prose v poem

the prose po form seems to be in vogue right now, i see it all over the zines. my thoughts are that it appeals to non poetry readers  because in form,  they are more " tweetish" more closely aligned with news story style, in a familiar prose package.   nothing immediately sets them apart proclaiming "attention! this is a poem".  so all the work, all the leaping and differentiation from prose- if that is what's required to make the writing, in fact, prose poem - must be done by the sentences, the phrasing.

cotton candy skies at dusk

the little patio is just large

enough for two chairs and a table

slung under a brazillian pepper tree

facing west. sky in current  painting mode patiently

lends itself to artistic background for a hawk

landing on the light post, a parrot 

held in one claw nailed to the concrete top

by a talon that digs into the small green bird's

 Throat so that it cannot screech.
A scimitar's curve silhouettes on pinkening clouds
rips into the smaller bird's breast.
 It jerks,silently. the sky which has been gun colored

All day behind high cirrus slowly deepens

into the   blue of  an innocent sea 

on the shores of  the gulf of mexico circa 1915 

beside a row of  pink cottages or maybe
one of dali's mid period catalanian pieces
with his wife's buttocks on display before a wild sea

and in both the deepening quickens
imperceptibly until it pierces the remains of religion
and beauty on the edges of  suburbia

in the twenty first century. the hawk, sated for the moment

lifts her head, looks west as the sun dips a brush
Into blood red and dapples the line of clouds with it.

but first the poem

this shirt fits , i like the style
but it's too large for you-
another inappropriate gift.
i  hang it on my side of the closet
while you're out. you won't miss
what you didn't get.


wash  the bathroom walls down
with apple cider vinegar.
run the vaccuum, fold towels.
dust the picture of us when we first met
and only knew how to smile at each other.

i had a secret boyfriend once. he left
paeacock feathers in the fence at work
for six months. one day,
 there was half a display
mingled between fence and hedge,
even the down that grows
 skin close scattered irredescent
 across autumn piled leaves.
i gathered all i could see, weeping.


yesterday, a dozen blood red roses
in a heart shaped vase were left
 on the kitchen table for me to find
 when i woke up, along with that present
you meant to give me for christmas.
today i think they're advance apologia
for the way you punched a hole in our family
dinner last night. i know she's not yours. but she's mine.
she gave me chocolate this year.

sometimes when you're gone
i open the front door and let mosquitos in.
from an intricately colored glass vase,
peacock feathers spill,  pushed and pulled
 by a mild winter breeze. i want them
to fly  away with all the words we
use to clip each other's wings.

don't try to play ms Pac man at the monkey bar

They will steal your quarters and make you play galaga 1981

the queen of the birds in water colors

she had closets
he had things to fill
them with. matches, gasoline.
when he moved in he rarely moved out
she was a stay at home worker b.
she waited to invert for him to leave
it wouldn't do, for him to see
what she did these lonely hours
drifting room to room sprinkling dust
from cocaine parties she'd
 read about in people. hey honey, hold on a sec
weren't these laser diodes on
yesterday? she answered lackadaisy
on the balcony, the only room left,
i don't know honey, how bout another drink
politely pleasing her way off the edge.

no it wasn't that way. he was scared.
last chance and she prettty much
couldn't care enough to fight. so if she has
a suitor on val's day, so be it. he suspected
from the beginning...

































(())***


namesake


the birds are trying to speak to me grandmother
they've flown into my yard two sundays running

wearing totems i sang to as a child, bearing children
away from one nightmare to another. (all mothers

are children the first time, grandmother, you
told me so, you promised!). one perched on the light

post across the street yelling, unheeded until someone said
is that an osprey? when i looked, it went silent

but remained on the post until clouds came up
over the lakes behind us and i went inside.

