the poems for Poemosity project
Last year, as a method of payment for City of Cold Ribcages, I introduced a little plan called Poems for Poemosity. It's like Toys for Tots, but without toys or tots. Now I have two books, and my preferred method of payment is still Poems for Poemosity. As you can see the response has already been amazing, but the challenge is still on! The proposal: you, you purchaser of fine literature you, write me a poem and I'll post it right here on this website! You get the book free of charge, and we'll all get the satisfaction of reading your beautiful words! Everybody wins!
It can be a poem about anything at all, any length (but I draw the line at anything shorter than a haiku), any style. I'm really, really, excited about this. I don't want to hear any whining about how oh, I can't write a poem, it's just too hard, I don't understand poetry, I'm too shy, it'll be so stupid and bad blah blah. None of it! You're all wonderfully smart and fascinating people and you all have your bit to say. So say it! And don't just write this thing in five minutes. I'll be able to tell. I have a degree.
More than just "paying" me for my book, I'm hoping that with Poems for Poemosity you'll discover just why writing poetry is so damn fun, and maybe, just maybe, you'll decide to do it more often. This is important to me. This is worth way more than three dollars. There, we just had a moment.
Kindly send your poems here. Now start those ballads a-blazin!
Click on a name below to see his or her poem. As more come in, they'll appear here on this page.
Lindsey Paul / MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED //
Sarah Jumonville / THE ARTIST //
Andy Morrison / UNTITLED / LATER //
Laura Hannah / POSSIBLE TOPICS
Margaret Jumonville / DEPARTURE AND RETURN //
Jess Thompson / UNTITLED //
Nate Yeager / UNTITLED //
Steve Pearson / BAD HAIR
Jenny Hays / PHILOSOPHER IN TRANSIT //
Jared Flood / SUMMER //
Kat Griffin / THANK HEAVEN FOR 7-11 / MAGNETIC POETRY. CATEGORY: LOVE AND ROMANCE
Nate Paul / FLYING THROUGH TREES / SQUIRREL POEM //
Javier Cabrera-Perez / A BRIEF REPORT ON THE EPIDEMIC OF LIVING
Lindsey Paul / MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
Each night I climb steps to nowhere
But when I wake I fly.
Through frantic yellow left turns under pacified rivers
Over roads of neglect
Across the poison fields by the poorman's palace and the yuppie's sad yacht
And parallel to the sea of peace.
I wear my helmet.
Turns out forty hours are a lot.
Eight times five times four times twelve
Times a lifetime.
Regret forgets more money and harder work
While success scatters her wealth.
I look through the yearbook like Sonny.
Linear simplicity becomes a system of equations,
A tangle of variables and curves.
Rome said, "If not now, then when?"
When what?
Each decision prevents a chance prevents a decision.
Still every choice is right.
Mostly.
I am likely to succeed.
Sarah Jumonville / THE ARTIST
The artist,
they are an artist of light and dark, sunrise and sunset.
They are old, young, saggy, and tight
(this is all at once, in one moment).
They are family, friend, and foe?
frustrated, observant, expectant?
maybe of the world and the city? Or maybe of the
babies who can see what they are.
nobody nobody nobody
knows their real name
knows their real eye color
knows their real love.
What love! What art!
Maybe this art,
curdling art
confusing art
crazy art,
is enough to just satisfy them.
Andy Morrison / UNTITLED
'Faster than a speeding bullet,
but I don't have the time'
that's what he says
flying, fighting, saving
i'm afraid
for all my strength
i won't be able to keep up
i fight, maybe save
fail myself in the process
it's an heroic choice
i'd like to say i make it
for the benefit of all i help
but really, it's for the glory
the sense of doing something others can't
and maybe sacrificing myself in the process
i'm a hero
i hope
LATER
ow.
what was that?
it's what success feels like, i guess
i was vain, thought i could work hard
and get smart
thought i could save Deonta, and Tony,
and Akeem
a full year
plus two days after I arrived
and here i am
now it's time to ride in the passenger seat
i watch out the window
and wonder
did i really just . . ?
holy shit i did.
