A good poem

A good poem doesn't give a the fuck what you think about her

 Defiant, noble, it'll punch in the gut

 Doing no permanent damage

No seduction or complicity, no compromise with taste or vanity

It doesn't need you, especially if you are the dictator's son

Beardscapes

  There are landscapes and seascapes, yes

but are there mindscapes, gutscapes?

smellscapes for the dog's wondrous nose?

are there beardscapes?

Scapes of stubble and skin?

My Weaknesses

I am irascible and unkempt

Given to lust, pride, and despair

Leaving behind piles of books wherever I go

A bad piano player & worse singer

Pedantic and self-involved, harmful to the environment

My weaknesses are visible to the eye

There is no point in concealment

Others are kind, though,

Ignoring my flaws a lot of the time

And even admiring my one good quality:

I am a non-violent man

Bad Poem #51

Good lines of verse are locked up in a vault

Once a year they are released for the poetry contest

Every writer get one

To be the last line of a poem



This year I've gotten one that I cannot hope to match

At least my poem will end well

After this pedestrian start

Summer grasses tickle bare feet at church picnics

Coffee pot

1. Design a surrealist coffee pot. The first rule is that it must make coffee. The second rule is that it cannot have decorative or representational elements. No fantastical birds or plants. Its surrealism must be in the actual design.

THE INVENTION OF PLASTIC

Plastic was a word before there was

plastic

Artisanal

They call it artisanal

yet it is not

Surrealist Poem

Lately everything has turned into cauliflower.

Things get better

Bone-crushing loneliness
A Republic of Fear

Despair
"Salt Peanuts"

A freshly made bed
A letter from home

A wreath of myrtle and thyme
An invitation to spend the night

Body Parts

The waist of the ocean...

Her throat, where is it?

Where is the sea's elbow?

Poema en prosa

Durante unos largos minutos perdí la palabra "colibrí"--justamente después de ver un colibrí en un jardín de la Florida. Vino a mi conciencia, de forma insistente, otro pájaro, nada parecido, la codorniz. La palabra la recuperé sin esfuerzo, pero solo penando en el colibrí de Lorca.

Q: Oh lipstick girls of summer

In winter where are you?


A: Poet of paradox

We were not what you thought

Two Poems

These are not deliberately bad in execution. The idea is just to use a kind of silly premise but still do the best with it. I wrote them in my head when I woke up in the middle of the night and don't know what they will look like in written form yet:

JANUARY

Canadian

violins fly

south for the

winter. Flocks of

oboes, too,

migrate. So

in temperate

southern trees

we listen to January's

woodwind foliage

SWISS ARMY HANDS

With Swiss Army hands--

each finger a tool--

I could open wine,

cut, file, screw...

Making love, though,

would not be so convenient.

Theory of Poetry

The poet feels an emotion

puts that emotion into words



the reader reads those words

and does not feel that emotion



unless the poem is really, really good

April

April surprises. Its

skinny legs running toward you, like

every other April you've ever seen. But still...



Its blatant sex appeal: leaves,

bees, birds, flowers. Its fake

Iris brogue. Its cornball sensual appeals.



April is a phony, but you still want to sleep with it.

You've seen it all before, but you want to kiss it.

It is stunningly obvious that it has fooled you once again.

Lipstick

You wore lipstick and said you were from the future

We were confused, because in the future they didn't do that

You made grand entrances, as grand as grand pianos

Your lips and lashes filled rooms with perfumes



You never really told us your name

Your tiny heart beat rapidly and we frequently worried

You said you would go back there, to your future that was really a past

Where impressionable youth would swoon whenever you came and went



We were worried but there was no need

The matchbook you dropped on the floor carried an unreal date

Not quite the present but not too far removed either

Enough to etch your kiss in our memory forever

Is poeming an art
for the many or the few?

Either answer is wrong
Either answer is wrong

While in the Harvard library

The other day in the Harvard library I discovered this unpublished poem by a major American modernist. This is the first time it is being published:

your sweestest erasure directs me to a place I have never been;

small rainhands of dew springtime me again as I have never been done

among which; weeds; slightest kisses among; your gestures lilac

and rose me; however you might do; it is never the same syntax;



but then, the rude capitals; sorrowful derelicts rebuke

your enormous tenderness; pay them no mind, though

everyday teardrops drop dew in your facelpalm, but

that is enough; nothing ever was as sweet as your tinyness;



enough but still, in stillness of rebuttal; pay them no heart;

they have never known directness as direct as thou art;

blinking you might have missed it; how tender the reality seems



under snow; snowdrifts of salt. I’d love to stay and explain

but hours grow late; later than lates have latented.

Only the snarks complain. You and I not.

They Called me Teo

They Called me Teo



They called me Teo on the tough streets of Buenos Aires


I was feared, more for my wit than for knives or fists


It was short for Mateo, you probably knew that


I was an art student, with the grace of a non-violent boxer


fooling nobody, small like a boxer in a lighter weight division


Those boxers are some of the smallest people you will ever see

Gut


This part of my body does not belong to me.

In some ways it is the center of me, though.

It centers me. It is not one part of the body

but a plural: guts. Several organs comprise it.

Metaphorically speaking it is central

and literally too. Literally I feel things there.

More than the heart it is the center of disappoitment.