THE FIFTH AND FINAL POETRY MONTH POST
which features poems by the members and friends
of the Facebook Group "Ravenswood Books!"
Thanks for being here as a participant
or as a spectator. Please let us know
if you would like these postings to continue.
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 ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHER DISCOVERS PERPETUAL MOTION

    On finding himself bogged down,
    Aristotle had the insight to say to himself
     "GET UP AND DANCE, STUPID!!!
      He did and moved on.
      Hence, the earliest known affirmation that
      'Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion.'"


TAKE A CHANCE

   Ouch!
   Hey, wise up!!
   Go stub your toe again!!!
   Take a chance.

Aristotle Soter
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Tollway Oasis

Once so ultramodern,
the machines still dispense pain relievers and candy.
Remember the Beatles' A Hard Day’s Night piped into the lobby?
We saw ourselves reflected in the glass,
modeling bright pink purses
and rabbit fur hand muffs
Aunt Phyllis bought for us in Chicago.

___________

Product Impurities

the skin off a worker
dipped in the vat
whether foul play
or accident we’ll not
be called upon
to explain it to our
television viewing consumers
sitting comfortably in rooms
where heartbreak is measured
in number of tugs
on the tissue box.

Morgan Harlow
______________________________________

Born without recollection
That I sat in your hand,
to see myself in the world,
so I can learn about love.
Or of hard candy horses- in turquoise and red,
Casting dark shadows on the brightest yellow,
they collide and turn to steam.
Nor of the field with tall flowers,
where the dry sun cleans dust.

I had the initial fear of kindness, and distrust in the voices of women.

When the moon is huge in the North,
and the sidewalk urine is sweet as honeysuckle,
the incubus clouds will swim over the sleep deprived.
There was a deer that watched me wake up in that clearing.

I must be passing through again, to leave
and come back soaked in rain.

Shizu Homma

________________________________________________________


There is ink, thank god, on your hands again

Like a dry orange, ripping skin from the flesh,
what a waste. Some days you can't pull it together enough to even try
to peel it. But you always forgo the knife. Even when you are so far
behind that you're in the negatives and you're selling the beautiful
pieces of yourself to the garbage pickers. Watch them finger
your things. It's then when you begin to count your pennies
one at a time, palm to palm.

You see, the machines are tired of operating. Gold is tired
of shining, doctors of trying, birds of flying. The laundry is piling,
the dishes teetering. At times like these, pink won't stop my mind
from thinking. Maybe if I was still blond and rainbows weren't lies.
But the dolls of my childhood are armed and lining my bedside.
They are angry and their hands are dirty.

It's like the snow will never melt in Chicago. Afraid everyone thinks
that this would be better if I weren't here. Me thinking, I would be better
if I weren't here. My time is measurable. Reduced
to a tick. It's like waking up in a dark room
in the middle of the afternoon. Tock. Realize you are the only thing
that drives the world to keep making days.

Want to know how hard my father hit me as a child? Which men
I have allowed? Keep reading. You will die, the children will die,
the plants, the light bulbs, the love will die and mingle with worms
in the dirt. But there is so much beauty in pain. White
light, weak, pale, and sweating. There is so much beauty in feeling
anything.

Megan Wheeler

POSTING NUMBER FOUR OF THE FACEBOOK GROUP
RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM
Poetry continues to arrive in our in tray, and we
expect to put up at least two more postings
through April and into May. Fleet Historian Abel
has suggested that the project is worthy of
publication in chapbook form, i.e. an actual
book object, with paper and inky print. Let's hear
your thoughts on that, please, and thanks for your
continuing participation in the project. Use the Group's
wall for comments. Read on.

____________________________
An E Mail from Satan
 
Satan sent me an e mail:
Look, he said, anything you want.
A giant cock, authentic knock off watches,
Horny housewives lined up at your door,
Billions in clever stock manipulations,
Sex 24 hours a day while money rolls in,
A staff of fifty hand-picked servants
To run things for you while you fuck and spend,
And climb Mount Everest without oxygen.
You’ll be on every TV in the land,
AND you’ll catch world record trout,
Invent a cure for AIDS and pen an opera,
ALL IN YOUR SPARE TIME.
All I ask is a little consideration, he said.
Just sign here, he added,
I mean, sign here once you’re dead.
 
Robert Abel

______________
_________________________________________________

& we don't care where we kiss

we blew on our flute-rims 
'til the champagne spilled into shapes, 
spelling the notes we summoned into sound. 

ideas pitched into existence, 
under the spell of some thinness 
of our blood, 
they sank in the linoleum 
as if they knew this was the last night 
they'd be conjured up. 

they sang through the gaps in their teeth. 

& so did we. 

