skonen_blades

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 07 from race 07 and my horse's name was It's In Command.

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The rapture is a megaphone
poking down through the clouds
and every order must be followed
to the letter

and it tells us

to drown and burn
to dance and crush
each other

to ignite and destroy
the termite the earth
and gasoline our eyes

to treat destruction as a competition

it tells us
it tells us

you are all that matters
it’s open season on everyone else

God gets us to kill ourselves with the simplest sentence:

“You are my favorite and you deserve it all.”




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There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 05 from race 05 and my horse's name was florida gator.

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I see you, retiree.

With your long eyelashes
and your long, wide, snout.

People asking you if you’re an Alaskan crocodile
and then saying, “Well, you don’t have to bite my head off.”
When you bite their head off.

Head like a capital A.
Fancy hats, pearls, gloves,
and handbag skin.

But when you cry, you mean it.
Your death roll happens
under covers on king-sized beds

I will never see you in a while
but I will always see you later

You wait, motionless, until your chance
Sponging in the sun
like your scales are solar panels

Lunge, old lady, lunge




tags

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 03 from race 03 and my horse's name was Tam Tricky. He came in first! My father's name was Tam and he grew up in the violent streets of Glasgow (gang member, bouncer, military policeman) before emigrating to Canada with his first wife and three daughters and the moving to Toronto and meeting my mom. I always found my dad pretty fascinating and his ability to break the cycle of violence with my brother and I is something I'll always admire.

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Tam tricky

Found his way through the maze

Tam clever
Tam strong

The gutter’s hand slipped off his greased spine
His father’s fists only molding his clay
until he could fight back
and become his own potter

Tam long

Bird bones stork long but steel strong

Tam traveler
Tam gardener

Five children
Two wives
Citizenship in two countries

Tam resting
Tam never gone
Tam bus driver
Tam glazer
Tam human church
Tam holy memory

Tam throw me
(light javelin son)

Into the deep
unknowable
future



tags

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 01 from race 01 and my horse's name was Monte. It's an ode to a caustic and fun friend of mine named Monty who passed away a few years back.

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Dead friend Monty
You name meant mountain
You weren’t much of a hiker
(With your cane and your sarcasm)
But you faced your storms
Angry and fist raised
Naked on life’s precarious hillside

You insulted us all
to make us laugh and feel noticed
and you did the same to life

For some, spite is a mode of travel
Defiance is a gear
found surprisingly deep in the spirit

Monty, you exposed nerve
Smiling through the rage and pain

My bartender
Pour me a pint and tell I’m ugly
Because I miss you





tags

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 06 from race 06 and my horse's name was Barney Google.

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Barney Google


The man who knew everything:
Barney Google
The answers at his fingertips
Confident in his delivery
And immediate responses

A living well of knowledge
An encyclopedic man
A fact sprinkler

Sometimes pre-answering
Your questions before they were asked

He lives behind a bookstore
That’s only open on Wednesdays

I saw him yesterday
And before I even had a question to ask
He told me (from his nest on the back porch
of the dormant bookseller)

That seagulls were red
And carved from chalk
That weekdays were sliced thin
From a time log
That Zeus cries diamonds
That water yearns to freeze
And that television will bring us to the end of the world.

He answers questions
I won’t think to ask for another forty years
That I’ll only ask in dreams
and in fever states

He tells me clowns are prophets
That mirrors are made from hourglass sand
And that hunchbacks want scientists to leave them alone

He reads the books the store throws out
He reads the books that people donate

His mind a washing machine that drifts through time

I go to him for answers and I’m never disappointed.



tags

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 04 from race 04 and my horse's name was Synergy.

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Synergy

Promote synergy
Like Jem and the Holograms
At a business meeting in hell.
For the music industry sacrifice
On the altar of youth
The cash goes in
The cheekbones sharpen
Each gold record taking one soul’s worth
Several gold records putting your soul
Into the negative
With platinum confirming immortality
At the cost of the synergy
Of every reason
You came here
In the first place



tags

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 02 from race 02 and my horse's name was Anzac Bay.

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Anzac Bay

In deepest, darkest Anzac Bay
A woman gave her heart away
She threw it hard into the sea
A like a seal, it swam to me
I found the salty, beating thing
It begged me for a wedding ring
It flexed between my reddened hands
And spoke to me of shining lands
Promised wishes, love and light
And company in bed at night
It promised all my life did lack
If only I would take her back
Return her to the empty chest
And place her in her ribcage nest
This begging, pleading, bloody heart
The thumping, bleeding body part
Just wanted to go home again
My own heart quailed to heart it then
I asked the heart to take me to
Her chest and tell me what to do

I found her in a graveyard lot
“She died without her heart,” I thought
But when I read the headstone dates
And saw that she saw heaven’s gates
In nineteen ten. A century
Before her strong heart swam to me.

