I have a suggestion. It is generous to help a sister or brother-poet out and rewrite their poem with edits, but this could cause potential danger. It is dangerous to rewrite the whole poem because a lot of our personal styles can get lost in a big rewrite.(The poem isn't ours--so we don't know it's subtleties, motivations, etc.)) I think it might be best to, at least at first, ask questions about certain lines to get a sense of what the writer is trying to do with this or that word or phrase. Like what Alina did for my "closet" line- she asked 'why.' What do you think?
xoxox not-mean mollye.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Night Is A Hand
Five adult males carried Horatio to the telephone pole on 2nd Avenue to make a call to Vegas.
Birds are sight. Leaves are sound. Gingersnaps are taste. (Taste snaps). A bar of lemon-lavender soap is smell. When I stretch I am touch.
I mark the letter Q in my notebook. It breaks into seven silver boxes when I read it outloud.
Ms. Montgomery visited Mount Saint Helen in 1979 when her hair was long and gold.
The image refreshes every fifty-three seconds.
The length from one object to another object depends on the length of the instrument by which we measure it.
Heavens above! I believe we've met.
We walked in the new concrete house when we were six. It smelled so good of basement chalk. We held hands Time bit me there.
Inside the Heinz ketchup bottle I captured the sea (you can study the sand up close) and view the sea-goo strings that formed a gel inside the buttoned lid.
I float miserably into thin air on my way home from work. I love work!
Who worries, when they’re speaking, that their face says something else?
On Friday Ms. Montgomery will go to NitaNitas, order a drink she sacrificed for, feel bizarrely aware of faces.
Being poor has taught me…Being poor has taught me…how to be poor.
A beard drinks coffee in a cabin and breathes.
As soon as you feel this man's breath on your neck turn to his softest part and kiss.
Tak mozna ledem je krasnajisi na celou svet.
My blue star necklace performed an elaborate surgery on a Mr. Hank R. Mumphry on February 7th 1994. No one was there to see it. The result was successful, it, stuns.
When the larks comb through the wheat the air goes noisy. I step out on the porch to appreciate the cave.
-mollyemmiller
Birds are sight. Leaves are sound. Gingersnaps are taste. (Taste snaps). A bar of lemon-lavender soap is smell. When I stretch I am touch.
I mark the letter Q in my notebook. It breaks into seven silver boxes when I read it outloud.
Ms. Montgomery visited Mount Saint Helen in 1979 when her hair was long and gold.
The image refreshes every fifty-three seconds.
The length from one object to another object depends on the length of the instrument by which we measure it.
Heavens above! I believe we've met.
We walked in the new concrete house when we were six. It smelled so good of basement chalk. We held hands Time bit me there.
Inside the Heinz ketchup bottle I captured the sea (you can study the sand up close) and view the sea-goo strings that formed a gel inside the buttoned lid.
I float miserably into thin air on my way home from work. I love work!
Who worries, when they’re speaking, that their face says something else?
On Friday Ms. Montgomery will go to NitaNitas, order a drink she sacrificed for, feel bizarrely aware of faces.
Being poor has taught me…Being poor has taught me…how to be poor.
A beard drinks coffee in a cabin and breathes.
As soon as you feel this man's breath on your neck turn to his softest part and kiss.
Tak mozna ledem je krasnajisi na celou svet.
My blue star necklace performed an elaborate surgery on a Mr. Hank R. Mumphry on February 7th 1994. No one was there to see it. The result was successful, it, stuns.
When the larks comb through the wheat the air goes noisy. I step out on the porch to appreciate the cave.
-mollyemmiller
Restlessness
After lunch, uncle Kasimir grew restless
and paced to and fro, so much so that we
had no choice but to put him up for adoption.
The mountains were vibrating so violently
it was as if they were laughing at us
and we weren't in on the joke.
The Emperor stopped and stood gazing at the ocean.
So this is the edge of darkness, he thought,
my reign of terror is at its end.
Thank you, he said, as the waves engulfed him.
The cartoon mouse is running in place,
the moment before the mad dash.
I've looked and looked
but where have all the songbirds gone?
Friends, I don't know how to hold still.
They spent the whole summer at the famous
Banff Springs Hotel, for the good air,
on the advice of their doctors.
