the burlesque poetess(s)

37. The ancestral shell has been lost

(x-post LJ) Crossies, combination of poem-a-day #240 about December 30, 2010 (Bacon Day)
And @popplers request for a poem on Squid/rain

Frying pan and spatula melted
Into early retirement— reservé aux mutiliés de la guerre
Tail-gating scorched to new heights

Roaring pork in the back of a Cherokee? Was it?
Vagabond squid differentiated from ancestral
Squatters, denim-stripped muscular molluscs

Whose travel plans extend indefinitely, dorso-ventrally
What was once the red outstretched thumb
Is modified into a set of tentacles, tension rods

Condensed into suction cups
Rusted to flasks, the kiss of whiskey
And gristle, it’s Bacon Day’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah

Treyf with no rain of Beggin’ Strips
Octopi-wise Dr. Travis has eight hands
For each second opinion, Dionysian diagnosis

Is that those tiny nervous systems
Are opaque after being awake for 24 hours
In kippot or dark water— completely obscured

A post-performance nap in a lap
Underneath a round event table
Even teeny-er faces under familiar hats

Use my Amelia EarHart’s pork belly bomber
For a pillow, we may have to wear two strands
To make it rain, to melt this larder of snow

(by Rachel Leah Blumenthal)

http://locksmithy.livejournal.com/tag/poem-a-day
http://poetesss.tumblr.com/PAD (a mo. !!! behind on archives, ‘pologies poetesss.tumblr readers)

36. on being “in like” / return of the poem-requests, with a twist.

(x-posted to LJ) A game of online poem-project “crossies.” (Poem-a-day #239 meet poem-requests) Take 1!
This is an ol’ poem-request from @jewelpike. A poem about “being ‘in like.’”

You saw a face in that pile of shards
A smashed tea set? By the trash bins
Wind-blown corner lashes (subtle as twist ties)

A painted vine on a lost saucer
Flapper brows, precise as the imagined
Lines between constellations

Last night you fell “in like” with the chipped
Face of makeup with visible errors, assymetric
Mouth smudged into maw

Pupils dilated, intent on the person
Behind you— while you name
Nebulae after the vaguely

Violet beauty mark, become downright
Darwinian, genuinely concerned
Observant of the broken wicks

Starfishing out from a side part of the hair
Blooming for you, the vulnerable

(not mine- loopy_boopy’s, from creepy dolls pool)

*lots of poetry/mlle. faux lit mag type things going on on mlle.tumblr today. Bernadette Mayer & Cate Marvin :)

http://locksmithy.livejournal.com/tag/poem-a-day
http://poetesss.tumblr.com/PAD (a mo. !!! behind on archives, ‘pologies)

35. for @cgleason on dublin and the flights of writers from it

Given its history
of mass emigration,
Ireland was once a nation
which seemed to exist
in order to be abandoned.
(And documented,
as by those in love?)

Samuel Beckett left banana peels
in filing cabinet drawers, the stage wailed,
waited, never the same. Absurd, even.
Theatre disrobed in silence, intentional curtains
frame breathing, awkward emigré actors.

Thomas Kinsella left office Ireland for London,
his poems break dawn with daggers,
Justice wanes before his giant glasses, but
his classes made ‘mericans want to read
the Irish, rustic-ly pine for see-through green.

Joyce? Typhoid couldn’t keep him from vocation,
not even failing sight and Croatian teaching
posts, Nazi invasions, Jungian treatment, epiphanies
caught and writ— even a cyclops in France could see.

Oscar emptied of witticisms by labour
camp, drained of his flair for fashion
-able exits, dreary parlour banter—
ended his days in Parisian anonymity.

As Mr. Fryer commented
on Mssr. Wilde’s final part of life he was:
beaten but not bowed, still a clown
behind a mask of tragedy.

+

by your poetesss

the italicized beginning of the poem/built-in-epigraph is Siobhan Marie Kilfeather, in her intro. to Dublin: a cultural history. picture by photodash

*master/mistress list of secretwitter poem req’s from 6/09

34. a love/lack poem for @lizziekit

@lizziekit asked for a poe-em about love, the lack thereof or the inability to hold onto it. nerd angst ensued?

No replacement valves without receipt

My love is an inkpot with a prior engagement
ring of crustacean pigment settled at the bottom
in a frown. My nib’s gone missing, my voice

is a rust mute fountain pen, no choice
verse flows to cool a sunburnt beloved’s
brow, no place to sail parchment sailboats.

