Major P's Poems

i enjoyed the first one the most i would have to say, very simple and short yet very complex and in depth, a talent that is difficult for me to achieve i would say.

 

White Heat

Cinematic, the swirling clouds
that we see from the car on our way though town
above the old church is a wrought-iron storm
and the cross on the spire is blue neon

I think of the spectre of all that white heat
linking sky and cross in a desperate leap
and you wonder aloud if lightening will strike
I know that it won't, but I've hoped that it might

It's a blue carbon baby who won't grow to sing
but I'm listening, I'm listening, I'm listening
It's a passion in passion - I pick up a trace
of the energy there as you touch your own face

 

i liked this one. i'm not usually a fan of poems that rhyme but you did a good job to not get cliche or lose the flow. good meter too.

 

alone to the soup shop feeling good and imagining bringing another person with me for one day

sunday soup guys wait for them beneath blue flags
girl with blue dress blue bike is natural adjunct -
comes low-voiced to drink sweet cold koiwai linger
over Usual and broken sticks the disbelief and pleasure
and she discovers what is known this is every
week each sunday yes

here, she comes - together today - taller
between the two of them - showing instructing bestowing
her ritual (the cosmetic aspect of what is Known the practice of loving
the surface of the whole the topography of a world filled
with melted music) and haste and "here is where I go Sundays
to read about the surface life of my brothers, your brothers"
let us talk and think the feelings they thought to each other
and ours in ourselves near the sidewalk and under it too

------soup men see me smiling the strange quiet girl
with a delirious face-------

"I have never seen the face I am making it disappears
in the mirror the mirror blocks the light falling on it
from inside my eyes and the feeling is shadowed
by self-recognition

"so I cannot describe it but to say
that it is the vibration the organ makes when it trembles its lowest note -
I shut my eyes open with the strength of it all"

when I wake up and remember you had been here
I have a cherry with no skin in my mouth and a warm hand
on my stomach and I caress the brick buildings the ancient
the strong and crumbling that surround
me in the streets as I ride I caress them in time
with the sun as it pushes shadows along over and beside

and I love it I
love it
the cambrian
EXPLOSION in my instinct an intro-
duction to the New Rule the wipeout the double-
edged eight-track callback wringing my mud-
brick body to a needed nineteen and HEY babylon
you are gone and I am here and we are all together
in a cricket-filled casket from hundreds of miles -

[here the pleasure of writing expression regression overcomes the simple
joy the cherry the hand and I must

break until the glow wells again in my belly trickling up
my trachea into my forehead and eyes to soak the page once more]

so I watch the tiny child hop along the sidewalk with bright
beak and clawtoes and hear the happy scream of consciousness
that has gathered here and around me the New Eaters
and the ramen men practicing their Golf Swings and my new England
on the radio and I sip koiwai cool and sweet summer.
accompany me everywhere.

 

I was looking back over some of you older poems and came across this. I love the rhythm. Your use of punctuation is perfect. I especially love the first stanza if I have to pick a favourite.

There are some wonderful lines throughout though. 'skylights dimmed by dust and remnants of birds' is splendid. Visions of sunsets.

'shuffle in bliss' and 'flannel armor' too.

What an excellent poem.

 

thanks, red. i was on a lyrics kick for awhile but now I'm trying to get back into writing poetry for its own sake. as my last submission will show, i have a lot of brain-dumping to do. i really appreciate your reading these.

 

The Written Word

I'm not going to be
baby words in a class
the kryptonite of the delicate mind
whitelivered youth pallored daylight silent text
the imagination of hands limp
on a plastic desk -

I'm going to be
the slow and searing
rod as I split your skull
from above wrench through your beating
brain your jaw trachea
tonsils into your lungs the heat
baking your heart through the flesh
that surrounds down
the stomach a whitehot
fork through intestines in
inout
though yr vadge or tainttt tt ttt
tt t tttTHISs
s ss ssss sIS s
the ecstasy of the written word

 

very beginning/very end stand out to me. jumble of images in the beginning and the absence of image at the end - only sound w/ the t's and s's. freaky but you could go further

 

Hey, it's been awhile... any of the old readers still around?




I Met My Lover Smiling

I met my lover smiling,
when still I knew him not;
a smile of bland reluctance,
mere reticence my thought.

My lover never noticed;
he took my smile for joy.
And I did surely let him,
and wondered at my ploy.

I walked with him in sun and rain,
through cat tails and stream beds.
I noticed hope was shrinking,
and in its place grew dread,

and lovelessness (proved iron:
my smile began to rust,)
and he, though he could not say how,
felt frightened, as he must.

His anguish deepened by the day,
and, as I watched him ail,
I, too, was slowed, and cursed myself
on behalf of my prey.

Thus both our hearts diminished,
until they were but specks;
thus our shared load grew harder,
and threatened both our necks,

till neither mouth could ever speak;
till no dull eye could glow.
I write this now in sympathy,
to let my lover know

that I, alone, bear guilt for this,
for only I could see
the lines of doubt and loneliness
that bound him then to me.

 

Hi Major P.
I came back with similar themes.