[x]

Bad Mouth Habitsi.
I carry God around in my lip like he's chew,
spitting his name out in poems like potholes,
I make everything a simile
for the hold he has on me.

ii.
When it comes to men,
I've the appetite of a Roman housewife,
I take, I taste, I tear,
swallow and then then toss up
for the next course.

iii.
I don't kiss anyone so dearly
as the glass pipe bridged between lips
and fist.

iv.
Jameson, you're an Irish Lad,
a young ram of bucking proportions,
I let you rattle around my mouth
til I herd you in
and down.

v.
Sometimes there's nothing so sweet
as the jack-hammer of angry words
or the steel trap clamp of silence.

I exercise m

Atlanticyou were the ghost
who made the apple fall.

.

and no,
it's not you,

sometimes the seeds
turn into trees
or flowers, strange
incarnations of
the strangest force,
and, at other times,
the wind lifts them away
so they never
touch the ground.

there's nothing left but course.

.

of course you are, but i must know;

do you go door to door,
knocking on the stars?

reality: just
an architect's answer
to a philosopher's question.

.

over the atlantic you sing
like the end who just learned
he was a beginning.
over the atlantic you sing:

"god is an ocean,
and you can only pray
by kneeling on the ground."

pentadactylism

you realize
and in so doing
something breaks.
every minute
you deign to make
some unknighted landfall
in a mime
of an irreversible
act;
all this time
wasted
going someplace.
when we’ve gathered up the last
of roadworthy flowers,
touched our final
sundance
in the skull
then
we’ll settle
on leaving . . .

or,
you’ll say
we’re still together
hungering in underboards
dog-fed on blood slivers, whiplash and improvidence.
why
do we pick at moments
to unlock their gnashing
guerrilla war?
i have no reason for what i want
just . . . be my collaborateur
my psalmist
my letterhead
be everything that is outlying and forbidden
the cavus which cannot bear the weight of waterweeds
and i promise to keep you
burning, weeping
or whatever
it is
you’ve
been needing
ever since our funeral

in that godless hollow
of a mind

New FaithOf course it would be foolish to assume that the relationship between us is linear:

I touch your skin.
Memories re-align
to meet the meaning in your eyes.

Of course it would be foolish to resume the old ways of believing:

There is no pain
that this moment
cannot bend into beauty.

Southern Belle - 2I want to sing you songs on the low notes
for hours. Comb your hair behind your ear,
gentle and lingering. Slip into your eyes-
anything. You are

a ripple spreading across me. You are refracted light;
slickness of an abalone's back. The soft pearl.
Idle thought of my afternoon- always, always

I imagine. And Bourbon's not so far:
nineteen hours through a day,
then I could see you. Will we ripen
on touch?

I took offMy day off.
I stand in sunlight
without asking.
I can watch it being day.

The mud is soft and cool at home.
I'd bury well without a casket,
I’ll be a naked pill for earth.

I build a garden box from wood,
smash my thumb.
Red bell
peppers;
too late for lettuce.

I had a premonition
I would live like this.
No one will remember me.
I’ll forget by Tuesday.

Seventy-FiveWhen spring is impossible to recall
except in the eyes of fresh-hearted young
I will seek a new tale in the grey autumn woods.

Vietnam, PapaI think you must have
missed me, right as I was coming in.
The rest of your life spent
serving a sentence to a country you already
defended, cells multiplying as college kids
protested your thousand-yard eyes.

Politicians used great men to
play country chess over the Mekong, shoving
Saigon lovers and colors through the
barrels of your guns. You were one of the great,
lost in gold October, passing by moments before
I barreled through. It's not fair the only
name I could put to you is Swamp Rat,
not Grandpa. Secret agent orange destroyed
more than just your cells.

I'm still going to remember
hazy, azure moments I was too late
to see, but if I

nothing like the sunit occurs to me
that I do not love you
as much as I should.

your voice is not
musical to me,
is not by far
my favourite sound:
I prefer the skeletal
tones of a harpsichord,
the rustling of the pages
of old books,
the wild clanging
of a projector
winding up its film.

nor do your eyes
hold for me
visions of the stars,
in all their fierce, deranged
intesity: I love the sight
of a massive, gaseous
binary system
more than that of your
primitive lenses.

the touch of your hands
sends me in no quixotic raptures
that the lazy fronds of a lily
or the crushed softness of velvet
could not—
skin is skin, and quite frankly,
I've felt better.

I ha

Browse More Like This

Download File
HTML, 1.2 KB more ▶

More from `vespera

AcquittalWon't you leave me? I will love you
more than if you stay, transfixed

to the point of reference, our bodies
melding a sad, soft sublime, the back

spine of a little universe blown out
like a crafter's hot glass, the growing

moment, the wonder, the expansion
before a chill.

I Took To Howling With YouI was shy at first, timid in my dealings,
I laced the trap against my throat,
sang sparing, tip-toed
around your poems.

The tone, the slow vibrating
from the shoots of my shoulders
to the gleam of polished talons,
it purred around inside me.

Oh the song, Coyote,
the same resigned call, it
paled before you, swallowed down its insides,
wept.

