Topic: bad art

Hey, folks, H. and H. have been kind enough to allow me to post here, so I will be, from time to time, using one of the topics and trying my hand at some verse. Thanks, guys!

the q.l.

more luck

this morning i (accidentally)
put both my legs
through one leg hole of my underwear.
the polyester stretched until it looked like a skirt.
fortunately, i make a ghastly woman.
good; i wasn't ready for that kind of change.
you weren't ready either.

What if I said

What if I said it probably seemed unremarkable, the waitress doubted we could eat so much which always happens, the guy at the next table made up opinions about paperclips to watch the grins of his family retreat, and after hours of anticipation plus a month or two what are you going to talk about. I don’t even know what we talked about. That I was cold. I had a problem with his eyes at first, it was easier standing as he’s tall but at that table I couldn’t get away from them, not unless I pointed out the paperclip guy had moved on to Foreigner, and I felt the red crawl around my face and I dropped my food a lot. Already you want me to fast-forward, to the stoop and his jacket and the exact speed at which those eyes closed. But that’s hours away, and I won’t let you leave me at that restaurant, my body held very still with his eyes on me, the waitress shook her head over the tempura and when I could bear to move I sipped my sake, and of course we ate while he looked and don’t call it a moment of grace. Don’t make it anything less than what we earned.

On the Occasion of a Dress

long dark velvet dark black
puddle around the feet
secret uniform every woman
is born in, long silent
dark dark dark
not a tunnel, where the words go
and the eyes, where cold fingers & cold feet
into the dark velvet never quite
raise your hand tinged purple
close to black
raise your skirt & show off your scars
then you were almost warm the sting
if it has a temperature the cold is deep,
long, too long, soft fabric
around the feet
as open question as familiar
as in pause as in watch the words fall
soft, black, an evening in the city
as in breath
to swallow every thing never said
a graceful slouch the hot sharp silent
sophisticated smell of soft velvet rot
black sex long putrid evening
naked dress, stinking soft petal,
black pool, mute ugly elegant

at 4:37 in the afternoon
even the fuzz must have something better to do
than drive around screaming
waking up babies

seeing you come down the stairs in your new bathing suit
makes me feel like i'm watching haley's comet
tear apart the night sky for the thirteenth time

on a warm tuesday morning,
eating a can of creamed corn
is like watching a moose dive face first into the dead sea.

She
self-conscious
speaking in full throat
(and she doesn't even own a watch)
walks to the end of the hall
bows
returns unchanged.
If she knew, she'd do it all over again.
If she'd show, he'd find another window to live through.

waking up

waking up without you
would be a lot easier
if i could ever get to sleep

Has anyone noticed

the misspelling in this site's title? wow. i'm leaving it.

Postcard #6

I love the streets of this town

on a sunny weekday at 10 am,

still air and startled expressions

of other people on the street,

all the energy bundled up

indoors in the air conditioning.

Or on a Sunday night, windows

shaded and dozing, rain drops

in for an hour, and the roosters

are in the yard again next morning.

That rusted-out Ford still for sale

around the corner waits

for its cinderblocks patient as

my tabby as I smoke before dinner.

Every day more small dogs

in the street, another person asleep

under the hardware store’s awning.

When it’s quiet every glance

fills a perfect frame, silver

gelatin prints of light flashes

off of rusting roofs, a distant

tree’s silhouette offset by the white

bandage on a dazed woman’s leg.

delete!

Dear three people reading this,

The curious among you, browsing the archives, may notice that my first poem (titled 'Postcard #1') has disappeared. This is because a revised version of it will be published in the journal Gulf Stream sometime in May of this year.

As a consequence of my newfound fame and fortune, I am slacking on the writing of new material. I plan to remedy that today. Hopefully.

Best,

HB

a man
covered in color
counted down
ammolite
gold rabbits
champagne diamonds

a child
gray shadow
said goodbye to
zinc
tin cans
moonshine pyrite

Top(ic)less Wednesday

Could have waited for a day that starts with a 't,' but the only time you can ever do anything is now, so enjoy.

they wear boots there, right?

Dust stirs (maybe?)
in a place I've never known
and right now, never want to know
except for growth
oil
texas medicine
and the precipitation of feelings (that's a one way road?)

