Lord Dream from the Sandman Chronicles
Following you from dreamscape to dreamscape, I
cannot help but notice the taunt of
a quickly turned head,
an averted glance,
or a frozen neck refusing to turn on axis
to bring your eyes in contact with mine. I have chased you
from the steps of every illusion woven and constructed
from the vagaries of an attic stuffed with photographs
by a lizard brain that demands a coherent storyline.
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for Amy Winehouse
The forever young are held in a pair of parentheses
made out of 27 years;
the ageless are collected within the arms of Saturn,
exhaling breath at his baleful return.
Each of you has a life cycle,
you all follow the same path from birth to death.
You first enter as a little bright light, a tiny pinpoint of sparkle;
you part the curtain, hiding as white dwarfs behind this
ringed gas giant, fearful of his mythical jaws.
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I am taking notes
at a fantastic rock-n-roll concert
going on in my head
I always take notes
when the visions come
projectors singing in my head
throw up the screen
and let the film play itself onto it
in endless maddening loops –
freeze frame, focus in on an image
and magnify until the colors rain
into my hands
until voltage notes rain
into my hands
blue and black
royal and midnight
and now, the ceremony has begun
the hills embrace the throng like arms
they gather amidst the green
while the moon assents to the sounds below her
with her own pale light
the night and the people
gather together in thickness
beat like a pulse
hands reach up, trying to
grab the passing purple magic
bodies become pinwheels
warp space and time around them
as they dance an old dervish pattern
while the music spins them on invisible axes
all together now give up the ghost
release wine into air around them and
get drunk on the ecstasy dripping down
in the drenched air
rapt and nearly carried beyond
in my own delirium
I grab the words
I grab the colors
and attempt to translate
this music is a pure expression of joy
another night has ended
with a vision in my hands
Written 7/7 and 7/12/11
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Greetings! I haven’t written any poems in a while but I was intrigued by the latest We Write Poems Prompt. Viv suggested this week that we try to write a poem in someone else’s voice…in someone else’s shoes. It could be a person, an animal, an inanimate object…anything you like, as long as you leave your own voice at the door.
I’ve done persona poems a number of times, but in many cases I’ve always felt as if each one was still my own words. This time I tried my damnedest to leave my own voice at the door. It was tricky, especially considering my chosen subject — I revisited Jim Morrison this week, using two of his quotes and jumping off of them to write a poem (“I was taking notes at a fantastic rock-n-roll concert in my head” and “music is the pure expression of joy”). Comments are more than welcome — please tell me how you think I did. And I hope you enjoyed the poem.
-Nicole
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Kharon by Alexander Livtochekno
I hold coins in my pocket, refuse to drop them
into Charon’s rawbone hand;
I hold the gifts of my passage under my cloak
back from this boatman’s demand.
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I suffer the dreams of a world gone mad.
I have seen things that you will never see, and the film
is on a maddening loop. The heavens are falling down
and I can’t even breathe.
We turn kingdoms into dust as the violins
fill with water, as the winter takes one more cherry tree.
Everything has chains. I walk the sweet rain tragicomedy and
pass by a thousand signs, looking for my own name.
Have I run too far to get home?
Some die just to live.
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First, it must begin with fire.
The amphitheater, a darkened and silent blank page
laying just beyond a grove of trees rendered in silhouette,
waits for the first, single spark.
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St. Rose of Lima, by Jennifer Walterschied
for St. Rose of Lima
I know how to make fire.
It is not I who makes it; I am the kindling. A
cut here, a jab there: and the flame starts,
unbidden. In one little corner of Lima,
an Everlasting fire blazes on.
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Here’s the broken body like bread, so many
jagged pieces together all dipped in wine: a scratch here,
a drop there. If spines and joints could be chopped apart
like so many broken sentences, this would be
a string of stuttered speech: the King’s oration,
born as a black-haired and fallow-skinned man but now a collection
of words busted apart and barely held together by ragged
strings. A lament of blood here, a dislocated shoulder
there.
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I. Père Lachaise
Funny how graffiti never pulses underneath your palms,
even if it is red,
even if it does look like blood,
even if it does look like letters who have forgotten their boundaries
and have risen up like fresh, city welts on this skin of concrete. Palms prone
on the stone, you wish for a heartbeat beneath it
and yet, you find none. The poet is still
breathing: but not here. Mime
the curtain falling to cloak a greasepaint face
with the flutter of bare hands. Peel back the rain, and you might hear
a piano tiptoeing past your ears.
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I.
I’ve been collecting music and pouring it into the coffers of my brain
since I was fifteen. It took a few years for me to understand
that the stereo inside my cranial walls needed more stuff to spin, so I
reached out in raven-claw fashion, stealing everything
I could get my ears on. Trailing behind me is the umbra
of a greedy teenage girl trapped in a good two-shoes, church girl headlock
while sneaking sonic pleasures through the back door of
her ears. Hey all you people that tryin’ to sleep,
I’m out to make it with my midnight dream.
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Nothing is yellow here. I am surrounded
by brownstone giants who have risen up around me,
poking square holes in the gray cloud ceiling far above
my head. I haven’t seen a cyclone in years, and
the closest thing to the charcoal funneled eddy of wrath
that I’ve seen since I’ve been here were the twin smoke pillars of grief
pouring from injured and dying towers nine years ago.
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You’d think me rude, but I’d just stand and stare
while grocery store aisles used to jostle together,
every box and can a hungry puzzle piece
looking for its partner;
or the colors on every shirt, sweater, pant, and shoe
in every department store peeled themselves apart from their host
in paint by numbers precision and begged for my eye
to roll call. You’d think me strange,
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