Ami Lovelace's Blog, page 3

New Poem: Random Nature Thoughts

Random Nature Thoughts (a short poem)

water walks on golden air
kissed in brief and sometimes at length
by a northern brush of winds
wrapped in the arms of prickly males
who cast their reproductive spores into her
churning belly
and she laughs, with each new greeting
to her skin
a ripple of guffaws that encompasses her whole
and she carries their salutations
buoyant in her breasts.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: Naked in a Window

Naked in a Window

I am sitting naked
in a window
in a spa tub
jets on and whirling
bubbles and aromas around
hopeful skin
and I see the first of them
bolts of lightning long and hard
stretch across the sky
gods arthritic fingers cracking
in mysterious waggles
as if I was not
supposed to recognize
yet there they were
bright and flamboyant
reaching down from the heavens
as if to guide mortal lives
or snuff them out
miles and miles and miles
away
and still He is so clear
so present
and with each flashing miracle
His energy
ripples through the
air, through the distance
and stands Him
on the tips of the hairs on
my arm and on my neck
my flesh welcomes Him
He is here
and I am
on the 29th floor
in a foreign room
of a foreign city
submerged in furious water
grateful.


Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: The Kiwi

The Kiwi

Once ripe, fresh, sought after
to join his friends in the social splender
of a summer mixer
the aging fruit with stray and bristling whiskers
is passed over,
touched, but not enjoyed
squeezed, fondled perhaps in evaluation
yet never chosen
unbalanced discoloration threaten to permeate
leaving shades of chaotic patterns
to manipulate his pallor.

Bruised, the soft suppleness of his skin
has seen better days
this seductive tart,
his enticing aroma
long tingling in nasal memories
gives way now
to soured pungency,
his pulp, the succulent essence of his existence
and heart of fruit
once savored on the tongue,
firm and confident
now festers in fleshy mush,
acidic and bitter.

So far past his prime,
the thought of biting into
what had been palmed decadence,
sweet ecstasies bestowed upon the mouth
and dripping juices from a lover's lips
now reviles even the blandest of
revelers,
and so he withers,
a beautiful seed
rich in promise and bounty
left too long on the fruit stand
only to decay with the compost.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: Beauty is a Verb

Beauty is a Verb

Beauty is a verb
an ever changing
state, a tense,
captured in the still frame
of a passé canvas.
It does not enjoy
the simplicity of
being noun,
defined and stagnant,
caught in one moment—
caught in a million moments,
a noun will never waiver.

But a verb,
a verb is fickle
the embodiment of change
over decades, centuries,
pure manipulation, transformation,
its metamorphosing significance
swayed by its subject,
the intention, the times.

 

Oh, but beauty is a verb,
and She,
she is just that,
an unexpected concoction for
the grammatically avant garde—
to inspire, evoke, allure, love
scintillate, tantalize, fuck
she is familiar verbs, arranged
in Cummings' syntax, conjugated
under Picasso's brush stroke.

We want to make them tangible
savor them, savor her,
roll her around on our tongues,
tied up and twisted
like the verbs of some exotic language
we yearn to master.

And we don't know why,
but we will speak to her,
speak of her,
with our lips curling
around the words
kissing the syllables
as if, to close our eyes
we were kissing her,
sweet, but never satisfied,
always left
to desire,
to feel,
to know,

beauty is a verb.

 

©2012. Ami Lovelace.  All rights reserved.

 

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: Middle Aged

Middle-aged

She was middle-aged,  which
meant she stared strapped
to a lab stool with safety goggles off,
the chemistry set she'd grown
so attached to, played with
for 40 years, seethed and bubbled
in an experiment all of its own.
Its potion churned
a perfect balance of
death and life 
in a still muddled solution.  
Enough time, enough heat,
Suddenly then a turn in color—
decisive, explosive.
And she was tethered forever
to the blast, hair blown grey and
careening with the momentum,
no struggle to break her bonds,
no new liquids, powders or gels
pipetted into the flask
could reverse the reaction.
An inevitable stirring
of life and death,
slow boiled over her Bunsen burner
would always turn to black
and exist for a shelf life—
40 more years to expiration date
when the elixir has evaporated
leaving her, an empty beaker.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: Savior

"Savior"

She eventually became resigned to his routine,
the way he'd mostly keep his distance,
nostrils pinched retaliating against her obtrusive odor,
as if he was antagonized by her audacity
 in allowing her body's toxins to putrefy and waft up to his stature,
and he'd stand just off the foot of her bed,
as if he thought she was a breeding ground
for some raging sheet-leaping leprosy,
able to infect tall men in a single bound.
On some days, though, he'd descend to her level,
the quickening tempo of an emphatic mechanical beeping
and the scarcely perceptible flutter of her eyelashes,
the only acknowledgements to his presence she'd deign to share.
On these days, he'd bestow a blessing sheathed in powdered latex,
wiping to the floor the fallen straw strands decaying on her brow,
his face momentarily tugged into the softer expression of self-adulation,
patting himself on the back for charity towards an afflicted wretch,
and she imagined she could make a broom from the hair
sweep away the life she had until the floor was as sterile and boring
as the eggshell walls of the prison keeping her alive.

He probably thought himself a god, delivering his judgment
in measured rhythmic cadence, lulling even the most anxious
of his followers into hackneyed obedience,
or at least a prophet backlit in nurses' station lights,
standing above a congregation that clung desperately
to his every syllable, as if the commands escaping his supple lips
could lead them to salvation.
But she had no Faith,
and saw in his eyes the dull fade of genteel indifference
towards a dying woman,
and the front lines of his clinical detachment,
impenetrably defended by an outstretched clipboard and bleached white coat:
Angel of Mercy, Angel of Death,
it didn't matter which armor the reaper wore,
it was all the same.

