Recently, I've been writing a lot of poetry that I would define as the equivalent of a doodle or a sketch
in the art world. Not much of it makes sense, they're usually pretty abstract, and only one out of ten
are ever any good. But they keep me sane when I'm traveling and away from my computer. In this
thread, I'll periodically post one or two doodle poems that have any sort of merit to them.
Have fun!
Idealogical Rheumatism
It seems to me
that we'll all be in wheelchairs someday.
Wheelchairs with spokes like snipped guitar strings
and gutted seat-cushions that leave
little breadcrumbs of foam behind
when we shift positions.
All our bureaucratic muscles -
braided licorice sticks
or twined telephone wires -
are going to atrophy
eventually
and we'll all be confined to
thought-based nursing homes
where ideas are spoon-fed to us
from Gerber's baby food jars.
All our good intentions
are turning into peas-and-carrots
vomit-mash.
Wal-mart is throwing hand grenades.
Oh my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!
Would God I died for thee
Oh Absalom, my son, my son!
The Rollback man (America's own symbol of prostitution)
smiles benignly as little hornet-swarms of bullets
make hole-punch gaps in flesh as patriotic
as spongy apple pie and surgically stitched
baseballs.
Little splinters of shrapnel
kissed by the lips of gods that sit cross-legged
in New York City and play with passenger jets
are staining old glory
with gangrene froth.
But it doesn't matter how many peace signs
are sketched or tattooed or spoken
and it doesn't matter how many how many
of Jacob's multi-colored coats
(fatigues the color of Shi'ite synagogues and dirt smeared turbans)
are stained with slaughtered lambs blood
because in the end we realize,
Absalom is already dead.
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Canary word: Present
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Duskfield
One foot in front of the other, they slump
forward, limp and wilted as ladies in the heat.
Their hatbrims cup the sun and their faces are broken affairs,
cracked grilles and rusted piston-teeth.
Hon, it's strange how a little dirt and blood
can make a man so much older.
Look at em, their backs are all arched
like those of stretching cats
yawning, their stubblejaws
hang limp in their sockets
squeaking back and forth in the wind:
old porch swings.
And they carry their guns tiredly,
in repose across their chests and they shuffle
forward in the streets on shoes with soles worn down
to the thickness of flywings.
Look in those eyes and you'll see
a whole lot of nothing; empty, tawdry glasstoys.
They are always bleeding. The blood: it sloshes
down their legs and into their boots
and they leave redmud footprints in the dust.
Let the doctor examine your boy once you get him back.
He'll open the kid's mouth and ask him to stick out his tongue,
as purple as a nightmare.
And then the doc, he'll look at you all pityingly
and he'll tell you in slow, stately words
that your boy has done left a little more than glory
among those orchardtrees, among those bluedressed duskfields.
Aunt Jemimah!
She my steam engine momma!
She got these steadfast, Georgian eyes
that skitter across her face like north stars
guiding me, Lor', Lor'.
Her cheeks, dey shine
big ole polished apples that you
scruff against your shirtfront
to get all shiny.
Her sluglips shape blasphemy
and her hair is nested by sparrows in the spring
and rustyvoiced crows in the winter
and when she walk, the gods, they tremble.
Saddlebacked and nekked, she suns here by the river
with her bluecorn lizard skin
looking at you with eyes that are
hard as bible covers, but soft as Lord Jesus's preachin'.
See, she can have gentle fingertips sometimes,
but mostly she's got to keep us nappy-headed,
roach-bellied chiggers under a thumb an' I swear, man,
our backsides are swollen up rubberthings most times.
When she laugh.
When she laugh the whole world rattles and jingles
made of nothing more than nuts and bolts
made of nothing more than nail and tin
and I can lay down with my head between
her breasts – being jerked up and down like
I'm laying in the back of a pick-up –
and feel that heart of hers trainwhistling all the way up to heaven.
Hanging Out in the Deep South
his legs dangled
like hollow metal wind-chime tubes
and when the wind threw fists at him
covered by whisper-padded boxing gloves,
his body swung like
a gymnasium punching bag.
here, people don't have enough money
for piñatas.
but young men who look as if they are paper doll chains
cut out of the evening sky
can be plucked off of the streets by the ears
like dead game-rabbits, hole-punched by shotgun pellets.
now the men stand around the sycamore tree and
watch the makeshift piñata drop gasps and
soppy gurgles onto the ground
like lollipops and
gum-balls.
(A/N: I was really tempted to call this one, Ku Klux Klan Birthday Bash, but I decided I didn't want the poem to have such a facetious overtone.)
-Kylan
A Descent into Greeting Card Smiles and Fortune Cookie Sympathies
All of us are merely
Victorian women sipping tea around dining room sideboards
(that are like autopsy tables
where Conversation's corpse lies with its chest pried open
by Politeness's scalpel)
sticking to tried-and-true conversational subjects
like the weather.
We are
ticker-tape machines
spitting out common courtesies and
form rejections signed “sincerely”.
Our tongues are carving out
Scrabble tiles jumbled up into vowel-less mouthfuls
and dropping them into
the other Duchess's teacup
where they rattle
like “how-are-you's” trapped inside
mason jars meant for fireflies.
