my writings for the Bigtime Poetry Melt Word Jam 2-18-05

[Doreen Peri]

I do not want to discuss generations.

Not that I have anything against ancestory
or history or archived words or yellowed
photographs stuck to album pages which
gather closet dust.

I am here now and
not to make a sweeping generalization,
but I am here to say that no matter the
generations which have past, I am my
own creation.

Thus, I lust for the
moment, unconcerned with how
I originally arrived.

____________________

I come from a long generation of
sirens and wood nymphs. My sisters
and I decorate the hollows of chestnut trees
with our garments, and when we release
our spirits, our wings become sails.

We are travelers of both air and sea,
maritime journeyers, flight fanciers,
naked in wind currents.

Our solitude seeks
magnolia blossoms to
cover our skin, for we have been
sinners, year after year, through the
millenium.

My sisters and I have been sprites,
houris, dark-eyed virgins. We offer
paradise to gnomes and gallant knights.

Come home, my sweet scented knave
and I will crave your being in a body of water,
the forest, our shield from elements.
Let us drink vintage nectar from a
lotus leaf!

Follow me.
Folllow me!

____________________


My metamorphosis is incomplete.
I am a dragonfly, caught in larva,
awaiting the crown. I pose myself
on a bare branch, poised for flight,
yet nightfall erases the satin of a summer
glow by snuffing lantern light, each white
star, a needle poke into velvet fabric, the
sky, my god, the sky, my blindness, the air
teased with honeysuckle aroma and I am stolen
away by the way the music of your voice
chants my name, my dream to change
form and substance, to reappear
in your arms, whole, human,
transformed by your vision
of me.

____________________

If I live to be one hundred and four,
I would want more time to spend.
A century of your heartbeat next to mine
Will never be enough – my days would end
As stolen hours.


____________________

Allow me to offer naked images,
complete with peeled grapes fed
mouth to mouth, the recitation of wealthy
verse immersed by tongues trading
hot-emberred rhyme. Allow me to be
enamored with petite charms, words
which flirt with mistaken mantras. Allow me
to shape hidden stories by bringing them to
view, each chapter, unclothed, each paragraph,
undressed, each line, stripped from every other
line, each comma, purposely placed in order to
soak in the pause between the exhales of
Love.


____________________

I cannot break away from purpose.
My purpose is to become the tide.
My purpose is to ride a wave crest to
Fortunate communion, bathe in shore-foam,
Lie exposed to heart-rays, play words like a
Lute, violins orchestrated in a symphony arrangement,
Drumbeats keeping time with connective melodic phrases.
I cannot break away from purpose
or harmony, each iota of
Me making love to a stanza,
And when I expire, when nature
Has her way by my demise,
My purpose may be recognized as
Folly or as a trite dream, lucid
As the breeze is lucid, true as my
Purpose.

To Love.
To die to breakaway undercurrents,
To promote the touch of fingertips
To fingertips, to spread a shore
Blanket, warm like
Summer, determined, as a
Sand grain is determined to pronounce the
Purpose of shorelines.

Tiny are the questions of value.
I cannot break away from purpose to
Present such queries.


____________________

I have been soiled, buried in garden silt,
flower petals wilted without pardon.
I built a trellis from decayed and burnt
limbs, arms, legs, hands, fingers jutting up
like extensions from unfertilized virginia clay,
hardened, trampled, stomped, tamped, each
bulb buried live by fingernail digs.

It is the envy of winter still.
I await the bloom.
vines will climb with
room to strangle one another.

spring is such a
luscious time.

____________________

What if the sun decided to
Crawl behind December eyes,
Refusing to emerge when the earth
Rotated twenty-five degrees, Spring
Never again to don a nyad gown, no
Grape skins to peel, no return of heat, the
Circular axis incomplete, never the dawn of
Equinox, no vernal gift, no iris shine from
Beneath lids, nothing but icicle stabs,
Nothing but frozen tearstains, nothing,
No sidewalk cracks yielding even
Weeds to pick, to pluck, to recycle
Into compost?

