Box of Sky: skeleton poem 2 by Amanda Deutch, after JKD's Chrono/ Meter Chronicled

by definition nothing is repeatable.

naked
****the performance began

gulping

when you were alive
we used to dance on old loading docks
these bones
yours
and mine

New: Fraudulent Ceiling by Amanda Deutch

February, 9, 2008 Day poem

Fraudulent Ceiling

almost borealis. I light the birds on fire. . all my
greasy little fingers. slip on red. from temperature
change. inside blood rushes to skin. turns pink.
“somebody took leave of her shoes.” somebody soaked
into her skin only to have it slough off in pieces along the
trailing open. torn skin minerals. root systems.
in cities. trees speak. volumes to anyone who will listen.
skin a vehicle as much as any bus or taxi. so unreasonable
in the street. beside busted television sets and a nice chair.

To not be taken to by JKD

After “A fragment (not yet perhaps to satisfaction)” by Nicholas Manning, posted Feb 9th, & “Dust from the Mirror” by Sean S, posted Feb 24th

*
an arena shared by
this possible
this

sky clattering
labyrinth of dropped
mails,

..................a voice
has potential
only an arm’s length, a cleared
throat rice paper distance

red tattoos under blacklight
knuckles
perfume
like coins in a box

dropped cause
you said, like
this

walls of mirror
invisible doors in
a fluttering

acknowledgement
in media res
of this, possible
only refusal cracked

guttering
pale as a slipped
skeleton

glass
in a jar of light
this wick,
this

you, trapped
coven
to go back. go.

or share out
shell round
pieces of
bereavement

sticks
like moss
to your maroon
dress, in short
say
history

or a plane, this
surface
diameters between
in no way

a direction to
shadowplay,
screen this palpable
wrist, this signpost
out

dust from the mirror by sean s

after Dust in her... by JKD

The sky clattering like dropped coins in a box,
a labyrinth with walls of mirror, doors visible only where

you cannot see yourself. rice paper steps, dancefloor
tattoos, knuckles' perfume on a glass jaw,

an arm's-length ballet. your black reflection in the wall,
or the shadow of a lover, a slipped skeleton.

a fluttering, guttering wick. a passageway indexed,
dead end, turn around. go back. go.

man in the evening by sean s

after Roppongi by Maitresse

What am I doing here, my lap a garden for a highrise cat,
trapped in a leaky apartment with a ballpoint for a fur
coat, plasticking unsnug panes against
the pawing arctic?

such a saran wrap, such a calico

What am I doing here where rodents squeal through
closed cupboard doors, shrilly scrape at my
female protector?

such a bachelor, such a loaf of bread

What am I doing fricking bitten and kneaded and provided
warmth by a four-legged, docile, clingy, slightly declawed
barbarian?

such a well brought-up urn, such language.

Occasionally she opens a yeasty greek eye at me
as if to say: You will pay significantly
more rent for your next place,
you will no longer leave me alone for days
with your maidservice friends, and you will
desist with that uncouth tongue of a lint brush,
worrying my hair off your garments and rugs.
Now scratch under my chin. Darling of course
you may write about this, continue on
after your torsos, your ashes beneath
the compound eye of nighttime stars. After all,
the insect of many streets creeps inside
your walls and in a moment my imaginary words
will be unrevoiceably in memory.

Chrono/meter Chronicled (New) by JKD

After Writers' Almanac* radio post Feb 21st 2008

Stop all of the clocks, he said, she said, they were, yes, obscenely educated,
Cut off the telephone, to be able to hear the head, the self. Then, we write
To taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection, she wrote. It’s like
Preventing the dog from barking, the cake from baking, the street she lived on
Referred to not by numbers but by the name of her corporate sponsor—
Fiction is. Dancing, with a juicy bone, out by the dog house
With the house howling and the scraggly mutt covering its floppy ears
Is foregoing what it is to be a human being, to be virtual, above all,
The human, resonating in the silence of the pianos, bound
With muffled drum? As Auden once said, "Words so excite me”
As per example now, the stairs and the marble and the city horns
Trumpeting their past golden forward as from Invalides where
Nin peeks up from her cradle in Neuilly to spot Miller in the 18th.
To hate any language that is not as enticing as that pornographic story,
The first one, slipped under the covers, for example, to excite you
As much as rhymed couplets in iambic verse once did, ballsy writing,
Can you do something about this, she said, is my situation reparable? Meanwhile
He said “Language excites me sexually more than any living person can”
Turn in the grey matter for some pink flesh and a violin, a lyre, a poet
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come in before anything else, ie:
A person is who is passionately in love with language. O never say that I was false
Or rarely spotted at the bar, or barely sleeping near the grate
Scratch, scrape our way in, you, she and he, out to the light, my nature
To leave for nothing, to never believe all the frailties that besiege this line
It is as if, after the fact, in the rumpled bed, the papyrus rolls were all left
So preposterously. To be stained by a sum of good words, and bedraggled wines.

*NOTE: After Writers’ Almanac from American Public Radio’s Poetry Foundation Program, read by Garrison Keillor. This passage uses snippets from William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 108”, & WH Auden’s "Funeral Blues", as well as bio notes & spliced up & rearranged quotes by Auden, Anais Nin, & David Foster Wallace.

Not Exactly Beautiful in the Lamp Lit Night: a roach poem, After Sawako's "Transclucent Skin" by A D

This one, male and alone. He is afraid of sound, hiding
for god knows how long
behind the dirty white bathroom sink.
There might be others there,
cavorting, mating, love making
between the sink and the wall,
but I wouldn’t know.
Nothing to eat there,
but plenty of rusty pipes leaking streams of water
to bath and drink from.
Now this one, fugitive, intrepid adventurer,
catches my eye. I scream. He runs.
Large, brown, not so tough as his stone cold rep.
My voice alone moves him in another direction.
Ageless and perhaps brave
he, a maverick among roaches,
out alone in stark bulb light
crawling now on the wall towards somebody’s bedroom.