The pawn shoppe appraised my lust—
the jewelry box with the locks worn off
for tuppins, said so in magpie scrawl.

My gloves were made by Shakespeare’s
father, surely. Who else could stitch so closely—
holding hands with roses, supple prosody,

quill fulfilling stage left fantasies. My ink-stained
palms applaud the cruel danseuse, a sparkling bauble
I’d drop inside an unstrung viola da gamba, and leave

behind a curtain after a salon and cigar. My love
is an instrument I let rot behind the buffet service,
grow to be forgotten amidst polite party chatter.

I received the invitation in sapphire ink,
but already pawned my evening cloak
for more paper, my night mind must have
someone lily-pale and patient to confide in.

+

by your poetesss

33. A cad’s medical report, for @Theservant53

(he asked for a poem on “a false positive syphilis test” for his wife. surprisingly this was both my 2nd wife-request and 2nd syph’-related poem request! haha, you kids crack me up)

A cad’s medical report

My tests show some malnourishment
of misanthropic ways. I’m taking steel
-toed supplements, to kick my itch
for booting street urchins out of the way
into high gear. Bronze cog intentions
now well oiled with blood in the gin.

Inconclusive results for my ability
to catch a stranger’s eye, hold it a bit too long.
Lecherous business or fisticuffs? A bend
-you-over a barrel, enjoy the coin, little
pigeon. I’m feeling the silver quicken my
pulse already, I’m pissing jewels away.

Someone left me a note— false positive,
syphilis. And here I was slowing down
my gifts of rot and inkpot, snipping purse
-strings with rat teeth and stealing sweet
evening dreams lined with virgin mink fur
away. Negative for the plague, philanthropy.

+

by your poetesss (who blames Thomas Mann, somewhat, mostly, in part)
pardon the ominous/romance image choice. anyhoo, it’s fun to get back to these wacky requests to snap me out of my self-centered voice-volution that’s happening in my poem-a-day project. but i’m happy you folks are reading what i’ve got. i’m doing a bit more silly faux lit. mag stuff over at mlle.tumblr, aussi.

 » master/mistress-list of AFP secretwitter req’s 6/09, almost done! &now i am writing faster than ever, new-requestees, fear not ;)

32. “guitar hero” for @emb2k1

Guitar hero

Players hump their way through the speaker fabric
using layers of candy shell plastic.
At last! In their minds the bass thump, pumping
lyrics have always been rubbing them through their
jeans, teasing them from the back seat sub woofer
with bubble gum breath and Beatles 1 inch pins.
The radio single always tousled their hair lovingly
and adjusted the stray, mysterious-making, too long bangs
while smiling from the other side of the pocket mirror,
the digital stereo display. How to cross through
the red velvet ropes, climb inside the amp, champagne
room to croon in the cocktail lounge where
all the music you listen to on repeat goes
to have all the teenage sex?

The other side of the Looking Glass
sound system, now with a guitar-shaped peripheral
(musical equivalent of a jelly dong) to stimulate and
simulate the fret buttons on the controller. Don’t fret,
you too can fingerbang Joan Jett and bite Bowie
back on the back and solo with Slash
and crack skulls with Alice Cooper
(he will drink anything not labeled
“Drink me.”)

by your poetesss

+

i took the bulk of my twitter-poem-request-topics from amanda palmer’s secretwitter contest concert at the bridge this time last year, the army of toys opened and it’s where many of you met me initially. those of you who’ve -not- met me whilst i was flashing my bum, being inappro’, musical, loud and gaudy and gosh down bawdy (maybe through the tumblr creative writing directory?), you may not know i’m a no good miscreant in the boston vaudeville vorld, and that the TOys’s cd release is tomorrow night! we go on tour sat, and we are playing the after-party for the finale of amanda palmer’s Evelyn Evelyn tour June 19th. but there you go. this poem topic was no doubt influenced by miss AFP. i remember seeing her peform ‘guitar hero’ solo at sxip’s hour of charm summer 07. it was intense, it stomped on my already-broked-at-the-time heart, i’d never seen her without brian, and i didn’t know it was the beginning of a whole new incarnation of her art and my own life was about to get very different very fast, too. never could i imagine that less than half a dozen performances as the burlesque poetess later wld end me up with the TOys, at the cloud club…anyhoo, this photo is by cbane on flickr of the live guitar hero show with the danger ensemble. lovely folks. lovely photo that captures a lot. je shut up now with the dithering. xo

