Monday, September 6, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Writer Buries Himself in The Mud Until The Next Rainy Season
Thursday, September 2, 2010
BAD CHESTER RYAN
he smoked a cigarette
despite quitting years ago
and he listened absently
as the preacher tried hard
to console him with passages
from the Bible he never read
and telling Bad Chester Ryan
If you believe you'll be saved
but Ryan believes he's beyond
the pale and hope is a tiny thing
that will burn with him
in that chair and after this
he can rest his murdering bones
under deep ground where
he can't hurt another living soul
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
SEPTEMBER 24, 2001
brown leaves
on the steps, from
rust and green
to ashen like
the last weeks.
Now on the
metro, I’m sniffing
for something that
smells like
nail polish remover,
for someone
with a bomb.
Last night I
dreamed I gave a
reading but I
couldn’t find any
poems I wanted.
When I open my
mouth, I spit a
black rose
*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
thank god I’m a poet
I scraped this dog shit poetry off of the sole of my soul
with a termite infested wooden prosthetic hand
and splattered it onto the back of an unpaid parking ticket
it’s as lovely as chainsaw sodomy preformed post mortem
feels like I’m holding up my warm slimy intestines
for the leisurely perusal and cockeyed judgment of zombies
that my bloody vomit looked like abstract art
since that moment I’ve crucified my pride daily
so that chronic spiritual masturbators
could watch this trailer park freakshow with outraged eyes
and be reassured that they're not as fucked up as some people
Monday, August 30, 2010
SUCH KNOWLEDGE
What do I know
About the perfume of midnight cemeteries
Or the blood rose
With no thorns at all
What do I know
About the hand that touches me in the dark
And stops my blood beating in my veins
Or the ice in my ear
When I hear an avenue of hummingbirds
The sounds they make full of the colour of their wings
What do I know
About the hidden desires of my
Loved ones whose faces change in twilight
What do I know
About the veins that trace a journey on a leaf
Or the hidden energy of air
Sunday, August 29, 2010
SORT OF A NEW BEGINNING
Alabaster in the shining moon
His buttocks and belly were bare
He sank into the pond
A chain of stones around his neck
A garland of honeysuckle in his hair
His skin so pale shone luminous when wet
He wished a wish to sink and drown
And forget—
But he could not…
And as he struggled to die
All his hatred
And jealousy and fear
Bobbed up within his brain
Causing him much grief…
Much more so, indeed, than the water
That was trickling into his lungs and
Not really suffocating him…
He bobbed to the surface
Sucked in the air
Ripped off the stones
And clambered – cursing
Both life and death –
Back onto the beach
And returned to this world again
Artist's Son
The artists are dandelions:
There are so many of them
unwanted.
God called my mother
a dandelion
and told her she was
better than all the other
flowers.
Wasn't too long
till they chopped off her head,
poured weed killer
across her stem
and she drank it up,
became a member of society:
bane.
But not before she born me.
And I'm still a seed
flipping in the breeze
past the wanted flowers,
one of the few artists
who's still got a head.
But the mower is always
in the distance.
And who knows where
this wind will carry me?—when
we are all destined to be
shitty poems.
Friday, August 27, 2010
HAREM
talking full time about "Everyone in my
family died in their sixties," although
(a face-lift 5 years ago) she looks fortyish,
e-mails every day from wife-possibles from
way back, sending me pictures of grandkids
("For me that's what counts, genetic continuation)
photos of themselves, poems, publishing questions,
when can I come out to Carpinteria to visit, five
months since Joey died (shark), "Let's meet in
Chicago," or this skin-cancer beauty in New
Hampshire, "The surgery went great, come for
a visit before the first snow...," my ex-student
in L.A., pals for 50 years, "This widow stuff is
crap...I need you...," a bunch of fucking saint-
whores, amazed at how the legs still hold up,
the surgically-chemically helped faces, and
always this sense of almost supernatural
get-together-foreverness, what I needed was
five lives and a theology that said "Who you
love you marry, forget numbers...."
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Conspiracy
I won't be long
but I might be late.
Don't wait up.
The red moon is up.
Stars blink like
frightened eyes.
Guilt shackles my
naked form to life
and from the corner
of my mind I laugh
because I know not
how to react to anything
right.
My children glint
like little lakes,
swallowing moonlight,
hiding their secrets
in centers so deep
no mother could reach
and so I choose to drown.
Fathers pass away
behind plastic curtains
in critical care units-
no more minty breath
or spinning thoughts,
my father dies delicately
quiet and all I can think
as I slip away, down the corridor
of hush and antiseptic
is why and what will I do
now that there will be no more
warm hands and glue and carpentry.
Who will fix my broken dolls?
Lovers kneel
and send flowers
while a thousand others
tear my pictures in half
before throwing them into the fire.
My heart is stale.
My love is nothing but an astonishing remark.
I'd call my latest lover perfect
but he has a scar above his lip
and his knees are weak from kneeling.
He's far from it.
Okay, I won't be late
but I might be long.
If you write, don't expect a reply.
I did not pack a pencil.
*http://www.lisazaran.com/
http://www.contemporaryamericanvoices.com/
http://www.dearbobdylan.com/