Bored

Niobe Talks to Herself

1.
Turn left
you said to the taillight flag,
this land is airless.
A spider taps his fingers on the windshield,
ghostly in the dark, & rain walks
through your eyelashes as though
we could stand with poplars & do the job
of seven dead sons and daughters.
You said this conversationally,
looking down your arrow nose.

But how are you, my friend?
It's funny how hard it is to map
the internal, even to those we trust.
It's better by far to deal indirectly
with rhymes and literary allusion
than to tell anything at all.
One could call the last lines a metaphoric anchor,
I'm sure, but you would call it stupid,
& that is why you never manage to do anything.

That silver bitch shut up after that.

2.
Perhaps I'll dye my hair white to match my hate.
Perhaps I'll go back to school.
Perhaps I'll grow old with him, watch our children move as slow waves outward.
Perhaps I'll pin a note to my chest that reads 'Merry Christmas,' & shoot myself in June.
Perhaps I'll mistake the sacred for law, again & again, as so many do.
Perhaps I'll turn to stone eventually, leak amber through limestone.
Perhaps I'll face it all manfully & stand until the last damned day.

3.
The first daughter of mine
is the sort who wants to live forever
just to say she did.
I left her in a parking lot, on her cell phone,
arguing with her husband over investments.
I don't know if she saw me go,
but her diamonds flashed forever in my rearview.
I put on a new coat of lipstick.
"Oh Mom," she said when she got back in the car,
"You've got shit on your teeth."
4.
Pretend sorrows make the best veils for boring ones.
It's an old story, & one no one likes to tell:
There are times when no matter what road you take,
you'll still end up fat & old
in a suburb with too many convenience stores.
Gravity will never stop, will it?
The witch in the window came before the fairy tale,
rode her arrogance over ancient cities,
mouthy serial killer or feminist,
maybe objectivity is the first requirement
of the divine. Either way,
my old enemy has blackberry eyes,
the first cosmic clock, & a silver bow smile.
Our rivals are our mirrors.
Outside the car, snow begins to fall,
fat as a white cloud.
She asks if I'd like to grab a cup of coffee,
of course I would.

9:38 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

More pome, different size

Found this in my grad school submissions file. I don't think I've sent it anywhere, and I kinda like it. I think it kinda needs a better metaphoric anchor, especially since I wrote it, and I can't remember what it was about.

~*~

Love Token

A woman's echo is what

you can't wash away —

flies like pharaohs

of the windowsill,

Coptic & cruel, gold

& lapis blue, a jade

eye blinks twice.

Shadow under

ankle bone, a plum,

the pulse at her throat,

a nun's veil fluttering

in a hurricane.

She writes a letter on

the 13th of every month,

ties sheets of archaic language

with shoelaces, buries

them like gold pieces.

"Kiss me again" —

she dots her "i"s like ants —

"There is no ocean."

"My soul is three

curved breaths,

a moth afraid to die,

crucified."

She's practical

as an origami wedding dress,

rice paper, speckled & vain —

Better hope it doesn't rain.

~*~

BKEgan, 2002

8:19 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Rejected again...

Looking Back At All the Meetings with Cardinals.

i.

Before you were old, you never walked gardens in shaman skirts, an interactive lilac tree. Now, hair pale as silk fish, you can explain the way a spider web resembles a smile, the geometry of a broken mirror in the alley behind the house where you grew up, and even now, count the constellations on his cheek by a green pond where a reflection of three clouds skip like white stones. There is no audience left but rain in the grass, and it listens like nothing else.

ii.

That erotica of comfort, you would argue, the finest desire, is that sagging delicacy of mortality, when you just don't give a damn if you add five sugars to your coffee, you want someone to sit across from while you drink it, to make you laugh and deepen your smile lines, so hard you fart and it makes you both laugh harder, especially since you were just talking about global politics. When you don't care anymore about silver hair, because you looked at him and imagined the droplet of rain on his mouth when you walked together by the Clyde thirty years ago, and nothing has changed since except your respective pant sizes. Your coffee's cold, because you leaned over to kiss him, still taste that rain.

iii.

Q: How is the ceiling still so white, after all this?

A: It's not a barrier, just a gate.

iv.

You worried that you may be old now, and may have to trade your lilac

for jade. You read about an ancient Chinese mummy once, a princess whose last meal was watermelon. Her people wrapped her in a suit of a thousand pieces of jade, held together with gold wire. She broke her left arm when she was young, and died of a heart attack. If your heart exploded while you ate a watermelon, would your friends wrap you in jade pieces, make signs? World's largest green sun catcher. Under layers of charcoal, clay and silk, when she came to light, she would have been brighter than a thousand ceilings, imperial in her dragon-clawed obesity, her love of watermelon preserved by someone ancient and unseen, but certainly the more important of the two. You wonder if a Scotsman would know how to wire a thousand jade pieces together.

Probably.

v.

