Nothing like Estel to get my courage up...she went and reposted her poems from the Scriptorium, well, I decided to go dig out mine.
Yesterday
The chain fell off my bike, and in a funny way
When I got out my keys and bent the handlebar down
To pull it back around
The teeth
(here as I tested my icon white hands against mud and rust I thought
of great factories, steel and smoke, and marching ranks
proud Soviet smiles, with bicycles like mine)
I pulled it around, and turned the bike back up
Wiped down the saddle, and hopped on
For a glorious ten yards of satisfaction.
Then, the chain broke.
I might mention the day was rainy and cold
And my American shoes were full of holes
As big as your thumb.
I walked back home
Soggy socked
And sacrificed a driving class to stay and soothe
My icon white hands, as brown as chocolate
Or the boy from Zaire who takes the class with me.
I told him to take notes,
And gave him a fiver for his lunch
And aspirin.
It’s a rainy day
I can neither trust the Cold, Dead Hands
Or that There Will Always Be Sunshine.
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The Curse
'One twenty downhill isn't smart', said Blaise
'Especially with a tall thin black boy in the front seat
Instead of the usual heavyweight skinhead.'
'Driving with Blaise isn't smart', said my mother
'Especially down that tragic road to Lodz and back
You must remember his family curse'.
But I ride with Blaise, in his fast little Fiat
With a camera in the back seat, safer than me
With the big Jew or the thin black
With the radio on full blast.
We always say: This is the danger spot
Fourty five accidents, ten people dead.
This is a railroad crossing, so look carefully
Remember how the racecar driver got killed.
This is a tricky bend.
Blaise has a family curse, or so they say
He was in the car that crashed. The driver in a coma
Died weeks later. I had German with him.
Blaise's brother killed his girlfriend by driving into a tree
On the same road we flew down at twice the speed limit.
The girl's father is the one who helped me be born
'Push' he said to my mother, and cut my umbilical cord.
It's a small world.
'You can tell your mother trains aren't any safer' said Blaise
'Just look at Spain.'
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This is my country
This is my country:
This birchmud and snowsand, pepper and salt
The mines in the south, holes in the asphalt,
And pretzels. Of history fled and revived
Of those gone. Those lost. Of those still alive
Of me and my city, my freedom, my God
A bright coat of paint where the mortar has crumbled
The sulking suburbia
And Stalin unhumbled
The birches and mud.
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Cold
Tender is my sinus membrane
Both of them, as is
If I have two. I should beg pardon,
Biology was never my best.
But to put in perspective the need
The desperate need, blind and supersticious
For decongestants,antihistamines and suppressants
Or was it anticongestants, depressants and suhistamines?
Really, you ask too much, my best friend
My love, you demand miracles!
Mummy dearest, I'm fine. Piss off.
And Godard, up yours with the Herald Tribune.
Who said snow was a warm blanket, eh
Stupid Russian willow-bark folklore
I couldn't match it if I tried for centuries, and you know
Perhaps Norstein is a vampire, drinking ink
I wouldn't put it past him.
What I really really think
Is I will take the whole blasted day off tomorrow
Supplied with soup, bread, butter and a sheet of hanging cloth
Which is better than barbed wire, where roomies are concerned.
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Christmas
Whipped cream!
Foam!
Stars!
Cotton wool!
That mystic fluff that makes me wonder
Every time,
What the people who divide their year
Into muddy and cracked
Would think.
Because seriously, if it's a magic to me
And I've been hearing the scratching of shovels forever
(I have pictures to prove it)
Wouldn't it turn their world upside down?
We benefit from zoos, but I wouldn't say I ever saw a giraffe.
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People can fly
And brave the impossible
And mate on lightbeams
I possess sunshine at night
I possess a memory of touch
That becomes near everything
A phonebox in the snow contains
My most elaborate elation
Which is but a shade of premonition
A flier thrown across the ocean
Advertising, proclaiming, screaming
The life I've caught a thread of
To be knitted into hope and babies.
----------------------
Fox
The fox is loose
The fox is wild
The fox is hunting near your gate
Good man with the poet's name
Set your snares out for the fox
She will scratch against your door
She will bite the wired fence
Good man with the picture eyes
Keep a look out for your fox.
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Friends
Geek me
Shriek me
I sit hours thinking I'm hacking,
Racking my head thinking
Why the files won't do what I ask them to do
But files don't usually 'do' anything
Baby fun
Mattie broke a limb, he hops like
A bald kangaroo on the wrong side of the globe
Flightless kiwi of a cat, my kiwi stayed up all night
I have friends. Sage Stellie, Sexy Steve, Better-than-me Becca
David with a toolbox and five extra years
For my housewarming
(Roxy brought the coat hanger)
I have Hoosier Kat llama-rider, with too much on her mind
Too much on my mind, with another theme
Friends of the one I loved are flying where I'm flying
I have Mat the cat with his kangaroo limb
I have Julia
Trucker grocery seller, postman, office rat
Bowling on tuesday with someone I hug
Oxf*** in a fortnight, Steve went to Cambridge
Shakespeare I never loved, he serves me despite
Hairy MacLary and the moon over Warsaw
Geek me, shriek me
A copperheaded blink would be nice
I have the enchanting immigrant, to thank I have
The Lily Rose, the fellowship, the Asgard bridge
The ones I missed
To conclude
I have a bike
I can't quite write like mr Stipe
But to conclude, I have Chris
And everyone else by default.