FOR SEPTEMBER'S CONTEST CLICK HERE - goodreads staff




* DO YOU WANT YOUR WORDS TO MEET 1.6 MILLION PEOPLE? *

The Goodreads’ editors have invited us to participate in the selection of each poem that will appear in the Goodreads’ Monthly Newsletter.

1. Post your best poem (one poem per person) in this folder.

2. I will select five poems each month to be voted on by the Goodreads community.

3. The poem with the most votes will be published in the Goodreads’ newsletter – distributed each month to 1.6 million people!

Good luck & please post your best work!

Thanks,

Amy King
Moderator

Perishable

There are apples
rotting.
they transform from pure crisp forms
to brown soft bruise.
flesh emitting liquid shame.
decay, reduced to a stink, a cavity, a pair of witches gums.
in the end only yellowed must, crumbled.
apple you are dust, return now
to the sweet dark earth.

In Paran


Call me Ishmael: My mother was a slave in the house of a patriarch
Hand against her thigh, he swore to raise her firstborn
But he lied. He threw my mother out; she made it to Paran
She found a well and didn’t die. She saw God and lived;
I saw demons, and thrived.

I grew up wild and reckless in the land of desert nomads,
In the arid lands that lie near the promised land and Egypt,
That land of milk and honey they were saving for my brother
And the land of Pharaoh’s bondage where my mother’s kin were born.
I lived my youth near Canaan and the slaving lands of Egypt;
I lived my life an outcast in the desert of Paran.

I grew up wild and stubborn: My hand against my father
At war with all my kinfolk; my kin at war with me.
I grew up wild and skittish like a scared colt in a sandstorm.
I laughed at mules and camels that never could break free.

I learned to run in sandstorms, and how to eat my water,
And how to find oases, and how to take the heat.
I learned to talk to demons, to tempters and to genies.
I learned to talk to devils, to outcasts just like me.

I learned to love and pity my younger brother Isaac
When they took him to the slaughter not even asking why.

God bade me make the manna for Isaac and his children.
My demons said they’d be here, twelve tribes of them someday.
In this land of desert nomads near the promised land and Egypt,
Near the land of milk and honey in the desert of Paran.

Trees

I seek now forgiveness,
for I have cut down trees.
I did it without feeling.
I did it with such ease.

When taken down to molecules,
they really are no different.
But I assumed them foreign to me,
And not from my own stream.

They stood there, let me cut them,
my chainsaw buzzing loudly.
These mighty oak, these stately beech, and these honest ash,
I butchered them all unthinking.

If I might be forgiven,
for this deed without honor,
then I will vow to love all trees,
to love them as they’re living.

A WHALE SONG by Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Amidst the ocean depths, far below the light,
A lone whale glides by in her watery flight.
A cry so lonely, a wailing of despair,
Something precious lost in the great Somewhere.

Serene, yet watchful--moving always in fear
Of death's stillness, she searches ever near.
Pulling sunlight upward with the utmost care,
She caresses the surface and mists the salty air.

Nothing! Not a movement, except a hulking mass,
A predator's scent with a watchful, sweeping pass.
Dangerously taunting, the sight draws her near
As battered nets pull in the one she holds so dear.

Her baby! Her angel! Death had claimed its song,
While a deathly quiet stillness seemed to linger on.
Across the endless ocean, far below the sky,
A mournful mother sings a haunting lullaby.

Copyright 2008 Cheryl Kaye Tardif, author of Whale Song: A Novel

In My Grandparents’ House

It wasn’t the sleek baby grand,
plush-piled carpet, dark wood paneling,
Revere mugs, Erté plates on the mantel,
dining-room silver nestled in velvet-lined drawers.
The candle-snuffer. The bell for the maid.
None of this made my grandparents’ house so rich.

It wasn’t the every-day cook, a big-hipped Brazilian
who samba’d around the table serving vichyssoise
or the fine cook for company,
a black-clad, white-pinafore-wearing Austrian
trotting out red roast beef, rich chocolate mousse.
Not the live-in maid who sobbed
at my grandmother’s wake when we her kin
stayed stunned and dry-eyed.
None of them made my grandparents rich.

It wasn’t even the books, in built-in shelves
from ceiling to floor. Volumes of Britannica.
The giant Webster’s on its rolling stand.
The signed first editions from Pearl Buck,
French wines from my grandfather’s other clients.
None of these made my grandparents rich.

It wasn’t even us, their children and grandchildren,
children’s and grandchildren’s husbands and wives,
their sister, their nephew, their good old friends,
who filled the rooms with laughter and argument.
It wasn’t we who made them rich.

