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A Heaping of Poetry
This is all rough draft stuff, but I'm kind of pleased with it. Cut for the heathens who aren't really into that sort of thing, or for those long-suffering folks who have seen all of this stuff already. :)
Cranberry
The skin is thin and pliable
so it's very easy to get under it.
Once you are, though,
there's that shock of tartness
that puckers your lips, raises your eyebrows.
Is that the response to being bitten,
or is it merely the only way it has
to wake you up?
My inclination points towards
the idea that Rinzai himself has
reincarnated here; he's traded
bamboo sticks for the color of
the harlot's fingernails,
his loud belly laugh
for the unassuming, attractive
sharpness,
dry and bitter and sweet.
This is not something you can
casually appreciate;
it is a small thing
that nonetheless demands
your immediate, absolute attention.
Why I Hate My Job
It's the carelessness of indecision,
of being forced to wait for people
to count their change
or decide what's the better bargain.
It's the parade of people who send gifts
to their loved ones in whatever way is cheapest,
or taking great care with things
that were haphazardly packaged at best.
It's watching them flounder for the names of things
they've used dozens of times.
It's correcting, explaining,
repeating, apologizing, remembering,
and moving fast and efficiently
to accommodate the two-hour lunch,
the mid-afternoon game of bocce ball.
It's responsibility without intimacy.
It's realizing that I am impatient and ugly,
that I in fact do not love people,
merely the idea of loving them.
When I was younger,
I dreamed of being the perfect butler
of great men.
They would admire my efficiency
and adore my good-natured, restrained
affection. They would forgive my mistakes.
My clothes would be pressed, my back straight,
and they would slip secrets between my paychecks,
and I would be their living memory,
their moral compass.
I work for such great men now,
who tell me how awful the policy is, how difficult it is
to deal with.
I can only agree, while thinking
how terrible their children must be
if this is the example they set for them.
Sinister Love
You're a fool to think I'm beautiful,
but I've learned to love the stupid.
Even after I've told you several times
what I know is incontrovertible
you insist on loving my thick lips and
uncomplicated hair, my ashy skin,
my oddly-shaped body.
How could you call this patchwork
of features beautiful when
there are sunsets that set your hair on fire
or movies that move you
to tears, to lying on my shoulder
or foods that make you smile with
the simple satisfaction
of something delicate melting on your tongue?
Perhaps beauty is relative, as they say,
which opens the world up to unfair judgement.
Do I fit in the scale between
a perfectly formed acorn and the
movement of a belly dancer?
What about the flutter of impossible wings
and the hypnotic rise of righteous anger
in courtroom drama?
Place us in a line and I have some idea of where I'd go,
in the place where the idiots would have me,
where I would find you simply irresistible.
The Real Housewife of Beverly Hills
He helps her chase youth
with a scapel and some butter-creme,
the way the hyenas chase
zebras past their prime.
She emerges every six weeks
from a fading cocoon, looking
five weeks younger, delighted and surprised,
though that will droop as soon as she's back
from lunch, where her assistant will tell her
another house has fallen through,
and her husband is calling on line two
to tell her that his bonus won't be coming this year
and it might be time to tighten their belts.
And this makes her think of dinner with the girls,
the celebration they throw themselves where they
imagine themselves as debutantes all over again.
They are forty and fifty-two and thirty-eight and forty-six,
but they're all thirty.
With two perfect children and a marriage that never crumbles,
like the paint on their fences or the siding on their houses.
Their breasts are perfect, their smiles are genuine
and they can run endlessly
from the creeping terror that seizes them just
before they make their next appointment,
that if they let their faces slip
their lives are sure to follow.
Cranberry
The skin is thin and pliable
so it's very easy to get under it.
Once you are, though,
there's that shock of tartness
that puckers your lips, raises your eyebrows.
Is that the response to being bitten,
or is it merely the only way it has
to wake you up?
My inclination points towards
the idea that Rinzai himself has
reincarnated here; he's traded
bamboo sticks for the color of
the harlot's fingernails,
his loud belly laugh
for the unassuming, attractive
sharpness,
dry and bitter and sweet.
This is not something you can
casually appreciate;
it is a small thing
that nonetheless demands
your immediate, absolute attention.
Why I Hate My Job
It's the carelessness of indecision,
of being forced to wait for people
to count their change
or decide what's the better bargain.
It's the parade of people who send gifts
to their loved ones in whatever way is cheapest,
or taking great care with things
that were haphazardly packaged at best.
It's watching them flounder for the names of things
they've used dozens of times.
It's correcting, explaining,
repeating, apologizing, remembering,
and moving fast and efficiently
to accommodate the two-hour lunch,
the mid-afternoon game of bocce ball.
It's responsibility without intimacy.
It's realizing that I am impatient and ugly,
that I in fact do not love people,
merely the idea of loving them.
When I was younger,
I dreamed of being the perfect butler
of great men.
They would admire my efficiency
and adore my good-natured, restrained
affection. They would forgive my mistakes.
My clothes would be pressed, my back straight,
and they would slip secrets between my paychecks,
and I would be their living memory,
their moral compass.
I work for such great men now,
who tell me how awful the policy is, how difficult it is
to deal with.
I can only agree, while thinking
how terrible their children must be
if this is the example they set for them.
Sinister Love
You're a fool to think I'm beautiful,
but I've learned to love the stupid.
Even after I've told you several times
what I know is incontrovertible
you insist on loving my thick lips and
uncomplicated hair, my ashy skin,
my oddly-shaped body.
How could you call this patchwork
of features beautiful when
there are sunsets that set your hair on fire
or movies that move you
to tears, to lying on my shoulder
or foods that make you smile with
the simple satisfaction
of something delicate melting on your tongue?
Perhaps beauty is relative, as they say,
which opens the world up to unfair judgement.
Do I fit in the scale between
a perfectly formed acorn and the
movement of a belly dancer?
What about the flutter of impossible wings
and the hypnotic rise of righteous anger
in courtroom drama?
Place us in a line and I have some idea of where I'd go,
in the place where the idiots would have me,
where I would find you simply irresistible.
The Real Housewife of Beverly Hills
He helps her chase youth
with a scapel and some butter-creme,
the way the hyenas chase
zebras past their prime.
She emerges every six weeks
from a fading cocoon, looking
five weeks younger, delighted and surprised,
though that will droop as soon as she's back
from lunch, where her assistant will tell her
another house has fallen through,
and her husband is calling on line two
to tell her that his bonus won't be coming this year
and it might be time to tighten their belts.
And this makes her think of dinner with the girls,
the celebration they throw themselves where they
imagine themselves as debutantes all over again.
They are forty and fifty-two and thirty-eight and forty-six,
but they're all thirty.
With two perfect children and a marriage that never crumbles,
like the paint on their fences or the siding on their houses.
Their breasts are perfect, their smiles are genuine
and they can run endlessly
from the creeping terror that seizes them just
before they make their next appointment,
that if they let their faces slip
their lives are sure to follow.