(but really) you and i ain't so different.

Tuesday's Topic

Dallas, Texas

Story for the Morning

This is exactly what I say it is. The cerulean

splits the sky this morning like a wise

man’s hands. I don't know what he has in mind.

The door barricaded with a broom and a chair

against the knob but the blue still gets in. Where it hits

the ground a fern begins to grow, first the thin purple

curlicued stem, skeleton of a lawn ornament,

but as I watch it slowly unwinds, rising slow

an arabesque of lace. The fringe brushes my fingers

turns my knuckles raw but I still don’t know what to do.

I raise my hands but the light produces a crushed rope

of lava. My fingernails are a mess. Wind caress

an old man stroking his beard.

unfinished sky

j-

can you recall cerulean days on the farm
before nineteen was too many
where the western wall flapped in the breeze
and the college graduate couldn't get the job done?

do you remember the scream from the barn
and the sharp pupils
as we raced for the pitchfork
only to realize it was all a joke?

or the backyard vomit
and the energy of the billiard table
as we went to work on record covers
and pages of the koran?

what of the overheated affair
that left me hiding behind pillars
on 120th street
a year later?

it's been too long.
but i'm in coit tower now.
come up if you can
spare a minute.

Monday's Topic

Cerulean

It sits

high in airports behind glass as you rush ahead can't miss that 3:45 to atlanta transfer at 6:15 northbound snowy weather ahead slows your pace and you glance left and briefly see one man's work, his everything laying there beside polynesian masks and no admittance signs and 6 million people pass every year and don't blink. but your children pull on the hem of your skirt and want to paw at the colors that are trapped behind the conveyor belt.

meanwhile, he sits in his drafty room working on the next masterpiece which will sit above a gas fireplace somewhere where the houses have no soul and the roads are wide with freshly painted yellow lines that get more attention from speed trap junkies than anything you can see from the line at the pizza stand.

Sunday Special

Bad Art

A day for drought

The day is wet and it will rise

like tropical mold on a loaf of bread.

It is unnecessary and arrogant

and slow. It is damp and deaf

from the rain’s rhythmless drumbeat

on the night’s tin roofs. So I rope

the clouds in like a paniolo

and hoard them in rocky pasture,

silver wire strung as afterthought

around the perimeter,

and watch the ferns curl their fingers inward

finally chastised. As the clouds grow fat

I wring them out into a corner of porous

earth every three days or so. Otherwise

they graze as quietly as stoned sheep.

After several weeks, when the heliconia

has turned to kindling, I belly-flop

in the last of some tidepond’s brackish water

and watch the black crabs dance.

I bury my fingers in the gasping sand.

perhaps it's the

hyperbolic dreams of sun-stained curtains
silver flashes more precious than gold leaf
hold tight your children in jewelery boutiques
too much empathy resulting in periodic shifts from one mass to another that stopped the second hand on Fermi's wristwatch. But even Leonetti couldn't help but laugh when he watched you argue that helium is lighter than fat-free yogurt with raisins and granola.

Friday's Topic

Ag (as in the chemical symbol for Silver)

watching grainy snuff films
a 63 inch plasma high definition screen
the basement of a 6 story walkup
drawing power from 180 foot blades in a california valley
am i so forward?

Suitor Questionnaire

What do you think of my wet hair dripping on the floor while I dance, in my towel, around my bedroom. Answer before my hair dries. Yes the towel is blue. Yes it smells faintly of mold, what do you expect when it rains every day. If we go out for dinner will you order a salad. Good. Unless I order a salad you really should not ever order a salad for dinner. What do you think about mochi. Are you a person who remembers what Saturday is the farmer’s market, the good one, with fresh tamales. Do you work out. Mind if I smoke. Did you ever watch someone start to cry and walk away very fast and cough so you couldn’t hear it. Were you why she was crying. Define investment. Define wind power. Can you build a wall in one conversation lasting ten minutes or less. Will you push me deeper while you stay up top with the water lilies. What’s a good wine for less than ten dollars. Do you remember my first question. Yes I will buy a new towel. Yes I’m hungry.

Thursday's Topic

Wind Power (courtesy of lrapps)

Postcard #5 (belatedly)

Peel apart blades

of grass and blow

a sound a papercut

and all the birds go still.

