Featured Poetry - Spring 2012 ...
By Eric Shapiro - Various Dates, Spring 2012 - For Submission to Skidmore Fiction Writing Contest ...
Celestial Dance
Hope
Drugged up and lazy
Gathering the praise of his elders to forge life-sustaining delusions
Every poem, every song
Birthed from a manic desperation
A mutt chasing cars on the edge of a cliff
Can feel time’s encroaching shadow
As it bares down on his fragile, egg shell mind
Fear
His wall of delicate fantasies will be shattered
He will be dragged into a cubicle by the force of his own mediocrity
To toil for the rest of his days
Salvation
He envies the stars
He dreams of transcending his carbon-based, carbon copy life
Of rising up to the heavens to join them in their celestial dance
Rendering his experiences a constellation
A second-hand dream
To detonate in a blossom of light
Cremation in a solar flair
Burning himself
Onto mankind’s retina
Untitled
I am an unchaist Hindu and you are my holy milk cow
I bury my face in your udder and see visions of suckling babes feasting on your produce
Envy infiltrates my heart as they soak up your energy; energy meant for me
You have erected a facade
But your lasagna speaks louder than your half-hearted words of contentment
They are killing you, one diaper change, one nightly summons at a time
The light has forsaken your smile
Just as you have forsaken me
When the doctor's blade snipped our children's chords, so too did it sever ours
I know deep down that there is but one way to weld the torn ends together...
Night
An endless barrage of raindrops batter our window
You lie beside me, exhausted by another session of unsatisfying mock-reproduction
Once again, your exhausted body rejects my desperate thrusts
Once again, you sustain my empty ejaculations in dutiful silence
I was once your lover, but now I am reduced to a wild animal clawing at your door
I beg God for forgiveness as I fill your chalice with my unworthy seed
I turn on my side and gaze at the wall, for to look at you is to remind me of the power that I lack
The power that they have deprived me of
The power to make you vibrate like a cell phone as you cum
My eyelids are heavy, but your feathery breaths block my path to sleep
Resigned to wakefulness, I exit the bedroom
A warm shower
Back to bed
Devils In the Dirt
Angels in the stands
Devils in the dirt
Wrote a sonnet in my head
Could not speak a word
Tried to run the bases
But my head was in the sand
Struck dumb by calculation
All the songs I sang were canned
The Zebra
As the lightning lacerates the plains
At the groveling of the setting sun
The zebra saunters over to the watering hole
Dips his snout in its mud-tinged waters
The cool, gentle jungle rain pattering on his striped back
He drinks for several blissful minutes
As the lionesses converge
Even as the other animals
Brutish, brazen elephants and long-necked, far-sighted giraffes
Fleet-footed antelope and sinister hyenas
Shoot away from the banks of the pool in unison
A living shock wave
But the zebra waitsEyesOn the fourth of July she caught me in her room
Playing with her clock
Watching rubber duckies drift down the river
And plummet down the waterfall
Into the vortex
Spat out the other end
Alone in the bathtub
The baby’s down the drain
Out with the bathwater
Sucked into adulthood
Where he tries to hail a cab to take him home
As the conveyer belt pavement drags him along
Cars floating by in the opposite direction
He will be here until he dies
He remembers
When his sister was sucked in
Blood between her legs
Smiling as she walked down the aisle
Filing towards domestic bliss
Daddy was proud
Of the beautiful young woman she had become
As she sprouted pimples and shed the lining of her uterus
Nevertheless
He dreaded selling her produce to the milkman
But even as he watched
Hair erupted in hidden places and musky clouds oozed out from the open pores
And into the unsuspecting nostrils of relatives
Great uncle Tom and cousin John
Caught a whiff of her unintentional invitation
So tactfully given
And they were happy to see her at all the family gatherings
Their embraces lingering and drifting across her petite frame
Stopping to probe symmetrical fat deposits
Of course their fingers do not linger too long
Drenched as they are in the perfume of propriety
Glass
Glass half empty beneath a sun of gold
As we climb the ladder of do as we’re told
Paying no head to those above
We stretch out our arms for the team we love
Glass half full of dreams annulled
Shaved 1,000 sheep for their moon of wool
Standing naked in bitter cold
We toil on as our souls are sold
You Were My Greatest Invention
Here I lie, in a cesspool of self-pity
Haunted by your perfume ghost
How I would prefer the stench of death
To your flowery fumes
Oh, my build-a-bear!
