Poemunity — your poem community

Ida and Isidor Straus sleep side by side eternally in an Egyptian galley fronting their Woodlawn mausoleum. Symbolically they lie. Their boat is small; nor was her body recovered from the Titanic. And yet the image of the voyage holds. Why not embark? A river runs behind me on the other side of this dark window. A dream called Night Boat arranged us side by side in a black craft, sailing the river of forgetfulness until the stars went out. It was poetic license. I didn’t dream that boat. The boat was dream, and we were passengers balanced on the slippery cusp of daylight, unless you had already disembarked in some shadowy port, leaving me to sail along alone.

’Tis merry to hear, at evening time, By the blazing hearth the sleigh-bells chime; To know the bounding steeds bring near The loved one to our bosoms dear. Ah, lightly we spring the fire to raise, Till the rafters glow with the ruddy blaze; Those merry sleigh-bells, our hearts keep time Responsive to their fairy chime. Ding-dong, ding-dong, o’er vale and hill, Their welcome notes are trembling still. ’Tis he, and blithely the gay bells sound, As his sleigh glides over the frozen ground; Hark! He has pass’d the dark pine wood, He crosses now the ice-bound flood, And hails the light at the open door That tells his toilsome journey’s o’er. The merry sleigh-bells! My fond heart swells And trobs to hear the welcome bells; Ding-dong, ding-dong, o’er ice and snow, A voice of gladness, on they go. Our hut is small, and rude our cheer, But love has spread the banquet here; And childhood springs to be caress’d By our beloved and welcome guest. With a smiling brow his tale he tells, The urchins ring the merry sleigh-bells; The merry sleigh-bells, with shout and song They drag the noisy string along; Ding-dong, ding-dong, the father’s come The gay bells ring his welcome home. From the cedar swamp the gaunt wolves howl, From the oak loud whoops the felon owl; The snow-storm sweeps in thunder past, The forest creaks beneath the blast; No more I list, with boding fear, The sleigh-bells distant chime to hear. The merry sleigh-bells with soothing power Shed gladness on the evening hour. Ding-dong, ding-dong, what rapture swells The music of those joyous bells!

came in a pink, orange and white striped metal tube, with a black curlicue border and a splayed gold base.   It came in any number of mod shades: Nippy Beige, Chelsea Pink, Poppycock, Hot Nec- taringo, Pinkadilly, Dicey Peach.   There were several tubes in my mother’s makeup drawer in the bath- room five out of six of us used (my father had his own bathroom, as forbidden as the walk-in closet where his Playboys were hidden under a stack of sweaters on the top shelf).   All the girls at school had Slicker in their purses; I watched them apply The London Look at the beginning and end of each class.   I marveled at what else spilled out: compact, mascara brush, eye shadow, wallet, troll doll, dyed rabbit’s foot, chewing gum, tampon, pink plastic comb.   At home I stared at myself in the medicine cabinet mirror and, as my brother pounded on the locked bath- room door, twisted a tube and rubbed, ever so slightly, Slicker on my lips.

A playground, in a park. One lady raises to the top of the slide a ball of newspaper, gives it a kiss: "Ready . . . set . . . go!" Another holds a lampshade in her hands, smoothing its chenille bangs. "My daughter, you should see her dance— she's already won two prizes." "Did I tell you mine—he's three—can already write?" A girl, in line behind them with her son, is listening. She tightens her grip on his hand, hoping no one will notice he's real, and alive.

You and I inhabit thresholds, clinging to neither here nor there, and to and: this is a threshold of no relief, of interrogative light and obviated shadows, of questions flattened between clapboard slides, in laboratories of hanging frames—in a potential frame, the next moment slumps beneath the shadow of the overhang. They call it earthquake weather, a day like this, of reflected light and leveling heat of no relief, of corners around which and angles of incidence jellied in consommé, molded in amber lunches of tea and impossible: no incidents or tension, no reflection. No striations: rather, bangle, a broken shoelace and what are we going to do about that hair? We were in a boat. You were navigating and I was tending the lines, which flew from my hands, flapping like live wires on the wind. You watched the shadow of our sail on the water through the light reflected in your face, conducted a depth sounding: You went under, but not overboard, swam away to plot reliefs of ocean floors. It is far too shallow here to die. for Chip Madden

