Taylor514ce poetry

Prose

The Passion of the Crust

Ol' Harv first noticed Vera at the pie eatin’ contest at last year’s county fair. Folks had always told him he had a good eye for livestock, and he nearly choked on his hog call when he caught the glare off her sweaty bosom as she came up outta’ that cherry pie for breath. He’d won the hog call championship three years a-running, but the way she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, flinging cherry filling and pie crust away into the shimmering summer air, plum took his breath away. Harv’s mind cast back to that day as he and Vera made love on the bathroom floor. The sound of her love-slick backside as it squeegied across the linoleum, put all his hog-calling efforts to shame, he thought, panting.

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“The romance is just gone”, wept Peg to her cousin Vera. “We never even do it anymore. The closest I get to romance is checking him for tics. He goes out ever’ night, and I just know he’s down at The Wet Spot (‘does your Mama still dance there, V?’ ‘No, not since her hip replacement’) and I just don’t know what to do. I mean, he’s no champion hog-caller”, Peg pauses to dab her eyes and blow her nose, as Vera blushes a particularly porcine shade of pink, “but he’s all the man I got. How do you and Harv keep the fires stoked-up? Why you’re always at each other. They don’t make these double-wides like they used to – we can hear you two, especially when the dogs get to howling”.

“You just got to keep it spicy. Mix things up, Peg. A man likes variety”, says Vera. “Why don’t you surprise him, play dress-up? You could play ‘Hooter’s Girl and the Traveling Salesman’ or ‘Babysitter and the Pizza Pie Delivery Boy’”.

“Which delivery boy? You mean my nephew Joey? Oh… I don’t think Hank’d go for that", said Peg, with a faraway look in her bleary, close-set eyes.

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VERA lay unresponsive beneath him. Beneath, above, beside… our grammar wasn’t built for space, thought Harv. Another thought: no time for stray thoughts, focus, Harv, focus. The Venus-Earth Relay Antenna – regardless of its spatial relationship vis-à-vis the General Communications utility ship Kala Mari - shouldn’t be unresponsive. Harv knew the background noise in his mind was a defensive reaction, a nervous tic meant to fill the void of this silence. A silence so disturbing, so total, that he’d been forced out of his “administrative leave” to investigate. Harv knew VERA with a thoroughness bordering on intimacy, but another thought now bubbled to the crust of his consciousness: I'm looking at a corpse.

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From “User Poetry”

Age of Boys

Once upon a time, Boys ruled the Earth,
and the power of flight was attained
through bikes and scrap-wooden ramps.
(The True Believers could achieve much more,
hawk-riding thermals above the street lamps,
dangling from their Levi's jean-jacket sleeves.)

Sorcerers were clad in magic sneakers,
imbued with the ability to run faster,
jump higher, than the mortal neighbor brats.
Oh, Talisman of Power, the red sport logo!

Horrific weapons of warfare were crafted
from scrap lumber, tin pails, and dirt.
Holy Wars raged through eternal Saturdays;
resurrections of the Righteous
and the Unrighteous as even the slain
were called to dinner.

Loyalty was sworn in blood and spit,
bravery and cowardice revealed during
The Ritual Climbing of Mr. Miller's Trees.

Boys spoke all the Animal Tongues:
language of Toad and Salamander,
Robin, Crow, and Lower Dog.

They lived in the woods, their days
a meander along old Indian trails
and the muddy creekbed of the Amazon.

Then in sudden cataclysm
the Age of Boys was over
(a new species was the cause).
Scholars now study that ancient world,
that primitive time,
before the Age of Girls.

Age of Boys, by Taylor514ce

I derive much satisfaction
from passive emotifaction
    my nouns are all mozzled
    because I'm half sozzled
and looking for some action

NAP-TIME

Just after lunch, when the paper plates and crumbs have been cleared from the table, the hands and plastic cups scrubbed clean, visits to the bathroom negotiated, comes the drowsy afternoon, tucked snug between the sheets in the amber-lit, blue-walled bedroom.

Quiet conversations, whispered at the border of perception, shuffle over the morning's debris: the menagerie loosed upon the ruins of block cities, toy metal cars screaming away from the confusion, storybooks piled in a riot of twisted pages and plot lines.

As the house creaks and settles into the slumber of regular breathing, the afternoon descends into the pages of my poems. Nap-time: morning's chaos woven into measured dreams; frozen stories, flickering eyes, fingers dancing on the keys.

nap-time...
childrens' voices
echo through the vents

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So you eat but not sleep, I see, I see! I drink but don't think (I pee, I pee!) What a pair we would be on the streets of Paris eating and drinking all night, mais oui!

Margins, by Taylor514ce

Tonight I'm browsing the "Selected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson" - "Isaac and Archibald", probably my favorite poem. I've always had an affinity for old men - I often think of old men I've known, the unplumbed depth of their meaningful silence. When E.A.R. writes of the "small boy's adhesiveness / To competent old age", I recognize the feeling.

This copy of the book is secondhand. It's been studied; the margins have penciled notations, a few of the stronger assertions in ink. I like to draw my own meanings from the poems, but take pleasure in the insights left behind. From time to time I add my own marginalia to the pages. I imagine this book making its way to others. I want to write something profound, but settle for a few smiley faces.

on the library steps
the blowing leaves
of a book

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Do you remember
when we said goodbye outside
behind your house?
Afterwards, we spent two hours
trying to find these earrings.

