Tag: poet

The Centerpiece

~ SW Altair ~ 1 Comment

They have come to watch me unfold,
sweaty dinner guests with gold lorgnettes.
I, a tigress imprisoned by a glass cage,
devour their lambs and spit red poetry.

Over the soup course they eye me closely in smokes,
horny widowers with stubby little cigarettes,
I, a dahlia rising out of the giant vase,
pluck their hairs and assemble sad history.

After wine they gossip through my earlobes,
bored mothers with their stuffed marionettes.
I, a blue moon squatting in a loveless cave,
kill the bats and begin a new story.

 

Originally published on December 21st, 2015 on my old blog. 

Mary Jane

~ SW Altair ~ 2 Comments

Mary Jane is the girl
who perches her five-year-old chin
on the windowsill
like a small bird in the sycamore tree.
She doesn’t speak
nor would she run across the street.
But she could blow a bubblegum bubble
as round as a dream and as loud as herself.

At tea parties where the floral girls
sit and giggle knee to knee
Mary Jane pours air into cups of brown leaves,
and when everybody goes to sleep
she draws portraits under her swan sheets
one of Lily who is pretty;
one of Anna who tells secrets;
one of Bernice who is as alone as herself.

Mary Jane is the girl
who puts her favorite bow on the bald moon
and lets a lost ladybug hide in her sleeves.
She doesn’t cry
nor would she go to the ball without her red shoes.
And she dances behind the summer reeds
until her sundress spreads out like wings,
and she believes the butterfly in the pond to be herself.

When the floral girls put on aprons
and shop for meat sauces instead of ribbons,
they wonder what has become of Mary Jane,
that small milk feather of a girl
who hopscotches barefoot on the lawn after the rain;
who never finds another bird in the sycamore tree;
who could blow a bubblegum bubble
as round as a dream and as loud as herself.

 

Originally published on December 16th, 2015 on my old blog. 

A Thousand Nightfalls

~ SW Altair ~ 2 Comments

The the first ray of darkness cuts a nightly swath
through our metropolis, the sun bleeding its warmth.
What have we done to deserve such wrath.
A pale star scurries across the purple twilight.
A single mother rushes home through traffic to her wailing child.

What have we done to these saddened spots
here and there underneath the graffiti walls,
which upon inspection turns out to be
misplaced youths and mushrooms that grow
quietly under the bone-white moonlight. What have we done

to the man sitting alone in the bar, disappearing
bit by bit, untouched gin, loneliest thing. He lives
quietly without attachments, like a blown dandelion seed,
listening each night to the drips of espresso, pretending
it’s rain, it’s rain in the green terrain! What have we done

to these driftwoods floating into our harbor – candlesticks
for our glittering candelabrum. There are no elms or songbirds,
only jagged steel pegs and a postal code. Stars plummet
to our bedsteads like death. What have we done
to deserve these bursts of bright lights

falling like blessings, falling
like a thousand radiantly gilded mornings.

Old Man and An Apple

~ SW Altair ~ 1 Comment

Old man, the bite has taken away so much.
Your deformity makes me laugh.
Out on the ledge I left you –
I left you without a hole to hide in, red face shriveling
under the sun’s glare, browning slowly in despair.

It’s not easy to explain the things in your world.
If you couldn’t be swallowed whole like a fawning cherry,
then you shall suffer to be sliced into appropriate sizes.
I’m no god of yours. But I could be a mouth,
a stem, a colossus, or the orchard from which you come forth.

Old man, the blood you bleed is sweet.
Your anemic face stares up at nothing.
Of my own body you remind me –
You remind me of my own worm-eaten flesh, tossed
into the cruel October air, browning slowly in despair.

It’s not easy to explain the things in my world.
When your core grows bitter you will understand me,
until then we are two apples hanging onto the same tree.
Who is this god of ours. Is he a mouth,
a stem, a colossus, or the orchard from which we come forth.

 

Originally published on November 17th, 2015 on my old blog. 

Eighth Piece

~ SW Altair ~ 4 Comments

The rain came ever so softly,
like the cat’s paw, or the wind-chime’s song
sung by a pair of sparrows on telephone pole.

I stayed up at night mending the lint-balled hem
of my heart that barely kept you warm last winter.
Time never stopped passing through the moth holes.

Out on the rain-soaked lawn, an old pair
of faded memories died tragically on the hangers.
I wrung them out while you, love and a raindrop fell.

Love

~ SW Altair ~ 3 Comments

Through loving near, you have loved afar.

A stray dog stuck his head
into a garbage can, eating candy wrappers,
searching for white bones and a mother,
hiding bruises behind his ears,
wanting a home, maybe a long year
of bread and silence, having seen
too much of this world…
You ran home and hugged your pup
who was born tiny as a lily bud,
raised in your palm, an innocent nook
in your summer bed, not knowing
what home is when his whole world is a home,
and through loving him you have loved all lost souls.

