These six Landay (Couplets of nine and thirteen syllables) may be read as a single poem, but they were created as six separate poems about six separate subjects.
An ethereal inversion;
the television’s moonbeams
combining with darkness
masking our mockery;
our shared laughter at
your expense for once
instead of your typical
plucking at our insecurities
with orchestral precision; you,
still the chillest cat in the room,
but your arsenic-tipped wit
replaced by Bible psalms,
and sincerely, instead of
your standard
“The Lord is your shepherd, you shall not want”
atheist parodies.
You didn’t seem to mind,
but in the upside-down,
for once,
the egg was on your face.
I awoke still laughing
at your absurdity.
Dad, you were such a
magnificent bastard back then;
just a gloriously
belittling jackass.
I feared drawing your attention
almost as much as I craved it.
We all hated verbally sparring with you
because you’d gut us like catfish
while taking far more care
not to drop cigarette ash on
your freshly cleaned carpet.
We hated being victims
almost as much as we loved
being living witnesses
to your eviscerations.
But this time, we got your ass.
We ganged-up and nailed you
and that pompous Jehri-Curled afro
to the fucking wall.
You took it surprisingly well
given your massive ego,
but there was no mistaking it;
Boom! Roasted!
On a night we all saw
our man Jordan
get dunked on
and his Bulls lose
by thirty points.
I awoke still laughing
at your comeuppance.
I reached for my cell
to give you a call to remind you
and rub it in your face again;
that you’d finally been dunked-on
by those you’d repeatedly roasted
countless times; after all,
they say you only roast
the ones you love, right?
But as I grabbed my phone to dial you
the punchline came; I remembered it all;
that it was only a dream;
that not once did we ever
get the better of you;
that you probably never would’ve
been cool with that anyway;
that we never watched MJ
lose by thirty with you;
that I’d long forgotten
your phone number;
that in my contacts list
there was a blank spot
where your name should be;
that I hadn’t spoken to you
for nearly a decade,
months before you died.
Grasp that lightning if you must;
harvest it, gorge yourself upon it,
repurpose it to power your safe haven,
getaway vehicle, or doomsday device,
whichever you choose;
I’m not qualified to judge.
Ask my mother.
She knows. She knew
way back when I was 16 years old
that I wasn’t shit
and my grudge-fueled quest
to prove her wrong succeeded
at proving her both absolutely wrong
and unequivocally right like an
accidental Schrodinger’s cat experiment.
Inability to forgive
converted my potential into kinetic,
driving my momentum
into achievements I never imagined for myself,
and it also left me lifeless,
dead-eyed,
inside an unremarkable box,
waiting to be discovered by wiser forces.
Forgiveness is for old folks
who no longer have the energy for grudges;
many of whom are gathering
their remaining momentum
in a last-ditch effort of
getting into heaven.
Suddenly
the meaning of The Lord’s Prayer
crystallizes before them,
and they’re angling for a slice of salvation pie.
I don’t know much about forgiveness,
but I do know how it feels to run out of steam,
finding myself alone with regret. Nowadays,
I find both grudges and forgiveness
equally inert.
All that matters now lie within
taking accurate readings
and observing what is.
***
Floating behind me,
a sea of blue, an immense sphere
comprising all that I know,
adore and despise,
breathe and asphyxiate,
drink and drown.
Ahead, you glisten, in quiet peril
reflecting light, juxtaposed in endless black,
after reporting a problem, drifting away,
brave smile in your voice
unintelligible
at this growing distance.
“You’re too late,” you said,
while still in range,
the warmth in your voice
transcending the void,
inexplicably soothing
my chilly fingers
and frosty extremities.
“Oh shit,” I said,
profanely breaking protocol
as the aspect of you
slowly shrank to a point of light.
“I’m sorry,” I offered to the magnets
within the transmitter mic,
a vain effort to overrule
our physical plane.
“It’s ok,” you said tenderly,
reassuring neither of us,
us both ignoring the
depleting oxygen alarms.
“I’m on to my next waypoint.
We’ll have to rendezvous
at the next target window,”
you declare as if our time were not
fleeting, finite,
our fates fixed.
You disappeared beyond the thin blue line,
leaving me to contend with the enormity
of the pale blue light and
an hour of radio silence,
floating above our northern hemisphere,
tilting away, towards winter.
“You free?” your voice vibrated
into my anxious receiver
after a maddeningly long silence
as your glimmer emerged
from the far-side,
rising to rival Venus-glow
and moondust.
“Yes,” I replied quickly,
maneuvering towards a
rendezvous altitude.
“I’m listening. I’m here.”
Then everything went null,
no heat, no cold,
not even light or shadow or grey,
leaving us clasping onto nothing.
***
Where the Rocks Kiss the Sea and Calm Waves Embrace All
Standing on rocky midnight shore, the sound of the Sound beckoned his return to where he began decades ago; his wish, to bookend his life where ancient kinship first drew breath.
He intended to breathe saltwater and snuff-out all that rotten progress.
He’d just wade into the frigid current until the chill melted into warmth, freeing him of the dread of empathy among the specter of cosmic apathy.
Inhaling brine should sever the unending sinewave bouncing between two extremes.
Knee-deep within numbing, moonlit, black-reflected muck, the cold needles through, forcing his breath shallow. Waist-deep, and the current beckons him forward to rejoin infinity and nothingness.
He begins surrendering to uncompromising fate he’s chosen when far away an interrupted cry of a drowning woman breaks him from indulgence. He summons reserve to drag her back to the rocks.
“You’re welcome,” smiled the mermaid he “saved”.
***
Their pain is born from fissures
in a ruptured union, leaking black bile,
becoming tidepools of resentment
under moonless night of regret.
Intensity of emotion
has brought her into this world
blind and formless.
