Poetry

[barton]

Gbabe -- I think I remember you.  I used to post a bit on the science (George Johnson was the staff moderator, IIRC) threads, back at the NYT forae, and in Science Fiction when they had a separate thread for that.  And the film forae.  My monikers were bartonphink and nilsson.

If I recall you rightly, you posted something about being married to Tony Soprano, or similar.

[oilcanbody]

Howdy, galactabitch.

[Lhoffman]

I'll be gone before someone drops a house on me.

Worse things could happen. 

How about a ufo falling on your head?

What's with Google anyway?

Something gonna happen??? Hmmm???

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090911-space-water-dump.html

[pugetopolis]

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
—for galactababe and laurie

“The beautiful trail in the sky
looked like a mysterious celestial
event. In reality, it was urine.”
—http://www.space.com

Skygazers—were amazed
Watching the lovely shuttle flyover
Sporting a magnificent massive
Beautiful curved plume

What could it be—an OMS burn?
RCS thrusters—an attack from Mars?
Something venting—something ominous?
A crop-circle materializing—in the sky?

It turns out it was—astronautic pee
Freezing upon jettison—a urine dump
The sun hitting it—vaporizing it into
Water vapor—dispersing it into space

Reminding me of—Wizard of Oz
And Dorothy’s lovely little sad song
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
The Wizard of Oz—took a pee

[Lhoffman]

 

[pugetopolis]

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbHpXca7U0

The day—the earth stood still
My alien boyfriend—made love to me
He was the cutest grey—I’d ever seen

He had lizard skin—big iguana eyes
When he said something—his lips didn’t move
He was telepathic—he had the hots for me

Gort brought me—back to life
Took me back to the—art deco spaceship
Up the ramp—there in the baseball park

Déjà vu came back to me—my eyes opened up
Klaatu barada nikto —the magic words
And there he was—my interstellar baby

When he touched me—I almost fainted
Sexy intergalactic galvanic skin-response
He gave me a Krell mind-boost—right up my ass

“You Earth boyz—are so easy,” he said
He had a sleek Vandal of the Void Venus-torso
Around him lost time—oozed de rigueur

“Take me to your leader,” he said
“There ain’t any,” I smirked and shrugged
“There’s Elvis at the 7-Eleven, I suppose”

He took me for a spin—a solar system ride
The pretty Rings of Saturn—went spinning by
The Red Sands of Mars—after their great war

He took me to the Moon—ruined and wrecked
The Dark Star that—finally got us all here
Exo-history—ain’t a very pretty story, baby

When it came for him—to say goodbye
Michael Rene and Patricia Neal—cried and cried
He waved goodbye to us—interdimensionally

[pugetopolis]

Thugs in Topeka

“Cloud, Castle, Lake,”
tells a tale of the individual
hounded by a group of German
tourists. A Russian émigré wins
a trip in a lottery…”
—Priscilla Meyer, “Nabokov’s
Short Fiction,” The Cambridge
Companion to Nabokov

I was simply a modest, mild bachelor—
Minding my own business—who happened
To win a pleasure trip given by Melba refugees

It was in 2009 or 2010—the Kansas summer
Was in full blowtorch heat taking pity on nothing
Turning everything brown except the sparrows

I didn’t want to go anywhere—so I tried to sell
The ticket at the office of the Bureau of Trips
But was told I needed permission from TPTB

The Ministry of Transportation told me that—
First I’d have to get a lawyer and draw up a
Complicated petition and get a notary stamp

And besides a so-called “certificate on absence
Or non-absence from the city” had to be obtained
From the local police department immediately

So I sighed some and decided to go after all—
My hair neatly trimmed, my eyes blue and kind
Trying to remember my name “Vasiliy Ivanovich.”