It was the gaze between them
when my grandmother was dying,
the look of long love hushing the room,
while we, at last struck silent,
witnessed revelation and burial
of their secret treasure.


Jan Steckel, 2008
Author of The Underwater Hospital

Instructions for the Day

Take with you
what you will need,
and leave by the north exit
or the south,
then turn
either east or west.
When you come
to the corner
turn left or right
or continue straight
until you come to a dead end,
then stop
and look around.
This is the place
you must draw from.

previously published in Chiron Review, 2004

Dodo (for Anne Sexton)

Under white moons strapped tight
against night’s black leather,
pierced through with the terror of stars,
the Dodo steps warily
from the jungle of her dusty
and plasticene diorama.
Her asylum spread out
across continents, sightings
from remote corners, electricity humming
off the telegraph.

From corroded speakers,
the narrator’s static:
“Notice how the thin legs, the delicate feet,
balance the bulk of the canvas-covered torso,
the bulk of restraints and buckles,
the crest of feathers like hair
sparking forgetfulness.
She is posed emerging from her nest…”

…little more than a hollow
worried into the ground, defenseless,
Her eyes roll chameleonic,
see every direction at once:
one fixed behind her on the flat,
tempera depiction of her native landscape,
the other set on the horizon,
the plate glass, the academic museum,
the explanations and context,
maps of her territory,
dwindling over time.

What we won’t see is movement,
the tortured struggle of flightless wings.
What we don’t hear are the cries
that can only be guessed at,
the mating calls she turned in circles
around the last lover she had left,
the alkaline scent like crushed insect
on the tongue, the glorious ferment
of Death’s sweet
and overripe fruit.

Insomniac Lament

In the tug of war
between sleep and wakefulness,
I am the sweat-slicked rope.
Gripped by the flotsam of the concluded day,
tomorrow’s uncertainty rolls over me
in waves like seasickness. If I
put the light on I’ll never
get back to sleep, so I lay
on my side in the claustrophobic dark
and will my mind to be still.
Mind over matter, they say.
If I fall asleep now
I could get 5 more hours.
Then it’s down to 4.
They say the darkest hour is just before dawn,
but does it really matter.
Next thing I know
my clock radio is wailing that
it’s just another manic Monday.
Who are those guys? Butch asks
prior to plunging off the cliff
with Sundance, who chooses this moment
to admit he can’t swim.


Nina Bennett, 2007
author of Forgotten Tears: A Grandmother's Journey Through Grief

What We Say Now

This was where...
There used to be...
Here was the place...
Our litany
Of what has passed
And what is gone
Replaced by progress
Time marches on.

The sandy beach
The wooden porch
You'd sit outside
And drink and watch
The children splashing
Through the shallow waves
The picnic tables
No one saved.

The ancient willows
The Indians knew.
The leaky rowboats
The fragile canoe -
Cat-tail marshes
Where water-lilies grew-
Now all filled in.
Clusters of McMansions stand
Where farmers used to tend
the land.

No scent of clover
or new-mown hay
No medowlarks singing
To greet the day.
Only the sky,
the moon and stars
the last reminders
of what once was ours.

Love it! I like that you stay with a metaphor of water at the end, though I wished for a continuation of the sea/ship/sailing imagery of lines 3, 4 and 6. My favorite lines are:

"In the tug of war
between sleep and wakefulness,
I am the sweat-slicked rope."

Oops! My comment above refers to Nina Bennett's poem "Insomniac Lament."