What if the sun decided to
Crawl behind a February tease,
Spring only a love-threat,
Never reawakened?


____________________

parched desert
alphabet lies
cactus shadows
blanched oasis
____________________

Let us send Winter a one-way ticket to
Orbit Mercury, lift-off to a Jupiter crash,
Ablaze to skim the edge of the Sun until
His arrogance is singed and blisters
Devour his skin, launch him into blackhole
Deathspace until
He is annihilated by Saturn rings,
Hang him to a cross in a public square,
Dare the crowd to plant a crown of thorns
Upon his brow, slaughter him like a calf,
Spring, the resurrection,
Spring, the greenery,
Spring, the garden,
Spring, the Eden
Arising, hearts proud of the
Murder.

____________________


Heather greets a morning breath,
Scents of Prynnecess desire,
Kate awakens sunsmiles,
Cracked pavements prepared to bloom.
We make room for a thaw.
We make room for air where
Vernal paradigms fill our lungs with
Love.

Above, the Gods laugh.
We attempt to discover their mockery.
Humor is cyclical as the ghosts of
Seasons trick us with a riddle,
Same answer each time.

Spring and Love are siblings.
One of a kind. They travel hand-in-hand as
Paramours.

We serve them tea on the
Veranda, grape vines
Draped to blanket us from view.


____________________

I walked barefoot on truth,
pealed my jane mansfield sandals off
to find pavement heat making whoopee
with my sole.

__________________

i have followed the presence of flesh, met
death as a friend at my dor, wore my hair
in glistened shades of grey and gold, sold
memories in exchange for glances of affection,
tested the depths of ponds and floods on lawns
with bare toes, each fresh blade affectionate between
the distance of doubt and wonder, and i have heard
thunder increase on the corner of a storm, a warm front
confronting ice, and just as joy became flesh, i have rested
in the shade of ideas, the goodnight moon my child's story,
revelation becoming my worth.

birth is snipped from an
umbilical cord.
we were once connected to a
universe. today we wander
free, tenderness, the mercy
offered.

i try not to toy with
miracles.

__________


generations of angels have
taken residence in the minds of our
ancestors, their wings marking time,
their halos refracting moonbeam ideas.

they are life-sized replicas of souls
split into an alternate space.
their faces beckon
wisdom and memory.

generations of angels do not
engage in puppetry. nothing is
staged, but they do rehearse
day and night, their voices becoming
our mantras, our muse.

__________

I am a snow angel.
I lie in depths of ice,
spread my arms to wave them up,
down, up down, my body warmth
melting winter chill, wings making
way for crocus blossoms.

__________

we stand on the shoulders of
generation after generation,
feet bare, steady on the clavicles,
one on top of the next, frozen in our own
time, and soon we melt back down
into the generation below, becoming
history or legend, for future children's
feet to stand up upon.

__________


I hear the ancient drumbeat of
a circle rite, rocks on tin, sticks thumping
ritual, rain making crescendo echoes,
a Thunder God worshiped.

In the center there is a fire.
Inside the fire blue eyes scold,
orange wise memory unfolds,
laps yellow white truths
to lick a velvet sky.

I become one with the supreme
reminder of ancestory, decorate
my skin with vivid paint and feathers,
dance until dawn, chanting
wordsongs I had never remembered.

__________

I am a child of the present,
a parent of the future,
a grandchild of history.
I am a documentary of myself,
connecting generations with
a theory of strings, each chromosome
a part of my children's hearts, each
gene woven with the genes of ancestory.
I have discovered the religion of
All Time,
this moment
the only
moment.
__________

If you only had a half hour left,
what would you do?
I would attempt to
reconcile thirty
minutes by
examining
one at a
time.

__________

The purpose of poetry is
to circumscribe the relationship
between generations of ideas.
__________

Some burn a city with words.
Some set fire to a country with philosophy.
Some fuel atrocities with the fervor of flame,
Commit arson until the globe flares into carbon
By a lie or a religious rite, claim royalty in order
To dictate social strata.

