Discovering The Red Plum

When my lips found a red plum
They did not know that very soon
All I could desire would be found
In sweet, wet pulp under soft skin
And the tartness of that skin, and
The way my teeth broke through the
Taut, smooth, thin reddish skin.
But yes, then they did know the sweet
Wet fruit of the red plum, and what
Once had been a bit of unnoticed color
At the back of the supermarket was
Soon my greatest desire, the love of my
Lips, the target of my tongue, the one
Sweet-tart taste repeating in my
Mind and that, that is the surprising
Way love falls into our absent, toying hands,
That is when sustenance becomes sustenance,
When a mouth becomes a church and a body
Yearns beyond nutrients for an experience
And what was a pleasure, a force of life.

no quarter for the enigma machine

one voice says
the heart is a complicated place
that demands the lambent language of poetry
to air its spiderweb expression

one voice says
the heart is far too complicated a place
to let such listing lines of verse
be its speakers on the floor

most human wars
are caused by miscommunication
and strategists build secret codes in them
while thousands die trying to find the key

journal in a locked glove compartment

weeks when it was enough
to keep the roads in good repair
and the car sat silent
and only the weather went anywhere

days of looking up from the dirt
to the dashed line convening into miles
and all the traveling we managed
was a traveling of eyes

home was a burnt-out shell
home was the prairie grass strung with webs
home like a silent car
at rest beside the miles we could not manage

I walked out into the night
firelight to firelight
the fireflies parting like truths to avoid me
and the truths I avoided in the name of the sun

my hand
is blackened with oil
is gripping a drop-forged steel wrench
both mysterious to me

my eyes
drive down the highway
the wind blows my hair back
the wind against my palm is her memory

there are confessions
that don’t need confessing
no one should hear them
they live like a fire

they know nothing about engines
or how to rebuild a house of steel
and if we are traveling anywhere, love
then we pray to the mystery behind the wheel

the storm

if I give to the voices
on the winds of the storm
the house will be torn asunder

if the storm passes over
and the house still stands
I know there will be another storm

there is no forecast
there are no sirens
but the lightning knows my name

how many times
can the walls shake with thunder
before I believe it all?

larks and lurches

yo, this will be an isolated incident, a break from the norm of poetry posts.

probably no-one is going to buy something that's available online for free, but i wanted a hard copy for my own shelf, and waiting and polishing weren't going to do the deed, so i cranked this baby out with lots of extra pages at the end for writing on:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-sniadecki/larks-and-lurches/paperback/product-21064494.html

i've kind of gone full-blown guerilla poet. i have a feeling by autumn it all may go on the backburner again for awhile, but i just can't see that far ahead. the bug has certainly bitten. and i've got a wonderful support group of one.

:)

It All Gets Out Of Control

Let's write a poem right now.
It only has to make sense after someone
Has read it three or four times
And all the words have had time to sink
In like when you go to water a dry flower
Where the pot fills to the brim
And then only slowly begins to go
Down and be swallowed but then of course
It begins to leak out of the holes
At the bottom and makes a mess
And the flower just looks back at you
Ungrateful and dead except that
(Because you consider yourself a poet)
You seem to see its ghost petals
Spreading in the shaft of sunlight
While the carpet and your jeans slowly
Get soaked with dirty water and that
Is alright because you are alive to
Feel it and later when the sun goes
Down you might get into someone else's
Jeans and make friendly gestures
With tentative hands that cause the
Other person's eyes to close and open
Like the petals of a ghost flower
Until finally you are both so anxious
To set the moon on fire and empty
The whole watering can into the hard
Dry packed soil that the terracotta
Breaks in your hands and vines burst
Forth and bind you together for all
The world to see and soon its nothing
But nothing between your bodies and
A soft sucking silence of sated roots
Tangled in the timbers of a happy grave.

It's Not As Bad As It Sounds

Get up.
Shower.
Eat, then shower.
Hygeine.
Get less naked.
Get dressed.
Go to work.
Get off.
Find food.
Go to other work.
Have coffee as dinner.
Come home.
Raid pantry.
Postpone sleep.
Get on computer.
Get off.
Sleep.

Get up
With the deejays who think they’re funny.
Throw on last night’s clothes.
Check hair—is it utterly ridiculous?
Who is gonna care? Neighbor girl?
Don’t care. Shuffle out to take care of the dog.
Find nothing that sounds good for breakfast.
Find something anyway.
Get on the computer.
Facebook. BoingBoing. CNN, XKCD, Penny Arcade.
Rinse, repeat.
Check clock—is it utterly ridiculous?
Strip. Walk naked. Glance at mirror.
Stare at mirror.
Draw back shower curtain.
Get water in the ballpark of hot.
Pop the thingy.
Shield skin with shower curtain til ready.
Wash hair. Lather.
Wash face. Lather.
Rinse. No repetition. No need, also no time.
Wash body.
If clock is ridiculous, tops and tails.
Rinse.
Kill the water.
Draw back the curtain.
Dry head, dry body, step out.
The mirror fogs differently depending on the day.
Stare at mirror. Imagine a six pack.
No, fuck that. Imagine no spare tire.
Imagine skinny fucking hipster boy
With porn-ready sausage:
That would be sufficient.
Acknowledge and accept.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T like Aretha.
Know it.
Brush hair until it feels right.
Hit it later with fingers.
Shave the terrible neckbeard now.
Shave just below the lower lip.
Redefine the shadow on the cheeks.
Call it good.
The clock is ridiculous.
Deodorant. Q-Tips. Occasional powder.
You know the drill.
Go get dressed.
Put the dog way.
Get out the door.