After the begging had ceased,
after the demands rose,
floating away as all hot-air does,
after the tears dried and crusted
in corners, after goodbyes
scattered wounded elements
the way all stars fall,
a series of electro-chemical sparks
ignite her coalescence into
nebulous idea,
as hurt, shame, and love commiserate
with introspection, perspective,
and empathy; her formlessness
is shaped into a proto-philosophy,
the light splitting her darkness
is an empty notebook, opening.
Her energy not lost, but transferred
as all pain is, she reclaims herself
after a lost cause, opening, pouring
her dark tidepools onto pages, her bile
shaped into words they wanted to say,
but were too prideful, too shameful,
too fearful to voice to one another
when it may have brought them closer
to joy; their Shakespearian tragic timing
cooling, on paper, appropriately,
into a poem which begins as:
“She is born as all are; from their pain.”
***
Written for NaPoWriMo’s day 28 prompt: write a meta-poem, or a poem about poetry.
That iconic church
catching fire
is not upsetting.
Firebombing
less-iconic black churches
is not upsetting.
Random hate crimes
against minorities
is not upsetting.
A murder of another
based on who they choose to love
is not upsetting.
Having a government leader
with no empathy, no tact,
no impulse control, no shame,
no fundamental grasp of science,
not even the service of
an official proofreader
or spellchecker
is not upsetting.
Passing the tipping-point
of human-aided
catastrophic climate change
with a collective shrug
and a doubling-down
of business-as-usual
is not upsetting.
What is upsetting
is the growing numbness
incinerating our
collective superstructure.
What is upsetting
is realizing that faith in humanity
was firebombed decades
before observation,
like a lobster having no idea
they’re slowly being
boiled alive
until there’s steam.
What is upsetting
is our growing detachment
from the humane.
What is upsetting
is catching yourself wondering
what the victim did to provoke
such violent hatred
before remembering
that all they did was
have the audacity
to exist.
What is upsetting
is that a hilariously-terrifying,
poisonous, treasonous,
wood-rot-brained,
dementia-demigod
is executing the will
of a percentage of people
I call neighbor.
What is upsetting is receiving
such an oppressive influx
of terrible things,
that the nervous system
reflexively shuts down
to protect itself.
What is upsetting is knowing that,
even after adjusting cosmic perspective,
knowing that no one is coming
to save you from yourselves,
compelling you to root for the
sweet, sweet probability of a
random extinction meteor.
What is upsetting
is slowly realizing that
nothing is upsetting anymore.
Not even when the steam is visible.
***
Written for NaPoWriMo’s day 16 prompt: “write a poem that uses the form of a list to defamiliarize the mundane.” Again, I took license and adjusted the scale, as I’m running dry on mundane topics and I’m a bit sleep-deprived and grumpy.
Also written for Real Toads’ day 16 prompt: “poetry as an insurgent art”.
Two new high school grads
our duet, playing at probing,
experimental love;
clumsily grasping
at the third rail,
illuminating our
respective darkness,
calling the freshly found
fool’s gold
love eternal.
II.
Victims of circumstance, we
circled the idea as
adults consenting at this
scandalous dispelling of intent, this
instinctive discontent
sucking at the plea; a need
we’d already met
in spirit if not deed, she,
splayed and braced
for our forbidden crossing,
forever eroding a
gold-pressed
promissory note
as false idol.
III.
Never bothered catching her name;
would’ve fumbled it away anyway
in the aftermath of two bored barflies
stalling to return to our respective
counterfeit lives, finding life and little
deaths pressed between, rubbing for wishes,
but granted only golden gilded-guilt.
IV.
Last night with her was…
last night was…
it was… have you ever
in all your
quarter-century-plus of life
been so sure of someone,
so secure in her warmth,
so open to your own vulnerability
so overeager to overflow,
to explode,
to lose containment of self,
spilling onto
and into her essence
until you forget
where you end
and she begins? Like… you know…
uhm… like two novice glassblowers
playing in molten golden sands,
you both know it’s real and urgent
and wonderful, and powerful and… and…
…and inevitably,
one or both of you
will still shatter it
once it cools.
Anyway,
it was like that
with her.
V.
There was something
within this sad, soulful
old-soul lonely eyes
that fleetingly
stole her soul
from her fiancé
for an afternoon delight
that never happened; that was
her story anyway after
entering a bachelor’s loser-loft,
asking for a glass of water
she never drank a drop of,
spilling it on the night-stand
next to her thirst and
a certain creaking
secret-spilling mattress
and I can’t say if anything
she moaned into my ear
was gospel, but truth is,
sometimes
seeking that golden sandy fullness
leaves us spent, wrought
with emptiness.
VI.
Neither of us
are in the mood,
molecules moving
a bit slower with age
and still,
catching me
admiring her hips,
she wiggles a spark my way,
igniting knowing smirks
encircling in decaying orbits,
concentrically spinning
towards collision
saying inflammatory things like,
“I thought you were sleepy?” and
“What you wanna do?”
with knowing grins,
knowing the answer
before it begins with
clumsy grasping of our third rail,
transmuting darkness into
golden hues.
***
Initially, I was going to skip this one and just exist within my depression for a minute, but then I began reading everyone’s steamy contributions, and as Bjorn predicted, I became inspired for some reason. *heh*
Passion and sexual desire are often their own reward, but I thought it might be interesting to examine the fact that often these desires don’t exist within a hermetically-sealed bubble. Sometimes indulging is great and the circumstances wonderful, and sometimes the whole sultry exercise may be wrought with symptoms of a deeper need.
No judgments here! Lord knows I’m not qualified to judge anyone. I just thought it might be interesting to play with circumstances.
I enjoyed writing for this prompt. It pulled me from my doldrums for a bit. 🙂