Laura Hannah / POSSIBLE TOPICS
a poem in exchange for an heidelberg stahlfolded take on minneapolis minnesota. city
and boy both near and dear to me. good for you Jack, really, but poetry?
i hate you.
i should've worn my patched-elbow sweater. positioned at a corner table of the looney
bean. head in hand, pen to paper. duke of earl in a mug that horribly clashes with my
personality. What to write about?
possible topics:
personal growth - that spiderplant looks so much healthier than mine at home. perhaps it
prefers coffee soaked air and gossip filled corners to full sun and water. is there a
metaphor there?
too poetic.
purpose - thus far my legacy sadly consists of one red door and one-hundred daffodil
bulbs. be the change. i should situate myself below a picket sign, between a tree and a
dozer, beneath the white house steps, behind which cause?
too open ended.
nurture - my mother appeared on the other side of the mirror this morning. i find myself
agreeing with her more and being drawn to mismatched shoes. perhaps i should cut back
on the your-mom jokes?
too personal.
love - i worry the decisions i'm not making are the wrong ones. we should have had a
chance. he shouldn't be so sure. i'm craving a real connection, but peanut butter
ice-cream will do. is the color of that bridesmaid dress designed to make me look single?
too sex-in-the-city.
memories - spread out like seeds to the wind connected by inside jokes and framed
doubles. we are searching for a passionate sense of our potential. City of Cold Ribcages
on our shelves to inspire and encourage us. good for you Jack, really. for your poetry,
i love you.
Margaret Jumonville / DEPARTURE AND RETURN
Departure and return mark my months.
Their schedules are earmarked pages in my book of days; life's rhythm, marked by corners folded down,
By airport rendezvous,
By beds newly blanketed,
By grocery lists of increasingly pure foods,
By phone calls to the old one,
By smiling answers to neighbors' questions,
By reminders of morning silence,
By silence in conversation,
By silence, as we listen to strong proclamations, formed by places not seen and persons not met,
By knowing with certainty that they, who were always other, and are now truly other to us,
have always been departing.
Jess Thompson / UNTITLED
Faster... now.
I crave the coming rupture of this tedium.
Quicken every breath.
Drown every smothering image,
every sliver of pain,
every panic of uncertainty,
every dullingly sensible thought throbbing in my brain.
When will something happen?
My heart beats too sluggish to know.
Slower... please.
Dear God, it feels so painfully good.
Cripple its passing.
Solidify every sensation,
every pulsing moment,
every tingle of anticipation,
every electronic ripple of excitement quivering across my skin.
Has something happened?
My heart beats too rapidly to remember.
Nate Yeager / UNTITLED
In a sea of possibilities,
I chose the strip mall
because I liked the way
the misty fog
interacted
with the lights
of the parking lot
after I dropped you off,
one night in June.
Steve Pearson / BAD HAIR
A haircut? Why?
Damn the hair cuttery. This ain't the 80's.
They're all grinning gremlins,
Promising years of women and magazine ads,
Only to sell you three months of embarrassment for 13 bucks.
I don't understand
How I got duped.
Perhaps it was the subtle smile of the lady at the reception desk.
She seemed to indicate
That I would be hers forever,
If only my brown locks were three inches shorter.
Damn my naivete.
Jenny Hays / PHILOSOPHER IN TRANSIT
He got on the no. 6 at 48th
He had a thick hardback- tattered at the edges, large enough to be the complete works-
The cover worn from years of reading and rereading.
If you opened it, years of post its and pages of notes would fall into your lap-
Margins filled with musings readable only to him.
He set the volume on the seat next to him- never fully taking his off of it.
The other people on the bus were too preoccupied with wasting their brains on trashy magazines, i pods, and text messages to notice him.
To the untrained eye, he was a dirty old man.
He wore tevas
His feet thick with callous, cracked, dry and dusty-
Clothes stained and torn
Dirty fingernails
Silver hair- long and wavy- it looked as if it had just recently slid from the top of his head down to the sides- leaving a patch of shiny skin behind.
His face was wrinkled with age
His eyes were young and alive
He stared out the window- never taking his eyes off the world outside,
His look was intense.
I looked out the window thinking I might be missing something exciting.
Nothing.
The same old graffitied, deteriorating sidewalk, gutter trash city
He saw more, I could tell.
He was happy, a half smile parting his lips the whole ride- privileged- elated to be taking in such views.
He had a secret. The meaning of life? No, too cliche
Suddenly something moved him to pull the cord.
He got off at 39th
He stood smiling at his surroundings- book in hand.
I thought about yelling, "what's your secret?" out the window- to which, I imagined, he would wink and simply reply, "don't worry", cracking a half smile as we parted.
Jared Flood / SUMMER
her breath
a grass stained sponge
again dawns a drape of blue-black silk
a sumi sinew of summer dusking
they all call it
"evening"
but I know
what it really is.
Kat Griffin / THANK HEAVEN FOR 7-11
midnight cravings
cravings only last 20 minutes but I don't wait.
digging the couch for spare change
do we have enough?
headlights alone find destination
warmth of neon lights.
sweet and cold
brainfreeze.
sugar and ice
oh so nice.