& it was either the silver & gold 
of our apartment keys 
or the black & white 
of the piano 
that we fumbled around 
when the next thing we knew 
was we couldn't feel our fingers. 

so just as champagne had once occupied 
a bottle that now laid probably on some sidewalk, 
our lungs let laughter occupy the room. 

& with feet intertwined, 
we slept a dreamless sleep 
wearing shapeless grins 
on our bare skin.

by Dustin Currier

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On Reading Alfred Tennyson
by Stephanie Cascio

You are an ally of alliteration.
You sent a rolling wave over my head;
A wave of creative inspiration.
I think you may have inadvertently led
to my yearning for a life of poetry.
A life fill'd with verse and a musical
meter; and beauteous, perfect symmetry.
A life that is oh-so-fantastical.
Now I am here, writing this sonnet.
'Tis my first. Is it very obvious?
If this does not go well, I may end it;
But hopefully I make thee envious.
O Lord Tennyson, how you provok'd
my poetic genius that was yet uncloak'd.


(Yay for poetry!)
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Gin

She came to sex as she’d come to gin. Five
years in the convent, what did she know
about gin? Sister Emmanuel said the Devil
himself was suckled on it, and after her
third drink in the Red Kilt she knew he was
inside her like a crazed Wizard of Oz,
pushing and pumping her levers and gears.
Sister’s voice whispered, You couldn’t
lift one finger, not one pinky of one hand
if not for the Love of God. But she was
twenty-five and didn’t know anything about
love. She knew she wasn’t holy, or chaste, or
even sorry. And she knew she was alone when
the man called her beautiful, when the gin said
Baby, relax, enjoy it while you can.


--Meg Kearney, from An Unkindness of Ravens
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No Lap Dancing at the Nada Bing

Lives lapping at the wreck -strewn shore
wave eroded lives
purchased at the market's top
slipping into dirty froth
and lichen slimy rocks

Overlapping lives, perhaps,
but unaware until a backward glance
reveals what might have been
and now too late to change the course,

to stop and try your hand
at some enchanting conversation-

the rip tide and the undertow are furious here-

swim parallel to shore
until the ocean's bottom drops away
and things calm down

but in that deeper, older sea,
no one that you'd want to meet
all these fatties in the inner tubes
no hunks or halter tops
to catch the eye and tempt the flesh,

The floating folks
waiting for the tide
to take them in or out,
wherever.

Jim Mall
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THE THIRD POST OF RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! FACEBOOK GROUP
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM WITH MORE TO COME !!!!

Here is my "clean" poem (Day 7)
Share
Today at 8:45am
On April 6, 2009 the body of 8 year old Sandra Cantu was found 
inside a black suitcase floating in an irrigation pond in Tracy, California. 
Sandra had been missing since March 27, 2009

My Own Beloved Child

I do not know you but I shall hold you like my own beloved child
I promise once I’ve cleaned you I will cover you like my own beloved child

From the black case I lift you and lay your modest form upon a white sheet.
Painstakingly, I comb through your tawny hair, like my own beloved child’s

Gently I hold each hand and scrape foreign matter from under your pink nails
Your tiny breathless nostrils and still breast make me ache for my own beloved child

I photograph your cuts and bruises, set your twisted limbs aright,
Map every inch of your lovely form as I might my own beloved child’s

I swab where I must, reassuring you that this will be the last assault upon you. 
I eliminate all infection from you as I would from my own beloved child.

Every fiber and hair, is combed from your hello-kitty top and black leggings,
as if I were grooming the lovely angel wings of my own beloved child.

You are clean now, though no amount of wickedness could ever really stain you.
Dearest, you are my angel, my angel; forever my own beloved child. 

Meg Harris

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Winter Night
 
let your streets fill with water
puddle up to the grocery store, the taco cart
sell your beer past three,
drop a coin in a coffee cup.
give a man a fact: a real hand on his real lap
in a musty taxi cab
weight of a woman on his thighs
a sigh, a whiskey drink on the bed stand.
 
it takes a long time to hear the streets
to know screeching and romance,
the wind-whipped lovers at the corner café
hair tangled over eyes sip sip
you know I can’t love things right.

Laura Jo Hess
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Only the Hurricane
by Timothy L. Campbell

Floods.
Tornadoes.
Earthquakes.

All nameless bringers of destruction and grief.
Only the hurricane, the sea’s mighty fury,
Earns itself a name for posterity.

Floyd.
Agnes.
Katrina.

