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 Mar 31 junipercloud
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LOST ITS MEANING 876”:}]' (((((~WOE IS ME~)))))


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Harder to notice, things that aren’t important.
Such as me




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The life of a poet lives on
through all their poems,
but the day I do depart,
I want to be cremated.

I will entrust family
and some fellow poets
to let my ashes sink
into some deep black ink.
And I'd want them to write
the stanzas I secretly saved
just for the occasion.

That way
they can say
that I put
all my heart
and my body
into poetry.
Literally.

My soul,
on the other hand,
would live on happily
as an eternal poet
having fun rhyming
while everyone's crying.
(and I'd wish they'd stop.)
I wouldn't want my loved ones to be saddened.  I'd want them to rejoice, knowing that my dream of becoming an eternal poet finally came true.
 Mar 27 junipercloud
st64
baby in the crib, turns closed eyes into dream-light
young boy at the window, eyes on the calf
woman with the cow, flies milling around the eyes


1.
every morning, with a penchant for rising before his hour
           he stands, sees the calf at the wooden-fence
           watches with the fawn-coloured beauty of sea-shell heartbeat..
                              the rising-eye
while his sister, nearly a young-woman, washes dishes with eyeballs
                              out the tiny-window
           heifer passes by and he looks straight into eyes – gentle eyes –
                              soothes calamity

2.
in the cold morning on the farmstead, the baby curls in its warm-folds
     she chases off the flies from the horns
     and cleans gummed-openings
yet deity’s crown falls from splendour this day
      as moments devoured by need eventually bear witness
to warm dripping in the sand
the bowl is filled

                                           *(high-scale horror)


and the boy has seen it, too
he holds his arms round him to stop the wholesale-shaking.. bites down hard
     as his face contorts baleful.. in impotent-anger
     his silence bought decades ago.. in another life
no price on his shock
and the bird on the branch flies off.. glint-eyes on another branch

it’s that time once again: she takes the old-cow to town
they await her before nightfall
she never does return


3.
I’m begging you
        leave it be, this is how it is
go pick up the baby, please
(the baby won’t stop crying)




your fences, I’ll rip up your fences with your very own whip
while them wolves howl on and on
I got oppressive-time to suffer your unmatched-law in the crush-of-daylight
now, kindly.. get outta my face!








S T – 22 Jan 2014
A day.. is a day is a day.



sub-entry: one day

it ain’t so far away.. one day is just the day
after this

see it.
 Mar 27 junipercloud
st64
Little Box talks back
With a new set of teeth
And pink gums
A fake nose and a wax mustache
She disguises her voice
To sound like Groucho
  


Little Box opens up
And cries to her psychiatrist
I don’t know why they hate me
I’m such a sweetheart
I volunteer at the zoo
And teach Mandarin
To their bratty children



Little Box is not happy to see you
So she closes herself up for months
Years, decades, and two millennia!
She tacks up a sign that says
Nirvana



Little Box is undead
She sleeps all day in a coffin
Hands over chest
At night she cruises the mall
For juicy victims

She prefers type A
But AB if she has to
What can you say
Vampires can’t be choosy
She likes your stupid brother



Little Box is on the psychiatry couch
Everybody hates me
Nobody loves me
Little Box lies on her side
And spills her guts



What’s in Little Box
A perfect orchid
A chocolate-covered strawberry
A new iPhone
With a glittery sleeve
Amber earrings from Pushkin

Keys to a new Porsche
A retro Chanel brooch
A Getty scion’s left ear
A Czar’s *****
Gifts so rare
Please don’t stare



What’s in Little Box
Rancid chow mein
A sliver of cold pizza
Last week’s hummus
You’re a starving orphan
From East Brooklyn
And you’ll eat it



So you want to **** Little Box
You want to know her secret
She won’t open up
She won’t give it up
And you are genuinely repelled
By her filthy ribbon



You want to DO the Little Box
You are a sorry story
You big creep
Why don’t you get off the couch and find
A real girlfriend!



Boss Box
White, square, and without a soul!



Please don’t analyze Little Box
She’s just cardboard clogging the landfill
Her mother Precious Jade Purse
Has been regifted
howdy :)
 Mar 27 junipercloud
st64
Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change  
is train tracks. She's sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery  
by the side, but not the tracks.
I've watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.


Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train  
is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.  
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.


Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.  
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn't change.


Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.  
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.


The train whistle still wails its ancient sound  
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
happy birthday, antonio -- may your soul-seasons exceed four :)


Naomi Shihab Nye
b. 1952

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1952. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. Her experience of both cultural difference and different cultures has influenced much of her work. Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects, Nye has said that, for her, “the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks.”

A contributor to Contemporary Poets wrote that she “brings attention to the female as a humorous, wry creature with brisk, hard intelligence and a sense of personal freedom unheard of” in the history of pioneer women.

Nye received her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and continues to live and work in the city. “My poems and stories often begin with the voices of our neighbors, mostly Mexican American, always inventive and surprising,” Nye wrote for Four Winds Press. “I never get tired of mixtures.”

In Hugging the Jukebox (1902), Nye continues to focus on the ordinary, on connections between diverse peoples, and on the perspectives of those in other lands. She writes: “We move forward, / confident we were born into a large family, / our brothers cover the earth.” Nye creates poetry from everyday scenes throughout Hugging the Jukebox in poems like “The Trashpickers of San Antonio” and the title poem, where a boy is enthusiastic about the jukebox he adopts and sings its songs in a way that “strings a hundred passionate sentences in a single line.”

Nye is a fluid poet, and her poems are also full of the urgency of spoken language. Her direct, unadorned vocabulary serves her well:
‘A boy filled a bottle with water.
He let it sit.
Three days later it held the power
of three days.’
Such directness has its own mystery, its own depth and power, which Nye exploits to great effect.

Fuel (1998) is perhaps Nye’s most acclaimed volume. The poems range over a variety of subjects, settings and scenes. Reviewing the book for Ploughshares, Victoria Clausi regarded it as, above all, an attempt at connection: “Nye’s best poems often act as conduits between opposing or distant forces. Yet these are not didactic poems that lead to forced epiphanic moments. Rather, the carefully crafted connections offer bridges on which readers might find their own stable footing, enabling them to peek over the railings at the lush scenery.”

As a children’s writer, Nye is acclaimed for her sensitivity and cultural awareness.
Nye told Contemporary Authors: “I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late—there’s that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantime…Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”
 Mar 24 junipercloud
irinia
this body a structure of rupture filled with words
their censorship - an act of love but
I can still feel their rawness, tenderness,
the milk of light, the roundness of sunset
I'll give them away to the rites of spring
to the procession of the shadows that carry us with them
to the unexpected burst of you like the morning light
poetry works best in silence

— The End —