31. @YoAdrienneKatz’s fabulous professorequest

this is the sexiest depiction of Charon i’ve ever seen, and it’s a bit mantastic, so i’m stoked to share it. stay tuned, week3 of my poem-a-days will be archived here as well asap. and it’s tumblr tuesday, if you fancy, you can tell the world/-ternet that you fancy this here tumblr, too! » recommend/creative writing directory

Artist Calcar’s landscape backgrounds for full-page skeleton figures, layers of muscle.
(- Art & History of the Book)

The literary landscape was overgrown with muscular poems,
and your lectern (the stuff of legend) hacked away at hungover
monosyllabic student replies with the tar-handled machete, humour.

Shaming scotch sweat and good ol’ gin breath into lapping at
the fountain, into taking notes, into taking coins into their mouths
to taste the majiscules and majesty better, Highness. They crossed

the pond with you, your voice. Anything for the Socratic ladder,
the sign of the cross, the signature sneer of a villain we love
to talk about behind the author’s back.

*

I majored in the sound a well-made padlock makes
underwater— a twisted key turning its cog-testines to click
just so, disturbing coral as well as whales.

You took my graduation tassel and mimed moving it to the right
side of my face (the side my mouth curls to speak, to protest this—)
and then you considered the left, beneath my Boop lashes,

the old parchment-coloured Cruella streak in my hair.
Who pretends to adjust another’s motorboard during the dummy
diploma-hand off? A professor as fabulous as you, who believed
the rumours, and didn’t see my flask, the crossed bones of my busted left hand.

30. on space, for @One_Bloody_Poet

i decided to objectify some men. some silver screen manly representations of space, handsome aliens, epic galactic tales, phallic spacecraft penetrating dark worlds? idunno, just being silly. what can i say, i decided fictional snippet stores of information might be more fun than poemifying an encylcopedia entry to-day. i’m sure i’ll be doing that next…ok i hope you enjoy the silly.

Men in moon boots
SPACE:

Where Patrick Stewart will rescue pronunciation, we’ll learn
via scripted Shakespearean allusions not to make poor
inter-special frontier costumer decisions, gills, frills.

Superman will look like a fallen angel as he re-enters atmo,
create a crater without smudging his sweet kicks, his sensitive spit
curl un-frizzed, still intact like a kiss on his forehead.

Tom Hanks will utter unforgettables to Houston’s un
-mentionables. All seduced by near-tragedy, routine moon
cheese fondue, key parties cancelled, ‘mericans glued to the tube.

Howard the Duck (G? PG?) has a surprising amount of tail
feather in it. Playduck before he’s blown into our world via
easy rider Lay-Z boy, what the fuck is with all the panty shots?

Nathan Fillion’s tight pants prance through a world where companion
courtesies akin to a tantric yoga retreat and pleasure cruise run by silky
courtesans makes you think Joss is on to something…wonderful.

Bruce Willis will willingly get blowed up so Liv Tyler can have the
romance, or he will romance an orange dreadlock’d pure being
in a medical pod. Pyramids will sigh, space safe once more.

29. for @lexie527 on Waltham

Waltham

I wouldn’t go to a spa that didn’t know how to spell “pleasure.”

I won’t miss the angry man (my one negative
townie/dreadlocks-cident) at Josephs II.
            Sir, I’m sure you can’t smell me from where you sit.
            I’m in my mother’s mint, pastel, cap-sleeved
            sweater. I am protected, sorry to have—offended.
(Someone had post-traumatic-hippy disorder.)

I will miss the one of two Burger Kings with coffee
milkshakes at 10pm, the bike paths, the river
surprising you at random bends, the condemned lovely
houses and indie movie theater. The art supply
store tolerant of undergrads (to a point), and the jazz
café on the common, my Fitzger-mingway getaway.

Two sushi buffets Mon.’s /Tues.’s to choose from,
Amazing.net versus Lifestyles adult stores—
always a tossup jerkoff tear-jerker banana
split at Lizzie’s— decision. On one hand
I’ve never seen the physical incarnation
of an adult website emporium, on the other sweaty

appendage— I respect a naughty boutique
with a misleadingly PG window painting
facing the moody family thoroughfare. After all,
Brandeis has the Honorable Louis Brandeis’s
favorite pair of woolen knickers on occasional
library archives (bicentennial) display.

