#martinnarrod

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

The Penguins

Me, up on the snow-rock white glacial cliff hedges mountaineering my way in the moments-after-twilight-sweeping-black. Execrable cold, a death-making quiet, Not a seal, not a hare - this Earth of gelid death. I climbed out above the snow Where my expiration left sinuous brandings in the copper light. But the Weddell was siphoning the darkness to the katabatic deep valleys - piceous lees of the brightening umber - cleaving the moon in two like the split eye of a winter lynx. And I saw the penguins: Little specks of black in the limitless white - fifty together - obelisk-still. Their inaudible coo, they sat motionless, nearly mute, With creamsicle feet and amber-eyes, incomparably mum. I proceeded: not one chirped or swiveled its little fur cap. Black silent fragments of a black silent world. I hearkened in the barrens of the desiccate plains. While the wooly bears came from the sea to see of the silence. Slowly edges oozed out of the darkness. Then the moon ivory, porcelain, azure erupted Quietly, and halving to its heart and shot mist, shaking and the ocean opened, crying blue, And the giant mountains lunged-. I stopped Scrambling, as if up from my voice at the mouth of a nightmare, down towards the snow-rock, from their glacial sheaths, And came the penguins. There stood they, still-, silent, in the river of blue light: Creamsicle feet and amber-eyed Thwacking the ice in a grand fête While everywhere was gray and rimy. And still they did not speak above a breath, Not one squeeked or cawed, Their nestled shining beaks dug into the polar rim, Low into the valleys, in the blue shimmering rays - In throngs of the congested cities, living among the years, the faces, May I some day greet my memory in such solemn a world Into the estuaries and the azure-skies, curious wooly bears, Listening as the ice tholes.

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

The Temple Place

Your heirloom temples, from mama, where the gold sea split, was the tenderest place. One spot in North soma of many, once when cruising my way up from your center, past the narrow of your collar bones, climbing with slow-skill your neck, I found myself there, an hour had passed, I just stayed there mid-breath kiss. It's as if I had locked in your amour-green button, you kicked on, alive. Some fantastical god of the heavens wired you together. I knew then how you'd been retrieved from under the bed, strapped to a gurney like a porcelain one ton feather and carried off into the tiny room so any He with big hands could grasp your Situation, whether your heart was still whole. There I could see you leap from hungry shadows, colliding into monsters, stuck between the screaming and the feral laughters; my lips on the on-off alive switch, except your face, feeling nothing I pushed to grieve the tears back into your pupils and bring you up from your dead and drowning voice. I wish my arms had been the sizes of Washington and London, I could have held you above my head, or stripped off your sticky chrysalis and fed it back to the belly-sagging dragons in the salt sea. Right through into those heirloom temples I went Taking every breath between us, Ridding you of your Uncle's leg, How many headaches did you suffer this demon to grab you by the hips of your rose bush, the stalks of your golden hairs? The reports escaped back into the sea. But me, I never gave way, my elbows were branded upwards, nothing could break my sleeves. Somehow still, that fever grew inside of you, The hungry shadows crept into your shoe-boxes and shelves of jewels. I could never turn away. And then one July while we sat a seashore on our heels That deleterious ghost came back Into you where I had immolated that goblin of silence. A hole just beneath your little tum. Right in the sun you burst open, your crooked arms, your wiry legs, Everything beautiful and earnest was sucked out of you, Eyes from blue to black, crown from gold to grey. Your retreat from the light, ghouls idling in your entrails, monsters with strings to your fingertips. I pray that someday soon, amidst the worries of the waking days, the sadness of the in between, and the darkness of that solemn day that I will meet your heirloom temples again. So that even as my skin begins to shrivel and stink, and my eyes slouch back and my quill shrinks, I can share your breath just once more beneath a summers' day.