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grey squirrels' winter dreys
punctuate
my morning drive

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through the kitchen window
neighbor's young wife...
clouds cover the moon

A Farmer, A Barn, Some Animals

There was a farmer whose barn
got smashed down by some hail,
so he built a brand new barn
and he built it very well.

His name was ManWhoTakesCareOfAnimals
'cause that is what he did
and the animals all loved him
and did everything he said.

The animals were so happy!
The went outside to play.
They took a very red ball
and played with it all day.

They put it in their mouths
and spit it out real fast.
That's how animals play catch
since they don't got any hands.

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Ths pg is 2 dmn small, my wrting gets all sqshd
How cn I write half the wrds
I wnt to write, it's absrd
But if I hd what I wshd
This pg'd be as big as T H I S
Jst to me has ths occrd?
Ths pg is 2 dmn small!

Jst imagn wht u hav missed,
all the things u havnt heard,
the suble thghts I've infrred
You'll nver see, cuz (I'm pssd)
This pg is 2 dmn small!

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Traveling through a fabled land,
seeking the answer to karma
I heard stories of a holy man
who knew all the laws of dharma.

He lived atop a secret mountain,
the trail was hidden from sight,
beside a glittering fountain,
chanting mantras through the night.

I followed dreams and avatars
until at last I found the way.
He listened to me strum my guitar
as I wondered what he would say.

He opened his mouth to speak, 
perched on that mountain crown,
and said in a voice tired and weak,
"Thank God. Could you show me how to get down?"

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driving to work
I swerve to miss the 
twice-squished squirrel

Self-Portrait

Cruising through downtown in a '67 Chevy pickup, finger-snapping each stoplight green, bellowing "Sweet Baby James" out the won't-stay-rolled up window, while the burned-out dash bulbs, like polished hematite, rattle out the hole in the floorboard; dressed in denim and stubble, my head turning to follow brunettes in heels, those pretty office girls clickety-clacking their way through pigeons and the leers of fellow aficionados, I park in brick-paved alleyways with the engine idling to hoof it into bookstores, asking after periodicals to be told "no", leaving with smiles and backfire.

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cosmic rays --
celestial dice rolls
through my system

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gooseasonorouskies

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A penguin dressed like a nabob
who goes by the name "pilobob"
took a stab at a verse
it could have been worse
all-in-all a very good job.

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Our scholarly gal Patricia
While traipsing through Galicia 
Paused in a nook
To sit with a book
I'm sure your friends all missed ya.
As her partner snapped a picture. <-- that rhymes in Chicaco

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That's a scathing generalization
for I, without hesitation
would rather girl watch
or drink a fine Scotch
than discuss angles of polarization

The Stapler Incident

J, don’t ask me how, stapled his finger. No one was paying any attention, and he ain't sayin'. Our first clue was things went quiet. Nature hates a vacuum, right, and the silence made us all look at once. The look on his face, man, like he couldn't believe it, a how the hell expression, plain as day. Then the pain must've set in, 'cause he started this low moan. It built up slowly to a full-on freak-out, with him yelling god jesus god jesus and flopping the hand around with the whole damn stapler still attached like a fish on a hook.

So we couldn't help it, we were rolling. I’ve never heard R laugh like that. Like it hurt, with tears streaming down his face, a full five breathless seconds between spasms of oooh-oooh-oooh real high-pitched. K was trying to help but couldn't and just kept yelling hold still hold still with his hands spaced out around J's like a levitating trick, J's hands gyrating in-between. He got the staple out eventually.

Now and again one of us would start a stifled little laugh, within five seconds we're all wiping tears with J trying hard to be pissed in between laughing himself. Rest of the day we find excuses to ask for the stapler.

in the middle
of anything, anywhere
helpless grin

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Her eyes
trapezoidal 
blue, her wide yellow smile --
I've never seen such a happy
spider.

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the small boy
jumps five times, laughs
this recipe works

Now What

Now what?
Now that we've each
said that sad, fateful word --
all we can hear now are fading
echoes.

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Rufus
chewing a bone
the slow mastication --
meditation? No, it's just a
good bone.

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Plato
on mimesis?
Is it divine madness
to mark student papers in verse?
Untruth!!

From “Scribblings”

Quotes from "The Secret of Lost Things":

"Whiteness exerted a kind of sorcery."

"Acquisitiveness drove them, and envy - the ingredients of any passion."

"The books housed in one's first adult bookshelf are the geological bed of who we wish to be."

Random Words to think about/ try to use

recognition 
autodidact
condign
impenitent 

Musings

The perfect arms of my waitress, line of the tricep, definition, yet womanly, soft.

middle-distance gaze of the pretty 20-something waitresses in the limbo of no new customers, all drinks full; texting, texting, throwing words into the world, marking time... desultory chat, springing to life and smiles when the door chimes or a chair scrapes... my warm gaze following the small brunette who doesn't disguise her boredom, not the falsely cheerful one preceded blondley by her tits...

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Incunabula: prior to 1501 a.d. printed with movable type, also the primal beginning of a thing.

"...how much a part of curiosity is uneasiness." - B of A&S

at CN Tower
sudden vertigo --
your arched neck

neck/column/tower... your long white neck. Curve.. subtle curve. smooth

at CN tower
sudden vertigo --
your smooth curved white neck

[doodles: circles, curves]

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spider on thread drops descends stops pause
reflection in glass door, window
focus shift? looking outside, then at reflection, then at up close spider.
play on "reflection"

-or- capture sense of waiting, pause, time still
spider stops at eye level - I stop
both waiting. I hear each tick of a clock. cliché?

a movement, glance 
to see a spider
stop

glance up
to 
see
a 
spider
stop