Poetry Friday: The Word is SPRING

In the panel on the right side is a section called "Poetry Friday Archives". This collection was written back in the summer/fall of 2005, when I was just a kid in the blogosphere, and was a different kind of Poetry Friday altogether. It was more onanistic. Just me, playing wid my bad self. One day I decided to write poems based on a theme...a theme of a body part. And plagiarize a few good writers, write in their style, take a poem or a song lyric and see if I could tailor it to my theme. I enjoy a challenge like that. (Go see Nancy's recent challenge...I'm still obsessed by it.)

I decided to revisit that style within the realm of our current open-source/group-circle-jerk that is Poetry Friday as we now know it. Today's offerings are based on writers I know and love...or at least like...or have at least read for English 101. I guess I should warn you...when I write like this, I tend to get...uh...sexual. Not pr0n sexual, just situational, and talk about breasts a lot, and I still don't know WHY, except maybe that I choose to copy writers who 'turn me on' to a degree. Some curse, eh?

Please feel free to use the word SPRING in your own blog posts today, in whatever sweet yellow cluster of flowers you choose...poem, story, song, mashed potato sculpture, chocolate deity, other food reference.

Have a good weekend, y'all, and don't eat too much chocolate...but DO eat some.


(With all apologies to T.S. Eliot...and his poem, "The Waste Land")

The Waist Land

April is the cruelest girl, eating
chocolates out of heart-shaped boxes, licking
every drop from every sugary cone, stirring
fudge and men’s desire.
Winter I kept busy, measuring
cups of green beans and ounces of chicken breasts, reading
South Beach and Atkins like an addict.
Spring surprised us, coming in over the mall,
with “Bathing suits for sale!”; April and I stopped in,
and chose several fetching ensembles, in Macys,
and entered the changing rooms, and stripped to panties.
Gott in Himmel. Oy Vey. Mon Dieu.
When we were children, very very active children,
April, she and I were skinny little things.
And then we matured. April said, “oh Mary.
Mary, don’t worry. Size 14 isn’t so bad.
In that corner there, there you’ll find my size 2.
Hand it to me, please? I can’t help the way I am.”

What is the problem, o body, what foulness is this
that has befallen my midsection? Son of a bitch,
I cannot understand, or guess, what I have to do to lose weight.
Perhaps, o heaven, it is in my choice of friends,
and their cheerful disposition and strong metabolism.
My dear April may find a dagger in her back
(soon...very soon).



(With all apologies to ee cummings, who knows I love him endlessly.)

on Just-
spring break when the world is drunk-
wonderful the little
lame bartender

whistles Last call for alcohol

and eddieandbill come
running from body shots and
dubious hookups and it’s
spring break

when the world is sexy-licious

the skeevy
old bartender whistles
Last call for alcohol
and barbieandbritney come dancing

from wet-t-shirt-contests and test-tube-drinks and

it’s
spring break
and
the
bare-footed
bartender whistles
Last
call
for
alcohol


(With all apologies to Papa Hemingway...The Nick Adams Stories.)

Nick Adams, President

Walking around the hardware store in the fluorescent light, Nick passed the electrical supplies sitting in neatly packaged rows. Rod Stewart was playing on the Muzak. Scotty VanSlooten adjusted his red Home Depot apron and put on his best salesman smile as he approached.
“Hey Nick, “ he said, “Whatcha got planned this weekend?”
“Nuthin’...just putterin’”
“That so? Well, you might be interested in our workshop on Saturday. “Build your own nuclear reactor.”
Nick idly fingered a package of small springs he’d picked up earlier. He didn’t have a reason to buy them, but they were cheap, and they might be the right size for fixing that clock he’d found in his dad’s garage after the funeral.
“Tomorrow we got a class on birdhouse buildin’,” Scotty said. “Martin houses. And houses made from gourds and household appliances.”
“Well, that sounds like a right stupid thing to learn,” Nick said.
Scotty laughed and muttered in Swedish under his breath. “Well, that may be. But I earn enough teaching the durn thing to buy a bigger boat every year.”
“What kind of boat?”
“A big-un. Bigger than your house.”
“You teach the nuclear reactor class too?”
“Naw. They got some guy coming in from the university. Pain the ass professor.”
Nick fingered the vial of plutonium in his pocket. He remembered Scotty’s wife from that picnic last summer, how her blond hair glowed on the beach, and the way her bikini barely clung to her round breasts. She smelled good. He wouldn’t mind getting in good with Scotty, just to get a look-see at that woman again.
“I’ll pass on the birdhouses, Scotty. But I’d sure be up for the nuclear reactor one. How much is that?”
“Two hundred dollars!”, Scotty said through a broad smile.
“Well, let’s go fill out that form then,” Nick said.
I rock, Nick thought to himself. I so fucking rock. I will be king of the world. Just you wait.


(With all apologies to Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, The Artilleryman's Vision.)

The Drunkenwoman's Remembrance

While my husband snores at my side, and the smell of stale beer fills the room,
And the world spins around my drunken head, and I no longer feel like throwing up,
I think in the darkness how the word “spring” came up so often tonight, spring, in
all it’s glorious meanings.
There, at the party, when I leaned over the table and my breasts did spring forward, out of my tube top, and how they did surprise John, and Mike beside him,
Who did lick their lips and not tell me about the emergence at first, but let their eyes linger and their minds wander, and their trousers inflate to great tents.
The smooth metal spring popping out of the great red overstuffed chair, when Mike did dare me to straddle him, to make my husband jealous, and his wife,
and the combined weight and repetitive gyrations did urge the cushion to give way, startling Mike, creating a rift in the action, and a great tear in his pants.
The spring of water which erupted from the faucet, when Jim led me to the bathroom, pushing me to the sink, the kisses insistent, the accidental turning of the handle, my bottom under the spigot, making the wet even wetter, the hot hotter, o my soul.
The spring I felt my body make when my husband entered the bathroom, a catch in the action, which I hastened to hide by pushing Jim into the empty shower stall and feigning a stain on my skirt.
The spring in my step when my bleary-eyed husband failed to notice anything besides my once-again-emergent breasts, which I pointed toward the door and led him out, while Jim fingered the gash on his head.
How happy I was that my husband offered to spring for drinks, for everyone, and two more shots of whiskey made the evening complete.
(The tequila, oh, someone remind me next time to avoid that concoction, which spins my brain and makes breasts pop out of strapless blouses.)