Sagittarius

The way he grazes, unattainable,
Fingers clean and callused.

Running unbridled, walking on tiptoe,
Sleeping standing up.

He is a singer, he plays the guitar.
Neck so wide,

Calves so hairy, teeth so frank.
He rolls the joint, chews the roach:

Lazy glow,
Breast braced in the wind.

interlude : 3 poems by noah cicero

Noah Cicero's blog is one I've been following for a while now. It's worth checking out for his political views and extrapolations as well as for his unique, Youngstown voice in the world of writing.

The following are three short poems that Noah wrote; enjoy!

Obituary

Noah Cicero got a check
for 130 dollars
instead of buying food
he purchased cigarettes
and starved to death

Fortune

I once had dreams
of being a great man
now I dream
of fixing the fuel pump
on my car

The present

I'm overwhelmed by the present
some poets are overwhelmed
by boats
and juniper trees
but right now

I don't wanna talk about it

Auto-da-fé

A year has passed. This summer's a lot hotter
than the last. Do you remember when
you turned eighteen? Now I am eighteen, too.
I did it without you.

You ran out of butane not long ago, stopped
lighting me afire. I require
something greater now, something monstrous. I am leaping
into the pits and opposites of pits:

The city will sift me to ash.
The lasting flashes will reduce me
to a girl of marrow.

Cross-scheme experimentation from a few weeks ago

Sing out, whistle a tune for the world's end:
it rings in echoes, ripples and then fades,
like small things dropped into a well and watched
until they're gone. Zing! Beats like bent lightning bolts,
jagged, unsure, strings sent across a line
in different ways; sent strings, crossed messengers,
the lyric bent and limed, zinged in weird ways.
In a well-mannered way, the things behave
and then watch it all fall. The bells ring tolls,
end everything. Ragnarok. Muses, sing.

Dreams

This morning I wrote through to the last page of a notebook, a rare event in my life.
This notebook contains a couple of poems, raps, stories, and journal entries, but what it is primarily comprised of is dreams, transcribed in that half-awake, incoherent, coherent state of morning.
Paging through it, I found this entry from February 20th:

I lived next door to James Joyce. He had just recently died.
I woke up and water was lapping all the way up their house, halfway up my own window.
Huge waves.
It was just the Joyce house. I watched for a little bit.
I was going to call 911 but it didn't happen, but someone else eventually did.
I think the pets drowned.

old school, cold war

Peach pits sat in your lungs, your kidneys lingered.

And you were unlettered,
you could never read or write back to my letters.

Thumbing from your friends,
you skinny-legged child of bums and guns,
you never knew when you were wanted.

Sleeves too wide,
you eyed the hammer and sickle,
cocked the pistol,
let your fingers win it.



(a rewrite of this)

I tossed a rock onto the sand.
The moment it left my hand

I gave it up. It made no splashes,
settled before the crashes,

but when the sparkling water rose
my pebble changed Neptune's flows.

We trip gods with our crumbs.
The sea is moved by a slip of the thumb.