Lady, your head's full of earthquakes, and he loves you for it,

strangely. He listens when you wonder every Thursday afternoon if your heart weighs less than a persimmon, and he listened the time you decided that the house was filled with Lenape water spirits who wanted to steal your cable. He forgives all eccentricities, and keeps nails in a rusty coffee can to repair loose window frames. He strokes your hair every time you ask him why he stayed, why he came. He's still working on weather-proofing the left side of the front porch, but his knee bothers him more these days. He does these things, even if he'll never understand why you cry at the sight of mosquitoes.

vi.

You woke up one morning after he'd gone, took three aspirin with a chocolate cookie, watched a ladybug climb the inside of a windowpane, a transparent Mount Everest. Yesterday, you sat outside, smoked a Spanish cigarette, saw the first cardinal of the year clutched against the pale skin of the sky. It'll happen again and again, lady, until the bird will be there, watching for your smoke signal, and you won't be there to give it. Happens all the time.

7:59 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Just when I finished saying I needed to do something crazy...
Current mood: excited

I'm thinking I'm going to join my best friend's roller derby team. I went out to see Leigh skate a scrimmage Monday night, and I finnally understood why she'd so into it. The energy was just amazing, and it seemed like a lot of fun, with yes, a little bit of danger mixed in. The girls all seemed really nice, and while I'm not a great skater, I can skate in a circle and cross over. I'm also relatively fast on skates, though I'm sure practice will help with that.

Plus, I'm bored. I miss my Kenny, and while I see him every few months (this has been a big break between visits, because I've been saving my vacation time and money to go see him. He's already had another Holiday since he was here last. Fucking British Labor Laws are ridiculous...but it's good for us, at least), I need to do something to keep me off the streets, as Leigh says. Lately, all I've done is read, and go out for alcohol from time to time. And write, but even that's sort of stagnant right now, I think, because I have nothing really new to record. And I know, there's always something NEW to record, but a new experience might help.

So, when I get back from Scotland, I'm gonna be a derby girl. :D    

8:31 AM - 4 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Thing I did in a group awhile ago that I liked. :)

Definition: A circle is the locus
of all points equidistant from a central point.
It is the first step, a path on water, one drop at a time,
each mouth equal to pi, or the smell
of an open coconut.

Cut the world in half, or better yet,
draw circles in the sand, you're 16 again & not sure
if he's going to kiss you, just go with it, open arms
another spice caravan up your sleeve,
tarot deck sliding the future around,
or a tired crystal sphere
misunderstanding the heavens.

Examine: a carousel, a compass, the pupil of her left eye
open iris, liquid camera you didn't have to pay for. Crop circles
for the alien aesthetes, cut away the stalagmites,
read the past in all their broken feet.

Trees know how to draw circles better than any of us.

Once upon a time, I knew a circle. His name was Apple, and he smiled
sweetly, with little sharp teeth dipped in cyanide. His sunburn never
healed.

Examine: A closed curve in a plane. An aereole. The sun.

Definition: a polygon with infinite sides,
a small hole used to watch God.

4:29 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

woot.

Got drunk with my dad, again, and discussed existential autobiographical art/found anachronistic juxtaposition with him and others. Told him I still love his drawing of an 18th century Japanese woman sitting on a pile of pizza boxes. This is why I am what I am, I swear.

Also, hung with Suni and Willie, and Willie discovered his love of screaming wildly in art galleries, because of the echo. If Titi Brenna had a couple more drinks, she might have joined him. Man, I love kids.

Okay, off to bed. Night, all.

8:25 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

And, one more. Not placed, but circulating.

Making changes, but can't find a disk. Blah.

~*~

The Geranium Manifesto

i.

So I’m sitting outside a peach tree pagoda again, smoking because I quit

when a fly lands on my left arm, & he’s handsome,

all black with cream

stripes like a designer sweater with wings,

& I decide his name is Otto

for the 17 seconds he decides to stay.

ii.

I might want to be a revolutionary when I grow up, all kitten heels and guerilla lip gloss, drawing diagrams for kids of political spectrums, boiling it down to a tea kettle analysis that preaches economic moderation &

force feeding supermodels double mocha fudge ice cream by the tub. Boredom with the machine has led to lack of pedicures, subsistence or purpose, but a girl’s gotta make it look good. A cappuccino is all you need. Lilac trees hide foxes with heart-shaped ears. Geraniums are close to nuclear manipulation. Paranoia becomes a trend.

iii.

I remember where I was, reading reports like a morbid bullseye with a quilted skirt. Before that, I was in the shower. The planes hit the towers, & I had my shampoo what smelled like white ginger and amber. My lover at the time slept on his left side, so he could be first to reach the alarm.

iv.

It gets old, being fascinated by things like Auden and Auschwitz. I can’t decide if I want to sell out for a dog & a god & some toys on the stairs to ruin my imaginary pedicure, or if I should buy a gun from the corner store, find some Coke cans to balance my ennui. Sensory ideology is so passé, all blank looks & paper thin skating rinks for graduate students with clean

hair and orange juice kisses. I take a sip of coffee and tell them that three yellow chairs in a river mean a whole fucking lot to kids starving in Kentucky, or another black eye on a waitress I know. I want to kiss

that bruise.

v.

