One from the closet

Found it!

I'm posting two versions. The first version is the old, classic one that I read for the group many months ago. The second is a revised version that I wrote not long ago. No title for either.

The first one:



Why are there children in my quadrangle?
They should not be there.
This is a place for adults with complex relationships.
I am a fairly well-dressed individual
I do not have a minute to spare
For your scraped knees and simple quips.

Please get off my cigarette-tapered lawn
And take your recreational throwing-orb elsewhere
You are distracting me from my studies
I, a fairly well-dressed individual, yawns
For I am tired and you have dared
To keep me from the nap I need because all night I was distracted by my buddies

I cannot believe I just said"buddy."
That is a child word
And I am not a child
I am a fairly well-dressed individual
I eat sophisticated things like bean-curd
Why, world, why do you let you children run wild?
Please take these children from my quadrangle
They should not be here
It will soon be passed their bedtime.
I am more than a fairly well-dressed individual
I am groomed with the utmost care all the time
And, unlike those children, when I speak, I wouldn't dare rhyme.


And, the new one:


Why are there children in my quadrangle
They should not be here
This is a place for adults with complex relationships
They have no prescheduled business
They do not contribute, nor perform in a reliable manner
They do not understand; but me
I am a fairlywell dressed individual
A repsectable straight-edge-laced totheclock citizen
A pillarmoral figure of civic faithlaw
Precise, mochablended, and statuewary

Please get off my pinstripe lawn
And take your overly rotund recreational throwing-orb with you
I scoff at its obtuse form which lacks sharp edges of trust and responsibility
Have they not heard of wholesomewheat? But me
I am a fairlywell dressed individual
A man of the straightback
Eyebrow furrower of the wakeup shapeup morning newsathon
Well groomed to the toothcomb
They call me just-the-right-curd-of-bean
Applied at the appropriate times, accu-first-rate

Authorities
They should not be in my quadrangle
They must reedulocate
Learn to discipline contibutevote and maybe we'll talk
For we, the fairlywell dressed
We go down the workweek sled
And you, casualman
It's off with you to bed

blippity blue

Here's the first draft of a poem I wrote for class... (the assignment being to write a poem about/in response to a museum). When I was in Germany, I took a trip to Prague and got to visit the Kafka Museum. It was fabulous... and the poem is a kind of ... chaos as it stands. The usual. But the indentation is all wrong. Blogger doesn't let me do my crazy indentation the way I wish it would. Alas.

AH, KAFKA

Die Verwandlung and you—
we can imagine what it means, we can know it by your words
this kaleidoscope jags through
alleyways, staircases, mountains, castles and snow.
More snow—virgin pure snow—
of white light spun into dark webs, a man becomes
a Käfer.

How to make a collage of literature? How,
but to string words along walls; to push against a happy canopy
with alley-way staircases of reflected light and dark:
the dark sum of feeling attached to the Käfer—
a beetle, whose metamorphosis spurs
the revaluation of prose:
der Vater-Sohn Konflikt; the body-soul conflict;
the lust-love conflict; the male-female conflict;
the genitalia conflict. And you never married

your lovers, did you?! Sick,
but not simply sick. Afraid of illness,
or the decay that proliferated
out of cells touching cells
touching your legal mind’s cells;

Temptation that never left you
to write your heart into combustible stone
until it wrote itself out (preserved itself atop this hill of your city; metaphors that may
be of a fever, of a gash
in the face that was much more than a gash—
the Country Doctor, the lusting crispness of a maidservant and you!).

You willed—never that this would happen: words,
yours, flashed out on walls,
bound and wrapped in your second tongue,
my tongue, in your mother tongue, not
the WRITING ON THE WALL tongue
ah, that there could have been some union, some award
swarming these details: drawers full
of light and drawings of
stick-figures in single black lines—
from overhead, from forward and behind:
the mirror that you were back then
never shone so clearly as it does today:
that you were lonely the brilliant
sojourner of the castle.

