pretentious poetry.

spring semester 2002, poetry writing:

untitled one

You broke my heart, and in return I crushed your spine;

my tiny hands wringing and twisting your tender flesh,

feeling the bones grind against one another,

and the nerve endings pulse and misfire.

 

Or, at least I meant to, instead of sending you bitter email,

but you were, disobligingly, two time zones out of reach.

 

untitled two

You give your heart as a gift with strings attached;

lacking rhyme or reason, and striking without intent,

this is less about indifference than certain happenstance.

 

Offering up want without desire or the pointless need

to be fulfilled by another, to be filled with another,

to be wanted and needed and instead be cast aside,

used and empty and broken.

 

Left a common casualty caught in the crossfire of something

you will never understand,

your simplest answer remains a gentle reminder

that all things too in time must change.

 

untitled three

You bring cacophony to my quiet soul,

disturbing the perfect order

with your wreck and ruin;

Your calamity not so much creating chaos,

as redefining

and displacing mine.

 

Destruction follows your slow sweet smile

assembled from half-moon curled lips,

and hard white teeth that glitter

with dissolution

and secrets that you won't share;

Hidden things hinted at from flashing eyes,

anchored by weighty veils of lashes

so long and thickly woven

that they pull the moon down from the sky

with every blink

or intently focused gaze.

 

However catastrophic the result,

consideration brings conviction

that has withstood the force of storms,

plagues, disquiet, and disharmony;

Certain oblivion in you wake

is far more appealing

than the solitude in mine.

 

untitled four

black eyes for blue eyes

hair pulled in knots

 

you need to listen

love curdles blood clots

 

untitled five

Come away

with me and we

will join the circus.

 

You can be

a strong man, walk the high

wire, and perform

amazing feats of physical

prowess. Critics and tourists

will discuss your human

pyramids and balancing

acts in ways that have

never before been explored

with word and song.

 

I will

eat fire, swallow

swords, and engage

in acts of agility

so cunning that people

will exclaim,

"How does she balance herself

upon one hand while gently cupping

the back of her head with

the soles of her feet like that?

Doesn 't she have a spine?"

We could

both share my spine.

 

We could

run away to Las Vegas

and get married by a velvet

Elvis in a little chapel

of love before taking day jobs

as slot machine attendants and lounge

lizards while we perfect our craft

in the evening.

 

I'll join

a topless review, dancing

in sparkly heels and feathered

headdresses. You can deal

blackjack in a fancy little

suit, hustling insomniacs

in the wee hours

out of their room

and board.

 

Things could be

interesting between us.

They could. If you could

only understand that

there exists a life beyond

the doldrums

and the d a t e b o o k.

 

Come away with

me. Come away

with me and we

will join

            the

                circus.

 

Assemblage

And despite that, I do not hate myself.

I am not angry at or with myself.

I am resigned to the fact that I am damaged.

I accept my own quirks and foibles.

 

Sometimes I disgust myself.

Oftentimes I am angered by the decisions I make

and the mistakes I oblige.

 

I loath certain inherent tendencies

to judge, to procrastinate,

to destroy, to desire,

to hoard.

 

I do things that I know are counterintuitive

and counterproductive,

knowing full well that they are exactly that.

 

And I care deeply,

passionately and strongly,

holding fast to my beliefs and opinions.

I am unwavering and unflagging

and indefatigable.

 

I am proud,

envious, slothful,

lustful, covetous,

wrathful and gluttonous.

 

I am contrary, contradictory,

contrite, contrived,

and sometimes controversial.

 

I crave faith, hope,

charity, fortitude,

justice, temperance,

and prudence.

 

I am tired, oh how tired,

and sometimes I cry myself to sleep.

And despite that, I do not hate myself.

(things never weren't)

pausing in conversation, he smiled at her

 

"The Celestial Commander-Adjunct

to Temporal Halo Eight

has just informed me that you are

to be my lifelong mate."

understandably, she crossed the street

"I'm afraid I'm not the sort of girl

a boy like you should meet

when you're talking to yourself like that

and shuffling down the street."

untitled six

One day in the express

line at the grocery store,

much to her own surprise,

she found herself trading

heated words with a stranger.

 

And an idea formed, coming

home from the exchange,

prompting her, with sugary

promises, to trade names

with the little girl next door.

 

Then, in an extremely

controversial street corner

swap, she traded lives

with an old man engaged

in his mid-afternoon constitutional.

 

Word spread quickly, and now

you can find her in the park most days,

trading stories over chess games,

horseshoes, and bocci tournaments

with other women named for little girls.

Prequel

You slit my belly with your tongue
and words spilled out.

Visceral, gooey language
oozed from the gaping maw,
my abdomen whispering things
I couldn’t understand completely.

Perhaps to staunch the flow,
Or, perhaps to maintain
a record of the incident,
I allowed language to insinuate
itself into a pile of cards and letters,
ink impregnating paper with ideas.

Lacking a better audience,
I mailed them to myself each day,
only to find them returning, unwanted.

And now, a mounting pile
of missives bound in ribbons,
and an ugly scar hide together
in a hallway drawer somewhere,
awaiting their purpose.

untitled seven

It's one thing to wear
your heart on your sleeve,
and it is quite another
to wear your heart
unfurled like a flag,
conspicuously waving around
for all to see.

The former invites
the sometimes unfortunate
misidentification
as a handkerchief,
employing the heart
in matters of mopping up
excesses -- nose drips
and tear drops
and teensy blobs of ketchup.

The latter is subject
to overt displays
of misguided patriotic zeal,
often resulting
in the heart being fastened
to someone's car antenna
-- buffeted and battered
by wind and rain and high speeds
until it is little more
than a tattered fringe
of colored strings
loosely bound to a wire
with a strap of duct tape.

One can be washed
and mended and used again
someday, and the other
is only serviceable
in the practice of immolation
by veterans of other wars,
mostly the foreign kind.

That could have been my epitaph.

I’ve forgotten simple things before this.
It was only that I wanted something
small and special to call my own.

An eye twitched, a neuron misfired,
an image of you burned my retinas black.
Once was more than enough to remember.

Things move, are misplaced,  and forgotten;
sometimes they all mean the same thing.
Love and lose share more than three letters.

That could have been my epitaph.

(for my final project in this class, I turned in an edited collection of the above poems bound together with a ribbon like a packet of love letters.)

in class writing assignments:

A Midsummer Storm, in the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins 

A slender silvershimmer

splits and shatters the Heavens

with the resonance of Your Voice.

And the speckled scattershot

of dappled earth and slated sky

accepts the sustenance of Your Salvation.

dandelion, in the style of D. H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, and e.e. cummings 

golden
            flower
bursting with eye-
bright
fervor, brilliant exhaustive
danced,
              swept tufted mop-
head low
               groundward thinking
soon softly soon cottony
change
             billowing breezy
             escape.

If you're a glutton for severe punishment, you may choose partake of the terrible poetry that I wrote in the other poetry writing class I took in the fall of 1992. I woudn't though, and I wrote the cr ap.

(unless otherwise noted, all thoughts and opinions expressed herein, therein, and whereverin you're looking, are © pixiemartin , 2002.)