* Chewer Poetry Corner

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

Ack! I went hunting for my poetry book and can't find it. I will add to this when I do.

Nice, btw.

The Princess and the Goblins Print Window

(1)

From fabrication springs the spiral stair
up which the wakeful princess climbs to find
the source of blanching light that conjured her

to leave her bed of fever and ascend
a visionary ladder toward the moon
whose holy blue anoints her injured hand.

With finger bandaged where the waspish pin
flew from the intricate embroidery
and stung according to the witch's plan,

she mounts through malice of the needle's eye,
trailing her scrupulously simple gown
along bright asterisks by milky way.

Colonnades of angels nod her in
where ancient, infinite, and beautiful,
her legendary godmother leans down,

spinning a single stubborn thread of wool
which all the artful wizards cannot crimp
to keep the young girl from her crowning goal.

Initiated by the lunar lamp,
kindling her within a steepled flame,
the princess hears the thunder and the pomp

of squadrons underground abducting him
who is the destination of the cord
now bound around her wrist till she redeem
this miner's boy from goblin bodyguard.

(2)

Guided only by the tug and twitch
of that mercurial strand, the girl goes down
the darkening stair, undoes the palace latch

and slips unseen past watchmen on the lawn
doing around their silvered sentry box.
Across the frosted grass she marks the sheen

of thread conducting her to the worn tracks
made by miners up the mountainside
among the jagged mazes of the rocks.

Laboring on the tilt of that steep grade
behind which the declining moon has set,
she recalls queer stories her nurse read

about a goblin mid on miner's hut
because new excavations came too near
the chambers where their fiendish queen would sit.

Hearing a weird cackle from afar,
she clutches at the talismanic cord
and confronts a cairn of iron ore.

Suddenly a brazen song is heard
from the pragmatic boy confined within,
gaily cursing the whole goblin horde.

Inviolate in the circle of that skein,
looping like faith about her bleeding feet,
the princess frees the miner, stone by stone,
and leads him home to be her chosen knight.

(3)

The princess coaxes the incredulous boy
through candid kitchens in the rising sun
to seek the staircase by the glare of day.

Hand in hand, they scale meridian,
clambering up the creaking heights of heat
until she hears the twittering machine

which quaintly wove the fabric of her fate
behind the zodiac on attic door
with abracadabra from the alphabet.

Pointing toward the spindle's cryptic whir,
she tells the greenhorn miner to bow down
and honor the great goddess of the air

suspended aloft within her planet-shine.
Laughing aloud, the dazzled boy demands
why he should kneel before a silly scene

where pigeons promenade the gable-ends
and coo quadrilles about the blighted core
in a batch of raveled apple rinds.

At his words, the indignant godmother
vanishes in a labyrinth of hay
while sunlight winds its yarn upon the floor.

O never again will the extravagant straw
knit up a gilded fable for the child
who weeps before the desolate tableau
of clockwork that makes the royal blood run cold.
.......Sylvia Plath

And here's another one of my favorites by Ms. Plath

CONTUSION
Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed out,
The color of pearl.

In a pit of rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow the whole sea's pivot.

The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.

I wrote this when I was a senior in high school. I've once read it during an open mic poetry reading at a coffee house dive one cool Friday night. I could still hear my girlfriend complimenting the fuzz that was supposed to be my goatee. Nervously I stood in front of bored students and angry old men still waiting for their coffee, as I nervously brushed my manly goatee with sweaty fingers.....

--------------------

Voyeur

We are all meddlers
selfish thieves
prying into other's lives
perusing their thoughts
scrutinizing their art
trying to confirm the sensibility
of the world
in which we spend
our time
under the burden of knowledge
becoming like all of those
we despise.
Alone, tidying up
after ourselves,
we are left
creating
our own madness.

I wrote this poem for Voltes. I think it reflects the thoughts of people who accidently wander into poetry readings while searching for a cup of coffee. It also exposes the irony of our human condition, and serves as rallying cry for lactose-intolerant lesbians everywhere.

