aetherianessence

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 19.1: It's a Hungerful Life

“No one’s a failure who has friends”

Sure Clarence, ring that bell,

But what hunts me is that second part,

that lethal, unforgiving qualifier,

and I’m no George Bailey.

Joseph, I want to be,

Zuzu, I want to be,

But there’s no

Building and Loan

Anymore. Just

building alone

in this hunted,

lonesome field

of dead-end soul,

endless, forever.

Over such distance

screams

shatter.

[aetherianessence]

i must not stir the pot. stirring the pot is the notifications-killer. participation in the discourse is the little-death that brings total activity obliteration. i will face the bad opinions on the internet. i will permit them to pass over me and through me. and when they have gone past, i will turn the block button onto their source. where the discourse has come from there will be nothing. only i will remain.

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 18.2: Neither To Be Mine Again

Sappho, I see you

forswearing honey

in conversation,

It’s 500 BCE,

your many lovers sitting

round the fire, agape, awestruck.

Looking on, have to admit

I am too. I don’t

see why you must

rid yourself of sweet

buzzing sibilant words as

they rise, tantalizing tongue

and rapt audience alike.

Does it make you sad,

this honeyed self-theft?

Do you not dare lie?

Poems slip honey-sweet, telling

truths when I obscure the real.

So vivid, pointing out deep

authentic pockets

in my fakery.

Hands write the unseen,

the unheard, ridiculous,

unfathomable. But it

sure feels real, don’t it?

Floats down leather tongue

so thick you could choke.

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 18.1: Sunspots

It’s kind of hard to say what I might be

if I weren’t me. I worked hard to get here,

why yearn another form, another time?

The past is full of perils, the future

is unknown, and nature’s brutish shortness

does not appeal at all. No, I think I’d

zoom out from all that stuff, see all the things

millenia of life can bring. I’d burn,

glow fusing atoms, brightness lighting up

the darkened cold, pull defining boundary

space amidst raw infinity. I’d dance,

a billion years, then die, a nurtured system gone

but birthing newness in my death, I’d smile.

Sweet flaming mother, cradle in the depths

I’d draw my children near and hug with light.

I’d spin them round the room to hear their cries

“One more, one more!” oblige ten billion times

Till age and sunspots end that loving grasp.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWrimo 17.6: A Rumor, Three Dots, Ugly

Partial credit to Derrick Brown

How do I even start again, begin the

new life I have despite this cruel design?

I’ve heard that you and him, shacked up, broke in

to her home, and smelled a rotting thing. The

foul scent did not seem to derail the stars

in lovers’ eyes, what I need to know is

this: why blackmail him into this if the

man you really loved, despite sniffing same

pungent smell, was truly, deeply mad in

love with you? What, we ruined lives with our

suppositions? No, it’s your deceitful hearts.

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 17.1-17.5: Two Song-Based Poems I Like And Even More I'm Meh About

As Long As You Love Me

At the extreme (EX-TREEEEEMEE!!!!) end of the cassette age

two hyper kids scream-belt Backstreet Boys

into Barbie karaoke mics.

They won’t hear Toxic for another three years,

Backstreet was never Back to them,

in this backwater bit of boonie

where bluegrass is king

and Natalie Maines reings supreme,

but Britney and the Boys are real as the tape

that plays, LOUD! as we sing louder,

spinning out in song till we hit the hard frame

of the little couch in the playroom

and collapse in laughter.

Mock serious confessions of love

to piles of air, saying we don’t care,

as long as you love me.

As long as this stays.

San Cristobal

I found religion in you

(Song, not island)

After angstily losing life,

Searching for foundation,

I came upon you, antifolk hero,

sum of bluegrass past, punk present.

Poet of the borderlands of my being.

Guitar chords resounding,

I don’t wish I’d never gone,

because without going, we’d never meet

and I’d never find the strength.

Years later, at Quaker meeting,

I still find religion in concert halls,

shitty venues, great ones,

I see you there, and the crowd

echoes your voice as one:

I’m home.

Breakaway

Kelly, Avril, you never told me

that it would be so HARD

When your voice, your words came belting out

of the Princess Diaries 2 DVD

our family must have watched

till it was etched in our irises.

Riveted, I was seen, and saw,

Longing for the wrongness to end,

too scared to pray it would.

