[Jeffrey]

I'm trying to pick four out of these five to submit to a publication. Offer some thoughts on where they need improvement, if you would, and tell me either which is the weakest or which four are the best.

This first is a new one, "You Reach for the Telephone." It probably needs work, but I am very proud of it. I wrote it last night and finished it today. I was driving out for dinner (& comic books) and the first two lines came to me. I knew the final thing would have to be in blank verse. The lines about the mirrors had come to me in the shower the night before that, so it all came together fairly quickly. Whether it came together nicely, that's up to you.

You Reach for the Telephone

The city on the plain is a pyre.
Abandon all hope, you who immigrate,
sweeping Alexandrian over Tyre,
onward to the Indus, to the eastern shores.

As you will, let the mirror fog, distort,
all that steam has to go somewhere, you know.

The skies blaze, rage, an oil painting,
a brushwork cavern yawning above us.
We step into the shower to rinse, scrub,
strip ourselves down to the frame, components,
and we spend our last moments washing up.

The city on the plain is a wasteland,
abandoned by all but jackals. Lilith
stakes her tent on the outskirts, waits for us
to emerge, our bones picked clean. Ivory,
we gleam, sickly and pale and white, noontime
takes us a shade lighter, like driven salt.

That steam in your dreams is really thick fog
billowing across the gray plain, tinged with
sea-salt, while cracks in the asphalt are signs,
omens our soothsayers divine, trembling.

Go ahead, let the mirror fog, distort,
giving you only a partial report
on which landscape is the fairest of all
and where you might just be when the chips fall

Abandon all hope, you who put down roots
past the crumbling cobblestones of this town,
letting your veins delve into the ground, but
finding salt when your life needs rich, black dirt.

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This one is one I've posted before. I don't know if I've revised it. I find the line about the painted macaroni to be a bit comic ("low") compared to the rest of that stanza, but for some reason I can't excise it. The second stanza I like because I break up my thoughts for some unbridled cynicism, something I've been trying to pull back from in my poems, so maybe it's refreshing to me at least to let go with some more overt wit.

Odin's Day

Right at dawn, when I wake up
the ghosts around me break up
their gathering. A smattering of
curses as I rise rigid for play and
work, and to affix pieces of me,
all this painted macaroni, to basic
off-white construction paper.

My best attempts at permanence, my
only ideas involve dusty volumes on
academic shelves, or atom bombs and
domino masks that blast half the planet
straight to Hell, my finger on the button,
my minions pounding on the door as they
realize this is more than a ransom or a
prank. My bank has revised their policy
of professionalism, opting to change their
name, dropping the "Credit" and "Union"
to name it "Impact" or "Amplify" and it is
for once something I can assert is a sign
of the times without feeling dirty or trite
or sounding like I might one day belong on
"I Love 2006," my soundbite mixed with
second-rate comedians and washed-up
celebrities, and then there's me: which
will I be in twenty, thirty, five days from
now, with the dawnsun melting into
noon's light that pounds down properly,
graceful yet without mercy? Heaven and
Hell, and the place in between: Dream.

On the silver streets of Tristanopolis, I
start my other day, in the rounded regions
where Morpheus holds his sway, so I make
my way to the bank on the corner of Grace
Street and Clarence Avenue. There, they
wear suits, ties, wire-rimmed glasses before
their eyes, and a polite smile as they rise to
greet me. Money stored in vaults, thoughts
condemned to electric cells, spitting out
reactions and memories, sucking up water
and nutrients greedily, as does the rest of
me that seems to want the world a desert,
a wasteland: eating all I can, drinking all
I will, and when the levels recede, the
hunger and thirst come back over me to
try again. I will be the last man, the final
ambassador of men, women, children, poets,
warriors, sailors, monks, I will be the last
one when the bomb falls. All the powers of
coincidence will converge upon me, keeping
me safe until the radiation dips, the last
mutant sits out of the game for eternity, and
there is just me to rebuild a sand castle until
I drop to my knees to sleep.

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I really want this one published. Of all the poems I've written over the past year or so, this one really sticks with me. Something about its pace and imagery really pleases me. In its own way, it inspired the tone and direction of "Morning Comes to Dagger City," but I could not find a way to work it into that piece (my epic poem).

fortyllan 3000!
indebted to Heidecker & Wareheim

I'd pinch you with my claws if I had some
Hold you near-lifeless and breathless and
Push my way through the villagers (screaming
bloody murder for both the monster & his bride)
Or maybe you'd wear something sleek and discreet
As you streak past me & through clouds of smoke
Manmade fog (lethal to touch and taste)
Past the rim, toward the rim, over the edge
As gray as the pit from pole to pole (oh! my
soul, rejoice - whatever God may be is pulling for me)
The bells would be tolling (tick tock tick tock) loudly
bloody murder for both the monster & his bride
You can run and you can hide and it's all been lies
That you can have one option but not the other
I've never had any other option beyond you
That's what keeps me scratching your shutters and
hallway doors and giving you the "what for" with footprints
that hint of midnight visitors in the garden beneath
your window. There's no afterglow to death, just glory

---------------

I posted this a while back, and have since revised it. This style, the stanza-lacking prose-poem, used to be all I wrote. Now I revisit it to entertain some of those old stylistic demons. I've added a few lines and revised some others. This one is one of the few that isn't written in my normal voice (though it's similar, of course) so part of me wants to see that presented.