Tangle

The moment your fingers brush my neck
I return to my body
and you to yours.
You lean in and unclasp
my necklace, smooth silver,
and let it slip to the floor.
Neither of us are worried
about the chain
that will soon be
a twirled, twisted tangle
from our carelessness.

You remove your watch.
You have no use for it here.
Sharp hands
are twitching from line
to deliberate line
as if there aren’t an infinite number
of moments in between.

I let you take off
my skin.
Ultimate vulnerability.
Ultimate freedom.

Locked.
One moment.
Us.

An Elegy for Her

Slowly trudging through the sludge,
Amidst mass chaos beneath grey skies,
She fought.
Fight did she by day, by night,
Clung to her last allies of hope:
Her crystal rain, whose mother the black clouds of death
Guarded from the sun.
Despair did she not,
For one day her sun would shine,
One day pierce the shadow.

But what when dwell in sole dark?
Mortality of those
Whom once we thought invincible
Harshly proves us wrong
As cower we in fear
At that very prospect of unknown.
And so the gruesome mask of death
Casts its ruthless shadow upon her innocent face.
And she, liberated to that sunny land,
Forever shall remain a mystery of the past.

-Nirmish Singla

For now I'm posting this under my username, but it might be transferred to his if he makes an account.

Untitled

Our Eyes met in passing
though brief the moment, I knew
and you did too.

I felt eyes on my neck
and turned
our gaze has met
once more.
a sparkle and smile.
Lightning struck again.

My face is hot
and tingling hands.
I want that moment again.

Untitled (as is the usual with my stuff)

sullen, stark and shabby,
he sits upon the stoop.

Slowly singing somber songs
Sipping on his soup.

Journey

A spot of orange
On the hard, white oval.
It begins.
Another chip.
It keeps shivering.
More cracks.
Suddenly a bulge.
The bulge pops,
Replaced by a head.
It keeps pecking
Out of its confines
Into the world.
Such a big world.
Such a long journey.
The casing is gone now.
Its legs are wobbly.
A shrill chirp.
With a small nudge
The caring mother responds.
Soon you'll be me
She thinks.
Go forth little chick.
Explore your new world.
It's such a big world.
Such a long journey.

It feels weird that all my posts so far have been poems. I'm going to write a story next, I swear.

My "lonely cigarette" poem

So I came back from the meeting and tried to work on the poem inspired by my feverish ramblings last week which I'd promised to have ready for you guys by tomorrow... but, sadly, it fell completely apart the way poems do sometimes. However, feeling poetic and refusing to give up, I sat resolutely in front of my computer until I came up with something. Not surprisingly, after the conversation at the end of the meeting, it's a "lonely cigarette" poem. It's so cool when the group works exactly the way it's supposed to... from our chatting came--an idea!

It's not super-refined or anything, and it's not really a performance piece, so I won't be reading it tomorrow, but I'd still appreciate your feedback. This is *gulp* my first actual creative post on here.

Fading (working title)

You walk with me, the glint of light dangling—
perky, precarious—from two careless fingers.
A fading moon looks stoically away from us,
the trees bend and sway, the air laden with
latent raindrops, or early dew,
or some other small quivering wetness.
I laugh and tell you to blow me a smoke ring.

You tilt your head up obligingly,
take a long drag (always with eyes closed)
and round up your lips as if for a howl—
but out creep two ghostly rings
followed by a wobbly third.
“You can’t breathe from the throat,” you tell me.
“It’s gotta come from deeper inside.”
Then you take another drag and start again.

Impulsively, I lean in
and touch my lips to yours, lightly,
before you’ve had the chance to blow all the smoke out.
In your surprise, you let it out into my face, and I laugh again.

But you don’t laugh. You
look away, stoically, and mumbling, repeat
“from deeper inside.”
Suddenly, I feel a sharp burning in my own throat.

When we get to my door, I stop and smile,
and you look at me—we’re both wondering
whether I’ll ask you up. You lean toward me, back bent,
and look at me a little too long.
I sigh an apology, and step deliberately inside.
I don’t turn around till later.

By then, you’re just a figure with a cigarette
fading slowly, shoulders quivering,
into the plain dark night.