the burlesque poetess(s)

poem-a-day week24 “Delicate deli inappropriacy in ascots & bowlers”

October 11-17, 2010 week24: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
http://locksmithy.livejournal.com/tag/poem-a-day
http://poetesss.tumblr.com/PAD

(re-demonstrating how not to stash money your first day of busking in broad daylight)

164. October 15, 2010 (fri. rain’d out buskin’ lead to Brookline flyering/debauchery)

Desire is matched by
The distant rhythm
Telegraph the breast
This tasteless catechism
An anxious calm

There will be no copper jingling
As it tumbles out of hat, hair
Loosened into small change
Twisters as our tips rain onto

Boutineer, bound breast, sidewalk
Stage too damp in this Oh, Boston
Storm means roaming Friday night

In flapper cape, in character to flyer
Flaunt kamikaze song at the Jewish
Neighbourhood’s sex shoppe?

Let me regale you with linen napkins
And kugel samplers- delicate deli
Inappropriacy in ascots & bowlers:

Nearby hospice patron
Speaking at a Friday night volume
In a rather rowdy restaurant

We normally love the place
But it’s just TOO LOUD tonight
Repeated to waiter, manager, busboy

Until we finally notice
Their untouched soup and wine
(If we’d been fastier ruffians

We’d have pounded it and toasted
Them L’Chaim! on their way out)
You can’t kick Semitic gem’d gesticulations

And youthful jazz hands out of a booth
For being queer(ly dressed) and bubbly as greps
Water, giggling animatedly ‘bout fisting

In cartoon voices vaudeville bespeaks
Folks rather spiffed up, you can’t point us out
As those rough lookin’ teens with silver topped canes

Lesbros in chimney spout tophats! The one with
The nose ring and monocle! Tattoos and cuff links!
It’s how the boisterous/bourgeoise

Get away with any everything
Isn’t it? Starched & collar’d delinquents
Matzo ball robber barons

Of your calm soup and crackers evening
Paying customers as pretty as we
“Get away with” enjoying ourselves, entertaining
Anyone warm-blooded as bouillon broth

(top italics are ‘poems by removal’ i wrote via The Passionate Life)

the rest of the poems li(v)e below!

Read More

22. @mousecanttweet suggested ‘on the tyranny of dreams’

Dreamemories of wish fulfillment anxieties

(1)
Not far from Grandpa’s shroud-like hammock, tadpoles
suckle, nibble the proud new dock into the crick.
It all flows into Lake Ontario, where if you find
the exact center you’ll also find Elvis fishing—
Johnny Cash measuring the catch, holding the pills.

(2)
The Nile unrolls slowly, costume shop gold snakes
around every drunk Cleo’s arms cannot compare
to the cocaine thrill of your brains dripping discreetly
onto sacred slab. The Jackal takes your heart
to start your tab, serves you a shot on the house.

(3)
Like the Titanic’s gaping underside, you smile
brightly as a gaslit chandelier too close to the curtains.
Bride enters stage-right (even if the lacey train
threatens to rip clean off), the band plays on
the freshly repainted slats. Every performance

death-defyling decadent as the last.
You press silk thigh-highs, then thighs together
(imaginary bladder pressure). No life preserving
lines to forget when you have lemon drops— improvise.
And should a puddle appear beneath suede heels,
blame the useless New Money— caviar in steerage.

In your doze you sense a woolen suit
ghoul— Freud stands over where you lay
sleep-talking. He holds a pistol, worries a fountain
pen, your childhood puppy’s collar, and a blank
expression of exasperation on his notepad.

Too many symbols! he complains,
and pulls long and hard on his cigar.
Too many objects to explain away, he says,
and pulls long and hard on the cigar
ashes in his beard. You are so sorry
to have disappointed him.
You wake up.

(And what to tell your analyst?)

+

by your poetess(s), jojo lazar

trying to break my over-verbose/spend too much time between writing initially and sharing habit (yay for the poem-a-day flow!) and being a bit sillier in these again. and by silly, i mean thinks too much auto-referential child of a psychiatrist writing poems about “dreaming on the couch” so to speak. geesus i’m a nerrrdface. i hope you enjoyed it though mouse one! (i may go back into it probably definitely and make more/longer of it)

bonus poetry fodder from: this Freud article, and jumpstart on form from this Ashbery poem.