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onlylovepoetry Jun 2019
Natalie!
at present I am present on a small isle,
which is so green genteel
to the eyes and the ayes,
you might include it
among yet unmastered possibilities,
living here forever.

indeed, the crescent beach so welcoming that
francais et l'anglais des anglaise is spoken here,
but actuality
has a way of intruding,
like
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Bleu,
saying I know you,
even if it doesn’t

this breeze bearing load suggests your name
as a candidate for future, honours, an MBE,
a practiced curtsy for a queen,
whatever is he babbling about?

why I am presenting an outline for a screenplay that
will make you a little rich and somewhat fameuse
so you buy a house on the water,
party all night,
write in the miracle wonder of the late afternoon
on a summery isle,
modestly hungover

say!

where is this isle so sheltered,
where nooks are set aside for poets and drunks
to pub crawl, to stand on tables and Irish sing of
those things that poets endlessly babble?

so add :

come here and let us listen to all your possibilities
and cross just this one,
your presence here,
off the list
n stiles carmona Jan 2021
Where'd you wander off to? I was one lonesome night-shift from writing another piece entirely – Allen y Federico, chasing Whitman as he climbs the paywall guarding Bohemia, ashen fog of beard left trailing in his wake. Ah, but here you are, my High Court of Muses! Lavender castoffs of two mechanical empires, camped outside on the supermarket pavement: awaiting a dawn delayed by the skyscrapers it hides behind. The Best Minds Left Standing... Lorca’s feet beating faraway Gitano rhythms; Ginsberg spouting love-letters re: the weeds’ anarchic growth from the concrete cracks... and one smaller sycophant.

I’ve offerings of oranges – Spanish nostalgia reduced to contraband – ‘stolen’, bruised, saved from dumpster fates. Wouldn't you have done the same? Isn’t food waste just state-sanctioned sacrilege? Naranjas, clementinas, full miniature moons split into crescents: I figured (halved) you'd (quartered) be starved (eighths). You savour each sacred drop of juice in ways I've yet to master. I’d always been preoccupied with expiry dates... Moloch who sets up shop inside my brain... yet time melts between my lips and I am with You under UV floodlights. I am with You where the overhead glow may not be starlight but it’s not the worst alternative. I am with You – until the checkout boy steps out for a cigarette and when Allen’s eyes follow in pursuit, I’ve lost him again. Holy, he mutters into his final segment of fruit; holy, I repeat, imagining Eve’s overeager sprint into the wide-open prisons of thought.
    I am a woman cloved in two, better half wrapped in citrus peel and tied with string – para tí, maestro Lorca. Does it bother you that these buildings stand closer to the Sun than you could have ever reached? Yet you were nothing short of an Icarus, and how close you came! Abstract wings borne from words and notoriety! Your mythology was written to fit a flamenco guitar – if they don’t know that, they don’t know you – through musical folklore, Franco tried to **** that which was immortal. His legacy is a nation of graves and a granddaughter in the gutter press.
    I begin to feel that history is a ripple-effect of looking over one’s shoulder and deciding “you’d hate it here.” There’s always the dawn. You wait for it with practised patience – pervasive optimism – the ability not to end an “always was” with “and always will be”. Is it all you’d waited for? Has time diminished its novelty? Will you write it down and tell me what I’d slept through?
    Out cold, you turn me onto my side so I don’t choke when Moloch finds his way out.
just a writing exercise rly lol. direct response to ginsberg's 'a supermarket in california' about his literary hero, walt whitman (i feel like it'd make even less sense without having read that beforehand). one day i'll write something that isn't too long for folks to bother reading - until then...

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