Be Brave Ramona Quimby, Sincerely Howie Kemp

P.S. –

Let me put it another way…
Somewhere far away a wind must have pushed
Against the water and set it in motion.
I know you are gloomy, but I didn’t know
How to tell you I’d been fooling around
With the occult. So like Roosevelt, in my ruth
I began to ramble about.
Out the window, a moon a few days past
Full. The unofficial end of summer.
Tonight, do not wander too far from home.
Act as if there is only now. And if
It’s true that the most common opening
Gambit in Rock-Paper-Scissors is Rock,
Always throw soft, throw paper. Make an impression.
Since breaking my heart music has never sounded so winning.
Be again, as you were once, my bright Cathay.
I miss our fearsome rivalry.
For one hundred roses Ramona, I
Could have a genuine girlfriend experience.
And the songs we sang at Prom mean nothing
To us now. But O did we ever have
The Steering Committee in tears over
Our dumb show! Tableau with hornet
Busily unblossoming blue summer.
Test whatever it is you call faith. Let
The candle go out. Bring your glasses close.
I suppose it’s my turn to sing something golden.
The rule of thumb when you are lost is find
A river and mind it all the way downstream.
Finally, I abandoned my kite on the beach.
If I were an earnest man, I’d have taken up smoking.
It started to snow. Someone told me
Right before snow warps into rain, the flakes
Turn huge. And there I was, surrounded
By so much water, so much potential water.
The world was simpler then.
I was a Cold Warrior. Anything
That was not fresh was wack.
Once, long ago, you demonstrated for me
A science experiment whereby
You recreated the night sky on the surface
Of a beaker. It was the same night sky
Seen by Admiral Perry from his ship’s deck
Adrift in that inky polar sea. You
Told me you find a star by its letter.
The stars don’t go anywhere during the day.
They stay right where they are.
And what I’m trying to say is I love…
Quiet nights eating Asian fusion,
Getting high and watching hardcore porn,
Attempting to pinpoint our successes
And failures. Ramona. It’s your Howie.
When making substitute sounds, begin by
Saying them softer than you normally
Would. For instance, practice saying:
The girls in the gymnastics class could do
Various Olympic stunts. Or.
California is near the Pacific Ocean.
And the sound seems to come from a distance
Or from a source other. A wave
Looks like the ocean moving through your body.
It’s football night in America, Ramona,
It’s 1st Down at the New York 37,
And my running game is impeccable.
A frost warning is in effect.
Amateur. From the French, ama-re to love.
I’ve cultivated many pastimes but
Distinguished myself at none. Love for me,
Ramona, was a bet I welshed on. And
When you said, How much longer will you be
The boy with the backwards baseball cap,
I was trying to remember the name
Of the flower that explodes when you touch it.
I wanted to ask you, but I couldn’t.

Sweethearts of the Great Migration

DECEMBER

Upon his last breath, windows iced merrily
Fire burned the same as yesterday
but this was his eye in the space
left free by the ice
here, fitfully a chickadee danced
on this branch, then the next, his eye
spoke the beginning December light
then beyond, his eye caught the field
he loved intimately, hands ready
welcoming his final flight.

ALONE

I sit here all alone, no one beside me.
All of my friends have been fair weather at best.
When my job went, so did our ties.
So much for friendship.

My only one true friend died, and I didn't even know.
You lose so much when you lose contact.
Now I have lost her forever.
Never to go to, talk to or be comforted by her words again.

My family are around me, but I still feel alone.
I hear them laugh, fight and talk to each other.
I never hear what I long for.
I love you. I care. I have you in my thoughts.

There is no closeness, no caring, no comfort to be found.
What does it take to make a moment priceless?
Do I scream? Do I shout?
Does anyone hear me? Does anyone care?

Whatever it is, I can not do it.
Locked in this shell of a body.
I can't move, speak or signal.
I'm still here! I'm still alive!

Will anyone miss me when I'm gone?
Death will hold no surprises for me.
I'm already there.
All by myself, ALONE.

Gender Question #2: Butch, Femme, Androgynous, or All Over the Map?

Marking the small check in the small box,
I think: there is no appropriate answer here,
except perhaps Artichoke, impenetrable, thick-petaled
flower, sharp edge and ragged root. Inside,
velvet opal translucent tongues, and inside,
further still, the choke, silky threads who want
to hold in the heart, to raise a spired fortress
for the tender green. This, though, is not an option,

so I choose, All over the map, all over Barbados,
Siam, Constantinople, all over Ireland and Israel,
all over the sierra of my stomach, down the straits
of my legs, to the archipelago of toes.
Somewhere on the circuit, I stop

to visit whatever terrain bears the name Femme,
some scenic dream atop a mountain or nestled
deep within a delta. I watch tourists teem
around the attractions. I snap some shots, too,
so I’ll remember what Femme looks like
once I leave. Perhaps, from there, I’ll bike

to Butch, a city that sparkles like hubcaps
spun from a swift machine. Some say that there
the stars are drilled through sheets of obsidian,
pressed like grommets into hides of darkest leather.
If the iron gates to town are barred, I’ll fly

first-class to Androgynous, where blades of grass glow
silver, the shade of Joan of Arc’s sword,
and the sky at sunset runs red as the rouge
on Bowie’s cheeks. The land shifts,
rolls and recedes like the tide, carries me out

and out, to my home, my artichoke home,
my platypus home, my webbed feet
and beak and fur. I trace again my small mark
in my small box, my small window
from which I watch landscapes reach
like frail fingers into space,
into the places we have not named.

waiting for surgery III

She says, “Blood test is fine. But there is something here
on your EKG. I want the other doctor to take a look.”
That’s it. We’ll give you a call, waves me out of the room.