I should have known
That you could not bear
The weight of my illusions
I should have known
That love cannot flourish
In the thin haze of mutual self-delusion
Now
The veil has been ripped away
And in the aftermath
My mind is a broken tape
Replaying our conversations in a loop
I can’t help but dwell on your precious fabrications
Precisely-tailored from the material of my deepest desires
If only I could stitch them back together
Into a patchwork reality
For a beautiful lie
Is much preferable
To a disappointing truth
I would gladly gouge out my eyes
To see you as you were again
Life of the Lover
Lovingly lifted
Out of his warm cerebral tunnel
By the mind-child’s midwife
Prodded into the replication game
By chemical slave-drivers
Endless collisions
Interchangeable set pieces
Only one constant companion
A wrestles hitchhiker
A well-dressed psychopath
With magnetic appeal
Love is not a gentle lover
He learns
In the wretched aftershocks of passion
Its kisses soaked with the undiluted nectar
Of ultimate judgment
Isolation Block
Finally unstructured time
A brief respite from the daily grind
On borrowed time he mines his mind
Profoundly connects
Some dotted lines
Reflecting on forevermore
This empty world that he deplores
With its seismic emotions, petty wars
His eyes they linger
On the door
Perhaps he should search for what it means
Unearth the dirt under a polished sheen
Nothing to gawk at when the surface is clean
And so tabloid literature reigns supreme
He scours the landscape for muck to rake
A juicy snippet of news to break
To prop open their eyes, keep them awake
Even as they have money to make
This seems to be his lot in life
To dissect them all with my surgeons knife
To reflect the glare of their daily strife
With his coat of mirrors attuned to the lightFacesThe contortions of life
Might as well be a dream
Because the contents of his life
Are transposed onto a screen
Reduced to a slideshow
A casual click away
Nothing worse for the neurotic
Than constant display
The prying eyes of strangers
Probing him for cracks
An invasion of his privacy
Technologies torturous tax
Abstinence suspicious
Must have something to hide
So join them in their vanity
And conduct yourself with pride
Better not frown
Always smile
The cameras are watching
They brook no denial
Was that you astride Jimmy?
Trading saliva on the couch
The strands will hang forever
He’ll never live it down
Peel off their plastic faces
Look beyond their tinted eyes
Expose their wizards to the light
You’ll be surprised by what you find
These high-tech beings
In their digital age
Preprogrammed machines
On the hunt for mates
Darwin’s Disney World
Give some credit to the man
A brand new spanking venue
The same old master plan
Celestial Dance
Hope
Drugged up and lazy
Gathering the praise of his elders to forge life-sustaining delusions
Every poem, every song
Birthed from a manic desperation
A mutt chasing cars on the edge of a cliff
Can feel time’s encroaching shadow
As it bares down on his fragile, egg shell mind
Fear
His wall of delicate fantasies will be shattered
He will be dragged into a cubicle by the force of his own mediocrity
To toil for the rest of his days
Salvation
He envies the stars
He dreams of transcending his carbon-based, carbon copy life
Of rising up to the heavens to join them in their celestial dance
Rendering his experiences a constellation
A second-hand dream
To detonate in a blossom of light
Cremation in a solar flair
Burning himself
Onto mankind’s retina
Untitled
I am an unchaist Hindu and you are my holy milk cow
I bury my face in your udder and see visions of suckling babes feasting on your produce
Envy infiltrates my heart as they soak up your energy; energy meant for me
You have erected a facade
But your lasagna speaks louder than your half-hearted words of contentment
They are killing you, one diaper change, one nightly summons at a time
The light has forsaken your smile
Just as you have forsaken me
When the doctor's blade snipped our children's chords, so too did it sever ours
I know deep down that there is but one way to weld the torn ends together...