The suite on the side facing away from the sea is the suite with the fireplace and two plasma screen tv s. Better luxury compensates for lack of view. Before the perpetual gas fire, stunned as if into stone, entering as you enter your Anne Brontë, a world muted, chemically arranged, I try renewal of a mind remade. Mind is book is water is fire, all change. Fear is the wake-up call at three, too early, for planes. Airport quiet. Leave the hotel without baggage, fly direct to Geneva. They await you there. What occurs is only the turning of a page, imagined for screen. Unseen is greater. Is attested to, as we rise in Mass. Water should be avoided by all those who get into difficulty with ease, and cats. Searching for the blackberry in the fur-lined coat, I roam and ring, opening a closet, from which tumbles a victim, providing a fitting climax. Mrs. Pontifax is staying across the hall. The glamour. She is the Minister of Finance’s daughter. She sees the cold winter sea rise from her vantage. Our age is blinded by celebrity, seeing with the gilded orb of a bronze, dull god. The domes of our room service cool after we have slaked and fed. As you read this becomes the first one written under the influence of an anti-depressed self, whatever that is to be. What is, is taken off a shelf, a remaining wrack that half emerges from the brackish ruins of the year. Will love reunite? Will Ireland be solvent? All nights, holiest, least holy, be still, be silent. Ireland, Christmas2009

I have to leave early in the dark and hungry to avoid crossing the snow as the noon burns the crust into an un-servable lake slush instead of the crisp bridge that would be in order to get me over the ridge My journal is already laundered clean of my words and my instructions have dissolved into a white mash a washed bone ball rolled into itself of all I have in the world in my pocket The ink is thin the paper is poor my eyes balance on the pale words around which a stream flows almost erasing the way across the idea Shadows the black flowers of the light self -sowing through the trees dark gardens of midnight for the gray-white morning hour of blindness in print miles before I am to arrive here To approach the waiting milestone dims whatever else of its lantern ‘til only the placed light there is on me. In this light barely but used to it I can make out the staggered columns of my account as if back through weren’t the real distance: the thin chest flag pinned on by each ridge the titled introduction taking your coat each storm. My letters and ribbons have been the natural— strengths on their way to the more— natural weaknesses— and loss. yet— I wonder where I thought I was going— to ’ ve done what you must pass examinations for before I took any.

If you're one of seven Downfalls, up in your kingdom Of mulberry leaves, there are men Betting you aren't worth a bullet, That your skin won't tan into a good Wallet. As if drugged in the womb & limboed in a honeyed languor, By the time you open your eyes A thousand species have lived & died. Born on a Sunday Morning, with old-world algae In your long hair, a goodness Disguised your two-toed claws Bright as flensing knives. In this Upside-down haven, you're reincarnated As a fallen angel trying to go home.

What makes that fox so grabby for the stars, Begging like boys do? I meant to fully Gild that lily, till less like virile Mars It’s clepd the pansiest of pansy, The caducous calyx of a poppy. Cuz, step into these arms where you belong A coup at the prospect of this lording, A gleam in the gloom with serpentine song— The phosphorescent tide’s mine to lavish upon. O stop me at the very vestibule— Before whom, and in what habit I speak I watched them use their meat to call me fool. Someone’s cage is aching at the seams, The noisome idle falls to dirty dreams— Thus the flummoxed drunk of xem will coil And I’ll learn the real, or it’ll learn me, Making free with the Italian model The single summer shower mano à mano. The proverbial number of angels That could’ve fit on the head of a pin Are crying to the myriad angles, This glassy labyrinth we happened in Will not undo the errancer I’ve been. Soon the swancrest, the feedcrest, my distress Will feign to fuck the furlonged mannequin— At what—punishing pace we undress This crapshoot idée fixe and its yahoo mistress. Fictive trees harsh the billow of my cape, All kind of lovers crashed rubbernecking. The fishes on the frontispiece were draped In your leafy worded velocity. You whisper,London has no more fog for me To whit, my darksome peachpit! storms above —A buckler to them that walks uprightly— Will not enforce this porno hand from glove Or diminish one jott my vegetable love.

You follow close behind me, for a thousand miles responsive to my movements. I signal, you signal back. We will meet at the next exit. You blow kisses, which I return. You mouth "I love you," a message for my rearview mirror. We do a slow tango as we change lanes in tandem, gracefully, as though music were guiding us. It is tighter than bodies locked in heat, this caring, this ardent watching.