I didn’t even now what an EKG was until today and now they
are telling me my heart is not ok. It is broken. I knew that.

And not once. It was chewed on by men who regarded me as a
dizzy blond, it was grated on someone’s slice
when he thought I was for taking, it was trampled
on in the Middle East war, it was smashed into pumpkin
bits like Halloween gone
amuck the day my beloved told me
he couldn’t go on
living

It was sledge-hammered
the day my son died, what was left of it. Because,
dumb heart kept growing back, like
another row of teeth on a shark, like

another tail on a lizard, like another set of
wings on a butterfly who had been pinned
to the wall. Somehow managed to jump.
Somehow managed to keep beating.

And now they tell me it is “irregular” as if I didn’t know. It could be
an old clock winding down the hour, it might be
it is fluttering in flame, it might be too many love
songs in the midnight hour. Like roots. My heart
tangled like shadows and lace.

it aches grease

the journey begins when
you leave stormy waters
and give up hold of the shore

“i have no longing
to be trapped under
clouds in storm”

still divided
waiting
for something to
clutch as the helm
goes wild
and lightning
flashes on peaks
turned white

in trusting the drift
one must be prepared for
destruction at sea.



Previously published in my book _In the Weaver's Valley_ (Blue Lion Books).

For the contest -- (also, prose poem)

Invisible Animals Crowd Round Your Face

Amanda Alisa Anna Bethany // someone is whispering names at the doctor's office// I am trying to turn my head to see// a goldfish is chewing his way through my palm// absent wriggling pain// when I wake up I'm on my back porch, my breath bleaching the air// the empty beech trees across the windblown lawn clatter then still// my back aches while I rake the horse stalls// the barn empty for years but sometimes I remember laying on the back of a mare, putting my cheek down along her neck, feeling the blaze of heat from her skin// somewhere there is a math in this// someone could calculate addition and loss// the wind knocks the shuddering barn door against its hinges// my daughter would have hands like me, this bent thumb, but smaller

In the Beginning

Before their eyes a vision appeared, a hollow ball of heavenly light filled with transparent fire, gently rotating and enclosing a maiden within.
- Martianus Capella (fl 410 – 439)

Before time was the center of things
Before maidens danced naked in the moonlight
Before the Magellanic Clouds
Before good neighbors
Before planets rotated gently on their axis
Before visions appeared
Before Flammarion poked his head through the umbrella of stars
Before the night sky filled with transparent fire
Before comets and nebulae
Before space debris
Before the first word
Before the last breath
Before a time before a morning after
Before flowers followed the sun
Before the earth dried up
Before nights without touch and sleep
Before the movie ends
Before throats opened in song
Before the car doors slams
Before psychoanalysis, bungee jumping and synchronized swimming
Before the show begins
Before the Anthropic Cosmological Principal
Before currency and exchange
Before three pigs went to market
Before cows and fish ate rendered flesh
Before cuisine and table manners
Before trains, suitcases and gas chambers
Before god or religion
Before the wolf’s howl and the owl’s screech
Before the hollow ball of heavenly light
Before one giant step for man
Before land mines and prostheses
Before napalm and nuclear arms
Before radiation therapy and breast implants
Before the first perfect dawn
Before quantum control of the properties of matter
Before Goldilocks and Cadillacs
Before Dolly and patented genes
Before the hard rain and hot wind
Before fragrance of jasmine and honeysuckle
Before another day goes by.

- Mari-Lou Rowley

Affliction


Something you picked up,
anywhere, never knowing
what it was—
a rare jewel, ash of a star,
the common cold, a jar of
another’s worries— it sent
with it an itch, a twitch, a throb,
and a jar of your own worries
Something you picked up—
not a flower or a toenail clipping—
the unseen disease, and a jar
of combined worries
Do you shake it off, do you
wash, do you wait? And if you
wait, how long?

Dizzy Boy



You will sleep where the light grows tired, completed in a sink
of holed-up, dreamy suds. New lights of teddy-life
tumble your boots to floor, and breath to a sleeper flatness,
as little snores try on your psyche in the bed's blank.

At this point, dizzy boy, you're just small enough for night-delusion,
but also for the intrusive present, which we all have a need to know.