No-Face

An angel hits the ground and no one is around to dig him out of the concrete. Meet me at the edge of town (you come dressed-down & I'll come all dolled-up). I called you up and I skirted the issue at hand while I kept a hand on the hem of my skirt. I want this to work, and I want you to tell me everything you know. I want to hear time-honored traditional pillow talk alongside the latest gossip and fashion reports. You’re my first choice and my last resort, the furthest thing from “safe” and the first thing I taste over my morning coffee. Give me the breaking news and all the sweet nothings you can rattle off the top of--I know. I know your secret. Don't think I don't. You won't tell me, and it's killing me (friends don't keep secrets or secret identities). Call it feminine intuition or just realize your little mission has kept you lurking at the edge of my life for far too long. You barge into my office at noon and creep around my streets at midnight. Gala affairs where you're always there -- and quiet evenings where you stand just out of sight but keep me out of harm's way. An angel falls to earth with the waxing of the moonlight and leaves a crater so wide that traffic is delayed for four hours the next day.

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This is a selection from my epic poem. I'm very pleased with the first stanza, especially the first two lines. It gets a bit stiff in the second, but it seems to fit the poem. Maybe not.

Mistaken Identity (Death of Aphrodite)

Shades drawn
by blood and minced oaths,
sun blocked out by patterns of
gray; last glances of sunlight
glinting around corners, a final
glare, sent to wink at me, “This
is the hereafter, ghost-valley,
the old friends departed without
decent burial claw their way out
of topsoil, through layers of Troy
paved and planned with concrete
and steel. Their death-wounds heal,
they force themselves out into the
evening, to pick your brain for
tender memories, throbbing through
flesh-wounds.”

Ferryman, they’ve told me only “She’s gone,”
so I left the Ionian coast to prove them wrong.
Sailed up white waters, heart rapidly carving calluses
into my chest cavity, the fresh spray
playing with my skin, wet then dry,
flesh chapped but eyes bright, a day’s
growth becomes a year’s beard, hair
creeps like undergrowth, smile turns
yellow but eyes point west.

The cabbie sizes up his fare and
responds: “You look as white as
a ghost, but you’re not the one
who died,” and he described for
me (guilt-laden relief mixes with
grief) an old friend I know as Aphrodite.

Chalk outlines etched on pristine
sidewalk chapels, the upside now
down, and I wait for your arrival.

Survival: a tautology for the fittest.
You survive this, or you do not. Each
disaster either hardens your heart or
drags out your chorus of hallelujahs
rising into the night sky, whipping around
taxi-cabs and rustling over curbs where
their fares quiver in the cold, cold wind.

-------------------

This is another I posted here on CGR. It was incorporated into my epic poem, and has some moments I adore. The Lovecraft references mean a great deal to me, no way I'm taking those out, even if wise readers among you convince me to excise all else. CGR's code tweaked a few of my formatting quirks, unfortunately.

The moments before I rise

PART (ONE):

I'll dream about you
I have never, ever doubted you

PART (TWO):

Exposed: living on the first floor, porch separated by
thin rails from the big black stretch of night, going
up, up, up and away, satellites spinning in the silent
sky, their laser-guided eyes narrowing, burning St.
Murdoch to a crisp, leaving just a crater for the river
to fill up, Lake Murdoch, passion of the saint, death
of his namesake. Exposed! Anyone can come, tap on the
window, rattle your locks, jump the rails and demand
physical conversation. (My/your) kingdom for a second
floor balcony to call out taunts to fanged suitors
writhing in the garden below!

Exposed: dietary habits of the stars, hydrogen, helium,
plasma, nuclear fusion. Or maybe I mean the Sunset
Strip, the sun-bleached stars who sneak out to seaside
bars to consume rhino horn and cocaine, the fountain
of youth is formulated in back rooms, meth labs with
beautiful, half-naked ladies in high heels pushing
cartloads of cough syrup out into the Wal-Mart parking
lot. Love potions! The stars crave them with no gods
left to protect, predestine, or save them!

Exposed! Front page. They drink the blood of
infants to stay young, and you drink in their
greatest defeats to keep yourself feeling sane.
Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods
with a Thousand Young! The love gods are dying!

(OVER)Exposed: the photographs we took last night,
solstice, the rites that were enacted on your
doorstep, the thing left behind, the nameless
dread, we turned out the lights and turned off
the radio, and no, we're not home, cease your
rapping at the chamber door, we're under the
covers, we're under the covers.

PART (THREE):

My Saturday is spent at rest, not play, so thank the Lord for a three-day weekend, where I can spread rest and joy and worship and impiety across a longer chunk of time. Today I slept for fourteen hours, just collapsed into the Dreamlands, no one to wake me up, and you are my girlfriend, but you take up hardly any of my time, which is fine by me on those days when I just want to sleep, be a dozen people, traverse concrete walkways, descend the steps of deeper slumber, and number myself among the shifting, shiftless, the dreamfolk, they're never the same twice, I wake up and they flicker out or someone across the globe picks up the dream where I left off.