Seven Poets

In Hades seven poets

pasting pips on paper crowns

facedown on the sidewalk

holding seven falcons down

woke to find the sugar vein

clogged by golden tusk

and the Genius of the Galaxies

was just shit out of luck.

When seven poets wobble down

the racetrack of the dawn

riding lazy Sensitivity

like bangers of the gong

who spin in gyres like goblins

whose experiments go wrong

when they trade their tongues for bullshit

then say, "Don't you love my song?"

Seven poets claim the globe

of earth and eye and breast

while their dietetic revolution

starves out all the rest

I pray for wolves and pray for beasts

to pry them from their pens

to strip them of their peacock pose

and show them stunted hens.

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Michael McClure.

also shared with The Sunday Muse #252. Image by Ruven Afanador

Just Because

Just because
I wear work boots--
the brown ones, with nails stuck in them, and wood splinters--
does not mean that you mayn't kiss my hand,
call me 'Ma'am",
and worship me like I just dropped out of Heaven like a vended miracle.

I have found
that pink lace invites being taken lightly. Behold, I carry a copy
of Saison En Enfer, and I shall be happy to brain you with it
if you displease me
or in any way betray your true feelings, excepting blind devotion.

My work boots
Announce my arrival on the wood floor of the local pretentious coffee bar
even better than trumpet fanfare.
Subjects, knock me your lobes, here's my new poem,
laced up in leather
but made of feathers white and weightless as God's eyelash in a china dish.
_______

for the endlessly talented Susie Clevenger's challenge at Real Toads: "Shoes."

"Saison En Enfer" = "A Season In Hell" by Rimbaud. 

 

Poet In Fuckyou Face

Observe:
the poet in fuckyou face.
haiku
haiku
haiku
haiku
rant
haiku
deletion
haiku
haibun
grocery list
sex story
manifesto
American sentence.

Aughhhh!
pain.
pain.
I guess you know what you may do with your very rude comment,
suggesting that I do not understand the English and how she is spoke.
Observe:
the poet in fuckyou face.
tears.
wailing.
gnashing of teeth.

haiku haiku.

That's better.
You may now kiss the hem of my

haiku

garment.

beret.

oh yeah.
_______

for Real Toads mini-challenge: Ekphrasis. "The Artist In His Studio" is by Rembrandt.

My computer seems to be working for the moment. Hopefully, it won't flake out again right away. We shall see. 

Black Milk

On your back,
thin as a banker's smile, 
black cashmere.

In your pen,
your campy prop,
black ink.

And in your fridge,
bare as a Detroit warehouse,
black milk.

Well what the hell is that?
Really honey,
what's in that shit? Irony?

You smile like you know the joke.
The cow, you say,
was making a statement about post-modern physical art.

The cow was sick
of not having command over her own body,
and so this is her finger at the world.

If you believe that, you should write it, I say,
but you just smirk and add a tab to the orange juice, stylishly blue.
Moo.
_____

for the mini-challenge at Real Toads.