I have it still, right to this day
The heart I found in Anzac Bay





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The day before the day before the day before I die
(The pre-ante-penul-timate-al day I mortify)
Will be a day I spend with friends and family and fun
I will not know that day will be the third-to-the-last one
I will not feel the death that’s coming shortly for me, no.
The death that comes the day after the day after tomorrow
I’ll be thinking randomly about those random things
That we all think about, that having conciousnesses brings
My bills, my ex, my deadlines, as Morissette once said
Or plans about a future I won’t have because I’m dead
I’ll gaze into my partner’s eyes, my daughter’s two eyes, too
Without the knowledge that three days from now they’ll both look to
A doctor’s horrifying words, a lawyer’s will to read,
A funereal domicile mausoleum’s need
To know if graves in grounds to dig or fires to be lit
Are wished for and what words are good to write for the obit
I’ll know none of that because I won’t know that it’s near
I’ll have no worry, tension, sadness, stress, fatigue, or fear
Besides the normal levels of those things that I possess
That ebb and flow within the hearts of all of us, I guess
That day will be a day like any other day I live
I’ll give the love that’s in me that I have the will to give
And pass the time without the knowledge just how temporally
Triply truncated these last few days are going to be.
But just as usual my common soul will swoop and fly
The day before the day before they day before I die


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Instant Poetry Slam tonight. We arrived at 7 and got the prompt. We wrote for two hours and slammed the results.

The prompt was "A workout and more".

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Many things are a workout and more.

Digging a grave, for instance. At night.

Having sex. With someone who is not your partner.

Spanking a child. Spanking an adult.

Holding your breath. Underwater. While trying to untie your feet from the block of concrete attached to your ankles.

Running. From a lion.

Giving CPR. To your son.

Doing chin-ups. While hanging off the edge of a cliff.

Carrying groceries for a family of four sixteen blocks because you had to choose between a bus pass and feeding your family.

Struggling to get free from the chair you're tied to before the guy asking the uestions gets back.

Swimming. With no land in sight.

Throwing a javelin. And aiming. Throwing a hammer. And aiming.

Throwing a switch. On an electric chair.

Making to to the person you've pledged your life to.

Climbing the stairs. On your last day of work.

Dancing by yourself, remembering when you were young.

Climbing a tree. To get away from bears.

Kayaking. Away from a waterfall.

Praying. Even though you don't believe.




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Dawn jumps up from behind the mountains and splashes over the city, making a high tide of light that reaches with bright yellow fingers up to my bedroom window.

The glow filters through the dust motes and the blinds. It paints stripes onto my floor. My dry body twitches, climbing the ladder up from dreams to a state of awareness. The images let go of me as my brain re-orders into something more limited. My humanity asserts itself, pushing the dreams away, eradicating the memory of them.

I remember. Last year the road outside would have been filled with the sound of cars, honking horns, and the hum of radials on warming pavement as the first world went to work.

That’s missing now. I can hear the scuffling of footsteps and people talking to each other. This is the new world. There are still banks and borders but cars, those dinosaur-blooded monsters come to reclaim the earth, they’re almost all gone.

I hear the ratcheting of changing gears on bicycles. I remember that rent will be due in two days.

Those of us that can afford it carry firearms now.

A frontier mentality is taking over, a mindset that always happens to humanity when faced with tough challenges. There’s an honesty to it that I find refreshing in its brutality. Like the human race is going through a chapter of being honest with itself.

Gold is still gold but most of the businesses in the world have gone bankrupt. The upper floors of high-rise downtown buildings are deserted. Corner offices have become hovels for nomads and squatters. We haunt this city.

The desert is reclaiming the south. I’ve heard the term ‘dustbowl’ from old books about the depression of the 1930s but I never understood it until now.

We all wear handkerchiefs or cheap air filters on our faces.

We feel lost. No leader has risen yet to take over. The whole notion of government has become informal. Local leaders are making the rules. The republicans were well-prepared. The liberals think the end times are here.

Myself, I know that I have to find some food out there and a day’s work. I wipe the sleep from my eyes and swing my legs over the edge of the mattress. I’ll check the condensation tanks and see what the day’s water level is.

I’m awake.





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