I took your little hand in my big hand,
flew out towards Crow, and for a while
My Love, there were poems
and the world was enough.

I took to howling with you,
down from the branches, safe
womb of the tree, I spread
dirt between my toes, sang happy,

sang the song of free,
your wild howl

Before You HowledI had forgotten for so long why I sang,
so many, my song turned into tumbled
bedsheets, bodies strewn,
nectar of a kiss overdone.

The lonely hoot low and languished,
I loved, My Love, I loved strong
and solid, the hollow notes,
the lonesome bones.

Crow, she came and whispered in my ear,
said your song is lovely dear,
take a feather from my wing, we beat
somewhat the same.

But the song, it was the same,
beneath the shadow of the bat, as
the love of a man
I nearly slew.

When she would call, month's later
the chiming at my ear, o' my heart
my little heart,
I heard her and she was me,

and I, without us, her little
black wing

The Creative ProcessYou sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and decide:
you will be brilliant today.

You will write about your crazy ex-lover, your vengeful mother,
the teacher you had in 2nd grade you barely remember
but who called you by the wrong name during your awkward encounter
in the supermarket last week
and it pissed you off.

Ten minutes later
your paper is full
of doodles of your dog
and you decide to check your email,

Find that your spam filter is as productive as you are.
A fine outstanding, yet cruelly mistreated, gentleman in Nigeria needs you to wire him money,
but his father with three doctorates treating AIDS across the border will pay y

View Gallery

Featured in Groups:

#Prosepoetry-Elegance
for excellent writing

#HumanConditions

#To-Our-Family

Details

Submitted: August 5, 2011
File Size: 1.2 KB

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 62
Favourites: 54 [who?]
Views: 729 (0 today)
Downloads: 48 (0 today)

[x]

Poem for a Mother

by `vespera, Aug 5, 2011, 8:40:55 PM
Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Free Verse

When I was four
I'd follow you into the bathroom
on sticky feet,

press my little bird hands
into the back pockets of your jeans
while you were washing dishes
at the sink,

babbling on: Mommy, Mommy,
I love you.

Then there was the youth
who played Simon Says
to your aerobic routine.

I took jumps to your steps,
laughing as I tripped,
I wanted to go
where you went

I practiced to be
who you were.

The world split sideways
and I stumbled out
a teen traumatized
by the gory birth.

I'd've sworn you did it to me:
the red plague of my face,
the heartache,
the inexplicable serrating rage,

I beat at you as an extension
of self.

These years are quieter
and the miles between us ache
for your back pockets again,

to be in my adolescent womb,
that dumpy-brown carpeted house
with the over eager rose bushes,

all those rooms where I'd scream
Mommy! I love you!

Poem for a Motherby `vespera

Literature / Poetry / Family Life / Free Verse

ACCEPTED to voxpoetica: [link]

Hear me read the poem: [link]

When I read Bee's [link] earlier my heart went out to her. I wrote this meaning to write a poem to say hey, it does get better. there's going to be "I hate you's" and there will be inexplicable rage, and you will be the target, but someday she's going to wake up and you'll be one of her best friends but it also ended up being a poem for my mother. But it gets better. I promise.

***edit 4/27 - minor edits

Critique by ^Kaz-D Apr 25, 2012, 11:16:56 PM

I really enjoyed the beginning of this piece - the first two paragraphs are tidy and have a nice emotional feel behind them. As I continue to read your style slips a little bit but I think that it still works really nicely throughout the verse. I stumbled a little over I'd've ... I've never seen that written before and I think you should consider perhaps splitting it up to make it fit in better.

I like the use of serrating - I get what you're trying to describe there, but unfortunately I don't think it's a word. You could perhaps go with serrated though?

I like how the ending is approached with a reflection back to the beginning, that's a really nice touch. I think the caps at the end sort of ruin it for me, but the phrasing is good. For a stronger touch why not consider Mommy, I love you ?

Overall a really nice read, thank you for sharing.

What do you think?

Fair Unfair

The Artist thought this was FAIR

9 out of 10 deviants thought this was fair.

No Replies

Devious Rating

Vision

Originality

Technique

Impact

Critique by ~erziban Aug 7, 2011, 3:09:04 PM

This is beautiful; you took my heart in your hand and carried it through a memory of my life with my mother...and I desperately wish for her back pockets again. You have done something all of us writers strive to do; you have made your words alive, created emotion that impacts on so many levels. I loved the way you described hitting the teen years as a gory birth. We do go through the throws in our teens, striving for adulthood while our toes are still in the nursery....you captured the pull, then push, then pull again of our relationships with our parents, and particularly with our mothers, perfectly.

What do you think?

Fair Unfair

The Artist thought this was FAIR

7 out of 7 deviants thought this was fair.

No Replies

Devious Rating

Vision

Originality

Technique

Impact

The Artist has requested Critique on this Artwork

Please sign up or login to post a critique.

*xlntwtch Apr 24, 2013 Writer

It does get better, on that (mother and daughter relationships) and regarding the talent you show here -- I agree with both you and several others who read this piece. You present it very well in those few words really good poets can put together to say things prose writers take a lot more words to say. Thank you.