poetry thread, anyone?

[ulysses]

Post 'em if you got 'em. I'll start.

Thunderhead

Disinterred, twisted among chamisa and the adobe cathedral
I have come here, naked, to the bloodless ground clutched
in hands of bone, a place pregnant by a thousand others' names,
a thousand lives the color of earth.

From a height that is above the sky the mountains
life to taste the rain; with turning wind the mountains
groan of Christ, mute to my ear, the rain a rosary of beads
in the dirt.

In the cathedral's shadow pueblo women sit on the plaza,
they are not of this time or of the cathedral; they are of the pueblo
and the mountain, and the clouds and the rain.
Their wheat-wrinkled hands rest from jewelry
in the small of the afternoon.

Near them my August laughter falls dry and colorless
to my feet; their silence asks the question for me,
should you have come here? Did your flatland birth
offer you a home where you were before?
Your loneliness goes before you like a dog in the road.

[Chan790]

1. I wrote this.

Middle America

There is nothing sadder than a rainy day in middle America.
Individual rain-tears falling drip drip drop drip against the old grey
wet slate roof. Sitting in a chair which belongs to somebody I've never met,
writing this as nothing goes on at 7:24am on a Saturday out a borrowed
window into other people's lives looking out over those green grass lawns in
middle America.

Goddamn, I hate you, middle America reflecting on my own lawn in new england,
an 18th century industrial mill city:
concrete, asphalt, patio stones, sidewalk tiles, gravel in rain-gutter ditches.
I hate the way you condescend out there in middle America
with your lush streets straddled in verdant sidewalk in ever-perfect lines
framed in green grass lawns watered by millions of rain-tears falling.

drip drip drop drip dripping drops

Everything beautiful ends, even here in the middle America sometime and idyllic peace must too,
as the author realizes that he is writing this exactly as it occurs out the window
on middle America and immediately becomes self-conscious
...
again.

Glassboro, NJ. June 2004

[ulysses]

2. you ever do readings?

I'd like to hear that one live. Good performance piece.

[Chan790]

3. Rarely...

which is funny because it's the medium I write for. Verbal. Poems in print always strike me as dead in some way.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Here's mine, such as it is:

When you go through something

Horrific

After you emerge

On the other side

Is it really still

You?

I don’t know anymore

Who I am

Someone has taken me away

And left this odd stranger

In my place

I don’t recognize me

Or you for that matter

Where did we go?

Who did we become?

Where is my soul?

Someone did something with it

Or maybe to it

Very odd

My inner landscape is gone

And replaced by this weirdness

[Chan790]

5. Awesome.

I like your style.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. My dear Chan790....

I am in shock at your praise....

Yours is so much better, IMHO....

And I love your style...

But I cannot write dense and lush poetry like that....

The words just don't come out of me that way...

Thank you...

[Blue-Jay]

7. 'Twas in a restaurant that they met

Romeo and Juliet.
He had no cash to pay the debt.
So Romie owed what Julie 'et.