Life’s Simple Pleazures sandwiched between
two sub shops, nail parlours, barbers, indoor garage
treasure trove. Would you get a bikini wax in that
strip across from the liquor store? I neglect
however to mention the magic macrobiotic buffet, the
castle, Chateau, abandoned (random) Rapunzel tower…

Waltham, your orbital pull is strong— as your
thrift store is children’s t-shirt hipster paradise.
Hey! It’s Chuck! I know this guy, this rivah.
I’ll see you ‘round the next bend,
Watch City.

+
by your poetesss

epigraph is a quote from a poem i wrote about Waltham in 2006 as a Jr. working with Rebecca Seiferle. tee hee. forgive the uber-personalization farewell, i don’t do it all the time. you seee, this was timely to write for me as in leaving my PT job (for good as of last week) i no longer haunt my old college town, and feel like a jaded creepy becoming deadened to their (second) childhood hometown. this is the first year since my graduation i haven’t gone back to see the graduating seniors’ creative writing reading. i got taken out to dinner by my former coworkers instead. i am starting to separate, a little, at last. well. ahem. anyhoo, there were many Brandeis Jewniversity students/alums in the audience that night last june for amanda palmer at the bridge/secretwitter rent concert. i cheerleaded for us and this isn’t the only Brandeis-centric poem request i got. oh boy. incoherent artxhausted jojo brainwashed writing the poem-a-day-about-my-day gettin’ autobiographical poemjiggy with it— away!

28. “Commuting to make love” for @mikacooper

(come to the tumble for accompanying saucy imagery)

Commuting to make love

What a dull day without tea
and something filthy.

Fluorescent coquettes, the lights
wink, blush pink and dim the deeper
you go. Lashes flutter involuntarily
from industrial fans, a post-apocalyptic
runway. Handrails polished
to stripper pole. You can chuckle darkly,
the third rail is but your emory board.
En route to rendez-vous, re-hickey, spill
petals from mouth, pants to floor.

Who can wait for nightfall?
Sensually electric enough to feel
the static in your pubic hair,
every zipper pull, button hole aches
to be the swaggery stranger
who can strike up a conversation
at the top of an escalator. By the bottom
have your hand at their waistline, rear
pocket, slipping your card inside.

Shake green feathers from plump leather
wallet and purse wine lips as you plan
your next cunning sext-txt reply.
Galloping toward, my sweet. I’m coming.
Drizzled in honey. Maybe that’s part
of it, the eroticism of the play, replay
on your mental movie projector.
Props, costumes, whip, gestures of the last kiss
-ing scene of tangled hair, you can stare

through your bangs, pretend it’s theirs
until the ding of doors lets you
aboard. Check bruises discreetly,
how tender your thighs as you hold
your phone lap-level. When the doors
seal shut with that disconcerting
alien/familiar sucking sound
you’re off through a Freudian
dark tunnel, rushing alone thinking

of that first moment you won’t be.
One half, a crescent moon with a bite
taken out. The arrow that quivers,
waiting to be buried. The red line
thunders and the shocks register
via morse code to pubic bone— the person
across from you biting down a frown,
feeling the swelled exterior, stretched
taut outlines of their overnight bag.

Checking by Braille for familiar shapes
cookie-cutter swells of condoms, safety razor,
corset boning. We all commute (sometimes
great lengths) to make love.
On the train’s springless benchseats,
in basements/studios’ futons on floors,
the bass thump through your mons pubis.
Your damp grip on metro coins,
subway cards, the ticket collector’s air

as non judging as the family planning
aisle at the pharmacy. (One family fare,
you be the kid on the train, baby.) You feel
each turn in the track through your jeans
crotch, the turbulence of sex
memories, solitary daydreams.
And that’s ok— the public display,
transportation’s tantric delay.
The journey ~ more foreplay.

+

by your poetesss

originally mika gave me the experience of intentionally turning someone on/mr. bowie’s codpiece as poem-prompt options. the former evolved into the sexual experience of being out in public totally fixated on a rendez-vous a deux to come. (i even told mika at a cafe939 show when this change took place…i’ve been working on this poem for a while!) well this went through 6 different .doc drafts and i still think it’s got a lot in it i can continue to write about :) i also discovered (after this being the third one) i write sexy subway poetry. what’s up with that? Tubephilia?