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

Seven

the beach, lake shore drive,- your prophet of the poplars. My moon-rock jog down victory aisle; not anymore. The lying and the lying, the two cups of coffee in the tree-house tea market playroom of sixth street, drive into the fortress of the fog in the county of doom, the ocean sweating its dead up like each and every shell was a shape-shifting tyranny, another car flipped over on the side of the highway, another sand storm jolting its way over the ridge. The blue car, the white one, the sleeping, your eyelids sideways, hands spilling into mine. We left at six in the evening, phone calls to the midwest, middle of nowhere and I couldn't get past the cows and my lymph nodes, a major attack of hypochondria, just a little play to play with you. Night swells mist, your sister, the zoo, Napa, up towards the redwoods, down and around through the sewage salt flats of the Dumberton Bridge, I-19 and Santa Cruz, red drink umbrellas, candy canes amidst the zubilee zoo.--Top of the rock and I'm sweeping for lighthouses, dead sea drift, bottle rockets, and the strawberry nursery. They told me to write something about being single; is that like talking about my cake and eating yours too? I could eat your cake for ours. The lemon tree, my bliss resistent fingertips, six-disc compact disc player in the trunk, a half-mile hike just to catch the mailbox, another four weeks just waiting for the man. This hunt of the desert something I couldn't prepare for, letter writing skills that were almost invariably going to be too underdeveloped. Points to the North star, but hasn't a fucking clue where it is. You think it was a suite I was suited for, your Rogers Park attacker coming through your bedroom door back from Narnia, the four burials of Los Alamos on El Embarcadero. Twice through the tunnel to Japan-town draw chalk on the door if you want to come back, knock three times and your father can come too, every word you want to hear but it doesn't matter, this hot hot summer and Wolfeborough still means nothing to you. I'm at the airport, jet setting a story settling, my vespers tested, my hips halved and exploding. I want just another morning, but I'm afraid there's nothing I can do. That was my plane but I missed on purpose, Sixty thousand places but not even one I can choose.--

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

The Audience

Now to commence the so over-glorious judge, Tonight's faces, mangled and chaste, loosely flooded their corpses: crummy, curmudgeonly glummy-mien shlubs. How then bodies are changed,- superimposed by the verse, when contrived in the looseleafs pre-parade of disperse. Transmogrifications in a two-timed split-grin, like the sun-clasped by pharoahs under the pyramid's gild. The amusement peculiar, the foolish blithe writhing, Eyes rolled, while the words lept from the throat-box through the hole-mouth exploding. Birds chirp on vexed hexes, leap berserk of branch idling, from their nesting spots amble by tree-limbs toward hiding. From the beginning, in this moment, until the very last vowel, the uproar of dumbfound in their J-shaped dropped jowls. Already the war: sea, land, and sky; my neck snapped my head back, meat-pizza bolus spewed passed my eyes. They love me, perhaps, or they're just in love- their amour for other, just won't be enough. The hen house is empty, the rooster must die, overthrown like the bard from the gallery's sighs. Death on a Friday, the twelth of the year will make midnight rhyming end early I fear.

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

1:7:13 'April

There is the two of us sat, looking as the night slowly unwraps itself: No second hand marks this. While bussing is repeated and hands hold Nothing tells where the clock goes. It is late-Spring: the heat hangs still sweeps around through ankles: Beyond the face of the moon, Within the silk of the nape an ocean, tell No clock, nowhere. It is us sitting, the hot does not unravel the summer. Time does not besiege, Till we are only supine, 'Speaking upright in a bed: words chirping from our brisk bird branches Like the parched palatial lands of the Sahara when the rainy skies submit to their wet-storm sensation; And stubbornly the Robins ditch their nest to leave the pyres.

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

Six

It's like this, and then there was total recall. Fast like a safety plan made wrong and then bouncing in and out all the way down the hall. Up through cable cars, Korean fast food market, wet fish, soupy street, concrete cracks filled with crab meat and meth heads. Just a square, a five block, two street, sideways quadrangle, beat of the Tenderloin, hour of the dove. Every one's dead on these loose ends. Hills of the back of her backside, skin of the back of her neck. Rapture is the grave of the sunset, memory is that thing that I said.

No one cans in carnivores, no one runs moves like a shepherd. Sunday, daft as candy, luck in the ways of the prophet. Canon of the blaze of every woman that died today. The sleep setting, the motorcycle bending the hollow, the ravines noisy interlude, up through the rough and the tangles, huddles in a six pack, three or four walking up the block to meet the rest of them. 

The skin doesn't fit right, it wears wrong, the shoulders stiff, the masseuse excuses himself. Buckets of flowers hang from the ceiling like stripped cat christmas decorations in suburban mastermind serial killer resort town. Everyone is quiet because they gotta. They move their feet like they were hurrying death into a red volcano, like they were the errand of red from the top bell to the bottom of the town. 