By no means is the obvious irony in this poem true. If it was, I'd have written something different. And more ribald. Your mother is a cow.

THAT SHE IS, SIR

Disturbed, the poet's mind,
a goatee
Exposed before
nervously emerging
People, with the microphone,
out of the chin,
A keyboard
puts compimentry words
Out of the mouth, speaking
on the lips
Into minds.
his girlfriend speaks with
And thinking,
... wait, aren't poets supposed to be gay?
They listen.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code:<hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> 'Dear Ms. Marshall,'

Running
Is there a way over there?
No; but he doesn’t see the shadow
Or does he?
The running continues as he fears something behind him
Looming
He hears nothing except his own breathing
The darkness drains any hope of help
Of Escape
Escape: there are so many forms
Mental? He doesn’t need that
He needs the physical form
As he can feel the burn of running for too long he slows down
He then notices that the sun is conquering the horizon
He runs towards it
He doesn’t care about the pain
But he does care about the fact that he hasn’t slept in days
The last food he had was back at the…
He couldn’t remember
How could it have happened? Why was he the only one awake?
Did it happen? What happened? </pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Innocent X, I think he meant Chewer poetry, not quoting TS Eliot...Oh and voltes, very nice. Here's some of mine that was readily available.

The End

5 Long Island ice teas.
3 Red Stripes.
God knows how many shots.

I
Celebrated freedom.
I
Soaked my hands with tears.
I
Vented lovefearhate out a truck’s window.
I
Made the day’s meals a puddle.

I peed in front of an ATM
and waved for the camera.
I made a friend leave me on my lawn
so I could sleep.
It was 5.

In the door at 7,
up at 9
for work.

sick,
Arriving at 10.
sick,
Sinking down a chair.
sick,
Munching Pepto tablets all day.
Too sick to think of
stars
night
her


Lines

The soothing sound-orgy slapped
Into the air like flashing neon
On a purple night backdrop
And bounced around the shrouded club.

He listened with detached admiration
As a deep thought density
Seemed to swirl on his face.

She reserved herself
To inhale the brassy,
Smoky atmosphere
That glimmered in the surrounding darkness.

Good band, she thought
When the set throbbed into
A twirling resonance
That liquefied on contact.
…nice to dance to…

All at once,
He flowed forward as if liquid metal:
“My life is a bubble,
flitting through the air,
flirting around mortals and gravity
with no apparent path or purpose
until it shatters.”
With a smooth transition,
He seeped back into his own thoughts.

She painted him a mask
With a grin and a thought-provoked look;
All the better to harbor her own notions:
Fucking poets


Well, I have more but I don't have a lot of time to look. Looking forward to more of everyone else's, reactions, etc.

I have been writing poetry and short stories for about the last 13 years, off and on. I have noticed that my best were written during my late teens and have wondered why. Perhaps it was because I was not yet jaded by the things I had seen in this world.

"Edges"

Shattered mirrors reflect nothing.
Broken shards that I walk over,
Knowingly for I like not what I see.
Bloodtrail,
A constant reminder
That I can never be free of pain.

Most of these were written around the time I was already out of school and before my life had truly gotten started. The year was 1993. The next poem was written after an argument with a girlfriend that left me breaking all ties with her and refusing to speak to her for about 2 years. I remember the evening so vividly. She had tracked me down to my best friend's house. The arguement played out on the door step. After a moment of silence overtook the house, my best friend's sister motioned me in to the kitchen. She sat me down at the table. After pulling a battle of run from a cabinet and a two liter of coke from the fridge, she placed them in front of me as well as a glass. She told me to drink as much as needed and then she headed off to bed. And these are the words I wrote that evening...

"Aftermath"

Stealing the night away,
Passing time
With cigarette after cigarette,
Wondering what the future holds.
Will I be like the moon,
All alone,
So close yet so far away.
It is the choice I have made.

I can share more if people to want to read them.