posted 12-11-2000 11:15 PM            

Watched the bride being bred
Just the other day
I wonder sometimes
How I'm supposed to find me inside of me
I'm locked inside the crypt of my brain
Wandering around and down corridors
Looking for the door to my heart
Been a long time since I've seen her
Beating her life drum
How am I supposed to live
When I'm already dead?
Death
That prevailing theme
I am death
Scythe ready and aimed
I am love, even though
I don't know what love means
I am.
That is all that I can be.

posted 12-11-2000 11:31 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by batgirl3780:
okay grape, you made me think about poetry, so now i've got to slap one of my little babies (a piece of my work) on the boards.
It's a little depressing, but I don't have anything else. Just go ahead and tell me it sucks now before I get my hopes up.

Watched the bride being bred
Just the other day
I wonder sometimes
How I'm supposed to find me inside of me
I'm locked inside the crypt of my brain
Wandering around and down corridors
Looking for the door to my heart
Been a long time since I've seen her
Beating her life drum
How am I supposed to live
When I'm already dead?
Death
That prevailing theme
I am death
Scythe ready and aimed
I am love, even though
I don't know what love means
I am.
That is all that I can be.

(ps i suck.)

---

Yeah!!!! I think I know you....

maybe you are the same...

your ha ha ha ha ha!!! is unique...

posted 12-12-2000 12:53 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by batgirl3780:
hey grape, where are you from?

---

I have to go to sleep. But I thought you were girl, but your ha ha ha ha ha!!! makes me think you were man, because the person that I know that writes ha ha ha ha ha!!! is man, writes poetry, and I know him in a message board.

posted 12-12-2000 12:56 AM            

Should all
acquaintance
be forgot. It’s not
when they take it out
that hurts, you told me,
it’s when they
put it back
in.

Christmas don’t come on a
Visa, or from
selling your
blood between
paychecks, the way
you taught me
to when I was
new if you
could see me now

maybe you
do.

sometimes

so late
long gone, the birds
of dawning singing
all night long or
at least just
after dark. no
faery takes nor
banality given
power to
steal
away--

Look up, and
it’s snowing
a million stars a million
dreams a ticker-tape
spiral storm of
static washing
all away

Look up, and
it’s snowing. I
stretch my
right hand to
a break in the
clouds where
Venus sputters
on

the first
grace notes my
mainline vein

pumped full of
cold saline, freeze
from within. i never
want this to
stop, better than
fireworks, better than

almost
anything

except

the night just before
Christmas vacation when we
lip-locked one hour for
each month you lived
after that
night to the
day—

Look up, &
it's
snowing,

grey blue moon-
eclipse light of
long time since
such stillness,

long time
gone,

snowing
out front,
dumping
down in
sheets

traffic
fades to
whistling
corners all the
bus drivers shake
their heads

It snowed
here.
Here. Blank dawn births blue
rainbows, from frost-blackn'ing
leaves of laurels all around the
window ledge at eye level
to the ground, the roses
dying at the eye of
holiday storms.

It snowed
here. Overarching
my eye, the branch just above
my screen is
poplar, peeling
bark,

going
nowhere, just the way
you're all forced
to act. prepared
in that dawn to
pick up where you
left off, but it's
snowing and the
bullshit falls
on (for once
deaf
ears.

It snowed
here. It
NEVER
fucking snows
here, Pilar.

What did you
do? They’re losing their
minds on black ice, putting
chains on for one
inch, stoking the
fireplaces

lightstrings dancing
rainbows in the
trees, i was never
there for that
midnight sandman
canticle in lansdale, but

now

my heart
cracking ribs
outward as comic-
book winds begin
to rise around the
bus stop as I
look up and it’s
snowing, and
your hair
whips back
from the
glittering
hood of your
cloak and

you sing
so loud the
breath stops in my
throat and then the
15 pulls in the driver
telling me I’m
blue and what’s that
bandage on your
arm and it
barely
happened
at all...

posted 12-12-2000 05:35 AM            

Here are just some of my thoughts...

batgirl & Lansky, you both have very strong imagery, & a lot of emotions.

I like how batgirl's poem is short & to the point. The rhythm is good also. The theme got a bit scattered at the end.

I think Lansky's rhythm is a bit off...but I like how you build up the tension.