Tuesday’s essay, full of grace. Darling, I want to tell you everything, every bird that sings Motown in my head, every planet I bury with my pen. I want a dark room & a corduroy coat. I want to turn our kisses to decades. Or

maybe some imagination, a thrift store daydream of what I could do with a checkered scarf. My chest hurts when I think of reincarnation. More cricket holocausts, or another tired waltz under a streetlamp in the rain,

saying it all again. I could spend my time masturbating, whittle a kitchen sink from the moon, carve an alarm clock from a comet. Saying a woman is an open window is a grave misunderstanding of terms. Is the disease left to the soul, like a yellow dress covered in maple syrup? If you know the answer, write soon.

vi.

I sat in the rain yesterday, counted seven sparrows in a bank parking lot:

One held a camcorder & talked about France.

One was waiting for a promotion & drank a lot of tea.

One married too soon & wished she’d fucked a movie star just once.

One was all about Jesus & roller derby.

One moved to Las Vegas & fell in love.

One got pregnant & kicked her abusive fiancé out of her house.

One wrote a horror movie screenplay & decided over a glass of cabernet sauvignon that she really enjoyed her life.

I chewed on a stick of peppermint gum, just listened.

9:04 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Poem, not placed.
Current mood: contemplative

Poem as Lie

She had sex with an iridescent disease,

called him only by his last name, even at the end,

read somewhere that the moon was a cornea

rippled by fingers, reshaped & sent out

in new packaging like milk or software,

money in a custom stitched pocket—

Jesus as CEO,

Holy Ghost Enterprises, LTD. 

Creases around eyes pretended to be comets,

            Psalms: double down or nothing gained, she said,

            left her hymn book dog-eared on the radiator,

            God: nothing but a comma under a bridge,

            the coaster with the rooster she threw into the street

when he told her he was tired of this,

now, there’s that old possibility of endlessness

in a traffic cone sinkhole, an open eye

reflecting the sky, the moon just

a camera darling wrapped in tissue paper

equals redemption (only if it’s blue with a shiny side),

maybe there’s faith everywhere—

he’s going to die someday,

            she won’t be there when he does—

            alone except for a mirror down her hall

            that’s only good for lipstick.  

8:50 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Not bored anymore

Liz's dog ran away, and so, Liz ran out into the woods between our house and a spooky-ass cemetery in the dead of night to find her. Somewhere in the pitch black, the damn dog suddenly starts yelping and barking and freaking out. So I went out with her, because seriously, that's scary.

So we went out with a flashlight, and fought our way through some crazy underbrush to find Doolittle freaking out...at a giant, and I mean bigass, "it's mama so fat, it eats wheat thicks" kinda big possum.

She'd apparently gotten a lick in at it, because the thing had a gash down one side of its face, and it was hissing at her when we managed to get close enough. The only problem was that to pull Doo out, the way the damn thing was, one of us would have to put their hand within easy striking distance of said hissing giant possum. (trust me, I looked at it, and there was a dead tree in the way, so I couldn't pull her out from behind, and Liz was coming from the wrong angle to get a hand on her without punching the possum in the face first. There was only one way to do it, and it sucked).

So, I broke a stick off the dead tree, to beat the shit out of the thing if it thought about taking a chunk out of me, and I got a hand on her and pulled her out. Liz did the hard part on the way back, which was carrying Doo's struggling, fat dog ass back to the house. I came back, inhaled a ciagrette in one drag, hopped online and told K and Ed about the incident.

Edward says I am now an Amazonian Queen of Possum Justice. Fuck yeah, I am.

8:28 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

One more random poem.

But not one from tonight. Just found it going through some old papers, and I like it. With no Kenny, all I do is write and work, I swear. And read. And go out with friends, and spend money I don't have on alcohol (Houlihan's in the Cherry Hill Mall has a triple mini martini deal that's fan-bloody tastic. They rim the glass of the Key Lime Pie martinis with graham cracker crumbs, and the Guavatinis get something that tastes sort of like crushed up jolly ranchers. Orlando, are these Pop rocks? Bring me my lettice). Now we'll find out if Jenn ever actually checks Myspace. 

Gah. I'm so BORING.  ^.~

Lullaby for Glasgow

If there were a song—

smoke wrapped in cotton,

fly wings dipped in honey,

old men slick with rain,

pulling boots off

two at a time—

I would seal it for you,

sing it in lemon grass

or moonlight.

There might be an hourglass

to fill with snow,

chimneys to dream of comets

or rivers to remember the tune.

You never know how

water is going to choose.

If fish grow feet,

or angels hang their wings to dry

on curtain rods or crystal spheres,

we might think up a lyric or two.

I could sing these for you, instead:

a toothpick instead of a tree,

red ribbons instead of a forest fire,

a cat's whisker instead of a glacier.

6:15 PM - 6 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment