Bela's a Day Late and a Dollar Short

[Bela]

April 8

Dialogue with a physician

“When I open my mouth
a moth flutters out.
Should I be alarmed?

When I sit at the keyboard
dust cloaks my fingers.
Will this do me harm?

The boards are unmeasured,
the camera unfocused,
the charcoal unsharpened
the plot unrevised,

the lump on my thumb
makes it futile to strum.
Need I loosen the strings?

By the easel a palette
wouldn't crack with--”


“Yes, yes
I think I get the picture.

Capture the moth
and see me in the morning.”

[5th column]

When this kind of thing happens you need to take an urgent dose of prose or have a drink with the quack ;0)

[Bela]

So true, 5th! Thanks for popping in.

// B

[Bela]

April 9

The Captive Moth

--No, no flame.
Here is darkness,

while in the dark scents rise and tumble
lanced by antennae.

A thorax folds a scaled wing,
unfolds it, courses blood, folds

useless scales in a dark of rising scents
while sensors tuned to ultrasound lay still

and still no flame
is needed here.

[Bela]

April 10

Zero minute egg

Go on, give it a spin,
snort at its drunken stagger,
see the yolk clonk the shell like the brain
in a linebacker's skull.
Watch it weave and dip,
a hamster ball's rodent asleep at the wheel
on a deck in a storm
in the pitch and the spray until tossed

at the length of a spoon
gingerly to the bubbling deep

and tamed over time
to symmetry fit,
it would seem,
for consumption.

[Speug]

I really liked the similes in this last one. Also, it feels a bit like there is a relation between the poor, mistreated egg and the beaten-up ice cream from earlier.

[Janet]

Bela- it's a pleasure reading your poems for the first time. The zero minute egg gave me a good chuckle. You capture it's odd buoyancy with fun and flare. Also really enjoyed dialogue with a physician- the moth flying out of N's mouth needing to be captured. Loved texting with the bandaged thumb- made me laugh.

[Bela]

Many thanks, Speug and Janet!

[Bela]

April 11

The rusted bicycle

sports no chain,
not round the spokes, nor fore, nor aft.
It's there for the picking
like browned fruit scorned by birds,
bored by bees and abandoned,
a blot on winter's twigs,

or the duct-taped jalopy that squats in the drive,
its windshield cracks growing broad at each frost,
its tires sighing soft

as a paunch on the couch
smooths a rumpled shirt's pleats
with each rattled rise
and each wheezing fall
keeping time to the honk of the tube,

until air oozes in
through the cracks like a thief
and the tires grow sturdy,
the fruit drops its mooring,
the chain seats its spokes
and the couch cushions breathe

in a deep inhalation of spring.

[anenome]

Enjoying the poems here, Tomorrow's Poem perfectly reflects my inability to write last week, even with sleep, the confusion of thoughts underpinned by the clock and eye movement is well delivered!

[Mike M]

Haven't taken the time these deserve yet, but I love the rhythm of "but the birch needs a hauler
and the hauler needs a back, and the stove has a gullet
and the gullet has a hunger
and the baseline has a crack."

And I love the idea of some guy setting up mock-ups of endangered birds to lift the birders' spirits.

[Dunc]

Bela

Looking Back — an engaging mix of rain and place and botany and microbiology.

Dialogue — left me grinning. The symptoms are a fine list.

Moth — Well that gets to the guts of it. Nice writing.

Egg — 'like the brain / in a linebacker's skull' ; a rather sinister culinary vision. I mean, it's just an egg, really ...

bicycle — 'its tires sighing soft // as a paunch on the couch'. Do Swedish bikes really unrust in spring?

You're giving us a highly enjoyable thread here.

Regards / Dunc

[Jee Leong]

"Mobile Poem" is highly entertaining. A keeper. I like the apocalyptic ending of "Looking Back." As Dunc wrote, a fine list of symptoms in "Dialogue with a physician." You are making poems out of breaking down.

[Bela]

anenome, Mike, Dunc & Jee,

Many, many thanks for popping in and commenting! Much appreciated.

// B

[Bela]

April 12

The Art of the Petrumpan Sonnet

The octave sets the stage, defines the tone
Disgusting! It's unfair! A con game! Shame!
presents a doubt or conflict in the same
I'm so, so great! See all the stuff I own!
I'm pro-choice...Life! Pro-life! And I alone!
then fleshes out throughout the next quatrain
Let's build a wall! I have the greatest brain!
a glass through which the speaker's soul is shown.
The sestet solves the conflict, forms a space,
I feel very strongly! Bad! It's bad!
a path to push the proposition through.
You know, believe me! Very--a disgrace!
Perhaps a wayward comet crashes. Sad!
I just want fairness. So unfair! I'll sue.