Batgirl, I feel for you, writing poetry is a form of releasing the stress/depression you may have, I know that I write poetry when I'm sad. It's also a way of exploring yourself.

Just another thought:
"I wonder sometimes
How I'm supposed to find me inside of me"

posted 12-12-2000 07:49 AM            

But please -- if you're gonna "review" it, at least READ it first! (HEH!)

posted 12-12-2000 07:52 AM            

Life moves on and history returns, old tapes like bad movies play in broken images across the shattered screens in my heart – jagged edges against places hidden from the light of everyday lay in shadows cast by the glow he’s added to every other part of me.

And my soul hitches and tears catch in my throat and flow from my eyes, salty water like the Dead Sea lays against my lips and seals off the words that would bring me back. Fear rises and threatens to consume me, reminding me of why I’ve lain so long in this bed of self protection, surrounded on all sides in a cocoon made of brittle strength and softness laced with pain.

Thoughts that time had erased these images, this terror mock me – send my center screaming to a deeper place, a place no one has touched, a place I can’t reach back from. And I hurt, and I am afraid, and my confidence feels shattered, my security a flimsy thing, like cobwebs at the core of who I think I am. How do I come back from here? What will keep me from cowering now in old movie sets draped with fear?

Tell the director to cut to camera 2, that lens perhaps will show this magic that so far has been you, will lead me back to the mark I’ve never stood on before, that studio of strength I thought I might live in. Because right now old actors are reciting tired lines, and the plot feels horribly inevitable, unwinding to a conclusion that I simply cannot face again. Their costumes are dusty with my disappointment, their shoes smeared with the truths of my past, but their make-up is fresh and perfect, their voices eerily project a line in unison I’d forgotten to remember – a Greek chorus to remind me that really good things never ever last.

And they dance together in pantomime, these ghosts of horrid remembrance, their bony fingers tapping out a Morse code that shrinks my soul, leaving open a space in their macabre circle, a space that’s shaped like me. They laugh, and I can see them, their faces drawn in a rictus of mockery, their meaning clear - “you think you can go away, but that space for you – it’s always here.”

And I wonder how long I can stand it, how long til my toes begin to tap in rhythm to that tattered music, how long til my soul seeks the inevitability of their tepid darkness … How long til I feel the cold hardness of those hands in mine and I return to that dank and secret circle, slip back into that me-shaped place, to dance their quadrille of loneliness – up and back, but never out.

What madness made me think I could simply walk away, what psychosis convinced me that I could learn a new script when I’ve never even been able to turn the old page? The cast lifts their shoulders in that “I told you so” gesture, they remind me with knowing eyes that my life is simply an ongoing lecture of pain and heartache, promises bent to broken, and fleeting togetherness purchased with the currency of illusion.

posted 12-12-2000 08:46 AM            

If he knew I was ironing on
This 3X6 sheet of glass
He tell me that's not smart
And I'd have to stop fast.
But this tapestry's so big
And I can't iron it on the floor
So here I am at the table
Oh shit!! Is that the door?

In walks the biker
And what does he say?
You're going to break that glass
And I say no way.
The cloth is too thick
And the iron's not hot
But when he walked to the sink
There was something I forgot -
He'd never looked more beautiful
In our ten years together
I paused and leaned upon the iron
I could've stared at him forever.

The water was rushing as
He washed his hands at the sink
And I gawked in wide wonder
Never pausing to think
That I was leaning on the iron
Yes, my activity had stopped
And within say, a mintute or two
The sheet of glass POPPED!

I'll have to write more about how I got a new piece of glass delivered without his knowledge, but I won't make any of you suffer anymore here on this thread.

posted 12-14-2000 10:02 PM            

slept through dinner like the lunatic that
i am
went for a ride to a movie theater
where no movies were playing for me
the movie i want to see hasn't been made
yet
and this little fairy
a voice running through my head
she's so scary
she keeps saying
you don't have to do anything with your life
all you gotta do is live and
you'll be all right
you don't have to do anything
except everything.
but no one is forcing you
no, i'm not forcing you
just don't waste your life away
you got so much promise
it's almost too corny to say but
girl, i love you more than any boy

you and i sit lonely together under all these
tethered stars
at 4am when we can't sleep
you say you smoke cigarettes because
it helps you think.