But it also works in reverse.
In the beginning was the word
And the word is Love.

Speak the word from your lips.
Tip the stem glass to sip the word.
Allow the word to perspire from your skin
And all you touch will become liquid gold.
Set fire to the earth with the birth
Of Love.

We are a new generation.
We are a new generation.
We seek peace through honest gestures,
Each word, our heartbeat.

__________

Closing sonnet......

Our day today is coming to a close.
No words can e'er be added to this verse.
Yet just as when the sun this morn' arose,
Each moment we are one, a song immersed
In sky, the air, our fair companion gift,
Becomes the atmosphere for share of thought,
Our spirits soon to rise by words which lift
Us into where we touch the hope we've sought.
When sons of generations go beyond
The next to find an answer past the grave,
We seek to hear them speak so soft, so fond
Of Love, the mere necessity to save.
...... These words a meger represented light
...... And with them I will bid my friends goodnight.

[mousey1]

You-all spread the jam pretty good!!!!

I am not a jammer, too slow-witted, too much of a slow ponderer. But I read, read it all. Whew!!!!!!!

[Lightning Rod]

Song for Ancestors and Descendants

Big Grandma was a medium sized woman,
the generations are radiant in their gradations
call it the past or the seeds of the future
it's up to you which dust to trust
which lingual tradition
what grunts and whistles

Somewhere I have an ancestor, his skin is black.
He tramped in Ethiopia, lived on berries and poetry
in grunts and whistles, and straddled the Great Rift.
Big Grandma was a medium sized woman.

Then the family moved north to Germany
which didn't exist then, and we lost the pigment
in our skin due to rugged cold weather
and the angle of the sun. Big Grandma was a medium sized woman.

We were on the run like tangled Hugenaughts
from France to Scotland to Ire
and finally to the colonies with nothing
but a blunt ax and the will to live and fire.

Next we will flee to bubbled houses
on Titan or Europa or some lonely asteroid
and camp on our convictions and science
while we invent new gods and kiss the void.

enron lemurs
barely primates
only stand upright for moments
wearing their lawsuits
like big eyed beans
and rascal underwear
Big Grandma was a medium sized woman.

when my country sat in the lotus position
on, I cannot remember when
around the time the founding fathers
were sitting around smoking pot
and cooking up our destiny.

cannabis rex
like a reptile rising
from the primate brain bewitched
not like glands released
or the bondage of ancestry

Great Grand Daddy owned half of Baltimore
or so the story goes. About the time of Poe.
The wharf district was his. And the red light.

He was a famous philanderer rascal man
had his key in every hole. An Irishman.
Great Grand Ma'am was of stern and German stock.

When he gave her the clap, she divorced him
These were the days when divorce was uncommon
and there was no penicillin.

Big Grandma was a medium sized woman
she lived to be one hundred and four
and then she started forgetting things
like the names of her children
and the attacks by Comanches she used
to tell me about. Curved by age she
still made preserves and potato salad to die for.

Shiva plays a sitar in my genes
they project into the generations
and take you along
like riding behind a big truck
or in the slip stream of a goose.

it's no matter if I'm the engine or the caboose
as long as the train keeps rollin'
a phantom on the tracks
helium or hemoglobin
a spiral to destiny.

my machine gun seed
shot into your belly
like diamonds of the future
rapt and wiggling
the generations escape
and swim upstream
on a chance

the crow can pass for a raven
black headed and lookin slick
but the crow knows more
and talks about it

his beak in the ears of the strawman
unafraid as a gentleman bird
picking up what others drop
Big Grandma was a medium sized woman.

the ambassador bird
scratches for seed
a magpie driven
a dark parrot
with a Shakespearian accent
and an eye that misses nothing

the bird is studying
to be a dominatrix
a wit on wings
where the sun gleams
things are never
as they seem

the guitar evolved from dinosaurs
like a warbling forensic
with no eyelids

this was before electricity
when only fire existed
and music

is it the nightingale?
no, it is the lark
alas, the morning
with its responsibilities

sun ripens over san antone
covered by the cloud
of bird wings
fourteen mexicans in a car
a fiesta of angel crows

there is a beer crisis in birdland
all the fouls are blinking fast
and the referee blows his whistle
the cock would crow
but he spent himself in the night
and once again at dawn

when a sperm whale comes
he comes in quarts, not tablespoons
his swimmers make swimmers
and singers and the
philosophy of the deep.