Please increase in night. Grow. The same price is a swivel
behind us all, we, the boney, attached adults, with cords to night,
as from the black we seep our dew from,
an oscillation of age and temper.

At this point, dizzy boy, you're just small enough for a vision,
but also for shades to grow, pressing in to know you in pulses.

The low slope on the folded sheet is a wall to your dreaming.
You reside beneath a short while, those satellites behind shut eyes
aflame, swiveling where the lights in the dark port burst.

At this point, dizzy boy, my boy, young as each novel day,
a small handle on each dream is still available and snug.




-Ray Succre

*First published in 'The Mirror Reflection of Life', January 2008

*An Account of Snow Settlement in the Palouse Region*

We’re believe the first explorers
melted and remain unheard of
long ago. Amidst the second wave
returned much less emissaries
than we hope, bedraggle
and declaring savage rumors
of profuse lands, roaming
with indigenous scatter peoples
and vastly uninhabiting
by winter. Enterprising souls
were launch a small escapade
of the first white settlers,
and flurries of hearsay
contradict itself with regarding
the barbarious nations:
others say they were cool
and welcome greetings,
some dangerously warm,
some that they lure from travellers
with the promise of frosty alcove
or several unwary riches,
others that red, gold, or similar
foliage are worn them over the neck
or between the waist. Soon the coils
of processions entwined
and indistinguish from one another
the crisp families blur the wind,
hills revolve like the color milk,
and a million crystal wagonwheels
creak, and sway, and drift
over the glitter and colorless
cities. From time to time
some bright and broken
arrowheads the native autumn
leaves long ago behind
still disappear beneath
the icy colonies.

Dinosaur

I can feel the sadness of the large head
that floats in the museum like a planet

the metronome of feet shuffling past
a little sun powdering the lifted dust and it’s haloed

Weeks, years, knees
Red-raw in the dug dirt

A scientist dug you free and spelt you out for your new skin

Now the dinosaur contains what we imagined it could
A life that’s visible we can reconstruct

And all these people shuffling past
Faith or what church do you believe in

What’s behind the glass behind the skin of this life as we pass

I am an alphabet of bones,
my own telling.

Contest Entry

Next fall

Next fall- you and I, we make our light escape
by planes and trains and automobiles
snaking through valleys and winding through hills
escaping horizons and erasing miles
of doubt and distance
while watching the great wheels turn,
pushing the engines-
feeding the burn-
riding the wind across oceans to where mountains
slumber with their feet in the sea.
Next fall we uproot,
replant,
and sow in foreign soils
steeped in unwonted waters;
gather sand around our ankles
and ponder the shore
sifting through our toes.
Breathing sea foam and mapping stars,
surmising how we soared so far on melted wings-
mariners of dreams, seekers of fortune-
next fall, you and I,
we bank fires from embers,
members of dreams deferred in September
stirred from sleep, burned and remembered-
glowing on the beaches of evermore.

Landing Under Water, I See Roots

All the things we hide in water
hoping we won't see them go—
(forests growing under water
press against the ones we know)—

and they might have gone on growing
and they might now breathe above
everything I speak of sowing
(everything I try to love).

Poets
by Donald Illich

We need to be
half-drunk drivers
inbound on
the loading lane.

We haphazardly
repair the truck.
Our seats bang
ramps too hard.

The highway
barriers sparkle.
We grease
wheels and fly.

What should we
smack life with,
a lazy bit of ham
for cowboys?

"Yells, hell,
and other things.
Identical sticks,
blades, and
pistols."

[untilted:]

and when we come back we’re floating on
the brilliance of the going on, the loneliness
climbing or falling no one would say
which happiness is? do you hear
What was in my way I cut down.
now we’re senseless
in half a second a sphere a hundred-eighty-six
This new pen hardly works at all
That singing in the streets or was it screams
when I meant fault
is he watching? Is it expired space
and what is I, I love for my I
and what is the word that stands for these things
Or lines on oneself as a pissed off William Blake, the wryness
the harmed who will not harm.

but war, too, is dead as the lotus is dead
and this is the poem I have chosen
and the wildness of it all context. Siam
asleep next to music which renders the mind
from its lone eye a voice sobsinging,
the way the saved look down at the damned,
calling attention, calling. You recall, “Nothing
and the end of loneliness,
the loop meaning safety, meaning me too,
Two breaths, two patterns of echoes.

The Treachery of Poems
Or, How to dress your friends in Magritte



I comb my hair in long sweeps in front of the winged mirror.
I cannot stop unfastening myself. I keep brushing, brushing.

