A violin is curved wood and four strings. It needs a person to make noise, an artist to make music, love to sing. Just like us.
Category: Poetry in the Moment
Two for fun.
“Shower”
I am a poet which means I stand in the shower and think the water is too hot and shift the faucet-thing to the right only to be blasted by cold reality into a sniveling shriveling carapace shouting silent expletives that crash cheap tile with all the force of metaphor.
“Preserved”
No
sugar in the tea.
It's today's enemy
(like cigarettes and
nostalgia and eggs).
So
what? Now I get to
outlive joy?
More poems here. (Some are not fun, but maybe you’re in the mood?)
And yes, there are stories. But they are not fun. They are real.
Victory
“Stand back, stand by.”
I am about to know I have loam and rock for a back and blue-grey sky for a head honor an orange sun yellow and gaze purple into ink rest in love as I have done all these years, wake to heartbeats and sleep with all sighs. Then when unripe Boys rape in dirt and shoot dark; masturbate dry pricks blood-smear voided genitals kill this body gorge on dull meat eat our kind burn our memory; then my arms Earth and Sky my companion-Sun my love this man envelop me pierce this hell carry me home.
FR-eee!
W-R-O-N-G is a sound. Go ahead and make it, SoundMaker. W-R -- do you feel the gravel in your chest? Vibration? O-N -- almost an OHMMMMM, almost prayer, right? R-I-G-H-T is a sound. Go ahead and make it, SoundMaker. Different, eh? Frequency rests someplace else -- R-H-I, closer to my head. Distant. BRI-ght. Now say P-O-O-P! Or L-O-V-E. OR... SoundMaker, SOUND! Stop thinking letters. G-OH into the FEE-lds and FO-wrists and BRIE-thhhh! Sound FRE-eee to LoverSound. I'll be waiting to SOW-nd with you.
Want more words? Click here.
Gawain
In old tales, men entered the forest alone, cut their own path through darkness. No guide but belief. No ancestry but thought, a word -- walk -- as thorns became home and light, theirs.
Drinks
I studied the bar for possible moods — what was the one I felt yesterday, right after the Manhattan? Was that CareFreeMelancholy? or CitySad mixed with WindSweptLoneliness? WoeIsMe? No. Wait. I sent that first one back, got a TallBud and rode AwesomeConvo and his wingman, BroLove into the land of FuckAin’tItSolid! Or was that the AMF?
More moods? Click here.
“Conversation”
That ladybug sits on that green leaf before its silken buzzy wings remind me I was somewhere too. — “What were you saying?”
There’s more! Here.
“Browsing”
Library of Memory, finger on the spines that hold together me. Oh, I do not like this book! (Though I’ve read it a thousand times.) I was too young to understand. How was I to know? (I knew.) One night sags the shelf that ought to be in the Restricted Section (like the old days, when you had to ask for the books with drawings). These spines are warped. Horrible! I move on. My, this one is beautiful. Just look at its golden cover: “Full of greeting cards and fairy tales.” Here, I learn right from wrong and begin to build My Best Self. Things work out in this book (just like a Hollywood movie). Grandma really likes it. I really should read it someday. But they said I could take out only one. Maybe this one? Bright and Sunny Days? And there are other rooms, futures I’ve never visited, a place for faith. Philosophy. I really should… as I bow my head, reach for Mistakes and turn to you.
Uh-huh there’s more. Click here.
Changeling
Poems are always
beautiful
talkative
loquacious
until I write them down.
Then they behave like ancient whores
who think they can survive
silence.
Want more? Click here.
Except…
Except for fear, cancer finds a greeting, age a celebration, death an orgasm!
Greg Beckman 