Tag: poem

The Right Kind of Manifesto

The Right Kind of Manifesto

Day 12! Kinda can’t believe I’m still going!   THE RIGHT KIND OF MANIFESTO I bought a can of pineapple at the store like it was a thing I might enjoy and now it stares accusingly at me from the kitchen counter because I do […]

Fates

Fates

Day 11!   FATES We weren’t raised on scythes and needles though we sometimes dreamt of Death in elf-toed shoes, lazing around the city streets, playing dodgeball with dusty happy children. Why do we have so many questions pulsing in us like heartbeats? I am […]

Sine Qua Non

Sine Qua Non

Day 10! This poem came from an exercise I tried once or twice in undergrad. We had to “translate” a poem from a language we didn’t really understand and then turn the resulting gibberish into its own poem. So this poem is loosely based on an incredibly poor sonic translation of a Neruda poem called, “La Carta en el Camino,” – “Letter on the Road.”

Fun fact: I learned the phrase “sine qua non” from a Battlestar Galactica episode. Not the four semesters of Latin I took in high school or anything…

 

SINE QUA NON

Goodbye, but you
will be
my conspiracy,
searching
like vultures,
for blood in my veins. O fire,
O love, kiss me bravely
with roses,
like an island,
like an outlaw,
like a torment
hung in air.

Cleave the earth!
Bury your lanterns!
Don’t watch for me now
in the mirror-smooth sea.
The sea, the night,
like a lathe,
turn my heavens,
the muttering rain,
my body cut free.

I live on your lips’ unfurling red banners,
twist through my fingers the vines
of your hair. There is nothing
but this, O and this
is: I love you.
I love you, your hands,
like a sun,
like a prayer.
This, heart, is how
I could call down a highway
from the middle of stars
to the firmness of earth.
If I know how to sing
your breath is my anchor,
my sword through black water,
my cheek on the shore.

There is a hole in the Great Pyramid of Giza

There is a hole in the Great Pyramid of Giza

Day 9! This one is a real work in progress. It kept wanting to rhyme, and it’s so sing-songy… I don’t really know what to do with it. Definitely needs more time.   There is a hole in the Great Pyramid of Giza Like a […]

Murakami at the MFA

Murakami at the MFA

Day 8! Inspired by a recent trip to the MFA in Boston and their amazing Takashi Murakami exhibition.   Murakami at the MFA In 24 hours, I can paint your dragon red – see? – reflected in the shining, low-reclining Buddha with a thousand wide-mouth […]

Let love never be your hapax legomenon

Let love never be your hapax legomenon

Day 7! This is the most I’ve written in awhile and it’s been exciting to get back into writing every day. And challenging. And things are already getting strange. I blame the dictionary that was next to me when I wrote this…

 

Let love never be your hapax legomenon

Look for me in every glassy storefront – full of lunar music. Did I tell you I have lived like a satellite – receiving everything, against the better judgment of my aura readers? Psychics have said I am followed by spirits – no – I am full of them – brainhandled, sparked, and unflinching. There are no past lives. I am everyone I have ever loved. Shake me down like a thunderbolt. Dissolve my lissome filament. I have torn mendacity from my hedges and I will not be buying your tartuffery and star turns. Throw your pomegranates at the roadside dust like – not today, Hades! No, by now I have lief laid down my mysteries.

Wake the Oracle

Wake the Oracle

Day 6! Almost a week in!   WAKE THE ORACLE who once sat stone-dark, immobile and born today. Watch my eyes move closer like a flounder like a brain’s white shyness standing in the doorway til the silence is gone. I should forget. I must […]

Love and Waste No More Time

Love and Waste No More Time

Day 5 and things are already getting wacky. This poem was inspired by paging through some Frederik Pohl short stories and a Nietzsche compilation (two books randomly pulled from my bookshelf). LOVE AND WASTE NO MORE TIME says everyone dead, but they never do convince […]

Healing for the Splendid Imperative

Healing for the Splendid Imperative

Day 4!

Healing for the Splendid Imperative

Lord, you are not going — god, lord god,
and god of the future — press your space face
close to mine, and sing me to my opera house.
Bring a bale of hay and a bucket of water to the stage
for the hungry piano. The chorus rings like an empty
endless river and it needs you. The difference
between an egg and an oval — yes? — is life.
God, lord, I was made to be the right hand
in your first house and I have held close
your oldest grasshoppers. I can be the one
to save the spider song from your rafters,
god! Bring forth your witching hour and
this time next summer, we could all
be driving Tesla’s on Mars.

Forest Love Story

Forest Love Story

Day 2! Success! Still not entirely happy with these line breaks, but I’m going to sleep on any more revisions. Or leave them until the end of the month… Yeah, probably the latter.   Forest Love Story If only I had thorns like a thistle […]