For a moment silence

the center

of a cloud vapor rushes

towards any slope of land

for a place to fall. Today

the guava tree is just

out of reach.

Well, now that you mention it...
i do recall manila memories of
seats switched,
white windows,
by tennis courts beside modern battlefields (by european standards).
and shy compliments on pre-recorded messages
taken in stride.

Friday's Topic

Manila Folders and Office Voicemail Messages

Postcard #4

Breakfast: marmalade

or the lion’s mane. Swirl

of sun on dawning gray. Delicacy

of scars a spiderweb across thighs.

Open the door don’t open

the door. Don’t pick up the phone.

Clouds spackle horizon. Island

in the middle of the kitchen bread

crumbs jam smear. His head against window

threatens to break. Orange jelly

in mouth’s creases don’t go up the stairs.

Hanger on white tile hanger

on white thigh. Hair knots back

knots sweat soft material. Windchime

drips rain twirls its long legs

around. His body curled into an S.

His voice I don’t see it anymore.

Marmalade or The Lion's Mane

Rocky stashed
while
Bullwinkle cried for better plurality in the genus
and the cold war raged
but i'm not hiding under any desk

Thursday's Topic

MARMALADE
OR
THE LIONS [sic] MANE

Soft Generation

scared of needle pricks
turns on with over the counter amphetamines
shouting italian names and
too many ingredients
on their way to (early) million dollar funerals

[p.s., perhaps]

80 in loans
and 40k per (+benefits)
looks like two years
but
that camry don't come cheap
and your girl asks you to
hold her purse while the bartender
mixes sloe gin for fast women
and you can't get out of your lease on that hi-rise studio
next lifetime don't major in communications

Postcard #3

I’m dreaming warm

Styrofoam and ratty beige

shirt hours days without

speaking without touch

Plumeria pink

and yellow

float

on a bed of gravel

losing fragrance tree’s

gnarled bark leaves

an itch memory

Somewhere my body lies flush

with light some bed

I can only half-remember

some face dimmer

before clear as coffee

deep earthy everyday hot

but cooling

Never know when

fruit is ripe so the papayas

in the yard brown fall

to the ground avocados split

themselves any slight pressure

Bananas sick soft and legs

don’t quake arms reach in my

sleep hit the wall in the morning

bruised knuckles think of me

in bed sheets pulled

to chin body slack

as yesterday’s flowers

Wednesday's Topic

Coffee

Posctard #2

(for M.)

In the mornings walk to work the slouched banyan and the canal I saw a giant carp in there once. More often an orange flash or two it might be goldfish it might be Fanta. Always a few signs on the roads’ shoulders of what’s gone frogs flat and crisping. Several days and their bodies evaporate to shells rattle like bottles. Some days a cat mouth open eyes in focus somewhere behind me. Today a bird’s wing a mynah’s wing spread out showing off its white pause in all that black busy in its perfect indifference. The pause tries to tell me where the rest of the bird has gotten to watching its blood seep invisible into black. Yellow markings under the eyes the reddening beak too cheerful too absent maybe now it is under a coconut imitating moss. The wing doesn’t miss its bird it is a peacock it stretches itself out and is perfect in its arch its tattered meaty edge. And the pause is silent after all.

Envy

You can fly
and I can't.
Aw, shucks.
But I can order delivery.

Tuesday's Topic

Birds

20/20 vision

you see:
yellow bristles
cold water
a sharp knife
which pares you into many
(soon to be) delicious
lengths.

you see:
black pan
old oil
awaiting change

you see:
metal grating
wax paper
inside a white box

you see:
ketchup
so much ketchup
god, do i love ketchup
it's the only reason i'm here to see you.

Monday's Topic

Potatoes

The Rules

The above mentioned (hereforward to be referred to as "Hal" and "Heather") have agreed to engage in a poemal duel beginning Monday, March 5, the year of our lord 2007 (also, the year of the pig). They are to write one (1) poem each, daily, until the conclusion of the contest. A topic will be chosen at the day's onset by one of the above, alternating daily. If someone happens to come upon this site, they are welcome to suggest a topic which will certainly be lauded by Hal and pooh-poohed by Heather. May the best (hu)man win (by whatever nonsense measure you can judge poetry).

-Hal and Heather