I made my way to the diggings. We bought an estate and lived
A prosperous life with miners, but we wouldn’t work the in mine.

I weave the stands of hair that comb out of my brush into yarns.
I weave baskets from this hair and give them as gift to my friends.

It was only once in a feat of remarkable lethargy, he would pile
Bundles and bundles of manuscripts, none of which to be burned.

I comb through these manuscripts and weave them into woven baskets woven works of rusting yarns brushing, brushing baskets in the mirror.

A black-eyed shadow of their former self, there is nothing else out there, He stood calm in the gun room and gazed lightly upon his cable sweater.

"unscrew the moon" by andrew lundwall

strange stars plucked the bones of her piano
dying the same dream night after night
if love might could be taught to be
cellphone refugees’ genuflecting lips
throw long o’s of sweeter life preservers
lies to each glance foretold by eyelash tips
mounts of sweat that creak of compromise
forgetful togetherness crayoned on chest
blacklisted alibis swallow to drain to fertilize
hazel-eyed assassins disguised as buoys
bobbing on a feather-filled lake in fishnets
tread tongues along bottom learning disturbed
a pixilated fantasy of horizon bloods up swells
each shell confesses when crunched underfoot
of delusions of grandeur fake a chain unscrew moon
where pretend is promise it’s best not to get

no matter



is this right then we put

all our ducks in a row all

our ducks of the under-word all made

of quarks which are or are

not matter but certainly are not

meaning though the ducks

mean as we line

the ducks up they make

a surface a surface of

water surface and water that

are not do not matter but

do mean the matter then

cannot mean the meaning is

nothing but we keep

on lining up the ducks beneath

the surface of water

is depth the more ducks the more

depth and dark and

murk all of which is no

matter no matter not matter
but is

dark murk and deep story

layered upon story stories without

matter but with meaning how

is it possible to live like

this to make stories that

mean but are no matter


—Joel Chace

____
Previously published in Ducky

Love Rearranged

And that is how I consider Mother,
our drag-length driveway calling me
home with the sputtering of truck back-
fire, rocks clanking metal of auto-
mobile, rocks spurting from the balding tires.

Rocks, the decadent gray loosely gathered,
always called gravel, are making those occuring
cadences, sometime during a golden August afternoon,
sometime after the convecting winds
die, sometime before the evening
blue settles into dust.

a poem written by a bear
by tao lin

let me go eat some salmon

why are there coke cans in the river

what if i wore a bullet proof vest during hunting season

i’m a bear; i walk in the forest and look at the river and the river is cold

i saw campers today and they ran away and i was alone and i destroyed their tent

let me go scratch my paw on a tree

let me go eat a salmon

last night i cried onto my salmon

the salmon was sad but it still wanted to live

it wanted to swim and be sad and i ate it under moonlight

i saw a moose scream the other day

it screamed quietly under a tree

i felt embarrassed and sad and i thought, ‘oh, no; oh god, oh my god’

sometimes i climb a tree and sit there and sing very quietly

sometimes i want to go to a shopping mall and chase the humans and claw them

i’ll ride the moose into the shopping mall and ram the humans

the moose and i will ride the escalator and i will hug the moose and the moose and i will cry

i will eat the moose

i don’t care

i will scream and throw the bubblegum machine from the second floor to the first floor

i felt compassion for the salmon and now i don’t care anymore

i’ll walk into a parking lot and chase a large human and hug the human and cry

i’ll walk into a house at night and push the humans off the bed

i’ll stare at the bed and i’ll feel fake

"Autumn" by Stacy Repin

I meditate.
The ripe fiber of my reflections
emits an aura burgundy
as voluptuous figs;
each thought
drops like bloated anvils
throughout the soil of my mind.
Even the sea’s tone changes;
I swallow the darkening images like
drunken mushrooms reverting back
to youth, to ground
and crunch of gelatinous
earthworms, blushed
by the blood of maggots
whose castles are woven
like tapestries
for earthen royalty
slogging in the heatless light
against spray-painted oak.
I weep on the indifference of carved rock
at the edge of the blueberry blur
where my veins trace back to
appearing deceptively stagnant,
but alive like the sweat
of a bitten persimmon
that which is and is not home,
unfurling marine corpses
and salt and petroleum as usual.

Peaceful Slumber

Gnarled fingers stretch, opposed by years of use
Safe haven of craggy hold
Longing to be reached
with yellowed nails.

I wish to rest on the face of this rock.
This obstacle, that my spirit
does not yet wish to succumb to;
Is that which my soul longs for?

