tinbrick alley -- leja's thread

I did actually write this on the first -- barely (23:30). I'm so excited that NaPoWriMo is a big thing again this year! Good luck to everyone!



april the first

It is household names
and penny loafers that create
our ambassadors to the world
when too much peppermint
makes us sick
and thick lights smoke through the
club in place with the fog.
Cordova and Jackson know,
fedexing inflexing rolladexing
collections halfway around the world.
We want to be here not how
and not near but now,
in a group where we only know
what happened by
the decorations that it left behind.

april the second

[[removed]


(11:30. again)

Yeah, I don't really know either.

april the third

"Kiss me, I'm Irish is one of the many ways
in which the continued subjugation and disappropriation
of women is perpetuated." We don't need that kind of discourse anymore
to be able to step up onto soapboxes rife with nails at the edges
and switch platforms to the changing texts.
Je suis un betty preparing to travel the world in a nutshell
taking bets from everyone who walks by the door: Who will be
arrested first? They're talking on the left about
feminism and power structures and on
the right about improvements for the solar system
(who needs Mercury, anyway?)
Let me know if you're going to Moscow
I'll hitch a ride on a train anyday, make my life in Siberia some way--
The orchestra always needs a few more violas.
The two of us can hole up in a flat for a while until this all blows away.

variation i

Montreal rode into town in a carriage decked with blue bows and mistletoe.
Never mind the forty by the driver and the ready-for-going-out tophat
tilting artistically off of his head. That's a lie.
Like everyone else, he just rearranges words until something makes sense.
Would you believe that?
Every missed opportunity is just a chance to get away and
let someone else pick up the pieces
because no environmentally living logic
would park a running hybrid car in one of the covered wooden bridges of New England.
Seasons come and go but a ten day switch might make all the change in the world.

Leja,

These are wonderful, little snippets; little not as in length but of expressions in time. I esepcially like variation i on april the third. Although your in april the third poems seem arbitrary and some of them questionable.

I adore this.

valleys of architecture and american impressionism
strung together by lines of Wordsworth and docents
who make it a privilege to mettle up your ears for
the rest of the life.

Also the title of your thread is awesome, it immediately made me think of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.

Ta,
Cal.

Caligula's Launderette wrote:Leja,


Also the title of your thread is awesome, it immediately made me think of Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey.

Woot for influence of BritLit!

april the fourth

let's get metaphysical

[removed]


[will return to finish later]

april the fifth

Five tossed in a car and laughing ourselves down the road
and sliding (internally blushing) into the front row after
everyone else rushed in. Our

chairs don't move, and the books passed
around the room differ with each coming season,
but that doesn't mean they don't still
say the same thing.
Yes, I know it seems like we have a few more teeth.

Leja -- I wanted to comment on one thing or another, but I love it all.

april the sixth
today was a weird day for poetry


i.

A floating staircase, as from Cinderella's world,
the foyer branches out on all sides like a phylogenic wagon wheel
anyone can walk up and proclaim to the world
for proclaimations of great kings and to-be-heards
are usually nothing more formal than kicking out
the man with the megaphone. Windows

and open space organize around a landscaped floor
that carves through the sitting room and then out the door
It's not just about how far you'll fall into the
rabbit hole but rather how many stairs

you'll have to climb back to the top of the hill.
There was reason, I'd guess, that it's all
downhill to the lake, just naturalized now to be
an obvious progression

Is being ernest still important?

Look up and to your left. I'm here on the balcony
watching the king from across the way
Just wanted to say hey.

ii.

[removed]

iii.

thin fibers growing brighter
wonder when the world'll be lighter
give another root to weave into a
route that's got another reason
to dress up or down this season
ready for another time of

year that's open for tomorrow
kicking art and business sorrow
out there to the curb
and we're looking for another mission
just a chance to leave the kitchen
ready for action when the chance draws
near. We watch and
wait for all the time we wait
when are you coming home again?
never to late to make amends.

next time I decide that rhyming is somehow a good idea, please remind me otherwise XD


april the seventh

Train's leaving for Edinburgh tonight, maybe
I'll kick up a few grains of sand to make it on time
and travel 'round the Old Town for a while.
Wish you'd get my postcard already
Come meet me at the park
I'll be the one in blue,
We can sit out on the rocks,
and watch the sun set for a while,
fly back home in the morning.



april the seventh

There isn't anyone around
to say that I should or should not continue like this.