Sunday, i was with your great great grand daughter. i took her
to the pool to swim, because the day was bright

even though the water was colder
than coldsprings in  summer.

i call her otter. she calls me gramma.
on the way back home she runs

around the corner and out of sight.
i watch  a column of turkey buzzards

in gyre just above the road fronting my  trailer.
i turn the corner. the screened porch is empty

my car is parked under the aluminum roof,
her scooter- on its side in the drive.

 one of the buzzards dives below the roofline
 vanishes on the other side then swoops

back up in a grin joins the other gnats hanging
 in the sky. i wonder what

they're hunting, think of kittens
and small helpless things,

run to the door with a catch
 in my throat calling your name.

smashed back to the metaphysical realm

i dunno seems to me
the more mucking with fermilab
we do , the closer we come to finding
a big bang. time sped up, the restaurant
is getting full and i don't know if
we can fire the grill fast enough
to handle dinner,.
--zaphod beeblebrox from the lost chapters of the hitchhikers guide.



just beneath the surface of your skin
where the oort cloud dances with other valent
planets, you left the door unlocked again
so i snuck in. i slipped between the wave particle
duality, brought my crochet needles, purled
a singularity, knowing you would not
notice. knowing it.

i couldn't find my keys this morning
so when i said please dont lock the door if you leave
when i'm coming home, like you seem to always do
i kinda knew you would. blech. this is not at all
the profound thoughts i had while i waited
in the car, reclined, in approaching dark
cold settling in like brown coffee stains

falling lightly asleep ; that state where
you blue shift up a phase, become jet shush
and a the little boy playing ball on his screend
porch.  not at all.

















*(*(*(*(*






two screens work better
as imago, imagine
transparent wings, triumphant
in foreground, while blurrily
behind them the tiny neucleus
is dragged along. i can see this
if i don't have to map the vectors
just watch  armies advance
at the behest of  massive neutrons
residing somewhere in this tractor beam
scotty, i can feel them tryin to rip apart
before i''m ready to smash em
like kix are for kids, into each other
which smithereens crumbly into
bose einstein constant carpet/carstant


and then what homie?what do you want
to find? smaller and particles perhaps
that somehow will be the last ones mapped
or journey into the heft of strings springing
from nowhere save desire. and that
my fried  is how the earth was saved.
because if we don't want it won't be.
slurry, white out, smears across the sky
slowly bring them into focus
playing the surprise me no
don't do that after all i think i know
that's why i'm a poet rather
than scientist. just, if you can
surprise me. grin.


















***







it's odd i would think about you
but facebook brought you up again
as meme-fed pills for ills mommy daddy
made, pyschoanalyzed until you graved
it rather than see  dissapointment
in their faces. they betrayed you my fried
it's not like they could watch you die
but kindnesses were not their ken, selfishly
they had you live, and then
regret and then resentment grew until
these things were all you knew-
that's when we met. right before you stepped
off whatever thin line kept you alive
the way excuses dived from the high board
into the empty swimming pool
at your dad's place or yeah , the reasons
you set my kitchen on fire.
it's like what the hell
what i thinking i'm supposed
to protect my kids from things like you.
she didn't think she was a kid
is how it went. by the time
the man before you was through with me
she'd already crossed into
what she'd be when she grows up.


so i blame myself. she wanted only a bit
of my time she said. she said you always
want to spend time with the him of the minnit
and you will regret it when you're old
and alone and no one talks to you, your family
abandons you because you were not a mother.
and i wonder how i was sposed to do it
not stunt her growth and still be the belly
she stuck her claws in when things got touchy.

and i realise that there were so many things
she was right about and this is another one
because she understood that be a family
you have to spend time with one another
bugging each other about things
but what she don't realize is how
an orphan just really doesn't know that at all
so fuck her. i mean really. i was raised
by wolves, by now she should understand that
and just be over it. she tells me i'm the fool
who's loved three of you and still don't understand
the way moon whips you and chemicals
whisper in your ear. stay and fight another day
or get up, walk away, the fight finds me either way.
witness the latest you.






















*[[*





this poem doesnt want to finish
it wants to dig deeper and deeper
back in time, play in the plasma
from the bang. how did love

come to be in this yellow room,
wearing pink pajamas, soothing
a brow wrinkled above sky
blue eyes? isn't that why you speed

the projector up, move beyond
the way she haunts you now
in dreams, berating the man
you didn't become, how he

calls you on the phone, looking for your son
who has his eyelashes and your heart?
love is in the questions, you think
while i pretend to sit outside it all

with all the answers and a cherry bomb.