Tears of salt, sweet bitterness cleanse my mouth
And from my tongue, they trickle to my soul.
Alone, buffeted by winds that will no longer
exact their human toll, I retreat

From the forces, and gaze upon
Heavens’ gate, where boughs of pine
sweet scented fragrance, beckon to tired
memories of ancient pasts.

Still, serene and in total light
the raging eddies are quieted,
And clothed in wonder and ardor,
I sleep on the forest floor, in peaceful slumber.

Very good, Grant!

PLEASE VOTE IN THE POLL ON THE POETRY GROUP'S MAIN PAGE (JUST SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM) FOR THE POEMS TO BE INCLUDED IN THE DECEMBER AND JANUARY ISSUES OF THE GOODREADS NEWSLETTER.


Please vote for the top two poems from the ten poems listed --please click HERE TO VIEW the selected poems.

The top two poems will each separately appear in the December and January Goodreads' Newsletter, respectively.

In other words, first place will appear in the December newsletter, and second place will appear in the January newsletter.

Thank you for submitting, and please consider submitting again in late December for the February newsletter contest!

~~~~~

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~~~~

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Pity's Reward

Mine is a deep, dark hell-hole of pity's reward
Where I am kicked a thousand times in the gut
Each time followed by the near recovery of spirit before the heart's stomach is again punched brutally in

It is an anniversary of my last marital failure
And lest I forget rejection and its sting
I hear how the one with whom I hope to share the healing acceptance destiny foreshadowed by her being one with my infant warm, white gleam
I hear how the love of my life though not quite yet
Whom I rescued from one abyss
Cannot wait to sink into another
Rather than wait as I am
Love's fulfillment put on hold, a lonely call
While another is put through to make the busy signal of another kick in the black and blue underbelly of my dark knighted soul

Lost
Last
Nice guy
Loser

Much is expected of that first ecstatic glow
To last a million dark nights of the soul


Copyright © 2008 by C. P. Klapper

Hello Grant!

I like the idea of "Heavens' gate"[sic:] as retreat from the world in dreams. It seems Nature may even alternate with Heaven as places where "the raging eddies are quieted" at night.

A nice lyrical piece.

Conrad

Fall

What connects the leaf to the tree,
Connected you and I.
The cut is deep.

Thoughts of a Vampire

Why does it seem all so familiar?
So Vague?
Why do I feel so forgotten?
So dead?


Did you think I’d forget?
Did you think of me at all?
Was I to be left alone?
To be shunned away?

Who’s blood do you think runs down my face?
Cries out of my eyes?
Drips from my lips?
Whose blood is it that runs through my veins?

All I know for sure is….

It’s not mine

Love Jones

Knowing what it’s like to need something so bad
The aching, the pacing, the watching of a clock
I have a jones for you, A Love Jones Baby!

As I think about you and my body grows warm with anticipation
The thought of you touching me makes me want you
And I can’t control it,
I don’t want to
I just prayer it never stops

You know the wanting, the waiting, the receiving of you
It drives me to do whatever it takes to see to it that you are with me
With me: here in my fantasy
With me: here in the wanting of you
With me: as I anticipate your everything
With me: Mmm! just be with me

I know you’re here even when you’re not
The air gets heavy and the room is hot
It feels like I’m a smoldering pot
Waiting for my master chief to serve me

Serve me baby…
Put me on your mind as I control your passion
Place me on a soft spot in your ecstasy
Fill my desire to love you in way only I can
Consume the very part of me that makes you happy
And when it’s all over and done

Turn me over, hold me close and tell me you love me
As we fall asleep together,
Together as one soul, one body, one union in love.

Jonesing - A Love Jones Baby!

Ares' Gift</p>
Dreams fade
in the light of day.
Life rolls in
and tallies up your sins.
Fate turns ‘round
to lay Her cards down
(Again)

Light fades away
Ares comes to collect his pay.
Coal eyes glimmer
with brilliant shimmering sparks.
He'll go away
if you give him what he wants.
(For a while.)

Empty & Dark
Light & Listless
one last ounce of gold
drops into a black gloved hand.
One more piece of her soul
traded in on the whispered promise of a hero.

Grins & Glimmers
Victory & Vice
Night descends
soft wishful dreams begin again.

Breadcrumbs

Everywhere I go
I leave a trail:
notes scribbled on a napkin in a bar,
an arrangement of leaves in the road.

I want you to be looking.
I want to be found.

You never come.

I blame the birds.

Do the poems need to be previously unpublished? Can we begin submitting now for Feb?

Thanks!

reetings Poets and Lovers of Words,