______________________________________________________
Dream in Technicolor

Black water flowed
Through the streets
Eager crows spread their wings
I was drenched in Desire
There was fire in the trees
Syllables twisted knots
‘Round the neck of the guard
Where I ran down that train
All a-flame spinning death
Gasoline in my pores
But I ran for the life
Of my velveteen bride
All the while
Drunk with fear
Through the river with the Sirens

I saw your face
Sparkle-Lace
Drank the pain
That dripped off your tongue
While your hands
Were ablaze
“By the Swift Heavy Sun”
Was a song from a dove
That you played with my heart
Revelry, Revelry
In a rolling wave
I was saved
Crying: “Grace!”
By the words that you spoke
With your gun
A thirty-two twenty, I believe it was

You were never just
As you were
Shifting shapes in the dark
But I would have-
followed you-
anywhere.

The cattle sob
Night grows long
Over pastures too soon
Now and henceforth
West and North
By the Alabaster Sea
In some ramshackle ship
What cosmic blinks
In yonder skies!
Be you our guide through the mist?

Kenny Lee
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A Woman Turing Forty Stops Wearing Underwear

President William Jefferson Clinton was on trial that year,
accused of having an affair with a collagen-enhanced
Valley Girl turned White House intern.

Two capitol guards were gunned down
Two U.S. embassies in Africa were blown up
Taliban Muslim extremists cut off the hands of Turkish thieves.

John Glenn readied himself to fly the Shuttle into space,
at 77, the oldest man to leave earth’s atmosphere.
Frank Sinatra died. So did Sheri Lewis and Buffalo Bob.

Politicians argued that no one cared --
that we’d given up our right to sue HMO’s:
We just wanted cheaper rates.

My husband spent his evenings
dead-heading the petunias in our garden.
He’d spent the mornings weeding marigolds.

He’d given up on the American press.
So had I.
They’d given up on America.

Truth seemed hard to find, sincerity scarce.
Despite mild evenings and rainy afternoons
our garden blazed with color.

I sat on the deck and counted squirrels in the trees
until the bats began to flit above the chimney.
None of them knew that I’d thrown away my bras and panties.

Neither did the shoppers at our local supermarket
nor the secretaries in my office or the clerks at the post office.
My psychologist was oblivious. So were my next door neighbors.

No one knew how close I was to anarchy
the soft and wrinkly truth of butt and breast.
I could feel them pushing through my shorts and shirt

Like weeds through asphalt, green and lanky
tipped with rubber heads,
I loved to feel my crotch against my jeans.

That’s the summer I discovered dark matter,
the pull of something invisible and obscene.

Nancy Grace
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___________________

SECOND INSTALLMENT OF
THE RAVENSWOOD BOOKS! FACEBOOK GROUP
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH UN SLAM
 
What Is Real
 
What is real is almost
a homeless man running for office
until Midwestern conservatives shake
their heads and their forefingers
spitting as they speak about verifiable
addresses and the illegitimacy of state
if they let such an outlandish thing occur.
But politics are already stolen
or stealthily bought by the highest bidder
the best-looking romantic in the city,
the shiniest cuff links but the cheapest education
the most reputable reputation for the most crooked
state in the union.
 
The man you lock eyes with
on the way to work each blurry morning
with the blankets piled upon his chest
three different shades of blue to protect
him from the violent Chicago wind
the broken window panes smashed in the street
the puddles at his feet not draining
along Ashland Avenue on the start of a spring morning.
Yes, there is your city official. He knows, already,
about the death of the cityscape the depth
of sadness, the leaps of boredom, hoping
maybe, this next passerby will be a rabbi, a monk,
someone more important than weak-hearted mongers
like yourself and the three people in nice shoes
who just outran you.
 
He coughs loudly into his elbow
and the sun is shining over a Wrigley billboard
directly onto his forehead, into his doorway haven
onto his pile of shoes, his basket of books,
his youth seeping from his wrinkled upper lip. Children
gone now, to the playground, the next state line,
the shelter, the hospital, the office building, the jail.
But this doorway is promising. It’s been three weeks now,
no policemen waking him with a baton to the skull,
no ice storms, no sleet puddles, no party buses or accidents.
 
What is real is remapping bus routes
so kids don’t have to cross gang lines
to get to school on time, so they can wear their own clothes
in their own way in their own streets with their heads up.
Real is cow milk in your coffee cup and football players
on your TV; crack house turned condo building thanks to
camera lens atop street lamps. Real is slicing
a drill bit through your thumbnail and riding the train
to the hospital. Real is you’re too late Chicago,
you’ve changed me.

Laura Jo Hess

________________________________________________________

If you couldn't give me your love, attention or even your friendship
The least you could do
Is give me a box of chocolates
And a long-stemmed rose

Laura Murphy
__________________________________________________________
Board the beast

Post me up and whisper to
my ear of how the wild wooden vessels of yesteryear
have murder on their breath.

And of how they wish to sickly suck
the blood from the curves
bequeathed unto me by
the lapping of the listless lull of history.

