smoke and mirrors. He died young,
the first to go among the brothers,
a vaporised trail of his cigarettes,
leaving the taste of salted duck soup.

Process notes: Napowrimo #19. The Poetic Asides prompt is to think of a favorite regional cuisine and make it the title of your poem.

a mixtape, of sorts

I’m no angel. I have a hangover. I have a nosebleed.

I’m a bohemian. I live in a Victorian cottage. I write.

I’m a Persian carpet. I’m a misdeed.

I dream. I smirk. I’m such a dolt.

I like sparkling water. I taste like mint.

I’m full of nachos and Coke Lite.

And I like SpongeBob SquarePants.

I’m as crazy and mixed up as you.

What it all means? We’re looking for love.

Stuck in the deep blue sea fighting the Devil.

Good God.

Process notes: Napowrimo #17. Well, don’t blame me. The Poetic Asides prompt asked us to write a mixed up poem.

the hourglass & the fat balloon

Daft intelligence,
gummy thin threads that diminish
through an hourglass
in a shuttered room.

In the half light,
a preachy voyeur grew euphoric
with a slash of belligerence,
untied the mask like an angel of truth
strapped to a fat balloon,
and undoing buttons for the moon
in a muted cane chair, overlooking a panorama
of perfection, casting for the devil,
sipping tea and sucking liqourice,
mourning and wiping off all ungodliness
in a febrile chase of a lovelorn unicorn.

Process notes: Napowrimo #16. The Poetic Asides prompt is a wordle, to use these words: slash, button, mask, strap, balloon. So you’ll find these words nested, amongst yet more words.

words: an apocalypse

Words bellowing.
Words effervescing.
Words sputtering.

The smell of stale grease
from the eggy toast fry-up
in a small kitchenette.

The tattiness of rag-clothed words
hiding in dog ears,
shabby and insubstantial.

Gray matter cling-wrapped
with numb-skulled words,
apocalyptic and without mirth.

Words for a stand-up comedy gig
to pay the bills.

Words in gold-designed stationery
to sell storage solutions.

Words to eat like canapes
amongst the azaleas.

Process notes: Napowrimo #14. Doesn’t sound much of an apocalyptic poem for the Poetic Asides prompt. It is perhaps an apocalypse of a poem.

something woozy

While you’re nursing a summer cold,
a woozy patience
while being my talisman,
I walked all over town in Birkenstocks
gloating,
returned home, useful and sprightly.

What I really meant to say was
something else–last night’s surprise,
talking about math,
while looking at curly seashells pasta
in a casserole. So many cooking shows
in which the chef talked about parmesan fragrance
our TV noses could not absorb,
tickling our scientific brains.

Isn’t it excruciating,
this infinite sadness, behind it all?
It’s the barometer of the happiness trickling
in, when least expected,
or if not, then the sodium
will kill us, slowly, with high blood pressure
and all unhealthy eating habits
like too much booze.

I’m still thinking of red poppies,
and well, earplugs.
We might be needing those.

Process notes: Napowrimo #11. The Poetic Asides prompt is to write a poem titled “Something (blank).” This poem is the opposite of the terse haiku. It’s my kind of meditation. Rambling through the woods. It’s also a ramble for Charles’ excellent prompt posting over at D’Verse. It is also a reference to the excellent quote posted at We Write Poems.

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling… A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually – that is, when your reach it, you will reach it intellectually too – but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.
~Muriel Rukeyser