I can’t forget you, early days

This break doesn’t mean I hate you

This taken chance will remake me,

But this change is not an ending,

Simply a finding of where to begin.

Carry On

I’m 16 again,

listening to the radio

on a drive past somewheres

I’ve been a thousand times.

Getting stuck in a creepy van with 6 people

six high-schoolers, for 30 minutes? Yeah,

angst central. I hate Some Nights (the song,

not the album- though little one, it’s much better

with the prelude), and We Are Young doesn’t yet

feel my own. So when your gentle piano caress

careens out of nowhere into my waiting ears

it finds a blissful emperor’s welcome.

And then- layers adding themselves until

a vast city spawns in my temporal lobe.

Bagpipes?- those madmen! I must

Follow them wherever they go,

My life is worth living.

I’m not a fuckup,

I’m just a girl

No one’s ever gonna stop me now.

Aw no,

They’re breaking up.

Welp, guess they were stopped.

Just Dance

Gaga, I feel you.

I suck at gran jetés,

pas du chaux,

sashays.

A traveler without a guidebook,

bereft of fundamentals.

Yet when your music thrums

I do them anyway, else

with militia-grade insistence,

my dance teacher will force me

nonetheless.

Yes, I’ve had a little bit too much-

Utterly unready, useless in this

We breezed through positions

why am I in front of this scathing mirror

without a barre to my name?

Gaga I love you baby,

But I can’t do this anymore.

This moment scares me.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWrimo 16.2: Salad Soliloquy

What acid’s one which mortals may consume

And saves thieves from the perils of the plague

Yet ruins, spoils honeyed fruit of gods

Doom of the Romans, Hannibal’s good friend

When made pure loses color and the fruit?

It’s vinegar, the spoiled runt of wine

That nonetheless some value has possessed

In ancient days, and balsalm-types have flourished

Until Napoleonic days destroyed

The noble’s wealth and fortunes by a sale

Which gave that land Italian secrets cheap.

Oh that my heart stay wine, and cease to spoil

And yet I fear corruption haunts us all

One day I’ll burn the hands of those I love

A caustic, bitter drink rightly despised

Oh may I guard this sightly pearl well,

And not dissolve by Cleopatran wrath

A fortune in the minds of those I love

I guard you, oyster’s child, and hope to see

My choice of goodness, not of infamy.

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 16.1: Spring in the District

In the morning stillness,

the crawling vine winds through

the cool, refreshing stone building.

The humidity today is pond-soft,

and you slip into it like a delighted frog.

Tulips waft succulent pollen,

golden beads of beauty.

As day stretches with honeyed languor

towards the warm, embracing night

a dove gently coos the hour.

Why does leaving feel like dying?

[aetherianessence]

I see this & all i can think of is a morbid version of "Escape (the Piña Colada Song")

A husband and wife unexpectedly meet in the same spot, both trying to bury a body

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWriMo 15.4: Lot's Wife

(prompt asked for a quotidian-formed poem, so I made a conversational prose poem that only occasionally waxes lyrical)

I salt the oyster mushrooms, so they taste richer and more succulent and occasionally I wonder, “is it her?”

Oh, I don’t think it’s entirely a punishment. Sure, salt can imply barrenness, but also, let me tell you, those mushrooms were TASTY. And hey, if salt loses its savor, what is it good for, and all that.

But nah, if it was her, she was pretty tasty.

You know, sometimes we all look back on things we shouldn’t, y’know? Sometimes we inadvertently see the face of God.

Like those patent leather Docs I could’ve used that money i used for electrolysis instead. I can shave- but I kinda can’t afford not to be stylish at concerts. The humiliation!

Or that time when I kinda sucked as a person, frankly. I have scrupulosity OCD, so yeah, I need to hold myself accountable, be better than I’ve been and all that.

But sometimes my brain goes “you’re still the literal antichrist, you should be crystallized instead of her, she should be seasoning an omelette with you.”

And a vengeful God sees my rot and condemns me to burn for millenia and I am chained alone, like a kid in a closed store forgotten by her parents who assured her that they’d let them out, but they never did.

And the kid’s utterly alone and everyone else has gone to their divinely-made homes, and suddenly the wall of TVs doesn’t look so friendly.

And she’s so SMALL and the appliances are so LARGE.

