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DrewTM |
long days, universe nights pull me in.
I always push away harder.
Labels: Drew
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Matt |
... but all of the important ones were about you.
I'm only good at one liners so far.
Labels: Matt
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Dalia |
I jolt awake from and exhale what you smelled, what stung you.
Cleanly engraved on a tombstone,
where your path dead-ends, engulfed in weeds,
with all the contours and pockmarks
embedded and expended like your liquid weeks,
suspended like an easel, draped in abeyance
and in shadow. You tried to be so
much more than an image,
but precariously intermediate, you are naked,
a building sitting on the cusp of the horizon.
Yet I caught you and held you and grasped you,
devoured your essence and stuffed into categories the heterogeneity
you faced. I have cupped your days in my palms,
I have made currency of your trauma.
I have understood the terror of the grace
that comes frozen, standardized in the imputed version of you.
Labels: Dalia
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Fred |
Shall I go and fetch the stars?
Shall I braid a necklace from grass or meteor trails?
Ask me anything.
Shall I fashion a belt from the Amazon or the Nile
or the Mississippi, whittle the buckle from a redwood tree,
crown you with the dawn and lay the light at your feet,
write a note for you on unlined paper?
Shall I sew your wounds shut? Should I remove the sutures?
Should I massage the stress from your back and your neck?
Shall I flood your house with rubies and emeralds,
should I paint your tongue with diamonds?
Shall I make a breakfast of omeletes and bacon,
shall I bring it to your room on a tray with some juice?
I can create a collage of gleanings from romantic films,
do all of them at once, while riding a unicycle backwards.
I can conduct an orchestra of wind through canyons,
a creaking chair, the sound of distant thunder.
I can tell you a symphony of silence or of drops of water
or of one thousand pink Chevy Novas, all starting at once.
I can sing you a song with a squeaking falsetto
I can trim the tips of your tears.
Labels: Fred
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DrewTM |
Get off my case! I'll shut it on your tongue and you know it'll
Hurt. Small, latching, silver jaws will hold you to the floor,
and I won't have to sit behind your ego anymore.
Labels: Drew
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DrewTM |
the horizon bares itself with a snarl,
and I am coming to realize that what is arrayed against me
is nothing as simple as a rotten impulse or molded habit.
It is the whole weight of my days, assembled in ranks,
their length and measure wound around my wrists, my neck.
My righteousness is an armor of glass,
utterly transparent in its construction and inevitable defeat,
and obdurate, as I grasp swiftly but ricochet off the surface.
The plane of opportunity wanes orange, purple, blue-black.
This frequency is cloistered in calculation,
measured out in tinny spoons, sutured irretrievable.
A milestone ago, an octave to come, have fermented and coated my throat,
like wet on a black deck.
I strain to see eves and gospels from below imbricated shingles.
When the children of the sun fall down my chimney
they are coated in dryest gray to lie in ash and smoldering embers.
Standing, awkwardly watching, mouldering in this de facto display case,
all the moving lights, red and white traces--living, breathing, crawling emberkind--
fill my vision and trap my thoughts.
Come from the horizon, wind-dog, air-lion.
Blatant heat is all I ask of a sun.
I dare you to inject chaff into the walls of these trees that shade my house
to hurl me against the panoramic, rocky apparition through my windows.
Suck all the coals and stars through my body as a filter.
Suck my body through the air, into the water that must fill the Big Dipper.
Impale my feet on a carpet made from shards of TV antennas, lofted high into space.
Strip the earth. Strip the air. Strip me, body and mind.
Suspend me facing full-on across the altitude the lights and the endless apperceptions
contained in this clay-pot, cracked, treasure-trove world.
Labels: Drew
1 Comments
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Matt |
I'll play third trumpet, but I won't play second fiddle.
Okay, so my first poem is only one line, cut me some slack.
Labels: Matt
1 Comments
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Fred |
You have been so much more than an image to me
cleanly engraved on a tombstone,
with all the contours and pockmarks
and in shadow. You tried to be so
a buliding sitting on the cusp of the horizon.