The trip was dull, the bus packed with creeps—
Most of them Melba Exiles looking for escape from
The Topeka heat and the Red State scummy smog

A lanky blond young Jesus Freak stood out at once—
His sunburned face cockscomb-red and his bulbous
Boozy nose gleaming in the sun as if lacquered

I knew I was in trouble when I sat there and opened
A small volume of Nabokov and got frowned at by
The moiling mob who only read National Enquirers

Two of the fidgety women sitting next to me both
Had big mouths and big rumps while Schultz tried
To make them right away in the back of the bus

There was a dark cripple who looked like Goebbels
With lusterless eyes and a vague velvety vileness
Who turned out to be a spy for the Bureau of Trips

The bus wheezed its way out of the state capitol—
Leaving behind the dreary dome moping moodily
With its John Brown murals and crummy staircase

A couple of cyclists were nonchalantly run-over—
Splattering the sides and windows bloody damp
That caused squinting as I felt askance by it all

I was stunned by the tormenting din as evening
Fell over the soiled seasick interior of the tour bus
With green cucumber vomit running down the aisles

Greta an old witch with malevolent eyes sneered—
As if she had my number in her little black book
Looking down her snooty crooked pimply nose

I studied the grace in the motions of silverfish
Scuttling along the floor beneath my feet trying
Not to squish them like Schultz with his boots

Goebbels kept eyeing me as if I were poison—
Knowing I was an intellectual and enemy of the
State because I mistakenly read a book

The driver was a drunk from Wichita weaving—
And barely managing to keep us on the road
Earning a modest living terrorizing tourists

I wondered out loud where we were going—
And they all shouted shut-up as if I’d said a
Bad thing or something woefully forbidden

No one at the Bureau of Trips would tell me—
What the destination of our dream vacation was
So I had to sit there and endure communal angst

I shan’t complain I said to myself uneasily knowing
Suddenly that it was all an Invitation to a Beheading
The joke was on me and then the bus stopped

They began beating me—beating me for a long time
They used a corkscrew on my palms and Goebbels
Strangled me with his studded belt kicking me

Greta had such a devilish dexterity getting me
Down there with a pinch, a slap and pull while
The others had a good time laughing it up

They dumped me off the bus by a cornfield—
Where Cary Grant got buzzed by a spray-plane
None of the luxury of a Santa Fe Super Chief

When I finally got back all-bruised to Topeka—
I begged my boss to let me quit my job but he
Told me the Bureau of Jobs had forms to fill

[madupont]

Barton, Just saying...!

Gary Snyder is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and prose. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975
and a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992 and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2005, he has been awarded the  Bollingen Poetry Prize, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award,and the 2004 Japanese Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize.  He has lived in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada since 1970.

[pugetopolis]

Jake Mondragon
Untitled #33, 2009

Thinking Outside the Box

My forehead veined & purplish—
Enthrumpened & bongeauxish
Hanging around Humboldt State
Arcata Plaza up much too late
So ephemeral & saxophoneish

http://www.humboldt.edu/~first/exhibitions/2009/unruly/large/mondragon_33.jpg

[barton]

Je chatouille mon cerveau
avec les blagues et jeux de mots.

[desdemona222b]

Hilarious that gbabe thinks pugey might be rkighton.  Their is absolutely nothing similar in their writing.  Rknighton and I kept in touch for many years - he's not into the forum stuff so much anymore.   

[barton]

I'm trying to find a rhyme for "Venus" that relates in some way to physical love. 

[madupont]

http://knopfdoubleday.com/marketing/poemaday_01_hirsch.html

[FlyingVProd]

On a tablet inside the pedestal of our Statue of Liberty is engraved the following sonnet, written by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887):

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame.
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

[FlyingVProd]

To Dream
by T.L. Verley


Tis a bizarre world
This world of a dreamer
What is extraordinary and great though
If not tis dreams incarnated?
With all pessimistic and dreadful
Strangling out beauty
Until the flower beneath the weeds
Hides unseen except by the dreamer
As the world screams "It tis but weeds
And thorns and thistles and other such vermin"
And the dreamer and the artist uncovers the flower
And the world begets its beauty
And for a moment forgets the thorns
And thistles and other such vermin

The weeds exist
But we should never dismiss the flower on their account