And so she listened, she listened,
she shut her eyes to the fluorescence
reflecting off his coat and pursed her lips,
absorbing the prognosis nonsense he spewed,
a false God searing her retinas and mocking her hope,
with each flinch at the sound of possible treatment:
12 pills 3 times a day, chemo, radiation
she grew more assured, she would not be blind
grasping at Free Will,
the Antichrist dressed in white and she would not be fooled,
she would not take his hand and be led down the path of false expectation,
but with life dangling in plastic nooses from her arms,
and Death disguised, teasing her from the doorway,
she could only listen,
resigned to his routine.

© 2012. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: Bedtime Lullabies

Warning: Content may not be suitable and/or comfortable for everyone.

Bedtime Lullabies

Not during, but long after the trial,
I had nightmares about him,
his games with the little girl, his smile stretching
across the jutted ridge of his jawbone
while he twirled and tugged at her hair. Laying
clothes out for her, he'd chosen the finest tulle
and silks in her favorite princess pink,
helping her slip from her yellow My Little Pony panties,
his fingertips gliding across her knees,
tracing a maze up and down her inner thighs,
a touch as gentle and new
as the soft dress fabrics
pulled snug against her skin.

Taking the little girl by the hand,
leading her to the play room
he'd created for her,
fantastical in pastels and
blown glass fairies
he lifted her to the bed,
and tenderly lowered her head
to the embracing down pillow,
the same as a mother would cradle
the delicate crown of her infant.

There, with the little girl recumbent
on the four-post bed,
lowering himself nimbly
and nuzzling between her knees,
peering up at her curious eyes,
he smoothed aside her dress
as if it were a rebellious strand
of hair from her face,
revealing her porcelain torso—
a stage upon which
he then danced
her naked Barbie and Ken,
toes tapping their way,
from belly button to budding breast.

Lips puckered to her skin
mumbling into her gooseflesh,
his muffled words climbed past her belly button,
scaling over the nascent mounds of her chest,
winding around the curves of her neck,
and drove their way into her ears:
"Kiss me, like Barbie kisses Ken. Kiss me."

And she did not defy him,
she did not cry,
she played with him because,
he loved her.

And because I still sat with him
on that bed, a child's bed,
I wondered ,
could I defy him
fight back for the little girl

Even as he quietly sang to her
a murmur of lullabies
to chase away her fears
to settle the day
lull Barbie and Ken to sleep
the little girl curled up into him
and he sang to her.

Only now, blanketed in darkness
linen nightie noosed around my hips
your shadow lays with me still,
and with the involuntary
moistening of my genitals,
salivating as ungraciously as Pavlov's dogs,
I hear the whisper of your husky voice
ghosting in my ear,

And I clench my eyes tight
but the negative of your face
imposes eerily in blacks and blues
again on my insides
as you echo once more,
"Kiss me, like Barbie kisses Ken. Kiss me."

Copyright © 2012 Ami Lovelace
All rights reserved.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

Poem: Good Night, Apollo

Good Night, Apollo

I remember

Dreams

rocketed forward

on thrusters and shining metal

carried on the wings of lighted fuel

impossibilities ignited—

burned in a

celebrated stream

of billowing

whites and greys

I remember

Dreams

rocketed forward

catching in the expanse

of an opaque

net

speckled with

fiery diamonds

at each vertex

of its invisible

threads—

threads, infinite

in their meters

I remember

Dreams

rocketed forward

suspended above the

suffocating grip

of gravity

50 years of

freedom

and childlike wonder

stirred from

the exhale of oxygenless air



Now, I know

Dreams

extinguished

with the ashes

of a char-stained circle

homicide victim

chalked in black

over a barren concrete slab

Now, I know

Dreams

dismantled

on the assembly

line of forward

thinking and utility

Now, I know

Dreams

devoured,

flayed before the forks

of their own cannibalism,
and swallowed by the
enlightening beams of
morning.


And so we say:
 Good night, Apollo.

 

©2011.
Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.





Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New Poem: Sunday Mornings

Sunday Mornings

"Thanks be to God"
That's what they say
anyway,
their droning voices
all churning up
singing some false conviction.
I know they're lying.
The woman sitting next
to me has been
sexting through the Liturgy
silenced iPhone pressed tightly
to her crotch,
presumably to avoid being
seen.
I think she's just trying to get off
on the vibrations.
The man four pews up
has sleep apnea,
snores like a woman screaming out orgasms
and we pretend to not hear him.
His wife nudges him, of course,
at all the proper moments
he sniffs, wipes the drool
and joins in a little too loudly
Oh  yeah,
"Thanks be to God"
they recite, at each cued
verse
for forty-five long minutes
And they mean it—
when they finally go home.

©2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

New poem: Awake!

Awake!

Morning rolls
around in her head
violent whispers from the sun
break the solace
of protective night's morphine.
Apathetic clouds
laze about
in the distance
at horizon's edge
content in their sloth
they refrain from
mounting her rescue.
She snaps her fingers to her brow
hiding her eyes from
the dawn's offering--
a breakfast of memories
served straight up
without the mercy
of a Bloody Mary
or some other dilutant.
The storm
now erupting
in the hemispheres
of her skull
lightening terrifies,
flashes
of his penis pinballing
around inside her
but,
it
was
not
a game
25 cents to play
No! Emotions
tornadoing in the glare
of morning's kiss
debris laid out about
the room.
In bed
naked, still
she picks
at the scabs
on her face
because she cannot
reach
the scabs
on her heart.


©2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.