Month of poetry #7: Ultimate floor

You led him away, one hand in glove
peaceable, the other full of insects.
If tonight you don't say bedtime
over mountain-climbing, who will?
Get the final rose from the top
of summer's flowers, never mind
scratches on the way back down.
Coiled rope in my guts twisted
like an experienced boy scout;
tested against history and the wind.
Uneasiness: it's my signature.
Move one step forward: one step into
a wall of nerves and flesh this was.
My ultimate floor was level with death,
his face you might mistake for a demon
or the golden crane, stayed, that needed to fly.

---------------------------------------------------
Including suggestions from:

@ernmalleyscat: this was my ultimate floor (from the log of William Beebe, deep sea explorer)
@spikelynch: hand in glove
@JayJayCee1: the golden crane stayed
@timsterne: who will get the final rose?
@lalscotton: it's my signature move

Month of poetry #6: Winter

It's late and my wrist aches like I'm the first
to hold a pen in centuries. I had raked words
into piles like the dry leaves and twigs
of summer's reaping, then let them spoil into
dank mushroom-fanciers. Rancid undercurrents
festering ripe and sprouting fairy rings of
rote exposition. I cower inkless during winter,
there is nothing rude to shade me from
the goths of near-July. Pick axes slam into picked apart
taxes of snowy white-goods. These are no
flurries of natural season, a freezer is no roof-line
of ice that fell in apology. Throwing June's money
at the cold is hard as a cannonball to resist
unless you are a cannonball. My advice would be
for people not to climb into appliances as if they
chill and boil happiness. They are no points
of power; will not bring back summer where
we wrote and drank white trash in the sun.

------------------------------------------------------
Includes suggestions from:

@timsterne: the dry leaves and twigs of summer's reaping (The Young Desire It, Kenneth MacKenzie)
@_boobook_: it's late and my wrist aches (Lighthouse Girl, Dianne Wolfer)
@sleepingdingo: rancid undercurrents festering
@sushipyjamas: shade me from the goths
@JayJayCee1: unless you are a cannonball (Richard Scarry)
@attentive: fell in apology
@dogpossum: my advice would be for people not to climb into appliances

Month of poetry #5: Commercial service - 3 out of 5 stars

Unseen hands on housekeeping trolley
firm knocks/pause/keys/nose the door open
with buttocks and back into the room.
Four-piece queen suites disrobed of dust
under pain of white-gloved fingers from upstairs.

Midnight room service slides sideways into
strobe-lit back to back Avengers,
four women shouting at primary flashes
screening in red/white/blue/green
"What the fuck, heroes, what the fuck?"

Breakfast starts at four. Head of service
queens it over grain breads and sweet jams
props up on years of coffee and
loves every wrinkle on each croissant
and face. Avenging the title of senior.

Front desk shone chestnut colour
polished into history with years of
nasty/brutish/short wages, generations of fingers
tagging the grain into macrocosm of oils
invisible hands wearing away a tree.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Includes suggestions by:

@ernmalleyscat: four-piece queen suites
@ReadingSheilas: 3 out of 5 stars
@JayJayCee1: shone chestnut colour
@chantarelle: what the fuck, Heroes, what the fuck?

I've always been interested in how hotels work, and the people seen and unseen who work there. Interviews with workers in these places are often amazing and mind-boggling. I even made the mistake of watching several seasons of Hotel Babylon based on this interest of mine. Admittedly, this was also because Dexter Fletcher (Spike from Press Gang) was in it. But either way, I wouldn't advise it.

Month of poetry #4: Breadline

She interviewed like a damp butterfly.
Spoke of the slide toward food stamps
that didn't spread to weeks' edges.
Looked past my shoulder, eyes right,
while words leaked out like tears
she didn't even see me. No additives,
artificial flavours or attempts to spice things up.
The bolshy ones would beat the devil
around the gooseberry bush before they'd arrive
at final poverty of "only rice". They'd pull out the
picture perfect of easy-livin', dog-eared
and worn thin with insistence. Not here.
"In the next room, I was able to hear my
sons' cries for what they were, and what they
were was hungry and too brave to tell me."
Long past the fragile crust of bread and a job to call pride
her eyes looked dark down a long platform.
Sugarloaf tops scammed stale from an Asian bakery
masqueraded as a dinner indulgence;
drowned out the creak of empty cupboards.
Home from school, they brought none of
the rawkish clatter of siblings. They sat
as soon as possible, eyed me as a stranger
but diverted the energy of interest.
It was clear from the angle of repose
how these children were hungry.
The pale young bodies, all awkward angles
and juxtapositions of heredity and circumstance
still trying to grow on scraps of the background.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Includes suggestions from :