*(*









and still we go , further into the maze
the diastole , sistole of stoichiometry













***[[






mornings
you make coffee
bring it to me, with steamed
milk, sugar. i say thank you, give
kisses.

we smoke
separately
try to quit, but mornings
feel like we might live forever
my love

i grab
yogurt, an orange.
you grab me, hold me close.
your back goes through a series of
small pops

you sigh
ask if i've seen
the sudafed. i have.
by the kitchen door, we kiss sweet
goodbye.

love is
less about time
than action. we might have
met 30 years ago and walked
away.

to say
wounds unfurl
slowly denies blood's course
down my legs, all from the inside
and loss.

let's do
this thing right for
a change. mislearn lessons
taught by lust. i think it's time to
trade up.




















*(((

the thing is
i don't know if i coud write a poem
about love that would not be on some level
a metaphysical sub particle caught in a borrowed
valent electron trajectory. it's all chance, you said.
anyone can be anyone's soul mate.
it's a matter of proximity and debate.
and acceptance, i wishpered.
i did. i wishpurred it
so you don't have
to keep doing
that now
from so
far
a
w
a












y




















***

new methods for precisely determining uncertainty

strong headwinds caught on the barb wire
wrapped familial around a crib. inside, a baby
as all things cribby seem to be. inside, lungs,
heart, motor skills. the headwinds peered
laciviously into her future, mottled green
and brown skiens of peccadillos rumbling
in her eyes. she closed them for a nap. precisely
at six each evening. she wouldn't awaken
until the first photons hit the pilot wave, precisely.
so they just never knew. that drove them down
the slopes into marshes, howling like every horror
cliche and the face of scream . nasa then tried
to quantify this for a warp speed drive which led
to some pretty interesting congressional hearings
in which  DOT and DARPA both confessed
they would have used waterboarding if only the kids
would return them after they finish surfing the internet.
none of this was good enough for explanation
or even an underfunded grant. the uncertainty principle
was standing outside of class when she finally skipped
into consciousness. the crib was dingos on ayers rock,
barb wire strode home without her usual ice cream cone
and the headwinds took notes for the methods of determinism
so they could catch up on everything they'd missed
while out with the flu.

prophecies that need to fulfill

you woke in the early morning
with a gasp, as if coming up for air
saying i dreamed you and leona
died in an accident on the way to your family.
you had to tell me about it?
with a sheepish smile you excuse
the revelation. my gods don't like
their surprises exposed so it's possible you saved
our lives this weekend when you rode shotgun
on i 75 south to my son's twenty first
birthday. not that you recalled the dream
everything must be done hush hush
with your gods but i knew, thought you knew
so it remained unspoken when i swerved
sharp left without looking in the next lane to avoid
the orange crate filled with clementines set nicely
unscathed in the middle of our lane
 like a cluster bomb, obscured
by the truck in front us, but for its swerve
so i was expecting something odd and liona
said woah gramma that was scarey what
did you do that for? and you went on about her seat
belt and how we needed to stop to make sure
she had it on right but i was annoyed that you didn't
recline and reach over to fix it however i held
my tongue because the internet wasn't working
on your phone, which you had to resort to using to prepare
next week's lessons because of course duh
you can't get wi fi on the laptop when you're driving
unless you've tethered your cell to wireless service
and who has that kinda money so
 after last week
i want to choose fights carefully. but her seat belt
was buckled after all and we settled in for a less fraught
journey yet just four short miles down the road
a semi signalled a pull over from behind a harzars-flashing car
who was nevertheless going the speed limit while we
in the left hand lane decidedly were not so i gunned it
to show intent and the fucker pulls over anyway when
i'm already 3 feet into his trailer and i wind up
kissing the emergency lane's pimpled ass
before dropping back in behind him and liona
asks nothing, she saw it happen and maybe
the idea of danger took root in her or maybe
she  was just thanking anyone's gods
for not having to deal with that when today we
were driving down to her great granddaddy's house
to go fishing. on the drive home i was careful
to avoid trucks or get around them
quickly, but mostly i tried to stay behind them
but i noticed the battle continued as i drove
below the speed limit and everytime i had to pass
someone, there was always other vehicles around
easily pushed into our spine
but we didn't get car bombed so thank you