The Blue Overalls

In the midst of a tedious day's
cleaning, I get
a defiant sense

of the luxury of ugly things.

I find a pair of overalls,
not even old, just blue--
naive, unvariegated blue--

as fashion statement,
useless,
and irrelevant to my lifestyle.

On no occasion
would I wear these overalls.
This fact gives me unaccountable joy
and I rush to try them on.

These elements, unacceptable,
are therefore mine, all mine.



for Poetry Instigator - Neruda & The Mundane

Let no philosophy be
analogous to clothes shopping.
I don't wear fashions
as feelings, or vice versa. My life
is poorly stitched by hand
from the scraps of those ideas,
not from whole cloth.




prompt from Matthew Zapruder @ Poetry Instigator:
"...pick a sentence from a book at random. Then, figure out the action or principle underlying the sentence, and begin the poem by saying you (or someone) is NOT doing that action or doesn’t believe in that principle, thereby negating the premise."

This particular li'l poem(above) is more of a fragment and I don't even know for sure what it means, but the prompt was dashed intriguing.

My sentence is from What Color Is Your Parachute? which is the only book of prose I had on hand. For a moment I despaired of finding anything I wanted to negate in this book of positiveness, but this was a pretty good prompt and I managed to grab hold of something.

The sentence: "It is exactly analogous to your going to a clothing store and trying on different suits (or dresses)"

Ardipithecus

Scientists still can't see
the evolutionary advantage
in bipedalism

wish they still had
grasping feet

are on the verge of admitting
it really was God.

Nature's mistakes
don't flourish.



for read write poem

Body of Work

Where is it done?
Is it located in the nerves,
in the back,
in the strength of the thigh
to walk and climb and do
whatever is necessary?

Probably the shoulders
are the seat of the Will
at its most godly--
the origin
of the muscles of embrace,
shoring up all things.



for read write poem

Coverage

We need health care
to stay pretty for you,
Senators.

A sick woman
is an unsightly woman.
(unless of course
we're talking
consumption)


for read write poem

Doctor's Office Diagrams IV

I always conceived
the uterus
to be huge,

also the heart.

Each, I am told,
about the size
of a fist.



for read write poem
yeah a bit slapdash and probably been said before, sorry about that. gotta keep on truckin'.

Doctor's Office Diagrams III

The exemplary human head is drawn
with the hairstyle of an American politician

for the small fraction of humanity
who might find this face reassuring.



for read write poem

Doctor's Office Diagrams II

There's no witchcraft in blood.
It's shaped like nothing,
like practicality, a modified sphere.

Experience is unpainterly.
The beauty of it always lost
to the body that lost the blood.

At best, taboo
or disgust;
at worst, bare fact.



for read write poem

Doctor's Office Diagrams I

Larynx, phonation

The color pallette
has been reduced, and dried
in order to avoid triggering
a too-vibrant self-knowledge

Larynx, inspiration


for october poetry mini-challenge @ Read Write Poem

Women On The Beach

You're pretending
moments of happiness change something.

You're posing for pictures,
a smile on your face.

The beach is real, and the surf,
but we can't know for sure
if it's loving us back,

if this will save us,
this one day,
with salt crusting our hair,
stripping our studied dignities.

Your laughter
doesn't echo here.

Are you writing this down?
Wouldn't this make
a good story?

--when the day has dried, when
you're alone again,

hoping there was a reason,
hoping
you did well--


for easystreet prompts #660.

Slowly, He Turned...

I've never seen a man change.

Ask him to reconsider.
Ask a pear orchard in winter
to feed you now.

The cycles are baffling
to short-lived, hungry things
like love.

Staring upward
through the placid limbs
I waited for flowers to bloom.

By now, who knows?
He may be on a hillside
in Provence,

sharing everything, smiling at the sky.


for Totally Optional Prompts

Absence Riff

1. It's A Wonderful Presence

Yes, and what if
you had been born?

with your wheels your faces your habits

If you had been born
Space would have expanded all around you
and energy would have flooded
in waves the color of you
everywhere you went
every day

The way you moved a chair
The way you spoke to that waitress

In your wake, an ever-widening causality

How is it
with so many people in the world
that time and space are not ajumble
with the wreckage from billiions and billions
of little sullen hurricanes going on and on?

How does anything
stand?


2. Without You

Occasionally one fantasizes
about the flash fame
of suicide

or bearing children

But no one ever says the truth at a funeral
that it's the dead who are most guilty
of forgetting


3. Take-Away

Convenience
is the most natural thing

Evolution only runs downhill

We get our food
from roadside stands now
and the killers and the farmers
like underpaid puppeteers
running around behind the black curtain

When the ranchlands
are pulled back under the earth

there will be no more
exotic places

We'll all be crowded onto a mountaintop
trying to be the first
to catch the raindrops as they fall

And we will eat dust and crawl on our bellies
just like in the beginning



for Poetry Instigator

(Falling in love at my age)

is a knot
to be untangled
blindfold, submerged
in water

a lock to pick, a box
to splinter

only to climb
into a new one, and seal it
even tighter



just wanted to share this cause i thought i was really clever when i wrote it, i won't lie.

Risks

I did not hide
sewing scissors
in the laundry

or set a bucket of water
by my screen door
to invite the rain in

I spoke of love, but did not
insist upon it, least of all
to myself

and I ran out of money
for all the extra fees
so I retrenched, literally.

I am peeping out of a hole, expecting
mortars to fall, and I think I am smiling.

I haven't gone
to the place where flowers are taught
what colors to display

but I pass that garden every day.
And there is a strict jungle of offices
and so much more that I do not know.

It's all in books. The library is the most dangerous
place in the world, and is, I think,
the door that leads in and out at the same time.



for http://totallyoptionalpromts.blogspot.com

My animal's all dressed up
in frothy, languorous petticoats tonight,
in bright hard glitter and a beat of blood.
She's been to a party, she's been talking with you.

She's been leaning up against the fruit trees
in the garden out back, full of coarse stars.
Give me, give me, she says.

She hitches homeward
from the night of tossed-up crinolines
eyelashes and bare arms--

She comes home with hot coals,
to me.

I fall into bed, disconnnect
the fiery diodes,
play my heart with a spoon,
chew on foil--

waiting, shiny with the fanaticism
of a new affair.



for http://readwritepoem.org

Intro

I'm Rachel, I blog irregularly at http://improbableenjoyment.blogspot.com on topics of general/no interest.

I've decided I need a spin-off blog for when I want to participate in poetry prompts hosted by various communities such as

http://readwritepoem.org
http://totallyoptionalprompts.blogspot.com

and whatever else I find, without spending too much time at Improbable Enjoyments just talking about my own work, since that was not the idea behind starting that blog. If it can be said to have a theme, well, it's not that.

So I don't know if there will be much here or not, but I need all the help I can get when it comes to writing and god knows I have so much time on my hands that I'm sure managing two blogs will be a snap.