NaPoWriMo 2014 #'s 5 through 10 (a long tone poem)

Another ballad of Eduardo Fortunato

    I use the poem to see the floors, ceilings are moorings wearing me too thin, I am bowsprit leaning into false bravado clever, I imagine there is a gallantry consumed by leaping into the abyss, I tie up recorded minutes, I swear by dust covering, I slow grind to forget, I write the self out of view from the new parts of old skin, bone and clay, any waded birth rained, any deep channeled currents and imperfections, any impermanence circled, all the eons spent remembering not to pause, as if any of us might have been more than merely a yesterday ago

    here’s another, a let’s start all over again cause/ because I want to fuck your poetry, your words, I want to silent-purpose your trembles, sharp egg paper your shells/ game valence your empty/ fill burst your kited membranes/ till into your undertow slaves and ritual kabuki…

    I want to breathe in a knave to knight to king of the earth and sky moment/ I want to be full/ feeding on your indicator lights, setting the table, opening the windows and setting fire to the absolutes of the fantasies I have of this world

    I spin an old RCA Red Seal 78 thick vinyl/ imaginary paper wall scratched raw, humid Toscanini, I am phrasing a you inside me, a pulpit, I pimp it, cause it to be something alive outside of echo chambered nautilus turned exit wounds/ I leave parts of me behind/ shrapnel fertile, beneath the southerlies/ I am keeping myself by eating a kept hallucination of you/ we become misty sound/ this fantasy I have of every tomorrow/ you, in the palm of my hand (kneading rise into needing wants, wands and wanes)

the Moon ( I want her, badly )

   late push/ pull wobble/ teetering geometry

craned neck observations

   I whisper things I want to do to her/ what I want her to carve me with/ bones and blades, portal star maps, red shifted spines/ folding me into your blues too/ eases and creases/ free always chooses/ coming or going/ between all at once and slow dispersal

   what am I willing to bargain life for/ what am I willing to see sold/ is my every death going to end up microbial or macro-cosmic/ does clock time stay at the end of someone’s ugly stick/ does fishing with hope beneath the dreams of skins tip our hands blindly, as we search for bones/ what is the common madness here…

it is

    I am caught coveting/ metallic in the Sun shined/ will I be something that asks/ or a soul starved for any piece of beauty I can dance stolen for/ a seed, subscription and slow tiny dying(s)

 

   time happens, to be made up, all at once, by observation, it is thin lined/ time has deep surface wounds and windows and is widely expanding today into tomorrow while re-writing yesterday/ I am also waiting to be/ made up countenances from jewel quiet nights, all at once/ I skim sustenance from what makes my thoughts fly when falling/ eating and feeding mysteries, meniscuses and menageries/ calling the shapes and forms between my theater marquee and the opened teller window, my poems

behind which

are doors

I smooth broken

glass by tide, ass and ride (poems)

donkey and steed

don Quixote and lady Godiva

put baskets in the reeds

while I backwards saddle

another old river town

   distance, it seems, happens when night ignores where it came from/ stamping my humanity’s reaction into weather letters and a language of desperate to understand itself as seen by modernity/ I am a literal now/ a raw and guttural species/ I speak in tonal velvet(s) as I kill myself slow enough so as not to have you notice my disappearance/ I am written in the cries of crumbles, cracks, concrete and rust/ I am steeled by stolen currencies/ black market histories, erode me into horizons and back-lighting, silhouettes and trees, miles ahead of please or be pleased

   I scry, lying with my decay, proclaim it news, by saying, I’m okay with rot, look at what shiny things I have still got to trade you…

  “…trading palms for promises…”

   I hand myself every fortune and escape by poem/ skeletal ink/ emotions, secretions and the wind/ blood stains relationships/ go all the way/ cross my hearts through pocketing things/ my soul knows sown eternities are inside every almost…I call an imaginary front desk…order late bar service/ rendezvous with my lonely thoughts…not a you in the melt of night, to twine with…only a me, not yet drunk enough, to keep the dawn away

  the pitchmen and swoon

for rapture by women

I bought

an allotment

of circumstantial light

and lotteries

I eat the right poison

to reach heaven consumed

I risk life blind white

for colors that smell

as if they once were sounds

alkaloids and dollars

chalk lined outcomes

possible redemption

versus dirt nap drip mined

minor and major trespasses

accumulate along the way

tribulation and trial

by here and now

may be erased eradicated

may become fertile

may become erogenous

solvent with wind again

without any I, having to pass through

the sticky rivers of writhe-worms

the wren wading of humanity

as a shoreline, beaks open

hungry to hear

an oar fish talisman

being bitten, smitten

lanced and poured

its chance taken

by bleeding little deaths

into why we count lives

to lie by time

barker-ed world

gaslight hearkened

seeded taproot indulgences, if ye will

rings around trees are the many insides of your soul

they can be counted on, courted for an analogy

fly-wheeled, quick-silvered with social gadgetry

enticements, wagers, thicker barks

and high angle limbs

detecting the curve

evidence of ash is…

the past rehashed

recollected by soft edging

jigsaw puzzle fashioned

persuasions

“…some of me

might be missing

a piece or two

some of me

are you I see

mystery eights

that might be the key

as I dream

of gold panned sluice

winning by astronomical ticket validation…”

some poems

(are joys thought lost forever

like the parts of my humanity

coming back to me

for another go around)

EJR ©