Yet I caught you and held you and grasped you,
you faced. I have cupped your days in my palms
I have understood the terror of the grace
Labels: Fred
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Dalia |
the horizon bares itself with a snarl,
and I am coming to realize that what is arrayed against me
is nothing as simple as a rotten impulse or molded habit.
It is the whole weight of my days, assembled in ranks,
their length and measure wound around my wrists, my neck.
My righteousness is an armor of glass,
utterly transparent in its construction and inevitable defeat,
and obdurate, as I grasp swiftly but ricochet off the surface.
The plane of opportunity wanes orange, purple, blue-black.
This frequency is cloistered in calculation,
measured out in tinny spoons, sutured irretrievable.
A milestone ago, an octave to come, have fermented and coated my throat,
like wet on a black deck.
I strain to see eves and gospels
from below imbricated shingles.
Labels: Dalia
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Fred |
the road philosophizes in its curves,
and we imagine we understand it
we can hear the ocean's perpetual soliloquy
from here, already.
it is all so gentle, so sublime
the crashing divides the future in half,
drowns our fears.
I can feel your breathing right itself.
I construct a ritual to hold its words, this feeling.
the waves are humming their secrets towards us,
and they are rolling underneath your skin.
Labels: Fred
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Fred |
place them in this box, here.
Stroke the nape of your neck,
push up the bill of your hat.
But do not be satisfied.
Labels: Fred
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Fred |
the horizon bares itself with a snarl,
and I am coming to realize that what is arrayed against me
is nothing as simple as a rotten impulse or molded habit.
It is the whole weight of my days, assembled in ranks,
their length and measure wound around my wrists, my neck.
My righteousness is an armor of glass,
utterly transparent in its construction and inevitable defeat.
Labels: Fred
0 Comments
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DrewTM |
This wilderness grew from a wonderland roottwo at the breast of the Wild and the Truth
Labels: Drew
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Fred |
In the raucous polity,
These words don’t make to try.
What I feel you know
Every day every day every day.
I see the world making love to itself,
but it can be brought to maraud.
Where man’s oneself is not there to find
all the mazes tried before the arena,
It is better to steer closely
to the firmly wringing twist-twirl
of a melting evening.
II.)
What we pray tell see is the minutiae:
Grass blades in a hardgone forest,
mindside on the balcony hit on.
And on the porch,
set long and fine in the indigo montage.
Livingloving in disaster,
It doesn’t make for anything unique
as it’s always.
The excess fear is baggage claimed.
Minus all the subsides and memories changed.
Don’t tell me about certain actors.
It doesn’t matter to be true
as long as it is in.
It doesn’t make sense that we’re here to know what you have to extend
We’re just here as friends to go back and get together to our own lives
We will go back to resume what we started.
III.)
We didn’t cross countries
Or raise mallets.
We didn’t come armed
with helltopay invalid.
We don’t have to go round about these things.
We can be steadfirm.
We can be brought to maraude.
You’ve brought us your finest truth
even without the guarantee
that it might not even matter.
- Originally written and performed by Dalia Malek, remixed by Frederick Ghansah.
Labels: Fred
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Fred |
I drove by one of their stores today, and remembered how creepy their logo was. For one thing, it's a little odd for me that a paint company, of all things, would have a megalomaniacal thirst for world domination. Secondly, couldn't they have chosen a color other than red? It looks like they are attempting to "cover the earth" in blood, and the drops coming off do nothing to make the image more benign. How is it that this company has retained this logo for all of these years? Are they totally oblivious to the connotations, or do they just not care? Bizarre.
Labels: Fred
1 Comments
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DrewTM |
We were an iceberg.
Seals rode our wake and danced
the sun made us flash and
the wind made us sing.
We were a glacier, with rocks
crushing into us, rolling
underneath us like ball bearings.
We were a lava flow,
resplendent in the channels of rock
we smeared, like chalk dust.
Heat-ghosts blanketed us.
We were a ship in the sun.
Burned-red sailors scrubbed
rough our back with bare feet.
(II)
We are breaking up now.
We are hewn asunder, hewn
by our own heat, by hours of
weary heat and scouring cold.
Pockets within us have burst in
Cupped angles and Chunks.
I can see you, and you, and you,
and the plunder I have left
sinking in the sea of peace:
the sea cools hissing rock
the sea melts frozen hearts.