MAGNETIC POETRY. CATEGORY: LOVE AND ROMANCE
rise
to
worship
explore
arm
on
cheek
throat
finger
red
tongue
linger
skin
glistens
champagne
lips
delicious
be
here
plunge
remember
Nate Paul / FLYING THROUGH TREES
When time permits, I fly through trees,
In winter, on snow; in summer, dirt.
I dent helmets, scrape elbows, ding boards, bend bikes.
Best case, I hurt the next day; worst case, instantly.
The rest of the time, I fly through books,
(made, perhaps not coincidentally, from trees)
Turning pages, by necessity, faster than I'd like.
Best case, my brain hurts the next day; worst case, not at all.
All this flying through trees makes me wonder...
Which is reality, and which is escape?
SQUIRREL POEM
This is a tale of next-door neighbor squirrels who number three
They live by my apartment in a tall and weathered tree
Neither squirrels nor I know just what sort of tree it be
(that doesn't seem to bother them, so it won't bother me)
I have named these squirrels in residence next-tree to me
One is Fat, the second Stupid, and the third Lazy
I gave them names while watching them from my balcony
And here I'll try to introduce to you these squirrels three
Fat is, very simply put, the fattest squirrel I've seen
So big he opts for level ground instead of climbing trees
He's always eating something, his girth reminding me
To keep close tabs on the dimensions of my own belly
Stupid is a silly squirrel, as squirrels do tend to be
His actions are erratic; he moves spasmodic'ly
Running this way, dashing that, leaping tree to tree
Who's had more fun when the day is done: him or me?
Lazy spends the daylight hours loafing in the tree
He rarely moves except to follow migrating sunbeams
And as I race through life, meeting deadlines, paying fees
I sometimes stop and wish that he were I, and I were he.
Seasons pass and I keep tabs on neighboring squirrelly three
And they are well-positioned to be keeping tabs on me
Sometimes I start to wonder when I see them in their tree
Exactly what do Fat, Stupid and Lazy think of me?
Javier Cabrera-Perez / A BRIEF REPORT ON THE EPIDEMIC OF LIVING
I love you says the man who runs upstream
at five in the morning yelling for help.
I love you, she says and you try to shake it
off, but you realize that the shouldertip
is broken. Before the sunrise, you are an antelope.
Brownian motion, they say--move around the room,
searching for a light source closer than Venus.
Move around the room and you might still
hear the kiss of a shadow with wings, levitating
slowly. Some call it Providence or Progress
but we both know it's my dead brother, feeling
inside of my chest for his own flesh and marrow,
light-headed bones, all things that exist but we cannot
explain to the cynics. We are stereoisomers,
I told you, molecules made of the same atoms
but mirror images of each other--
we shine polarized light in opposite ways,
so that when I wake up with the hunger of poems
bouncing in my stomach like hydrophobic stars,
you are sleeping in North Dakota, Wyoming, Arizona
trying to understand what makes us hollow boned
and brittle. Cynicism, I tell you, it's like arsenic,
vinegar, salt and humoral immunity: we ingest
sarcasm like arsenic, like the kings, slowly building
a resistance to poison, slowly pressing their ears
against their beating chest, watching it slowly gain
electric bile in the heart, refusing to believe that there is
a cure for splitting the atom (the residues of this
experiment are too much for them to consider. What
happens when you split an atom? There's nuclear
waste, radioactivity that leaves our soul burning alive).
"The world isn't built for us," you'd tell me, and I'd say
"You're lovely, like the aurora." You have a lovely, heavy heart,
and he kept a knife by the bed and told you it was sharp.
He kept hitting the walls and told you next time
it's going to be your face. And you stayed, your heart
trying to go on by building mathematical models.
It would be easy to end our story here, a heartbeat skipping
but there are things that we cannot avoid, you and I, some
too dark and too obscure to be told as a bedtime story.
You go on, "Rimbaud must have left his fingers in the sand--
he must have kept that inkstone of light around,
churning in his guts when he stopped writing at nineteen."
you are 27 and lost in the center of all centripetal
forces and gravity, your own soul counteracting them,
the poets are telling you about the Spanish inquisition,
begging for another color of paint and antibodies.
"The world isn't for us," you repeat. "You've got to jump
into water sources with your hypocrisy hung from a tree.
You've got to have the sarcasm and the poems rewritten."
Yes it is, yes it is. I'm telling you, move around the room
and try to find my missing heart.