spectrometer wind chimes

The buzz on the tongue of a hermit poet


Past NaPo years:

Spoiler

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

1. Fishmonger

Fishmonger,
I breathe into your lungs by imagining you into existence,
your shelf of white beard,
chest hair like the steel wool I scrape against my dishes.
I imagine you and another heart starts up in my head,
another soul conjured from nothing, or from a word.
Imagine a red-headed hot-air balloonist,
an Amazon fulfillment center employee
who goes fishing on Sundays and never catches anything,
someone’s grandma who used to work at a tomato soup cannery,
and your head, too, will fill with bodies.
Where is she buried, the one who first bathed in this glacial lake?
Where are the bodies that carved this temple out of a mountain in India?
I imagine their femurs stretching like a highway beneath the dirt,
and suddenly my mind sags with the weight of them.
Bodies living and bodies dead crowd that labyrinth of flesh,
crown my thoughts with brains that can imagine.
Matryoshka dolls, we hold ourselves inside.

Ohh that's a really strong start, @fortis! I love every image in this one - they're all so unusual but so very effective, like the "shelf" of white beard definitely helps me picture the fishmonger! At first, I interpreted the theme as being about how we remember other people and then they become a part of our lives and identities. But then I realised it could also be about fictional characters, especially in that first line, which is also one of my favourite lines from this poem. <3

2. Saying "Amen" Is Like Bursting Out From Deep Water
a villainelle

I go to the lake to say a prayer
and fill my pockets with rocks.
I do not need air.

The lake's slate crests are snowcapped with dawn's lilac glare.
Saying hello to God, I step off the dock.
I enter the lake to say a prayer.

My clothes are heavy, my feet are bare
and clusters of mussels cut them where I walk.
I do not need air.

I sit cross-legged in sand, and there
close my eyes against the murk. I talk.
"I've come to the lake to say a prayer."

The pulse of water tosses my hair.
If I cry, the lake does not mock.
I do not need air.

I'm empty of everything; the lake doesn't care.
So rise, rise! unloaded of rocks.
I went to the lake to say a prayer.
I scream "amen" into midnight air.

Extra poetry doodles!

collab between Meshugenah and me

Spoiler

I think I'm already off the rails tonight
wondering if you can plagarize yourself
and how far creative liscence goes when
it's never explicity said that the lines drawn
should protect you from yourself
if these words would flow freely
like a thesaurusized river, I would not live
in fear of drought. I am already so far
from the tracks of thought.
i am so far off the rails tonight
the crash was never seen.
Just yellow eyes of pygmy owls
startled from within their cacti holes.
I am lost amid the sands.

ghost cat

Spoiler

bloodstains on the desk again
and cat tracks in the ink
too bad this cat's my only friend
She's such a pain I think.

It's such a shame, this cat's a ghost
I'd love to pet her fur
She's more mischeivious than most
but I love to hear her purr

she yowls at the moon at night,
baring teeth so sharp and cruel
Her eyes glow with an eerie light
they sparkle like two jewels.

I'm gonna love this house

Spoiler

I'm gonna love this house.
I'm gonna trace with my finger
all the grout between the tiles,
I'm gonna paint it on a hundred canvases
and cover the walls with them.

I'll never leave this house.
You'll find my fingerprints under the wallpaper,
I carved my name into the floor.
My breath has soaked into the butter
that's been forgotten in the fridge.

I'm gonna haunt this house.
I'm gonna squeeze into the wood grain
of the support beams. You'll never hear the end of me
while my blood still stains the carpet.
You'll never wash me out.

I'm gonna save this house.
When they come to tear it down
I'll make its bones as strong as steel.
When arsonists scrape matches on its siding,
I'll make it rain.

Some more poetry doodles.
Wasn't able to write anything decent today.

??

Spoiler

I have some weird, arcane knowledge of birds and trees
like I identified a downy woodpecker and some black-capped chickadees
how do I know that these are bald cypress and those are cypress knees?
It also goes for insects, I can always tell the hornets from the bees.

bitter

Spoiler

I am bitter about the happiness
I see in other's faces
they sashay down the stairs
she swings around a lamp post
he spins her against him.

That couple holds hands,
that couple has the smileyest baby I've ever seen
those two just hold each other in the dark
as if letting go will split the universe.

and i taste bile and hate myself for it.

i asked for one thing.

how dare you tease it then yank it away

Bad day for writing

Spoiler

Today is a bad day for writing.
I can't find words that fit.
If I try to talk, nothing drips out.
I'm forcing words to march in rank.
It is not artful. It is not art.
It's just word and word and word.
And not to m_ntion, my "_" k_y is brok_n.

3. Chord
after W. S. Merwin

While God Created, we were writhing in an ocean of formlessness
while He forged the sun, we saw without eyes and heard without ears
while He spread the sky like a curtain, we raged and tried to rend the veil
while the Earth gathered itself under His direction, we clung desperately to each other
while the lava flowed and he called the rains, we evaporated
while He mixed the oceans, we ripped open our not-skin and bled our not-blood
while He formed Adam out of clay, our bones were peeling off our bones
while He banished them, we were chafing against ourselves in a dark and hateful place
while He burned within a bush, we couldn't comprehend the concept of having hands
while He watched His son weep, we gnashed and couldn't bear it
while He said that His creations were good, we fed ourselves into His terrible machine
and we arrived in the bodies that we'd learn to destroy in time

4. Sick of Squash
for Marge Piercy

Dear Marge,
remember last July and all
the green zucchini washing up? The hauls
from nearby neighbors' gardens overflowed
onto our porch. The veg that they bestowed
was not unwelcome... till it was. We drowned
within zucchini seas. We screwed around
with every kind of dish: zucchini bread
and pickles, roasts and casseroles. We fed
on squash till we were sick, but still the whales
(the biggest ones) continued to assail
our porch. We took them in, but sickened by
exotic recipes (jam, "apple" pie,
and "meat"balls), we left them on our table.
There, they turned soft and rotten. Unable
to bear the shame of food-waste, we started
passing to our neighbors any newcomers:
reverse burgling zucchini and cucumbers.

5. (poof! submitted somewhere!)

6. Cross-country (a cinquain)

The fly--
swatted and smeared,
watching the world go by
through the fogged window of this bus--
travels.