Think for the seventh time in a week
It’s time to clean the trash out of the car.
The car has touches of rust like the first barnacles
On the hull of an aged sloop.
Ignore broken gas gauge.
Ignore broken ventilation selector.
Ignore front passenger window you dare not unroll
Because the little motor sounds ill.
Ignore slowly growing hole in floor carpeting.
Ignore paint stains, fossilized French fry, and musty smell.
Stare at trip odometer and wonder if you have enough gas.
Turn your old baby on, remember you named her Helena
Back when My Chemical Romance was new.
Listen to her engine still hanging on remarkably well
Like the grand dame of an oil dynasty.
Except that random gurgling sound she sometimes makes
At a stoplight.
Ignore that.
Smile and put your records on.
Figuratively-speaking.
Wince, annoyed, as each bass hit rattles and buzzes
In speakers that have surpassed their expected life expectancy.
Drive down the alley that laughs at shocks.
Drive the familiar streets of your hometown.
Curse drivers.
Get to your first job.

Feel a low electrical mix
Of ease, joy, happiness, nervousness, awkwardness.
This is DESTINATION.
You want this to be your life.
You want this love, this freedom, this acceptance.
You feel strange arriving after everyone else
And leaving before everyone else.
You try to read signs like a wilderness tracker
To know if they plan to give you the great gift.
You like this place.
Four hours later, you leave.

Home to a can of soup.
Or, if the clock is being ridiculous again
Fast food in the car.
The fossil deposits must grow, after all.

Get to your second job.
Clock in.
You loved this place at first.
Feel a low humming mix
Of contentment, complacency, apathy, annoyance.
This is DEPARTURE.
You want to leave this life.
You want no more of the steady tasks
That drift by you unconsciously like fluorescent lights.
Some of the people here save your thoughts
From the aggravating human cattle and mallrats
Mistreating all the pretty books like
Drunk sailors groping tavern girls.
The shrieking and mewling children.
The entitled masses.
America, 2013, in which you are (you have to laugh)
Inextricably associated, non-optionally.
Ignore how little you make.
Ignore that a meal from the food court
Represents almost a full hour of your day.
Get coffee and a muffin instead.
You need the caffeine anyway.
Sell.
Service.
Read a prepared announcement over the PA.
On a slow day, think too much.
Maybe write a poem.
Maybe interrogate your heart.
Maybe someone beautiful walks through
And brightens your eyes.
Stirs your blood.
Service.
Sell.
Clean something.
Clock out.

At night the cat attacks.
Lock him in the bathroom
Until he settles down.
At night she reads or feeds her dinosaurs
And goes to sleep.
She had a long day and is not in shape.
You had a long day.
You aren’t in shape either.
(But not so bad, you think.)
Kiss her goodnight, hold her a moment.
Tell her you love her.
You mean it, even if you saw
Someone beautiful walk through
That stirred your blood.
Turn off the light to let her sleep.
Get on the computer.
Facebook. Email. BoingBoing. Random.
Look through the scraps of paper that accumulated
Notes and snippets and novels and poems
In the course of the working,
In the course of the getting by and earning a life.
Type something up.
Type something from scratch.
Make a video.
Make anything.
Engage in a long and winding textual correspondence
With someone very far away.
Or keep your secrets.
Or create new ones.
Or just make the best art you know how.
Until it’s 2:00 in the morning
And the deejays will be calling again too soon.

Get up.
Shower.
Eat, then shower.
Hygeine.
Get less naked.
Get dressed.
Go to work.
Get off.
Find food.
Go to other work.
Have coffee as dinner.
Come home.
Raid pantry.
Postpone sleep.
Get on computer.
Get off.
Sleep.

houdini barking

surround yourself with mirrors
physically,
and you will see yourself multiplied
into infinity,
every duplicate identity
with its own hidden heart
drawn to a secret,
scattering toward the horizon

i can accomplish this very same feat
using only a single mirror,
no horizon,
and with fewer magnets

but infinitely higher stakes

how it is

she looks up when I walk in
and always there is that smile.

six months is only a few hours to her
and that smile touches her eyes.

her voice carries to me on no words at all
and what I say she understands.

I never have to explain to her—
she accepts all thoughts and understands.

she is not my wife, my friend, or my lover.
she is not my sister, my daughter, or my mother.

she is not human and neither is our love.
she is not your God and He cannot know her.

I will have her for all the length of my life.
she is not even mine, but more mine than yours.

slogans on wet t-shirts

red clouds in a sea of sunlight,
blue mist on a half-black moon.

now to sleep on the grass at midnight,
now to dream on the floor of noon.

life is a desperate fucking fight,
death the silken call of a loon.