We thought it was Thunder

An implosion of the ear
deep, quick, fat
We had heard one like that
earlier in the week
So we turned off our curiosity
and went back to reading

Outside eyes diverted
toward the street
toward the bridge
Brooklyn bridge
A man walked away, covering
his eyes and crying

I panicked; again...?
No, it wouldn't be so quiet
Ran up the stairs
in my white socks
to Gans
"What are you doing?"
She answered in confusion

We peered out the bathroom
window to see
a carbon colored
cloud of smoke
eroding the blue sky
in a billowing form

The TV is no good.
Only celebrities and
sports.
Our Brooklyn was struck
and nobody knows
how or why
The world doesn't seem to care enough-

It's a wonder the paparazzi didn't catch the fume
and photograph
and photograph
and photograph
to extinguish the plume.

Pancakes

At night my thoughts
match my movements,
twisting in the sheets
of cerebral insanity
My cheek flips from left
to right- each time
my brain boggles from
its creative side
to technical:
Thirty page thesis paper
-flip-
Tongue turning rhythmic
lines
-flip-
Graph & maps & time too
exact
-flip-
Absorbing, observing, contorting
the simple

I flip halfway
& lie on my back

to frog

They say: "Do what you love"
and so I do-
I write, and at night
I come home to you

Tensegrity

Found dead on the border
in limbo of Nevada and California
Route 190 West, just past the sign
Her hand clasped tight to his
Continued into the night: rigor mortis
And on the upper part of his thigh
a handprint, imprinted in pink
indicating her grip on the curve of his
leg, as he pressed to speed up
then against the break at the curves
She lay smiling, head up against
the niche of his pectoral and bicep
He has, not the look of dying,
but the smooth satisfaction of having just lived
as if
he had just created life there before the sign
Christened the car with a lovely duet
to their own Eulogy

One wonders what they were doing in
Death Valley, in the pitch black of night
what turns they could have missed
curves and swerves not just left
but down and up, through terrain
unknown to the eyes:
Too dark to see
Gripped hands are tense
Tickling ambivalence
in their senses
She probably wondered whether
she should be thrilled or
chilled at the speed, the lack
of perception
Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smell
Absent
She became more acutely aware
of the clutching touch
As soon as she realized
the depth of this sense
It was stripped away.

He abruptly snatched his hands
to the wheel, just before the crash.
Just before their bodies bounced forward
then back.
The car hood, where they had loved before,
smashed into their abdomens
The imprint, the hands, the touch
Come together in a consummate
Coda of love

Seven times Seven

I
To teach Tyra,
who couldn't draw stars
because her pencils always twisted
into figure eights and circles
I told her to draw an alligator mouth
It came out backwards sometimes
but at least she drew straight lines

II
I read it on the back
of a nasty bathroom
stall door
that seven in the max
amount of times
one can fold
a piece of paper in half

III
Some celebrities name their children
Apple
or Moon unit
or Rumer
Erykah Badu's chosen
Toddler Tag:
Seven.

IV
The Great Pyramids of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Mausoleum of Maussollos
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria

V
All the Senior women
occupied their
choice cards
and in between whisper gossip
would wait for
Lucky Number
7

VI
The arch always seemed to
just appear,
never formulate before one's eyes
and although the pigments faded
into one another,
each shown distinct
Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet

VII
Contradictory, really
when one picks it
apart
Claims to be
even
when really, it's
odd

Affinerty

When he was butting heads
Michael was
with his comments as
triangular and
so bold
to be a child
I never knew

Dismemberment

Each memory forms a wrinkle
a crease we can't unfold
Etched in like an inscription
the truth can't be untold

I hate your poignant memory
fuming stenches from the pungent past
I hate my transient memory
But even more, that yours lasts

Why keep the creepy feelings,
the bitter leach that seeps in deep
Why suck on the sour memories
and leave the good ones left to bleed?

Let’s pretend our brains’ are hydra
and chop off the poisoned limbs

Epiphenomenalism

He asked me Why I missed some spots
on the canvas
I reminded him
not all rooms in the
city building skyline
leave their lights on
at night.
He asked me Why I was trying to be
profound
I replied: "No, just thinking aloud."

We toss and we turn
to try and create
we dive in our minds
steal inspiration
from the secondary sparks
the brain bi-products

Why, Why, Why

I answered:
Each lit window is a
thought expressed
The dark, dead offices
are the thoughts repressed

Spread the News, It feel so Good getting Used

What he said:
about the wrinkles- and the sunburn
except, i never find my fingertips
shriveled after a long conversation about nothing with him
the youth on the tips stays pure and everlasting
the youth of our hips is forever replenishable
by a chat about jogging
the high, after running
well worth the non-smokers smoker's cough
we use one another
each word overturns the next word
the other says
about ham
or leftovers
or some junk in our head
that doesn't even need to be said
but we say it anyway
and the chatter goes on
and on and on across the continent

diko

I don't like the way
you probably speak
to the women who make
your coffee
I smile because I'm a happy
person- you seem cynical
and condescending
but you're always smilling
I don't like how I feel
young and nubile
around you
Don't like how you act like
you're younger
Your experience frightens me
more mystery than I can
breath in
You wear a windbreaker from
before I was born
Your eye contact never wavers
Steady, steady stare.
Please, free me from intrigue

The Up-Stairs

These are the up-stairs
Everyone goes up
then out
I've never seen someone come
down
Inconvenient to make one's
travel to the subway
platform from
this angle
this location
Then again, maybe it
has happened
Maybe a man dropped his
hat in the up process, once
Maybe a lady
realized at the top
she got off at the
wrong stop

Maybe.