Blindfolded before the firing squad, I realized,
my lost luggage was the least of my problems.
Ding, went the fasten seatbelt sign. Ding,
goes the hotel service bell.
Nothing says inevitability like
standing in the path of a moving train.
and paced to and fro, so much so that we
had no choice but to put him up for adoption.
The mountains were vibrating so violently
it was as if they were laughing at us
and we weren't in on the joke.
The Emperor stopped and stood gazing at the ocean.
So this is the edge of darkness, he thought,
my reign of terror is at its end.
Thank you, he said, as the waves engulfed him.
The cartoon mouse is running in place,
the moment before the mad dash.
I've looked and looked
but where have all the songbirds gone?
Friends, I don't know how to hold still.
They spent the whole summer at the famous
Banff Springs Hotel, for the good air,
on the advice of their doctors.
Blindfolded before the firing squad, I realized,
my lost luggage was the least of my problems.
Ding, went the fasten seatbelt sign. Ding,
goes the hotel service bell.
Nothing says inevitability like
standing in the path of a moving train.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Sometimes like you I am an angry mess
The sun wraps its bright molded braid around my beautiful boy body
and coughs.
This is the sun I grew. This is the sun I grew up with and you grew up with
and are still.
Christmas hangs its head.
December happens in every girl.
I looked for a garden in an old city once. A woman told me of closeted leaves.
I wanted so much its hard banana colored taste
to flower with me for a minute.
I could not find this garden in the paperwork it is
behind a wall with teacakes and paintings of ponds
That sun I told you about is a mattress. Left on the curb it rusts
and bakes camel hair. I have a reason to worship it. I am a man
and must worship things I can't touch but can.
When I step out the door to be normal
I run anyway-wild toward whatever is breathing
the wind in the flags. What animates? Which edge do I lift? Only I
ask that question. Talking only breaks
-mollyemiller.
and coughs.
This is the sun I grew. This is the sun I grew up with and you grew up with
and are still.
Christmas hangs its head.
December happens in every girl.
I looked for a garden in an old city once. A woman told me of closeted leaves.
I wanted so much its hard banana colored taste
to flower with me for a minute.
I could not find this garden in the paperwork it is
behind a wall with teacakes and paintings of ponds
That sun I told you about is a mattress. Left on the curb it rusts
and bakes camel hair. I have a reason to worship it. I am a man
and must worship things I can't touch but can.
When I step out the door to be normal
I run anyway-wild toward whatever is breathing
the wind in the flags. What animates? Which edge do I lift? Only I
ask that question. Talking only breaks
-mollyemiller.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Quick, Pivot!
Five toads hit me in the head as I was on my way to the attic. It is a law in our town that toads are free to roam the sky, and at night, they rest in the police station. I just finished writing my letter of petition for an application to send a letter of complaint, and I am exhausted. There must be something in the water tonight, because the tea I made smells like seaweed. In fact, flowers are decaying in my yard. Ever since my doorbell broke, there has been a consistent knocking at my door. Yesterday I opened the door to find a few orphans staring at me with their fists in the air, as if ready to knock. If it's not toads hitting me in the head, it's chamomile seaweed, or orphans! The orphans quickly pivoted and clocked each other in the nose. I closed and locked the door. Enough of this mad, mad town. Too many toads in the air tonight, I'd better start sleeping in the attic.
My edits...
I stretch myself thin over the streets where it and I are anonymous
and buildings are wretched tree-skirts and people going toward the light under their hair.
My knees! Your knees! How they carry me endlessly over myself
through the streets. Four hundred crowns stacked neatly on a cornered head. What kind of vision is this? The crowns weigh and jingle.
Lillian wins a new crown every time I say her name.
What makes me go further? The feeling of friendship?
To have a curl of her hair near my hand! To have his (this word still makes me pause, may be change to her?) company turning in this song! It is comforting to know I can laugh so easily, then finally be the single shape in my tower. My tower! Three blocks from the hot foreheads of so many nightly ghosts! I vanish perfectly and so do all my companions
and buildings are wretched tree-skirts and people going toward the light under their hair.
My knees! Your knees! How they carry me endlessly over myself
through the streets. Four hundred crowns stacked neatly on a cornered head. What kind of vision is this? The crowns weigh and jingle.
