A Jar of Clowns

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for Disparate things, yoked, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

A Jar of Clowns

Like the snakes at the museum with their yellowing scales
and pale, clouded eyes, my clowns are jammed in the jar
until no space remains for humor. Only a groan or two escapes,
the wheeze of tortured breath. My face presses, with theirs,
against the glass, three-quarters of the way to the bottom.
The pressure blanches my skin white and bloodless; it curves,
following the bend of glass. Bruises blossom at the contact
points. A hint of jelly clings to the jar by my tongue, apricot
maybe. Or peach. Not enough flavor remains to decipher
taste. The absence of laughter causes slow starvation,
a steady shrinking of the adipose of joy.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090413-1059-1st

This is my FIRST draft, it's likely I'll write more, and if so, I will post them ABOVE the 1st one so the newest is always at the top.

Getting Ahead, for NaPoWriMo

Happy Easter!

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, for "Found Poem," for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Getting Ahead, Found Poem with Canyon Bob

When I finally start getting ahead, disaster strikes.
Today it's the sewer line, the trees growing
into it, the basement flooded. My sister
wants to sell my mother's house. But who wants
a flooded basement? I'm still living
in my Mom's house after all these years.
With her gone, it feels like my house.
Maybe I should leave the basement flooded
so it won't sell, been in the family for generations,
but who wants that wretched sewer smell
and I'd probably fall in and drown. Sorry
to bother you. Do I smell bad? It's that stupid sewer,
oh, and alcohol, probably. I'm not an alcoholic,
but that that f-ing Roger next door gets me going.
Look, he drove on my lawn and tore up the grass.
My mother was a wonderful woman, but she slapped
me once for using the f-word and that f-ing Roger
wrote a note about my trees in his sewer, that's why
he was on the lawn, taking down his trees,
ashes they were, fire trees, and he wrote me a note
with the f-word and my sisters saw it; my poor sisters.
He didn't have to do that. I still try to protect them,
though I came seventeen years after my youngest sister.
They took Mom to the hospital, thought she had a tumor.
I was the tumor. Roger's Dad said she was too old
to be pregnant, to have me, but she did anyway.
He asked my Mom, "aren't you ashamed?" she said,
"no, I'm married." I know you gotta go, sorry
to bother you. But I'm not an accident or a mistake.
And I'm not an alcoholic. Smell like it, don't I?
No, I'm no mistake; I'm an unexpected pleasure.
And I'm not an alcoholic; alcoholics go to meetings.
I'm just a drunk.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
A "found poem" (captured "rant" from Canyon Bob)
090412-1128-2a, 090411-2341-1c, 090411-1704-1st

This is a "found poem" of sorts, from a "rant" by "Canyon Bob." I have used his words as I recall them and arranged them into this poem. Should I be concerned about appropriating his material or life? Anyone? Do I have the right to do this? And can I call it "mine?"

If I write any edits or revisions, I will post them ABOVE so the newest version is always at the top.

When I was God

HAPPY EASTER!!!

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, Paradise, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

When I was God

energy sang and eternal light interpenetrated
eternal darkness. Vast joy had a pulsing consciousness: me.
Thoughts gathered to make substance, things coagulated
and then dispersed, but they came and went
with little consequence. Mostly, I was alone in all that singing
emptiness, without thought, self or being,
except when I chose incorporation. Then,
I preferred high places, which I created so I could continue
to see forever. I gathered my body around me and sat
with the God Cat who was another part of me, who stretched
away from my energy-flesh in an attenuated light and snapped
into being. Its blue eyes radiated energy's song, its power
hummed around it. People, too, were a part of me,
shadow clones of the many thoughts
that drifted to the surface of my huge wild mind. I knew
everything then, but began to get lost in the minutiae.
My creations created problems, wanted solutions.
Back then, I could produce solutions with a single thought.
Miracles, they called them. But the attention was tedious
and overwhelming after the relaxing expanse of the void.
I shrank from my terrifying omnipotence
until I was one of them and could see only
what was in front of me. Paradise ejected me.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Peter and George Osawa
090412-0916-1b, 090412-0846-1st, Easter Sunday

If I revise this poem during April, I will post the revision above the current one so the latest version is always at the top.