Bungalow

1.
The city isn't peaceful
like the she-touch of a wave
spilling up onto the shore
then falling back
by moon's effect

2.
The family visits the post office
on Sundays
rationing letters out to the young
children
to drop in the mailbox
like they do at the park:
scatter wood particles for the
termites hiding in the trees

3.
The house down there is naked-
made of pine logs
just cut last year
although new, the floors
creak and each crack
plays a different song
with the radio in the back-
ground

4.
The walls are full of splinters
and the hall light lives at
night, with stamina

5.
One child swears she's swimming
in a lake, not an ocean
because she's scared of sharks
Just like at night, she
swears the hall light is God
because she's scared of the dark

6.
But a lake doesn't crash at the
shorelines like that
Like words on a page,
falling down

Wyoming

Watermelon

Centi-celebration!

That's right folks - 100 posts! I think there are a few submissions that are not mine(and so indicated), so we'll have another centi-celebration when I've hit 100 personal poem posts.

*Why have I not gotten the "quit it with the alliterations" comment yet?
Get on the ball, commenters. Even I notice my own annoyances.

Why I Rhyme

My mind thinks in patterns
Though sometimes scattered,
always subtle configurations
And usually, obvious alliteration
I write poetry because I like
the flow
of language
The way a line rolls off my tongue
and gently onto the subsequent one
Sometimes the rhyme is subdued
by a particular placement
A doggerel rhythm
With my own chosen hues
I wouldn’t paint purple on a yellow
canvas-
Just as my words have a scheme,
I rhyme to avoid syntactical blandness
I rhyme for my reasons; don’t intervene.

(a response to "It's okay to rhyme)

It's okay to rhyme

It’s okay to rhyme
Reminisce of some
Ancient time
When words seemed new
A slow drive down
A backwood
Gravel road
The earth settles beneath the tires
A faultline after
An earthquake
Hands meshing
Heartbeats settling
Like campers at the base
Of a canyon
The rhythm of a first
Night in a new town
Pacific-northwest
We read each others thoughts
Like sonnets
The birth of some old cliché
We rhymed without fear
No embarrassment
Trapped in a fog
Lost
And if we skipped a beat
Here or there
We’d awake
Startled
How the rain begins
Again
On the other side of
The underpass

(submitted by a fellow poet after a poetry convention)
((yeah, we're dweebs))

A Coquette, A Poet

Once I put my pencil to
paper
all mental barriers are
broken.
Words become sentences
then ideas start flowing
like the surge of warmth filling
the body
after a simple kiss.
Ink on paper is
a writer’s foreplay-
Scribbling babble is
my forte.
A peck on the cheek
then skin against skin,
one will never finish what
one doesn’t begin.

It is what it isn't

Brooklyn tumbleweed
Somersaulting down the street
Black clump of hair-weave

These jeans

I wear these jeans almost everyday
I don't care if you notice
Don't care if you complain
They don't smell, they're not muddy
As long as I'm comfy
I wear these jeans everyday

The day the inside of the legs wear out
from the curves of my thighs
or
the button breaks off
or my butt doesn't fit

will mark a day I turn the textiles
into a skirt-
That'll work

Flaw

They say love is seeing an imperfect
person perfectly
But I don't buy in to the cliché
I say
love is caring unconditionally
Hating his bad habits
Despising his tendencies
Not particulary liking
breathing his morning breath stench
but kissing it anyway
It's unspiteful hate
It's getting to that point
The breaking point
crossing the gap
staying on track
until the next test:
Love is a mess.

Bread Dept.

My work is dull- numbs my mind
stare at foods- listen to people
You'd think they'd make for good topic
But dull dull, shapes & sounds

Not that I am profound
but I can think more thoroughly
honestly aloud, when talking it out.

Getting caught in my head
with Turkish symphony soundtrack
to my days
keeps my brain at a
simple stage:
Low observation
Repetition
Monotony
Monotony
Repetition

Your favorite expression

Yes.
My desk is a mess
and I let the pennies collect like
dust on an unattended counter
Yes.
My mind is a mess
It moves left then
right before it turns
it understands and confuses
before it learns
Yes.
My life is a mess
An unorganized spectrum
of the entire rainbow
where Roy meets Biv
before touching G
And sometimes skips the last color
altogether,
for sagacity
Yes.
I hold a grudge
against a color
I’m a mess.

Myokymia

You mentioned ‘convulsion’
and my arm, in its compulsion,
repulsed into spasms.

A chasm of character:
My mind and my fibers
Fought for a fighter.

My mind, in its obstinacy,
told itself to shelve
the tendency to teeter
when the word “convulsion”
was mentioned;
Mind over utterance.

Still my arm, the sputterer
fluttered,
the nerves trumped the brain:
No power of restrain.

A tick, my brain missile
missed its target to switch
from compulsion
to restrain.
The brain loses
the battle of natural
inclination,
a bodily reaction to a
verbal utterance.
A sputter
Convulsion
Sputter
Repulsion
Waver
Revulsion

My mind is disgusted
by its incapacitation.