the burlesque poetess(s)

Words i may (over)use.

In editing a new manuscript assortment (how motley motley from my MFA thesis, your poem-requests, and my poem-a-day project)— i realized i use some words truly frequently (at least in this collection):

champagne
skeletal
specter/spectre
ghoul
“red & black” (replaced one w. ‘coal ruby’)
spirals

The spiraling specter of champagne-skulled skeletal ghouls red red and blackening the champagne room with the carpet spirarling out of control vines with the ghouls serving yet more red champagne?

25. for @warkrismagic on Nikola Tesla

“One day the white pigeon got sick. Nikola took very good care of it, but it died in his arms. Nikola was not a very religious man, as he believed that there must be a scientific explanation for everything. But when that white pigeon died, he saw a very bright light coming out of her eyes, so bright that he told his friends afterwards, that even he could not have managed to create so luminous a light. It made him believe that the white pigeon must have been a messenger of a great spirit…”

What if Tesla’s cat coiled atop his static stocking’d feet
and his favourite memories were by candlelight?

It’s said he never needed a blueprint (they’d just get finger
-smudged with clumsiness), like da Vinci, he saw his machines

already perfectly formed. Can you picture him enjoying
a thunderstorm like a candy? A band-aid for the soul?

A silky pocketsquare of caution thrown and caught by the winds.
Is he playing piccolo below darkening clouds?

Oh Nikola, you’re not Mr. Franklin—
dangling his syphilitic key near stars and garters,

lightning bolts reflected in bifocals. Science is a witch
dancing across a symmetric background. Can I continue

to properly shock treat the history books (indecently,
decadently)- an over-imaginative American?

It’s said he was inordinately fond of pigeons in the end, too.
Tesla and the predetermined cadence of wooden mallet, his

claims of archetypes, lordly architecture, and ballerina toes
(at least that’s what he told the NY po’!). Yes, he was going

to bring the Brooklyn bridge down with this mallet, this one
bridge G spot. Oh Poopsie! The mite-ridden Easter bird

on his deathbed, let this degenerate beatnik rewrite the
ostuary annals, let the bird scratched cursive record show

(or if it be an LP, let it crow!) his only love then
was a non-lover, companion, pet-familiar, mirror.

A pigeon who’d come down with the drove
that drove the angry police off, when, hours later the bridge

began to titter, start a tentative jitterbug of cement dust
and not-yet-quite rust. They hadn’t trusted Tesla’s

syncopated claims. And who would believe Nikola
haha! had fled the scene by flying away, hoisted in the claws

of a grey flock, pink eyes. They carried him and
the alternating current, the polyphase Order of Danilo conferred

his citizenship, the same year as the Tesla coil took hold.
It never let go.

by your poetess(s), jojo lazar

7. for @sandykidd & @metafrantic

i was told to write a poem for both members of this dynamic duo. at one point i was even told to include sand! when they introduced themselves at the amanda palmer signing-line 2 sundays ago (after twitter-requests) i decided to give them an alt. reality/faux wedding toast to be surreal, since, after all, i’d just met them.

to-day i did some spelunking of their mind-boggling genre-bending monthly magazine » Crossed Genres, so it seems only fitting that i wrote a monologue/poem of fantasy/magical realism but prob’ly just that genre known as— drunky groomsman! so, it is performative silly. enjoy. i am so glad to have made such wonderful new friendfans.

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A particular pair of trees waking up against the window.
This partnership of mind, and always now
in want of forgiveness… (Josh Beckman)

Let me not to the marriage of two minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken,
It is the star to every wandering bark… (Billy Shakeshaft)

The lifeguards do too good a job,
we think we are immortal. (moi)

Wedding Toast / that never was

Peony portholes. Confectionary piracy?
Surely this is the best reception theme yet!
Raise your white wine from the Dead
Sea. Toast these two!
I’m your first mate, here to gag—
(is this Pacific Ocean absinthe?)
Hear me tell you I love
each and every one of my friends’
origin myths. But this couple’s
sloop has the best manifesto:
No sea-hominid left behind.
They met— The scene— The beach.
They meet— she, shakes
pixie stick sand out
of her pincers, though I could not
tell you how. He follows the caw—
seagull cacophony to this scene,
is he suspicious? Is she the culprit
cook that thought it’d be clever to start
salting the seas in the first place?
(Hawaiian wormwood, you say?)
No, this guy’s rarely supposed
he ought be suspicious.
He’s an angel, bordering on angelfish,
this guy. His hair— electric—
abalone. He’s got a halo
like the mother of fucking pearl
detailing around guitars’ soundholes.
He’s all fins and wings, on all fours
digging her out of the sound—
a steady maracas pulse, flung sand.
She accompanies his song on
abandoned plastic shovel and they
free her other half.

The lady fiddler crab lost
without instrument case.
A romance the stuff of fishnets
and half-hitch love knots.
We know these lovers won’t devour
one another with lemon and garlic salt
any time soon.

6. for @bdjsb7

Hans Janus?

That little letch
could sell dentures to a second grader—
no, braces— to birds.
He’s a cutpurse as rare as hen’s teeth.
Even a hen down on her luck—
one that stopped laying
last month. That fast talker
could pickle your doorstop,
bring it to brunch,
and you’d thank him
for inventing the clip-on
trench coat inner pocket.
You’d say nothing as he wiped
his mouth on a doily, swiped
the silver creamer, and left.
If it came down to it
he’d win over the flightiest
of international criminals
reverse pick-pocketing
a Rolex bomb
embracing the mob boss,
slipping out
the service entrance.

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Justin Moore » {photographeur extraordinaire} requested a poem “about a superhero named Hans Janus.” this turned into the superhero of the undeworld mensch crowd. i didn’t think you’d mind ;)