Fever and dream

(this week we imitate Jack Gilbert, a free verse writer.)

My head feels like a jet engine.
I spit the ground out onto the ground.
I miss when I used to feel safe
when I got sick. My cat would lie on my stomach.
He ran away when I was fifteen. Now I have nothing
but codeine and uncomfortable chairs.
No oases in sight, although
that may just be my vision going.
My friends are underwater and I desiccate.
My lungs feel like spilled cement. I start
wishing I could cough them up so
something would change. Think of asking the cat
to look for red spots in the dust. For now it's
just strings of spit, hanging like spiders
dangling from my mouth. This
is the company I keep. When I cough so hard
that my sternum grazes the upper bones
of my back, the spiders recoil.
My cat runs away to hide. Sometimes
he doesn't come back. I would look for him but
my head is spinning too fast, kicking up dust,
and I can't see.

holding someone's back hair

i hate sharing. i'm a little kid
with a tenuous grasp on the english language.
i eat bubble gum for breakfast and
play 52 pickup with the vacuum cleaner.
i can spell azerbaijan. you guys
always catch me in a good mood.
being bogged down isn't so bad when
your friends are there to make
fireworks out of the cattails.
i tell little kids to get off the lawn
when they crawl into my birdhouse.
nothing's clean and everything is
in its proper place. so stop
yelling at me, you're not my mom.
where did you put the shotgun?
these poetry tomes are staring me down so
let's attack them in
a non-linear fashion.

archaic

i stare
at the sparkling display,
explicitly decorated with the intent to
suggest. i stare. i wonder at
all the ways they've gone wrong.
we've been programmed to encourage
objectification. we obsess over the
exhibition but deny that we're looking.
i don't know how we became like this.
we make ourselves stand out like
birds in flocks against the sky.
we're taught that we, as humans,
desire other humans. it is in our genes
and it cannot be changed.
some people spread their tail-feathers
and do showy dances. some people
stalk and dive, unseen, from above.
they always leave by twos and they
never wake up alone. they know each other's
bodies but only sometimes remember names.
tonight i'm home by myself again.
i begin to ask myself where i went wrong.

I Love This Poem

The Candy Man

I strolled by the factory
and all my eyes could see
was a bountiful sea of milk chocolate candies

My mouth opened wide
as I peeked inside,
and tears of Almond Joy came pouring out my eyes.

I went around back,
broke open the door latch,
and ran about the factory ready for an eating attack.

I heard a Milk Dud not far away,
deciding to go on my Milky Way,
until a guard stopped me and said: “It’s just not your day.”

I Snickered at the guard,
called him a big, fat lard,
and told him he’d never put me in the prison yard.

His backup came soon enough.
They slapped me with the cuffs,
and my heart broke into Reeses Pieces⎯Man, I was crushed!

The bail was 100 Grand.
My mom came to lend a hand,
and I showered her with Hershey Kisses to show how thankful I am.

-Conor Meehan

The Riverman

(this week I imitate Thomas Hardy. basically lots of rhyming with imbalanced lines. oh yeah and DOOM.)

I've known many men
but every now and then
I find my thoughts returning to the Riverman again.

He was born and raised
into love, fear and praise,
yoked under his parents' fervid religious craze.

He grew up on his own
with a prison for a home,
but he found comfort in the river when he couldn't stand being alone.

He refused to stay confined,
so leaving the forest behind
and carrying a trusting and immovable faith, he bid his parents goodbye.

But his brand new life
under big-city lights
corroded the iron wills of him and his young wife.

His son's breath was seized
by the fatal maw of disease
and his wife chose over madness a divine, eternal sleep.

Now in the city still
he was forced to stay until
he could begin to pay off all his son's medical bills.

I used to talk to this man
when he would work my land,
crippled under the weight of things he couldn't understand.

He told me, "Son, don't listen
to the priest or the deacon.
They preach real pretty, but they're both of 'em just lyin'. "

I would catch him casting looks
down toward the deep woods.
I think the river was the one thing that he still understood.

He just needed to hear
that rushing in his ear.
He said he was leaving Jesus for a place far better than here.

He disappeared one day.
I was told he'd run away.
I can see him on the miry banks, kneeling in the mud to pray.

He stands and wades in now,
lets the water take him down.
The only thing he ever understood was that peaceful rushing sound.

take me to the river.

you say you'll be there, you say
you'll take my hand but you
never show up when i need you.
you never show up. always
make me make my own decisions.
i'm a supplicant. i was born
from the mud, half a bone maybe.
i turn my palms skyward and beg.
here in the dirt in this hole
i don't want. i'm always
looking down. waiting for the
sunshine on the back of my neck.
i get clouds. descending to
blur my vision. my knees are
wrapped in earth. i'm just
holding out for your hand,
begging, promising not to
kiss you, content to just
ask. listen. but you.
you never say a word to me.
and you. you never listen.

oh jesus.
i'm gonna leave you the first chance i get.

fiddler

(this is an imitation of Marianne Moore, who used specific syllabic schemes in all her poems.)

I lean up
against the
furthest wall.
My friends are already onstage, with
the rest of the choir,

the two gui-
tars, and the
sole fiddler.
She stands poised, breathes in, raises her bow
and delivers her

dulcet and
discordant
duet. It's
confusing to the ear but it's plain
and simple to the

part of me
that controls
the rising
feeling I get when exposed to loss,
exiles, wanderers,

the ones with-
out homes. The
fiddler frowns
at her music. I fold my arms and
watch the fireplace.