Night
An endless barrage of raindrops batter our window
You lie beside me, exhausted by another session of unsatisfying mock-reproduction
Once again, your exhausted body rejects my desperate thrusts
Once again, you sustain my empty ejaculations in dutiful silence
I was once your lover, but now I am reduced to a wild animal clawing at your door
I beg God for forgiveness as I fill your chalice with my unworthy seed
I turn on my side and gaze at the wall, for to look at you is to remind me of the power that I lack
The power that they have deprived me of
The power to make you vibrate like a cell phone as you cum
My eyelids are heavy, but your feathery breaths block my path to sleep
Resigned to wakefulness, I exit the bedroom
A warm shower
Back to bed
Devils In the Dirt
Angels in the stands
Devils in the dirt
Wrote a sonnet in my head
Could not speak a word
Tried to run the bases
But my head was in the sand
Struck dumb by calculation
All the songs I sang were canned
The Zebra
As the lightning lacerates the plains
At the groveling of the setting sun
The zebra saunters over to the watering hole
Dips his snout in its mud-tinged waters
The cool, gentle jungle rain pattering on his striped back
He drinks for several blissful minutes
As the lionesses converge
Even as the other animals
Brutish, brazen elephants and long-necked, far-sighted giraffes
Fleet-footed antelope and sinister hyenas
Shoot away from the banks of the pool in unison
A living shock wave
But the zebra waitsEyesOn the fourth of July she caught me in her room
Playing with her clock
Watching rubber duckies drift down the river
And plummet down the waterfall
Into the vortex
Spat out the other end
Alone in the bathtub
The baby’s down the drain
Out with the bathwater
Sucked into adulthood
Where he tries to hail a cab to take him home
As the conveyer belt pavement drags him along
Cars floating by in the opposite direction
He will be here until he dies
He remembers
When his sister was sucked in
Blood between her legs
Smiling as she walked down the aisle
Filing towards domestic bliss
Daddy was proud
Of the beautiful young woman she had become
As she sprouted pimples and shed the lining of her uterus
Nevertheless
He dreaded selling her produce to the milkman
But even as he watched
Hair erupted in hidden places and musky clouds oozed out from the open pores
And into the unsuspecting nostrils of relatives
Great uncle Tom and cousin John
Caught a whiff of her unintentional invitation
So tactfully given
And they were happy to see her at all the family gatherings
Their embraces lingering and drifting across her petite frame
Stopping to probe symmetrical fat deposits
Of course their fingers do not linger too long
Drenched as they are in the perfume of propriety
Glass
Glass half empty beneath a sun of gold
As we climb the ladder of do as we’re told
Paying no head to those above
We stretch out our arms for the team we love
Glass half full of dreams annulled
Shaved 1,000 sheep for their moon of wool
Standing naked in bitter cold
We toil on as our souls are sold
You Were My Greatest Invention
Here I lie, in a cesspool of self-pity
Haunted by your perfume ghost
How I would prefer the stench of death
To your flowery fumes
Oh, my build-a-bear!
I should have known
That you could not bear
The weight of my illusions
I should have known
That love cannot flourish
In the thin haze of mutual self-delusion
Now
The veil has been ripped away
And in the aftermath
My mind is a broken tape
Replaying our conversations in a loop
I can’t help but dwell on your precious fabrications
Precisely-tailored from the material of my deepest desires
If only I could stitch them back together
Into a patchwork reality
For a beautiful lie
Is much preferable
To a disappointing truth
I would gladly gouge out my eyes
To see you as you were again
Life of the Lover
Lovingly lifted
Out of his warm cerebral tunnel
By the mind-child’s midwife
Prodded into the replication game
By chemical slave-drivers
Endless collisions
Interchangeable set pieces
Only one constant companion
A wrestles hitchhiker
A well-dressed psychopath
With magnetic appeal
Love is not a gentle lover
He learns
In the wretched aftershocks of passion
Its kisses soaked with the undiluted nectar
Of ultimate judgment
Isolation Block
Finally unstructured time
A brief respite from the daily grind
On borrowed time he mines his mind
Profoundly connects
Some dotted lines
Reflecting on forevermore
This empty world that he deplores
With its seismic emotions, petty wars
His eyes they linger
On the door
Perhaps he should search for what it means
Unearth the dirt under a polished sheen
Nothing to gawk at when the surface is clean
And so tabloid literature reigns supreme
He scours the landscape for muck to rake
A juicy snippet of news to break
To prop open their eyes, keep them awake
Even as they have money to make
This seems to be his lot in life
To dissect them all with my surgeons knife
To reflect the glare of their daily strife
With his coat of mirrors attuned to the lightFacesThe contortions of life
Might as well be a dream
Because the contents of his life
Are transposed onto a screen
Reduced to a slideshow
A casual click away
Nothing worse for the neurotic
Than constant display
The prying eyes of strangers
Probing him for cracks
An invasion of his privacy
Technologies torturous tax
Abstinence suspicious
Must have something to hide
So join them in their vanity
And conduct yourself with pride
Better not frown
Always smile
The cameras are watching
They brook no denial
Was that you astride Jimmy?
Trading saliva on the couch
The strands will hang forever
He’ll never live it down
Peel off their plastic faces
Look beyond their tinted eyes
Expose their wizards to the light
You’ll be surprised by what you find
These high-tech beings
In their digital age
Preprogrammed machines
On the hunt for mates
Darwin’s Disney World
Give some credit to the man
A brand new spanking venue
The same old master plan