Lillian wins a new crown every time I say her name.
What makes me go further? The feeling of friendship?
To have a curl of her hair near my hand! To have his (this word still makes me pause, may be change to her?) company turning in this song! It is comforting to know I can laugh so easily, then finally be the single shape in my tower. My tower! Three blocks from the hot foreheads of so many nightly ghosts! I vanish perfectly and so do all my companions
Inside The Glass Dome Project
At the gas station they make the lights brighter so we can spot the station from the highway
but so when we come inside we won’t stay long. Do you think in the old desert days
“oases” felt and acted like our present day gas stations? Or those camel posts where people met
to smoke meat and tie their horses and other creatures? I’m really curious. I believe
because we are living we should exclaim more about how that is--weird! beautiful! absurd! reliable! scary
hell! relentless! And learn more about it as it goes on... Sometimes I don’t care and I know you
don’t either. But there is a leaf in the sidewalk with its leaf parts soaked in the concrete and only hard
khaki veins relieved on its hand body. And to the infinite part of me that piece means something serious.
We’re inside around a gas station table in an underground aquarium observing the huge glass tank
for a seal to drop inside and relate to us. But we are not at an aquarium.
They are offering plastic treats to midnight people like us who are filled with road.
I’m conflating two particular gas station understandings. I can do that. Am I a stranger? I hope my last thought
gets recorded. How can I make sure that happens? How can I make sure anything happens?
The highway is campfire quiet. Love does save peoples’ lives.
but so when we come inside we won’t stay long. Do you think in the old desert days
“oases” felt and acted like our present day gas stations? Or those camel posts where people met
to smoke meat and tie their horses and other creatures? I’m really curious. I believe
because we are living we should exclaim more about how that is--weird! beautiful! absurd! reliable! scary
hell! relentless! And learn more about it as it goes on... Sometimes I don’t care and I know you
don’t either. But there is a leaf in the sidewalk with its leaf parts soaked in the concrete and only hard
khaki veins relieved on its hand body. And to the infinite part of me that piece means something serious.
We’re inside around a gas station table in an underground aquarium observing the huge glass tank
for a seal to drop inside and relate to us. But we are not at an aquarium.
They are offering plastic treats to midnight people like us who are filled with road.
I’m conflating two particular gas station understandings. I can do that. Am I a stranger? I hope my last thought
gets recorded. How can I make sure that happens? How can I make sure anything happens?
The highway is campfire quiet. Love does save peoples’ lives.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
I want this poem to be better than it is right now....
Life on Planet Fuck You
Where the ice cubes are made of flies and a drop
of blood and sleep is a fishing pole
nobody owns. Where you drive
your dune buggy straight into the inferno
it won't let you in and the women
are sidereal light with bachelor's degrees.
And me without my mustard gas.
And you without your flagellum.
And Rooney grips his tear-soaked baseball bat
in the copy-room until night comes
and the men in white vans come
to take us back to the sleeping pods.
That's it.
You get one chance in the Black Motel
before the figment in your wings dries
and your tongue refuses to bifurcate.
Shut up and eat your high school
huge globs that never leave your body.
Dr. Apocalypto will be in in a moment
with the same news about your fungus.
Enjoy the kazoo music that wafts from behind
the prison's paper-thin walls. Someday
they'll name an overpass after you. Signed,
Hopelessly Yours, Casanova Artichoke.
Where the ice cubes are made of flies and a drop
of blood and sleep is a fishing pole
nobody owns. Where you drive
your dune buggy straight into the inferno
it won't let you in and the women
are sidereal light with bachelor's degrees.
And me without my mustard gas.
And you without your flagellum.
And Rooney grips his tear-soaked baseball bat
in the copy-room until night comes
and the men in white vans come
to take us back to the sleeping pods.
That's it.
You get one chance in the Black Motel
before the figment in your wings dries
and your tongue refuses to bifurcate.
Shut up and eat your high school
huge globs that never leave your body.
Dr. Apocalypto will be in in a moment
with the same news about your fungus.
Enjoy the kazoo music that wafts from behind
the prison's paper-thin walls. Someday
they'll name an overpass after you. Signed,
Hopelessly Yours, Casanova Artichoke.
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