you were one of the best female poets and I told the publishers, editors, “ Her, print her, she’s mad but she’s magic, there’s no lie in her fire.” I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’t happen. - Charles Bukowski, from An Almost Made Up Poem
Friday, October 9, 2009
If the stone benches could talk
Would they tell you what they missed more
Your marble legs an irony against their grey skin
Or how you sat there the whole night and for once,
made them feel wanted
Did you ever wonder
smoking into those nights by the lake
would you smoke enough
long enough stay enough
to touch the sky's ceiling
What was more beautiful
The moon descending for the day
The skies bruising to bid adieu to the night
Or seeing yourself in the
crystal ball of an eye
convicting you to memory
Is your gingham pink collar
missing any fingerprints
or have you in your obsession
starched them away for newness and forgetting
Do you realise something in the air
will raise its hand to acknowledge you were once here
even if you are now not
People are designed to forget faces first
and words later
But what might you hold on to as your mind's fingers
slip away
Is it the palm that cradled you in
Or the other mind's fingers
Did you run after the questions
who ran away
Was he Pride, or was she Denial
Was It fear
Is missing silent by day
and articulate by night
When the pizza that took forty minutes to
bake and served with ice water did you think it
could lead this stanza
What is a Saturday
Is it the afternoons spent waiting while pretending
to be writing
Is it the nights that in reality
is a Sunday morning
Is it okay for a muse
to kill you
in exchange for making you feel alive
Are you a fairytale
or one of those biblical parables
departing with a stern lesson learned
Is it really you
Or are you simply tied to leftovers of a heart's fiber
that seem remotely familiar
Would they tell you what they missed more
Your marble legs an irony against their grey skin
Or how you sat there the whole night and for once,
made them feel wanted
Did you ever wonder
smoking into those nights by the lake
would you smoke enough
long enough stay enough
to touch the sky's ceiling
What was more beautiful
The moon descending for the day
The skies bruising to bid adieu to the night
Or seeing yourself in the
crystal ball of an eye
convicting you to memory
Is your gingham pink collar
missing any fingerprints
or have you in your obsession
starched them away for newness and forgetting
Do you realise something in the air
will raise its hand to acknowledge you were once here
even if you are now not
People are designed to forget faces first
and words later
But what might you hold on to as your mind's fingers
slip away
Is it the palm that cradled you in
Or the other mind's fingers
Did you run after the questions
who ran away
Was he Pride, or was she Denial
Was It fear
Is missing silent by day
and articulate by night
When the pizza that took forty minutes to
bake and served with ice water did you think it
could lead this stanza
What is a Saturday
Is it the afternoons spent waiting while pretending
to be writing
Is it the nights that in reality
is a Sunday morning
Is it okay for a muse
to kill you
in exchange for making you feel alive
Are you a fairytale
or one of those biblical parables
departing with a stern lesson learned
Is it really you
Or are you simply tied to leftovers of a heart's fiber
that seem remotely familiar
Sunday, October 4, 2009
A Few Questions for Chang E
Is the Jade Bunny
A good enough companion or would you rather
A man who breaks your heart to make you
Real
Are snow skinned moon cakes what you fancy
Or will the calories shoot you with the swiftness of Hou Li’s arrows down
Back to earth
Have you seen the suit
Of silver on Armstrong and what do
The stars say to you when they speak
How short is an eternity on the moon
Or is it only as long as we deem
Relativity?
A good enough companion or would you rather
A man who breaks your heart to make you
Real
Are snow skinned moon cakes what you fancy
Or will the calories shoot you with the swiftness of Hou Li’s arrows down
Back to earth
Have you seen the suit
Of silver on Armstrong and what do
The stars say to you when they speak
How short is an eternity on the moon
Or is it only as long as we deem
Relativity?
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