posted 12-14-2000 10:09 PM            

nightsky, burning in my eyes.
why do the stars smear red sometimes?
why do i wonder where the sky ends
when i know that it does not end?
i'm holding myself down
this time and every time

why doesn't he call me
when i can't sleep late at night?
i guess i'm just lonely in my cage
the cage i built with my own hands
so why can't i break it with my rage
when this tearfulness never ends?
you say i'm strong, but i am truly weak
i'm gonna prove it.
you say that i am soft,
but i get harder every day
i'm gonna prove it.

posted 12-14-2000 10:36 PM            

love me, need me, touch my face.
help me, free me, take my place.

---------------------------------------------
heart is racing,
beating, pounding,
i am falling,
faster, flying,
down and down
into the abyss.
breath is slowing,
gasping, retching,
i am sinking,
lower and lower.
i reach out,
try to grasp,
miss my mark.

posted 12-14-2000 10:39 PM            

Wow!!!

posted 12-14-2000 11:22 PM            

Grape, where are you from?

MAD love to all the poets on here for dropping all the beautiful verses. Thank you. Keep it coming.

posted 12-14-2000 11:32 PM            

When I left for college,
You sat in the shopping cart and didn’t
cry, just sort of singing, the way
you did:”Youuuu’re goiiinnnn to colllll-egge..”

and that broke my heart the most
of all. A lot of times,
I felt like you were
my son, or even better than,
the little brother I asked
Santa for when I was
five.

You sent me a letter (the letter “E”)
from school, and said that your
favorite thing was when your
brother Ed (word)
came home to
visit you.

You told them you wanted to be a writer.

I think about that, and I still can’t stop crying.

Some part of me thought
I was always going to be there,
watching you learn to
be big.

But I had to learn that
first.

Three thousand five hundred miles
(and change)
away,
I want so badly to know
that you have learned

to joke your way through
the hard parts, so much
I want to say that I
am scared will be
lost in the translation,

So all I want to send, at risk
of our (the writers’
curse of mis-
interpretation, is:

Three thousand miles
(and change)
away,

I sit in a poolhall called
the Rialto,

big and clean and
classy. Only

a break, a good hot
cup of coffee with
real cream.

I sit at a back table,
broke on the second
day of Christmas, doing
the shopping one
millimeter at a
time.

It is a tough old world,
little man. I thought of
Mom on the way here as I
leaned on my cane, sliding
up the ice and an old black
man joked about
snowshoes.

Three thousand five hundred miles
(and change) away, I look at
your school picture in
my wallet ( next to
Lydia’s) and my heart
explodes with pride
in my chest

and I flail around like
Jim Carrey . (Still
can’t stop crying. Even
your birthday present is still
on layaway at
Excalibur Comics, in the
collectors’ section, but
on this cold and
yucky night,

there is this:

Three thousand five hundred miles
(and change)
away, there is
one plastic bag
in my hand. There was
a pet store
in Chinatown----

The old proprietor
saw what I was looking
for, knew
everything about me
as soon as I walked in
with the bell
rattling on the
door, brought out
a rusty
cricket-cage

from the back room.

“Pay me for it when you get famous.” he growled, thrusting the cage across, and motioning for
the door. I opened my mouth
to speak, but could not.

It was not
a cricket in
the cage,

but the Lung Hau,

the Luck-Dragon that goes
to Earth in the lean times,
shrinking to ferret
size.

Even then, the cage
was too small. I hid
the Lung in my
backpack at
work. My boss said
it smelled like someone
spilled an
inkwell.

Hau grew
rabbit-sized when I let
her play cleanup crew
with my leftover
burrito, stuffing it
under my chair, looking
over my shoulder while my
co-worker prattled
pompously on about
mythology and I just
chuckled to myself
like I do.

And she grew
to the size of a cat
when she
drank my tears,
just now. I coaxed
her out of my
backpack and
gave her a
cue ball to
play with. It’s
safe. Half the
waitresses are
Cambodian.

They remember.

Hau’s catfish whiskers crackle
like an electric eel. Her scales

are hosepipe rainbows in
summer yards,
her voice
the sea.