The sea is a sea of distance.
Labels: Drew
1 Comments
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Dalia |
In the raucous polity
where man’s oneself is not there to find
all the mazes tried before the arena,
even though I want to strike through,
turning it off what it is that sources passion,
it is betterworse to steer closely
to the firmly wringing twist-twirl
of a melting evening
II.)
These words don’t make to try
What I feel you know
Every day every day
I see the world making love to itself
Maybe for certaintea
Coffee and biscuits and milk
jam
but we can be brought to maraud
Don’t tell me about certain actors
supplied like the Argonauts
when it’s something that can be made in our kitchen, if we have one
it doesn’t matter to be true
as long as it is in
with creativity’s face slammed against a broken border
what we pray tell see is the minutiae, grass blades in a hardgone forest
mindside on the balcony hit on
and on the porch, set long and fine in the indigo montage
We don’t have to go round about these things.
We can be steadfirm.
Livingloving in disaster,
it doesn’t make for anything unique
as it’s always.
If you’ve brought us your finest truth then it should stealthworth be a sureluck shot,
even without the guarantee
that it might not even matter
III.)
It doesn’t make sense that we’re here to know what you have to extend
We’re just here as friends to go back and get together to our own lives
We will go back to resume what we started
The excess fear is baggage claimed
Minus all the subsides and memories changed
We didn’t cross countries
Or raise mallets
We didn’t come armed
with helltopay invalid
Labels: Dalia
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Fred |
for I cannot remain here for long, with you.
The last snatches of the roaring autumn orchestra
are echoing now, but they are now smeared over with silence
and shot through with frost. You can hold them
in the hollows of your palms like an amulet,
but only for a time, for a spell, for almost long enough.
Already we are breaking like cracked slate,
a ship collapsing in a becalmed harbor, throwing itself on the shoals.
Already the sky carries its crucibles of winter and distance.
There is no cure for this inevitability, not for this
which is its own harbinger. I cannot feel the heat
leaving the tips of my fingers, I cannot even imagine
what it was like to be here. Oh my god do not remember
me like this, do not remember me crumbling and fading,
these moments are sacred but they are not precious
to me. They are betraying me, they are swathing me
with truth. The moments between breaths are woven
over with concrete and tar. Forget.
I cannot feel your fingers leaving my palm.
Labels: Fred
1 Comments
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Fred |
we were translucent shadows,
dancing on curtains like
Wayang kulit, our wooden epics
stretching across the night.
We've seen better days.
When we were sonnets,
dovetailing lines,
closing our days with
careful rhyming couplets.
sometimes
we were broken carousels,
whirling in anachronistic circles,
gently, up and back down again,
the center holding quietly still.
When our hearts were
nautical, boats slowly
circumnavigating our every
motion so delicately,
the breeze trembling our faces.
sometimes
we carved ourselves in March,
into silken, silty mud,
tasting autumn on the air,
coming with its dull fury.
When we were pewter
statuettes, solid and ugly
and inevitable, hemorraging
silence, sacred, and elegantly
deaf.
Labels: Fred
2 Comments
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DrewTM |
Building a ship in a bottle.
A dying laptop battery at a critical time, and rushed conclusion.
Labels: Drew
0 Comments
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Dalia |
An ashtray partially containing ash and partially containing peanut shells
An airport bar, a baggage carousel, a PA announcement, and a turnstile
A chicken slaughtering
A religious tattoo
A newspaper lie
Someone else's pubic hair in the shower
Bubbles
A begrudgingly-made instant coffee
An "adidos" T-shirt and a "Roley" watch
An airport bar, a baggage carousel, a PA announcement, and a turnstile
A chicken slaughtering
A religious tattoo
A newspaper lie
Someone else's pubic hair in the shower
Bubbles
A begrudgingly-made instant coffee
An "adidos" T-shirt and a "Roley" watch
Labels: Dalia
0 Comments
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DrewTM |
A not-yet-fully-used tissue
A string freshly-pulled off of the armpit seam of a shirt
A finger missing half the fingernail, due to a pistachio-opening accident
A torn-out page from a missing book about anthropology
A hyphen in the first line
Labels: Drew
0 Comments
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