CE: Favorites

Jan 2018 CE

matthew scott harris

Re: Thank You to unknown
   tom, ****, harry, tam, dame,
   or dana from the MHS Class of 77,
   though this alum
experiences public education
   within lower providence jurisdiction

as a ***
er - minimally partaking advantage
   of extra-curricular,
   collegiate, inter-mural,
   et cetera opportunities,

   no not even a figurative crum
well nigh convey an impression of being dumb
bull door, deaf, and blind (with out faith no more),

   nor passing love notes from
some anonymous girl, who
   (after leaving a teasing message
   informed asper getting a smart haircut

   in ninth grade civics class
   taught by Missus Comly
   (do not quote me on my
   power fully pointed excel lent spelling,
   telling nothing, when out of desperation
   I experience primal yelling)
this singular potential fledgling flirtation,

   the extent from student,
   who appeared morose and rather glum
exposing such vulnerability to be hum
millie hated, and bullied relentlessly,

   whereat i wish to be a little boy
   comforted by me mum
since that option out of the question,
   thus aye didst never meet Miss Mot Toe
   (e plumbs e num), perhaps cuz eye **** numb

body, mind and spirit triage as if inebriated by ***
imagining the fighting spirit within me to thumb
or rather "flip the bird" to those,
   this then anxiety prone

   metaphorically rolling stone
whose metaphorical diet of worms also included
   eating picked over sun bleached
   un beak coming road **** crow - how yum

me does that seem, but gnome hatter
   how grossly said foul dish
   spurred via carrion (an analogy
   representing verbal taunting

   best left for hitch cocked birds) didst not appeal
not in the least did i give nasty brutes a "what for",
twas fear of getting creamed, fricasseed, irradiated...

   sans to stand proud and tall
   (all five and a half feet, but blunted maximum height
   topped off just shy of seventy inches -
   in reference to yours truly) against bullies

to this very day such emotional repercussions congeal
asper anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic...,
   which physiological symptoms served psyche not to feel
and only of late (particularly with daily intake of about
   a half doe zen pharmacological prescription medications

   do check and induce schizoid personality disorder
   (the diagnosis encompassing,
   the gamut mental health issues) to heel
akin to a well trained service dog, which fractured

   psychological state i.e. garrison to pitch and toss
   upon the precarious tipping point i.e.
   surpassing the tipping point,
   where thy body electric doth keel,

which precarious state finds me socially awkward,
   and off kilter, and maybe this chap
   ought to take a page
   from professional athletes playbook,
   and take a knee qua to kneel

hence this improvisational explanation
   why yours truly felt discombobulated
   to attend the recently held reunion,
   now aye wanna axe something serious, and fur real,

which essentially constitutes whether
   a current list of 1977 students,
   who received their high school diploma
   could be sent to me, whereby at least one alumni
   could buffer end this contemplative, intuitive,
   and pence eave guttersnipe wannabe with zeal.

hie haint gonna hold ma breath,
   nor wait fir any religious chief such as allah
boot nothing ventured...blah...blah...blog...blog...

adieu - - matthew scott harris

#where #did #intervening #years #go

Jan 2018 CE

Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue

Jan 2018 CE

W. H. Auden

******* Lil and Morphine Sue

Did you ever hear about ******* Lil?
She lived in ******* town on ******* hill,
She had a ******* dog and a ******* cat,
They fought all night with a ******* rat.

She had ******* hair on her ******* head.
She had a ******* dress that was poppy red:
She wore a snowbird hat and sleigh-riding clothes,
On her coat she wore a crimson, ******* rose.

Big gold chariots on the Milky Way,
Snakes and elephants silver and gray.
Oh the ******* blues they make me sad,
Oh the ******* blues make me feel bad.

Lil went to a snow party one cold night,
And the way she sniffed was sure a fright.
There was Hophead Mag with ***** Slim,
Kankakee Liz and Yen Shee Jim.

There was Morphine Sue and the Poppy Face Kid,
Climbed up snow ladders and down they skid;
There was the Stepladder Kit, a good six feet,
And the Sleigh-riding Sister who were hard to beat.

Along in the morning about half past three
They were all lit up like a Christmas tree;
Lil got home and started for bed,
Took another sniff and it knocked her dead.

They laid her out in her ******* clothes:
She wore a snowbird hat with a crimson rose;
On her headstone you’ll find this refrain:
She died as she lived, sniffing *******

Jan 2018 CE

That wren

Jan 2018 CE

Kobayashi Issa

That wren

That wren--
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?

Jan 2018 CE

Temp. Drop

Jan 2018 CE

Westley Barnes

Temp. Drop

This is the fourth time it's happened this winter
The fire is sparking
("Put on another log to dull the flames")
The wind, whipping up chaos outside, conspires with the moon
to plaster open our eyes, and
tangoes with the red of the streetlight to foreground the terror, the dramatic pull to this scene like the beginning of a barfight.
But all you notice is the snow.

Captivating Slush, like the wondrous stupid glow of children's television
("Close the door quickly, it's below zero outside!")
My chest wakes up to the sleeky bitterness of it, gentle but rousing,
like the critique of a crush taunting the back of your neck, but in reverse.

You've said that last line, and it's the response of everyone who can't savor what they most anticipate, the arrival of the thing itself cast aside for something mundane like safety.
The thing itself for you is watching snow,
and now you gladly push it away.

Life is so unpredictable, yet so callously routine.
To live in seasons is to be constantly surprised at things exactly how you've seen them before.
It's not emotions that frighten us, emotions are hand-me downs, the old favourite band t-shirts of experience, often ones we've worn before.
It's the feelings that surround emotion that we shunt out, that we tipex over in our journals of memory, our synaptic splints.
The tears of children who never turn back
to confront their tormentor with their tears.

And so now I'm walking upstairs as a means of brushing off these notions
("For the love of ... make sure the bathroom window is closed")
And I check my phone while debating how to spend the rest of my evening engaging with my phone while you rewarch American sitcoms, so cosy, your contentment as reliable as Irish wind
Then I sigh and look out the Bauhaus insulting bedroom window
Again I see the circus coloured tarpit the weather has made of our street
And wait a minute, trying not to feel anything
Because this is the fourth time this has happened
This year.

Jan 2018 CE

disembodiment

Jan 2018 CE

Gabriel

disembodiment

they say you will know
when you are dreaming
hands, clocks, mirrors
they say numbers will twist
letters will distort
an ugly tear will be ripped
across the fabric of space and time
but what if i avoid mirrors
what if i struggle with clocks
what if my fingers are always
too many, or too few
what if the material is torn ragged
and no matter how many times
i run my hands along it
i can always feel the stitches?

Jan 2018 CE

Love Is A Parallax

Jan 2018 CE

Sylvia Plath

Love Is A Parallax

'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
    in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
    where wave pretends to drench real sky.'

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
    or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
    is our life's whole nemesis.

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
    about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
    implacably from twelve to one.

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
    and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
    who insists his playmates run.

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
    like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
    should inflame the sleeping town.

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
    caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
    playing his prodigal charades.

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
    blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
    graves all carol in reply.

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
    brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
    while footlights flare and houselights dim.

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
    the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
    joins his enemies' recruits.

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
    there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
    an insight like the flight of birds:

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
    some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
    cycling phoenix never stops.

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
    and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
    away our rationed days and weeks.

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
    in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
    the simple sum of heart plus heart.

Jan 2018 CE

Monologue At 3 AM

Jan 2018 CE

Sylvia Plath

Monologue At 3 AM

Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.