She will not
stay this
size, but if you
help her grow
she will
visit. Tell Dad not to
get mad. She returns
to the wild on her
own when it’s
time., and makes
no noise, and
is actually fairly good for
massages if you let her
walk on your
back.

She is your Christmas present,
my big little buzzard, she is
worth nothing to me
unless I give her away.

She doesn’t breathe
fire. She likes
to eat
crickets and
mealworms. She
gets loose very
easily, and you can’t
hold her by her
spines,

But let
her smell you (watch
the way her fat tongue
flicks like a
Gila Monster), let her
get close to your outstretched
hand, pet
her snout ridge
and she is yours
forever, will in fact put up one
talon when you stop, and look
at you with those big iridescent
electric eyes and make little
purring sounds until
you bust out laughing, and
keep up until
she falls
asleep.

Fill up
the bathtub with
three inches (no more)
of warm water, let her
hydrate her skin,

and she will sing
songs that were ancient
when Genghis Khan was
still a baby in swaddling
clothes.

She will sleep on
UPS, Donald. Remember
Zach and Bridget
the alligator when you
unwrap

your lexical dragon. Take
good care of her, and she
will help you fight your
battles. Dig up worms
for her when the
ground softens, take
her fishing (let her
dip her whiskers in the
water, and Brother
Yu the rainbow
trout will swarm
to her while the
Game Wardens
scratch their
heads)

Unwrap your present

and remember

that three thousand five hundred miles
(and change)
away, you are
my hero.

posted 12-15-2000 10:35 PM            

((((((((((You are one of a kind!)))))))))))))

posted 12-16-2000 10:11 PM            

today was the day i turned my heart off
last breath, last beat, last tear
just another painful year
i can still remember
hating her when she teased
but she was half of me
now i'm only half of nothing
i can still remember her smile
she lost her last tooth just the other day
now she will lose all of her teeth
in her quick decay

today was the last day i wanted to live
yet i still live
i will carry my weight with care
i walk through mud, birthing life
and burying death
there isn't anything more unfair
how can death happen in the spring?
just another year of death
who knows what another year will bring.

posted 12-16-2000 10:29 PM            

Pale nights on a barren moon find me singing a Porter fable to my distant child.
If ever the boat should dock near enough, I would run the shores looking for lost virtues adding grace to our ranks.
Now is a time for modesties and sanity. A time for boring diner conversation bleeding like wine spilled on the tablecloth.
The minutes of our lives are being ticked off by a metronome working much to hard.
I find it difficult to breath your air for it moves to fast for me to catch.
Yesterday fades into yesteryear with no hesitation.
I can’t remember the word anymore for the emotions I wish to convey.
Frost is creeping deep into my capillaries with a beginning solstice far from near.
Night drags me to my bed and holds me down.
One breath then two then silence…
Day is quit.

posted 12-16-2000 10:54 PM            

Why? No other affects me so. Only you.

posted 12-17-2000 09:46 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lansky:
DragonGirl... I am a self-taught poet, and my poems are really more performance pieces. But the "school" of poetry that I follow are "punk classicists" like William Sylvester and Stephen Petroff, lots of experimental rhythms. What is your native language?

---

Chinese, I write poetry in the ancient form from the Tang Dynasty, I don't know what they're called in English.

Recently I wrote another one that is a bit more contemporary, it looks like song words.

Well, I'm also self taught, experimenting with the rhythm & rhymes. Since the Chinese language is monosyllablic, it's a little bit easier to generate rhythm & rhymes (so far my rhyming is a still bit off).

Plus, the Tang Dynasty poems have set forms, it's easier for me rhythm-wise, unlike the Song Dynasty poetry where there are more variations in form.

Chinese literature/poetry, it's a whole new world out there.

I see that you know the Chinese word for Dragon, (but the one you mentioned is in Cantonese).

I'll sign off my name in Mandarin then...

posted 12-17-2000 09:55 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lansky:
eep (hopping up and down)

Grape, where are you from?

MAD love to all the poets on here for dropping all the beautiful verses. Thank you. Keep it coming.

DragonGirl... I am a self-taught poet, and my poems are really more performance pieces. But the "school" of poetry that I follow are "punk classicists" like William Sylvester and Stephen Petroff, lots of experimental rhythms. What is your native language?

---

Yes, all the poems are beautiful...