That I can't walk into my room and strew garlands
of wasted wildflowers around the window
in gardens that'll grow out into romantic worldviews.

I like my Spanish folder with trees on it
and French music floating around the room
while cd'd chandeliers throw light to
accomplishments and life.

Dare you to tell me that I'm not going to
throw a rolled up rug over my shoulder and
strut out the door one day. I can
find somewhere else to call home,
anywhere I can put curtains up.

april the eighth

They rode into town one foggy April evening in a black Bentley that shone

each LED bulb from the green light on the hood as it passed by, a ray of

green light vaporizing clear the car. All three, dressed in sharpened hats

and sorted up looks they're ready to go to town in the blink of an eye. Can

it be love if it's not reciprocated? Maybe we should take a break from

challeneging ourselves and for once be happy a moment where we are.

Can you write for words? If you see this when you're here, know that this

is where the onions grow, that the last stereotypes are always the ones

that stick. We're not walking away.




*gigglesnort* this barely qualifies as a poem...

april the ninth

You know, sometimes you can stand there
laying pieces down brick by brick and
there's a solid wall
that can stand up to a hockey team after
the playoffs, that can divide a house from
a home and can surround you until
nothing at all can pass. And then there's
piles of clay that you can
throw into the center of a room
that build up and grow strange
apendages until one minute, it's just
a lump of clay and
the next moment, it jumps up and starts
walking around tinbrick alleys that
ping every time your foot hits the ground.

Leja,

I love this bit:

april the eighth wrote:They rode into town one foggy April evening in a black Bentley that shone

each LED bulb from the green light on the hood as it passed by, a ray of

green light vaporizing clear the car. All three, dressed in sharpened hats

and sorted up looks they're ready to go to town in the blink of an eye.

The rest is a bit iffy, but I really like this part.



Also, both april the seventh poems are beauteous.

Ta,
Cal.

april the twelfth

Let's build a new
Xanadu: a glass-domed roof that melts
into the fortress of a convoluted dorm; we'll
need to find a ginkgo tree (they're not extinct
anymore) then you or I
should deliver the mail between that
fortress and the castle on the hill
before the goldleaf gets all crinkled and
we're lost again to the worlds of
nights in shining amour and
days filled with hopeless spinsters riding
by with their spinning wheels on their
backs. This palace dome, a pyramid of
glass set back into the mountain of brick:
tinned up as its sidewalk unrolls to
meet with the rest of the world. We'll go
to the ends of the earth to find a new
coal-swamp forest: get one of the first
true leaves
for a mega fill of tropical foliage in that
Xanadu for the twentifirst century.

april the thirteenth [i]

From my childhood dreams, I
remember a white picket fence in
the middle of a Christmas tree forest. It
was draped with evergreens and sunk into
cotton snow that gets stuck in
the trees. There's a cottage with
gingerbreaded scallops falling from the
roof, and the whole camp is circled
with holiday lights that don't quite light
up the sky. I remember what it was
like to walk through that gate
for the first time, see these strange
people sitting around at the door,
and before I even went in, know what
it was like to be home.


april the thirteenth [ii]

A man on stilts stops at the Chinese cart
while I'm standing there waiting for the bus
He has a basket around his neck, I guess so that
he doesn't have to worry about where to
carry apples and white rice. The theater is
right next door, but he walks right past.

Through the bus windows, everything looks
so much brighter, especially when you don't also
have to be blown in the wind. The
buildings are taller, the colors clearer, the
people happier. This small town's the
way it's supposed to be. It's
impolite to stare.

The buses on this road look the
same as the rest, but they only go
back to Unamuno Street. Good thing
no one's a secret agent.
Then again, I do wait for the bus a lot.