-Kylan
Kylan you keep doing it!
You have this great way of writing that makes me cry. At first you did kind of lose me but then I read it over and I found myself liking this one better than the other two. Your imagery as always is fantastic and the way you put together words is exquisite. I have no complaints but I will if you don't keep writing.
Favorite Lines:
Love the imagery!
<3
... you came close to losing me between stanzas, but after rereading a few times, it's a lovely idea, so I suppose that could be a good thing rather than a bad thing?
This collection is... really cool. And I wish I had more to say, haha.
“You Talkin' to Me?”: De Niro's Interrogative Fidelity and Subversion of Masculine Norms
Her eyelashes are helicopter blades
snapped off of Black Hawk assault choppers
like foot bone-sized pieces in a model airplane kit.
Symphonic orchestras can not compete
with the serenade of her gunshot or
the musicality of her hands around a throat
because there is something about
bombs whistling (as gravity drops Hail Marys toward neon-poisoned skylines)
like air through a tracheotomy
hole-in-my-throat that makes
silver screen romance look like
soap opera scripts scrawled by infants in high chairs
with a Robin's egg blue colored crayon.
My heart fizzes like the carbonation
in a recently popped can of soda
whenever I see
plastic army men.
i don't think the title of this collection really does justice to the pieces within it. the pieces themselves are very well written, and just about the only thing i would change is in the second one where you keep writing the symbolism of each thing right after the line. isn't that what footnotes are for? but overall very good pieces. very thought provoking.
That describes the first perfectly. It reminds me of how my sister describes old people, her tottering hags and all that...
I didn't really find it the hysterical piece other people did, I can't say it made me laugh. That's not how I saw it. I didn't really see it as a humor piece, though obviously not a melodrama or anything of that sort. It was sarcastic and cynical and your analogies were nothing short of brilliant.
The second one, it was certainly written beautifully. You're like a magician with words. It was all so smooth and flowing.
"Little splinters of shrapnel
kissed by the lips of gods that sit cross-legged
in New York City and play with passenger jets
are staining old glory
with gangrene froth." This was my favorite verse; I love the second line particularily.
There were two places that stuck out to me though.
"(fatigues the color of Shi'ite synagogues and dirt smeared turbans)" The shift in tense really threw me off here.
"The Rollback man (America's own symbol of prostitution)" This line has a whole different flavor than the rest of the poem. I feel like it was much more obvious and the line was a little long. I think you could take out the part in parentheses completely and leave it at that, and it would work just fine.
You're absolutely amazing Kylan. I can't wait to see what else you have for us:)
*adna*
Kylan is that you? Really seriously...you're back? Where have you been? OMG!! I haven't any of your work in a long long long time and...give me a minute...ok Poetry?
Idealogical Rheumatism
It was funny in a weird way. You're right its kind of abstract you know? First we're getting older and we're grinding down to nothing...but wait the cycle's refused. We get older only to become younger. Dependent and what not. This was a very crazy piece I got to admit but I wasn't disappointed. As much was expected from you because you can turn anything into art. Bravo.
My favorite two stanzas were:
I like this stanza because its really detailed and its very imaginative in a realistic way. There's nothing that I can say that can describe why I like this stanza...I can't explain it...you've rendered me speechless.
When I got to this stanza I almost wanted to smile...in fact I did. What this stanza meant to me is all the things that we control like our legs and our arms are going to weaken as we get older. This stanza had so much right in it how could it ever be wrong? Braided licorice sticks...brilliant!!
Wal-mart is throwing hand grenades.
Before I go any farther I must say that I love this title. Its sort of evil and unreal but then you can believe it.
This was my favorite poem because I love irony. If I'm remembering this correctly Absalom was the third son of David and his name means father of peace. You talk of how war has effected the world so much that not even a simple peaceful get together can out do it. The message in this poem is very powerful and it really is beautiful to see it written like this.
All in all,
I loved these poems and I know I'm saying love a lot but its true. There is no way anybody can not like you're writing because its just so raw and original...and real.
Keep writing (or else) and Good Job,
Angel:D
Wow, pointed and good.
As sketches/poems, they're awesome. I love this imagery-->
The wal-mart one is harsh and great. I don't like wal-mart either. I don't know if these are your final drafts, but they seem good to me. I can't really comment now. I might come back and go in-depth later.
Haha, nice Kylan! Very funny! I'll go through each of them to tell you what I like.
Haha. I love the idea of this poem. I really don't have any constructive criticism for this. It was too funny and too much fun to read. I think I have a new favorite poem.
I didn't like this one as much. First off, what the heck did I just read? This is why I fail at poetry. I can never understand what you're talking about. But, you did say that almost none of these are supposed to make sense, soooo... I'm guessing this is one of them? I think this one has too much poetic stuff (well, no duh, Jared! It's a poem!) for my liking. I liked the other one better.
-Jared
HAHA, Lightheartedly Evil and cynical. Just the way I like my Filet Mignon. It's like a look at the world in 3013 if the human race was a story in a nursery ryhme for chidren born into toxic wastelands radiated by nuclear fallout from WW4. I'll have to make sure I read your future posts. Good form, keep that back swing firm and you'll be a hitter.