"unscrew the moon" by Andew Lundwall appeared in the December Goodreads' Newsletter:
http://www.goodreads.com/user/...

and

Gender Question #2: Butch, Femme, Androgynous, or All Over the Map? by Jennifer Perrine will appear in the January 2009 Goodreads' Newsletter distributed to 1.8 million people!

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all who submitted and voted in the contest!

Please stay tuned for the next contest for the February 2009 Goodreads Newsletter!

Happy Holidays,

Amy King
Moderator,
Poetry!


P.S. GOODREADS IS GETTING A FACELIFT -- THE POLL WILL BE MUCH MORE USER FRIENDLY NEXT GO AROUND ...

Seasons’ Greetings

Spring silently creeps
Between buds and branches,
And gilds the newborn leaves.
All colours are bright and spirits are high–
Blossoms against an azure sky.

Then the summer sun glows,
Like melted butter over the hills
And soon bleeds over the horizon.
Unspeakable light and beauty
In hushed and heated undertones.

Soon, autumn winds come rushing in
While brown red and amber leaves swirl along.
Through the autumn mists the winds persist–
Whispering through scarves their mournful song.

In a moment, the last leaf will fall,
And soon the snow will cover all.
The fickle snow that flies so fast,
Like winged white stars come falling past.

Here is the mystery of mysteries,
One that never ceases to amaze:
Is that wondrous sight the fickle touch,
Of the ever-changing beauty of Nature’s face.

Crimson


Rip out my heart and throw away,
all that grief and pain
tear at the edges of my life
pull the threds undone
linger near the violent ways.
Speak of horror and guilt, you must?
Look at the face, that does appear
look what's become.
See that crimson pain.
I am tied against the wall of life,
But is it life i lead?
Neck is bare, and heart is seen,
eyes are bloodshot, and hearing's keen.
Touch my being, do what you must,
To feel connected so.
To close my eyes, to get to sleep,
Awakened by the past.
The searing pain,
The crimson blood, that only you can see.
My last breath has been spent,
My last voice has been heard.
I am a failing falling ghost,
Not to return again.
Heart stained in crimson,
Wrists stained in black
life that I led, never to come back.

Please excuse my random post.
I'm trying to see
if formatting keeps

Sunday Café
by Tara McDaniel
after Ellen Bass

At the little outdoor Parisian Bistro
on the corner of Cincinnati and Elm
a man wearing a nylon raincoat
touched the knee of a woman in black.

Long after the thin copper disk
of the sun had burned through the clouds,
and the smart young waiter
placed the bowls of cream and lemon grass

at their elbows, his thumb remained there,
turning in circles, turning and turning.
As if her body were crafted by Stradivari,
and he the world’s poorest

violin player. As if her rounded bone
were made of tulipwood, or the skin
underneath her stocking was as fine
as the sheets of an heirloom

Bible. It looked as if they’d been
to a funeral, his thin satin tie
reaching to his waist, and the black around her eye
smeared from lash to temple. But he

stroked her and stroked her like the mouth
of the silk moth knitting his web
into a fine gauze dress, or otherwise
unknitting it, parting delicately the fibers

to split the cloth down to the skin, the sweet
fatness of it. We all, every one of us, watched them,
stopped in our constant gestures by that tension
which seemed to hang in the air – the girlfriend

reaching over her coffee to seize the attention
of the chattering blonde, the mothers cajoling pacifiers
into the mouths of babies, the old men parceling out
large bills, and the manager standing in the doorway

with his hand resting quietly against the white painted
wood. We could practically see
her defenses falling away as also her skirt
fell back towards her hip and his hand

finally moved from her knee to pinch then pull
the strap of her garter. We could feel the tight
snap of the studded satin bow against our own
thighs, and the blood heightened in the bones

of our cheeks. But the best part was his profile
as he bent over, the long tie swinging pendulously
between his legs, and the muscles of his jaw
clenched as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff,

his body ready to contract and thrust him forward,
like you must have felt in that crazy heat
of your budding adolescence, or holding the gold
ring in your hand the night before your wedding,

no matter what happened later –
if there were cruel ruptures inside of your body
or infidelities and lies smothered over
your faithful heart – you once stood there

on the precipice of the unknown,
looking over the face of the beloved like a chasm
waiting to swallow you or unloose
your wings, or both. The whole patio

of the café suspended, holding
their breath, each of us waiting for that moment
of acceptance and release, for the sad woman
to lean forward and uncross her legs.