A waitress bent over ketchup and spilled beer,
a lonely swan in greasy apron, shedding five drops of tears,
her girlhood, and a button, for overdue rent,
a center stage dream, and endless arabesques,
nicotine-stained face, someone calling her name,
table number eight, two men and a milkshake,
and she pirouetted, pirouetted to her fame…
You ran home and hugged your baby sister
who turned sixteen in a new dress, an autumn-eyed belle
with a nightingale voice, in love with a boy
with piano fingers, who wrote her long poems about seashells
and eagles, and all the pretty rhymes belonged to her,
and through loving her you have loved all fleeting youths.

An old lady went to the market
with a four-wheel-walker, hair whiter
than the cloud, each wheel in place of a child
gone into the world and could not come home
for supper; an empty nest, clean floral tablecloth,
two canned soups, a loaf of bread, three bells
tolling for her day, and slowly she went, slowly she went…
You ran home and hugged your mother,
kissing her hair and lines into surrender, like all mothers
she told you not to worry; not about her nor the others
entering this season, smaller than winter leaves,
trembling in life’s wind. You gripped her brittle bones to sleep,
and through loving her you have loved all greying mothers.

 

Originally published on December 3rd, 2015 on my old blog.

Good As New

~ SW Altair ~ 3 Comments

They picked me out of a hodgepodge toy box
and placed me in a white bed of angels, white-smocked
boys and girls stood over me with pencils and erasers
as if I was a tough one to crack, as if something
was multiplying exponentially inside of me.
The nurse put me in a swollen dress someone’s aunt died in
and said tomorrow I should be good as new, oh good as new,
I wondered whom else she said it to, did she say it to
the girl on the other side of the wall who searched
for her left breast with her right hand, who searched
for her left breast with her right hand all night.

By the time they put me in a tumbrel bound for the guillotine,
I already saw the anaesthetist’s red-rimmed eyes,
the surgeon’s red-bladed scythe. Their salted breath
fell on my neck, as Marie Antoinette’s high-wigged head
sagged over the red elms. It was then that I sensed
the place the scalpel was headed, the incision cold and precise.
If I wasn’t afraid, then nothing will ever make me afraid.
The moment I awoke, a distant voice spoke, the words came
undone one stitch at a time, my beautiful rhymes broken,
my lovely years gone, oh my beautiful rhymes broken,
my lovely years gone, gone, gone.

Whatever they took from me turned, turned its color
under the sun, and I was forbidden to go under the sun.
Still, I ran out of the sterile ward at five o’clock and found nothing more
alive than myself, wearing this gauzy dress someone’s aunt died in,
standing between the mossy stones and a lost bee.
I tiptoed around this sudden hole in my belly, catching earthly
elements released from my mother’s womb, and her mother’s,
and her mother’s, and her mother’s, houses of heirlooms. If only I knew
how to return to the warmth of her womb. If only I knew
how to have her bear me again at full moon, a perfect little doll,
seamlessly patched-up, and almost, almost, almost, good as new.

 

Originally published in Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine, issue 9.

Seventh Piece (Love’s Paradox)

~ SW Altair ~ 6 Comments

There, five inches above your rosy skin, is a hand,
a gesture, a hesitation, a tired bird looking for a nest, my hand.

How infinitely close Pluto is to his gold-haired Sun.
How infinitely far you are to my uncertain touch.

Why have we come to this, darling love!

On this cold blue evening we are as close as two stars,
and as far apart as you are in my arms.

Onion

~ SW Altair ~ Leave a comment

This is not about
how she makes me cry.
It’s not even

about the tender heart, tied
to a secret, hidden
beneath her

white organza dress, unattainable
despite my teary efforts.
You see – this is about

her coming to ripeness in my garden,
a full moon rising
to the high throne. Indubitably she is

the queen’s picking, fattened virgin
bulb, green stalks
soon to flower. Overnight,

poignantly and nervously, she drags
her robe of white mist
in slow waltz, my sweet deb.

Come daybreak I will have to take her
out of her loam-perfumed
boudoir, and marry her off to the gentle

yellow bell pepper.

 

Originally published in Mount Hope, Issue 9, Spring 2016

The Upstairs Neighbors

~ SW Altair ~ Leave a comment

The daddy must be gnawing at the bones
of the mommy who coos, coos and coos
over the crying baby who makes a boo-boo, like all nocturnal families

do, oh they do, don’t they, they do

the clunkity-clunk, the yakity-yak,
and the bibbidi-bobbidi-boo,
the happy rigadoon and a mouse at two

in the half-moon bedroom. I’m running out of
sleeping capsules, my tricolored silencio!
Red, white and bright starry blue. Saviors of America.
I mean, insomnia. No, really, I do
mean my nebulous wakefulness
at half past two.

Tell me what I should do, do, do
to stop my roof from – boom! boom! –
falling down. The woeful spinster clomps, clomps, clomps

clomps down on my papery skull. Why wouldn’t she take off
her wooden shoes? Is she masking the echoes

of the owls’ raucous hoots?

Up, up, up
into the reddening sky
I see them go.

They are all in cahoots!

 

Originally published on October 29th, 2015 on my old blog.