@spikelynch: angle of repose
@attentive: spice things
@margolanagan: angles and juxtapositions
@eglantinescake: I was able to hear my son's cries for what they were (The Whole Brain Child)
@JayJayCee1: scraps of the background (Adobe Photoshop textbook)
@matchtrick: easy livin' dog
@ernamalleyscat: long platform, sugarloaf tops
@lalscotton: she didn't even see me
@GretaPunch: crust of bread and a job
@realnixwilliams: beat the devil around the gooseberry bush

That's a lot of suggestions! I might have to set an upper limit to avoid writing an epic cycle every day...for your sake as much as mine...

Month of poetry #3: Hog calling

Arms side by side on the fence
hers brilliant bacon, his fine ham hock.
Every chat a poetry of interruptions
sentence rinds chewed up, repeated
to see who can speak the most vampire.
Lore is Crap on a pig farm where shit
is the layers of history: our home is
girt by C. Turdish strata built up
in shoe treads reads like rings of oak
and seams of farming voices distributed.
Being with pigs is to be in love with a side
on show, moving generations of comfortable
arses up road with a twang on the old left cheek
and a slap on her old hammy.
Crotchpong Cropduster always kept away
in his bachelor Don Juan pen, shampooed
weekly so the porkers could enjoy.
The confidence of thicker and fuller hair,
flanks polished into worldly glow.
He's a prize, a prize, dumping and humping
his way into pig hearts and family wallets with
all the slick glory of a Vaudeville ham, happy
as a pig in


----------------------------------------------------------------
Including suggestions from:

@pinknantucket: most vampire lore is crap (Supernatural)
@spikelynch: distributed being
@ernmalleyscat: our home is girt
@attentive: a twang on the old
@timsterne: her old hammy crotchpong (Cloudstreet)
@lucyrogue: could you enjoy the confidence of thicker and fuller hair?

A couple of...challenging ones...in there...

Month of poetry #2 - Twelve

When last strips of daylight
fell bright across her boredom
she rose in clockwork hope;
he creaked weary cogs of assent.

Worried again at one stray pillowfeather
as excitement rustled silks of her
skirts out the door. To dumb planks:
The lake's not on fire - as every night.

Underground with sisters twelve to
shred manic soles; hunters above
looked for what creature works
a creaking copse of trees from below.

Enough - and he rose to axe out
an elderly cape and hide from sight.
To the night, after her red-hot feet
despite velvet concern of the dog's eyebrows.

He waited to shame them, but frail curls
of sound - obviously a major malfunction
of cloak - daggered his eyes to their beds:
twelve sisters danced, minus one.

Older with waiting, she had bleached.
Half-starts shook the air out of him:
I wasn't sure - had to choose - but still I knew -
One of her hands confirmed the years,
two of her hands made him seen.

I was young - so I waited.
She has her dancing, her ten sisters -
Laid dormant in undisturbed frost,
she cracked her lips, touched his cape and saw.
Your wife will never know.

---------------------------------------------------------
This poem includes phrases suggested last night by:

@ernmalleyscat: the dog's eyebrows
@notunimportant: obviously a major malfunction
@spikelynch: the lake's not on fire
@timsterne: your wife will never find out
@attentive: a creaking copse of trees

I've been reading a lot of fairy tales lately, and this poem is kindof based on both the old tale of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, and Sara Maitland's re-writing of it in The Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairy-Tales. You know, kindof.

How many

How many lines have we lost
in glasses of milk, bums needing wiping,
the wrong amount of rice bubbles,
concentric circles of no/but/no?
How many plots disappeared
by a dream interrupted:
doors opening tearfully on a nightmare,
or just a plastic superhero going off
without warning?
Couplings of words smear
into tired crumbs on the bench,
tangle up with the holy business of getting
out the door with shoes on right feet.
I could have scored out an improbable
or something magnum opus by now,
seen the initial spine of my language
on a bookshop shelf.
But here in the half-dark
I can trace the curve of your cheek
(still babyish) in less than a minute,
and every night it looks
nothing like failure, or regret.