Thrift Shop

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, Thrift Shop, for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Thrift Shop

We cruise the neighborhood on trash day, hoping
to furnish the house with tables, bookcases,
desks and dressers. In Idaho’s desert mountains,
we find an illegal dump with couches, chairs,
everything we need for the still empty living room.
When we haul them back in my little truck,
the room looks almost real, like a student version
of Better Homes and Gardens. But we never
use the room. We spend our days and nights at desks,
wearing out pencils, grinding erasers to stubs,
burning the carbon from our eyes in the college library.
When the professor visits with his wife,
we haven’t yet located a trash-day or rubble-heap table,
so they carry their dinners to the rescued couch,
the first to ever sit there. Plumes of desert dust
rise in billows around them. Almost discreetly,
they swish the floating cloud from the roadkill rabbit
we’d proudly served for dinner.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090411-1318-2d, 090410-2349-1st

^newer above v older below

Thrift Shop

We cruise the neighborhood on trash day, hoping
to furnish the house; we look for tables, bookcases,
desks, dressers. One day, in the desert mountains
of Idaho, we found an illegal dump with couches, chairs,
everything we needed for our empty living room
where as students, we never sat. We spent
our time at desks, wearing out pencils, grinding
our erasers to stubs. When the professor and his wife
visited, plumes of mountain dust rose around them
from the rescued couch. We hadn't found a table yet.
They swished the floating cloud almost discreetly
from the roadkill rabbit we'd proudly served for dinner.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
090411-0005-2b, 090410-2349-1st

Another brand new poem, prolly not done. If I create more drafts, I will paste them in the same post ABOVE these so the newest is always on TOP.

Trapped (Nicknames) for NaPOWriMo

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, nicknames for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Trapped (Nicknames)

Horsehair, Gary called her, spitting the word
like phlegm, burning her cheeks with it. Horsehair,
because she wore her hair in long braids,
instead of short, curled and coiffed
like the other girls. She liked horses, loved to ride,
but the name stung as if each hair were a bee
angry, spiteful. In the classroom, while other kids
screamed, she lifted trapped bees gently in her hands
and carried them outdoors. They never stung,
but Gary did. “Dale calls me Tiger,” she told Gary,
wishing, at his horselaugh, that she'd never spoken.
If Gary called her Tiger, it would be an insult,
but Dale smiled when he said it, his eyes full of soft heat.
He found her feisty, strong. Independent. Fierce, even.
In the glow of Dale's appreciation, she morphed to Tiger.
Stood taller. Growled a little. Stalked the forest
like a predator. Kissed with hunger.
Gary couldn't see a tiger in her. It wasn't there.
When Gary looked at her, the tiger morphed
into a mouse, wanted to be invisible and hide
from Gary and his gang. But they always saw her,
the all too visible target for their venom. In an attempt
to quiet Gary, she chopped off her hair.
Though she tried to blend like a chameleon
with the other girls, she’d already been marked
for the kill.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Gary Sommers, Mike Sullivan, David McNalley and Dale Ripberger
090409-2341-1e

v older ones below, more recent above ^

Trapped (Nicknames)

Horsehair, Gary called her, spitting the word
like phlegm, burning her cheeks with it. Horsehair,
because she wore her hair in long braids,
instead of short, curled and coiffed
like the other girls. She liked horses, loved to ride,
but the name stung as if each hair were a bee
angry, spiteful. In the classroom, while other kids
screamed, she lifted trapped bees gently in her hands
and carried them outdoors. They never stung,
but Gary did. “Dale calls me Tiger,” she told Gary,
wishing, when he laughed his horselaugh,
that she'd never spoken. If Gary called her Tiger,
it would be an insult, but Dale smiled
when he said it, his eyes full of soft heat.
He meant feisty, strong. Independent. Fierce, even.
In the glow of Dale's appreciation, she morphed to Tiger.
Stood taller. Growled a little. Stalked the forest
like a predator. Kissed with hunger.
Gary couldn't see a tiger in her. It wasn't there.
When Gary looked at her, the tiger morphed
into a mouse, wanted to be invisible and hide
from Gary and his gang. But they always saw her,
the all too visible target for their venom. In an attempt
to quiet Gary, she chopped off her hair.
Though she tried to blend like a chameleon
with the other girls, she’d already been marked
for the kill.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Gary Sommers, Mike Sullivan, David McNalley and Dale Ripberger
090409-11832-1d


Trapped (Nicknames)