It would be fine if someone would even just break a chunk of salt off of me, but I’m a lone byword by a burnt city, the city of my own damn iniquity.

A city of cold steel grills, excess mocking me, dead Sears Sodom skeleton dessicated, nothing to throw my heart into, nothing, just an eternity of mall corpses.

Fuck, I don’t even know anymore y’all. Let’s have some more salted mushrooms. This whole allusion was a bust.

These things are really good fried. Just don’t think about the burning.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWriMo 15.1-3: Postal Poems

(couldn't choose one, so you get three- stamp inspiration below)

Tin Can Mail

Christmas, 1982,

Special delivery!

I scrawled your letter,

Packed my heart on a container ship,

my soul in a cookie tin,

and went with the last of the mail.

Elated, may you

throw your canoe over the cliffside,

somersaulting-swan diving down to greet it,

row it up as the cans rain down,

and hear my tiptoed footsteps

in your island home. Cracked Sphere

Let me break open

like the Soviet Union,

let my geode gem heart

fall open to fields

of amethyst,

khyber-crystal ruby,

 rippling agate,

icy lapis.

Riot of color,

play of light,

stir and,

awake! Puppy Love

Catboyfriend, doggirlfriend?

Unlikely romance,

in heavy rain,

they wear their love

on soaked shirts.

Dried up at home,

fur fluffed down,

cat comforts,

smiling serenely

all the while, as she

sees lover’s evening anxiety

evaporate.

Punk lovers,

break the system,

dance in clubs,

sing duets,

embrace,

and never stop.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWriMo 14.2: Laurel, Hell?

I can believe it.

Gnarled grasping fingers,

flowers laughing “foolish

child who dares enter here,

you cannot tame us.”

Fragile withered appearance

Hiding hardy beguiling ancient strength.

Bracken fronds pulling down, down below

To the forest floor, as it grows dark, darker

Color swallowed up in crawling roots

On your belly you will crawl

O vile serpent, man.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWriMo 14.1: Oh What an Awakening, All Hail

Beyond yonder hill,

beyond the mountains, stony secrets

beyond time and

beyond belief, I roam,

beyond care or want.

Beyond the bended river’s course i went

beyond, always further,

beyond, to renewal,

beyond, to light,

beyond, to neighbors,

beyond, to friends,

beyond, to difference, every return from

Beyond bringing vestiges of a past gone altogether

beyond.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWriMo 13.2: Too Deep

(In which the writer tortures the meter in a ghazal)

When does one know that they are in too deep?

What does that turning gyre spin too deep?

A drizzling day, news on the stoop, tossed down

 A death, their life stretched way too thin, too deep.

A writer in a Scottish castle spews

Sheer venom, “This nation’s sin? Too deep.”

Report due back to governmental seat,

the cutoffs to kids’ medicine too deep.

A good man with a blind spot shuns his friends

The cost is sunk, and the ocean too deep.

Report and Scottish writer cross the sea

Fuel raging fire, the hateful din too deep.

Well, Phoebe, this life must be lived, ‘midst fear.

They can’t take joy: You’ll never grin too deep.

[aetherianessence]

GloPoWriMo 13.1: Stuffed Shark Saturday Morning

Rest in zesty morning sun,

linen-fresh beginning,

cloud-soft spout of rain,

Soft shark plush at my elbow

under sea-dark covers.

Gift of ocean, take my hand,

listen to that fan, humming, thrumming

like my nightstand’s cards,

shuffle-slow start

as sun rises,

lethargic.

Watch, I’ll

make us waffles

as tulip sweetness floats

through the air and I’m filled

full up to brim

with daylight

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 12.2: Announcement

I managed both prompts

in one, so there'll be no more

poems today.... SIKE!

[aetherianessence]

NaPoWriMo 12.1: For the Intercession of St. John the Steel-Driver

The world is a series of battles

Against latter-day steam drills

And oh, I have not the courage

To lift the nine-pound hammer.

Mr. Henry, lend me your strength.

Eyes fiery, sweat pouring,

Total purpose one’s being

Let me beat back the void

Tempting vale of mechanized death

Swing, swing, swing that hammer

Arms more than pistons could ever be

Brain and brawn unified to crush

The weight of the smogstruck world

Let me forget alienation

Or die trying.