Big Grandma was a medium sized woman
my first guitar was a girl as well
she gently weeped and tightened
her g string a half step up to Jimi Hendrix
too soon she went to Africa
and plugged in her amp
turned it up to ten
and screamed like
a punk angel of rock
I am the father of her guitar

puppet
strung like a banjo tsunami
or a ruptured hurricane
distinct as a blue norther
and a maxed out credit card
there is a place in my back
where you can put your hand in
and operate me
like a manic mannequin

before I invented fire
I didn't have two sticks to rub together
But Edison was on my shoulder
and I had dreams of a nuclear program

I thumped my drum and drew
right there on the cavern walls
sagas of caribou and gazelle
I wait to rape the moon with my rockets
She was medium sized.

The past, the present and the future collide
as we take the rampant karma ride
just close your eyes to know generations
deoxyribonucleic acid twisted around
a lysergic handbag of memories
Big Grandma was a medium sized woman.

my parents are visiting my children
at the point of laughing at the generations
Janus looking forward, looking back
project the future and remember the past

don't look for the puppets
look for the strings
why do you think they call it string theory?
and chromosomes are little ropes
that tie the ancestors to the descendants.
Big Grandma was a medium sized woman.

[Doreen Peri]

mousey1 - well, "meger" should be "meager" in the second to the last line of the closing sonnet, mousey1 and this is a lesson 'cause god created spellcheck for a purpose and i suppose he or she also created jam for a purpose and so what the heck, i'm toast, butter me up, cream cheese me, serve me for breakfast ... heh... thanks for reading... sorry to *whew* ya ... next time, if you bring da bacon, i'll cook up the eggs, so please know you're welcome to scramble into the mix.

Lightning Rod - the generations of poetry we have created together could make for recordings which could be buried inside of tombs and never resurrected, but hell, all we have is the moment and it is now so thank you for coming to me softly with verse and wisdom and for your fluid inspiration and your spirtual flame.... it is no meger, er, meager feast, which you offer and i am honored to dine on it nightly, continually famished for more...

[zero_hero]

OMG
this is the fastest read I have read?
ever?
my heart in my throat as I scrolled faster and faster trying to get to the reply button after every word...

strange how I stumbled on these poems these gems
I was searching the the underbelly of studio eight on anything to do with a short story by I.B.Singer. And here were these gems off on their own nothing to do with I.B. Stinger, I guess it was in the search que because of the bit about "a crown of thorns"
did somebody say jam

it is easy just listen to the music
and do the keyboard jitterbug

I don't want a pickle or a porpoise
I am the dead
cut off the string
a good thing
I would sooner have the void for a purpose than be void of purpose
don't want no truck with vengeful patriarchal gods
listen to the goddess on the mountain tops
listen to that devil rock and roll
all night long
that's what I am
pleasure mad
jitterbug phenomenologist
whew
was that thirty minutes
do I have to stare into the abyss
a little deeper


when I read this again in the dead of winter
I will shiver

[gypsyjoker]

I found my purpose
I was born for this
amor fati
in a text box

just a GO
don't mean nothing

she was a medium size woman
she had to put her husband out
cut him loose
and for a child of the nineteenth century it was a death sentence for him, he did not live six months
sounds cold
but she had good reason

[silent woman]

I heard the word
the word was love
I heard the word when it was a thunderbird
in a mad girls love song
I think I made her up inside my head

The Mad Girl's Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

[Doreen Peri]

Wow! I used to be a writer! Amazing. What a joy to read my own words. Why? Because it proves that I used to be a writer.

Thanks for finding these and commenting on them. I didn't even have copies of these.