Horsehair, he called her, spitting the word
like phlegm, burning her cheeks with it. Horsehair,
because she wore her hair in long braids,
instead of short, curled and coiffed
like the other girls. She liked horses, loved to ride,
but the name stung as if each hair were a bee
angry, spiteful. In the classroom, while other kids screamed,
she lifted trapped bees gently in her hands
and carried them outdoors. They never stung, but Gary
did, Gary who called her Horsehair, and his buddies,
Mike, and Dave and the boys on her street.
"Dale calls me Tiger," she told Gary, wishing,
when he laughed his horselaugh, that she'd never spoken.
If Gary called her Tiger, it would be an insult, but Dale
smiled when he said it, his eyes full of soft heat.
He meant feisty, strong. Independent. Fierce, even.
In the glow of Dale's appreciation, she morphed to Tiger.
Stood taller. Growled a little. Stalked the forest
like a predator. Kissed with hunger.
Gary couldn't see a tiger in her. It wasn't there.
When Gary looked at her, the tiger morphed
into a mouse, wanted to be invisible and hide
from Gary and his gang. But they always saw her,
the all too visible target for their venom. In an attempt
to quiet Gary, she chopped off her hair.
Though she tried to blend like a chameleon with the other girls,
she'd already been marked for the kill.



Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Gary Sommers, Mike Sullivan, David McNalley and Dale Ripberger
090409-1757-1c

This is very brand new for me. If I make any edits or revisions, I will post them in this same window above this version.

Third's a Charm ("Three in a Row") again (revision)

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, three in a row for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Third's a Charm ("Three in a Row")

The first one beat her. She was bad because he beat her.
Bad because a dragon, hatched from an egg of flame incubated
in her heart. Deep in that pocket of inherited midnight,
it struggled to press its scales through her slimy skin.
Her breath burned with dragon fire. The beatings
squeezed the dragon-flames into that dark heart hole, transforming
it to dynamite or maybe a neutron bomb. That bit of antimatter,
heavy with shame and pain, prepared itself to blow acid and fire
in the face of the second when she finally escaped the first.
The second hit once, hard, then shrank
her with words and venom until she was smaller than the point
of a needle and crammed with the impossible mass of the universe.
The third one's a charm. If he can pry her out of her shells
of darkness and protective fat, and get past the land mines
and fire-breathing dragon, he might find a beating heart
held exposed in an open palm, eyes green
with forest light, a swallow, swooping through the trees,
carrying, like his cousin, an olive branch, a promise of roselight
and rainbows, kisses, a soft embrace, a hand to hold in his.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Pius, Nat, Keith and BP
090409-0802-3a, 090408-2124-2b, 090407-1651-1c

I edited this a little and think it's a little better and I am sure it's still not done!

Third's a Charm

For the NaPoWriMo Challenge, three in a row for national poetry month at ReadWritePoem:

Third's a Charm ("Three in a Row")

The first one beat her. She was bad because he beat her.
And because a dragon, hatched from an egg of flame incubated
in her heart, deep in that pocket of inherited midnight,
struggled to press his scales out through her slimy skin.
Her breath was hot with dragon fire. The beatings
squeezed the dragon-flames into a crevice, transforming
it to dynamite or maybe a neutron bomb. A bit of antimatter,
heavy with shame and pain, prepared itself to blow acid and fire
in the face of the second when she finally escaped the first.
The second hit once, hard, then shrank
her with words and venom until she was smaller than the point
of a needle and crammed with the impossible mass of the universe.
The third one's a charm. If he can pry her out of her shells
of darkness and protective fat, and get past the land mines
and fire-breathing dragon, he might find a beating heart
held exposed in an open palm, eyes green
with forest light, a swallow, swooping through the trees,
carrying, like his cousin, an olive branch, a promise of roselight
and rainbows, kisses, a soft embrace, a hand to hold in his.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
for Pius, Nat, Keith and BP
090408-2124-2b, 090407-1651-1c

Of course, I didn't do their three in a row, because I was working on personal poetry, but I still hope to complete some or all of the NaPoWriMo challenges, even if not on the given day.