Soon I will whisper back of
barnacles and the unchanged beating of
my siren's chest and
how his beard cuts into
the softened flesh of my barrenness.

by Kendra Lea Hull

-_
__________________________________________________________



I , too, wear dead mens' clothes,

    and

           walk in borrowed   shoes.


tom milligan

________________________

"I know, Myself" by Jim Joyce
My friends, if in the past weeks I’ve been cruel or disingenuous
It’s only to anticipate pending evils, those attacks against my wellbeing
By the electric man, spring showers, and Lent’s palmy grip.
If the opportunity decides to arrive, I would not deny myself the joy
of kicking one of their vertebra, clouds, or censers “out of joint”
To assure that the softness
             Of my delicate heart
Stays safe for our later enjoyment during these times of violence
Directed against me, my friends.  

 

THE FACEBOOK GROUP "RAVENSWOOD BOOKS!"
OPEN POETRY UN SLAM BEGINS!
Our National Poetry Month un slam begins!
Here are the first five poems from group members,
friends, and others who happened to be watching us.
There will be at least two more postings using the
remaining ten or eleven submissions now in.
You're all welcome to send more. Thanks for
playing along and having fun with this project.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––


April

The darkest time
is when the frogs sing
in the mucky marsh
scaring the lights
right out of our heads

Morgan Harlow

________________________________________________________________

HOW I BECAME THE GREATEST POET IN THE WORLD
HOW I BECAME RULER OF THE WORLD
 
  It was easy.
 
      --unfinished poem by Mark Strand
 
 
It was easy,
the goose in the bottle.
 
Easier than to justify,
or I would have done it sooner.
 
It was only to get girls,
and afterwards I discovered
 
old lovers kill themselves
more often than old virgins,
 
so I chose a reductive innocence,
crusty in my intactness.
 
I withdrew to commence
a series of lawsuits
 
against certain publications
which had, at one time,
 
or more than once,
rejected my work.
 
They all wanted it now,
that same stepchild opus.
 
And why were those editors
who made such a point‑‑


 
elaborate enclosure letters
do not impress us;
 
the poem must stand
on its own merits‑‑
 
suddenly writing me?
I knew what they didn't:
 
old words fare worse
than old celibates:  their juices
 
bubble and ooze                                 
till their pores are glazed;                    
 
they mummify
in their own secretions.
--
Tad Richards

_________________

Ensign March

The red splintered door, shade
of chokecherry, splits

the house into spheres.
You lie naked, less than sparrow, less
than cottonwood, and eye
a flickering moth. Outside, snow

strikes black limbs of oak; the sway
of branches twist eastward. Does it matter,
in this one season, who passes

or why. The steady hooves of a slow horse fill the arroyo
along with the sound of a slipping pack,
a few breathy groans. A sharpened

axe and stacked cordwood remain
neatly dry in all this falling. The rock salt
scattered over gravel beside the shed slops

the ground into a sheen. You draw a breath, a bath
and remember the dog tags in the desk drawer;
remember your body is somewhere
buried nameless.

Maureen Alsop

first published in New Delta Review
_________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
Chewed over

devoured like a pomegranate 
each plump seed plucked
pulp sucked, purple spit
dribbling from the mouth

it’s in your teeth
I see it in your teeth

Megan Wheeler
_____________________________________________

Misplaced


I fear I have misplaced myself
for good this time. The She I was
has not been found curled sleeping at her mother’s
feet, nor stuck inside the white-brick schoolhouse where
I’d guessed we might have parted ways. I retraced
rutted paths and couldn’t find
my self of breadcrumbs dropped between
the years. When last I caught a foolish melancholy
crinkled near the corner of an eye
it wasn’t here in mine. I checked at each time crossroads,
and may have been found once
(or many summer onces)
at my small sister’s shoulder, mired in the sticky street
where crushed and sour, mulberry blood splashed up
our heels like bruises. But I am nowhere fast—
“to lose oneself” a warning after all and not advice
for girls who think they’re young, or pretend sometimes to be.
It’s more a matter now of finding
not where I was but why I’ve been delayed
and with whom I have stopped along the way.


--Hope Rehak
___________________

In celebration of National Poetry Month
members of the bookstore facebook group, Ravenswood Books!,
have been invited to submit a poem for posting here!
They all have to be at least this good to get published.


HARD BOILED LOVE BY THE LAKE

Her eyes were like razor-sharp 
ninja knives. 
They ripped open 
my chest
 
and dumped my heart, my lungs, my liver, 
and my poor pulsating prostate
 
onto the baking hot Chicago sidewalk 
where the pile of guts
 
lay steaming in the sun
 
and I stood there trying to suck my breath 
through a two foot slice of bleeding meat. 

Jim Mall