A Can of Worms

A Can of Worms

"Isn't sex over-rated?" a long ago husband
writes to ask.  "Except, of course," he adds,
"what we shared in the sixties."  Enter
Hieronymus Bosch with his can of worms.
Twisted trees shoot up around me and fill
with monkeys; the ones riding my back chatter
and screech.  A fountain of acid erupts from the earth;
grass sprouts tongues and the edges of flaming
dragon's teeth scorch my inner thighs. 
I remember honey bright kisses,

fists and bruises, languid touches
but mostly terror, long alleyways, hiding
under bushes and inside trashcans full
of maggots.  Always, he found me, dragged me
out by the hair and hit me, painted me
into canvases with leering eternity signs
between waves of fire and mustard.
Always grinning.  He dressed me and stood
me by the highway, thumb out (or in my mouth),
while he hid in the bushes, waiting for a ride.

He forbid my descent into undersea canyons,
beam probing the coelacanths, if my mermaid
laughter wasn't on his schedule of simultaneity,
tantric song and knives balanced on his nipples. 
Malevolent demon bats, keepers of eternal darkness,
fluttered around us, roosted in the shadows
and threatened to engulf us.  We argued
about who had called them.  He insisted I did,
and of course, I did.

Now, when I dive through the skin-nets of their wings,
they dissolve in veils, and I am home in the lychnis,
catchfly and moonflower.  I sit among garter snakes
and mother stones, sun soft on my face.  No
longer do I fall endlessly into darkness, as I did
in his arms.  I walk down a different path.  No
man lives beside me, no sex shatters me.  No
landmines, no torn talons, only a vow of chastity,
cardinal babies and their red-beaked parents
in the sweet syringe, and black raspberries,
with their small thorns, ripening outside my door.


Mary Stebbins Taitt
090404-1219-3a, 990705-2f, 990621-1st, originally called "Underrated"  L
from the Desire 6 Ms

NaPoWriMo: 30 Poems in 30 days

NaPoWriMo: 30 Poems in 30 days

OK, I found it, a little diligent clicking and there it is.  Thirty poems in 30 days for National poetry month at ReadWritePoem.  I'm not really sure I want to do it--I don't do my best writing when I write a new poem every day, I do my best work when I work on the SAME poem until I like it--for say a week at a time, and then start a new one and return to the old one later.  And of course, I'm starting at a disadvantage, because I missed the beginning.  Luckily, I wrote a poem yesterday anyway.  But not an official NaPoWriMo Poem.

I am not committing to commit, but hey, I might work on it.  Hmm.  You folks are inspiring me.  Happy National Poetry Month, by the way!  OK, I'm going to write down the challenges and see what I can do.  I'll try to get back to you--someday.  LOL!

Dream Poem "Backwards"

This poem is from a dream I had last week. I had considered making a poem of it and didn't attempt it because it seemed too difficult, but it continued to worry me, so I attempted it and here it is (danger, upsetting images!):

Backwards

Round, puckered and striated like a nipple, the fossil

hides among rocks on the mountain top. I stroke it,

feeling the bumps and indentations in grey rock.

Limestone, perhaps. Below, sky stretches, endless,

fading toward white. It shimmers like the sea. I call you

to see this ancient stone creature, knowing

how you like breasts, the soft roundness of them,

the responsiveness of nipples. Not rock ones,

of course, but still, "come check it out."

But you frown and step back, refuse to touch it,

and when I look back, I see, not a fossil,

but a dead girl, naked, lying deep in the rocks,

disintegrating. An arm here, a leg there,

features half rotted from her skull, the nipple

just showing in shadow on the twisted torso

deep between the summit's rocks.

Boulders shift and ocean now surrounds us.

We're on a breakwater, but no waves strike

the rocks. The water is still, calm and blue as a summer sky.

We stare at the dead girl. She's become intact and fully clad,

her clothes pressed and clean. Her cheeks blush

with color, brightening. She lies on top of the rocks,

no longer lost between them, and I'd swear I see her

breathing. She's flung across a slanted rock

as if dropped there by great bird, head downward, legs up,

long brown hair draped down the rock toward the water,

facing the endless blue above. We're on an island,

a shrinking island, no land in sight, only the glassy water,

the unmarred sky. I'm surprised when I realize

she looks a lot like me, at maybe nineteen.

Her eyelids flutter, and I awaken, in another century,

in a distant place, alive, and much much older. Tears

dribble down my cheeks.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

090403-0930-2a, 090402-1757-1c, 090402, 1st 4:15 PM; from a dream last week