I sit on a roof top, baking in the noon day sun. Stripping sticks and stems off the side to sideways, just roasting away, laying, low in the afternoon light. I see a girl with her hands on her skirt, wobbling, scooting a priest card on a periwinkle terra-cotta.  I move my head, turn it upside round to take a better look. No one counts to ten when they see me. The gangster that woke up isn't the gangster that went to sleep last night. My wickedness ended my words mean your bright decay. So I ride the pavement exhausted, burying my coughs in an L-shaped arm.

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

Five

I need to kill it, kick it, destroy it and its feet too. Under its overachieving red ribbons and blasphemous gaze I need to throw it over on its side and bruise my toes by smashing it rapidly. It has to call, it must. It has to be, or it never will. Where it must live I'll never know. Where it swears, I know it swears. It keeps and it is kept and is bruised by the wind and chafed by water and swallowing. It cannot and it must be. Well as the day it came to be, it is still half of its greatest ambition. Undercovered and without denial it is only a member of its own annunication. Until now it never was mentioned. Never talked about, written forth, or underwent. It cannot. I can. It won't but I will. I will kill it. Violently.

Something comes and it's time. I've never know it to be like this. I used to swear off but I cannot resist. My pants around my ankles, my cock an eager recipient and traveler with a list wide open- I am ahead of myself. It will happen. Going there. Doing this. Being wild and still tightly acute. It's wonderland and I am riveting, wet, and riding with my heart opened and speaking loudly. I come to and it's over, I haven't missed it but it isn't happening just yet, a moment and it will return. To the ocean I'll go and wait. My ears still ringing with excite. The bells moving slightly in the corners of my eyes.

Casualties. Like a star would be if it could speak. Like too many childlike nuances in space if space had childlike nuances. I take the I out of it and just sit and watch for awhile. A bench on the side of the Earth, is where I sit and have my guava nectar and honeydew melon. Straight up, straight up like candle smoke until it's totally gone. The bear is gone with the elephant and out of the room. The basketball net tangles too, but it's not here anymore either. All is not lost but left. The year smells sweet but isn't anymore. Circles everywhere but too circular to be seen still. Everywhere is voiceless and too worried to say anything

I zipper up my jacket but it's broke. The coins in my torn pockets are starving for company. It is time to buy the flowers and mail the letters. November will be here and soon past, whispering to my friends, especially the ones I mention by pronoun but never by name, anymore. The street is full of perfume. The irony is that it's all but the autumn. No one comes here anymore. The longer the title stays the longer it keeps. There is an endless array of words and not a single ear to write them into. I was never inquisitive of melancholy but it tells me all the details of it's bowel movements. I'm annoyed and learning French to pretend I don't understand. I hold life by the wrists, its are much smaller than my own, its colors much more bold, much more bright. In night I explode into a lot of little pieces. Something comes and someone goes. Someone comes and I leave to return very little. The West I love.

[thepoetryofmartinnarrod-blog]

Three

Please be a sofa and not a couch. Please be the shade of the moon and not its sliver. Please be slouched over the stairs with your legs held upright to your chest and your back supine, not spread out over the sidewalk. Please hug the corners of your room and the corners of your mouth, not the half-inch bottoms of the table legs at Cafe Central. Please be crimson and not cerulean, though I know your whimsical paddywagon can carry soldiers, please fly a dragon instead of riding your sister's horse. Please crush intensely, strike upwards instead of downwards, the lightning that overcomes your fingertips when you flip through the pages of your story please be careful, please take your time and let yourself abhorr, please allow yourself to abhorr. There is no right way to run downtown, no right way to be wronged; there, there, is your right arm cooking its palm outstretched and upwards? Please be firm with your shaking, running, twirling, and stirring. On the roof with your curdling, lurking, and smirking, please be curious of your first words, your whispers, and your favorite vespers. Like my favorite fruits and leathers, please take me to a soft seaside bayou and show me otters. Please show me the otters. By the weir near the roadside the bright mahogany tyrannosaurs scream and shout, twisting their innards up into their stuck-up noses. I'm on the outside looking in, my insides are bruise bending; lip-less, just trying to learn something. My sneakers that I haven't touched in ages are covered in a pink film in a cardboard box, in a basement in California. There are no basements in California. No one can get them. I am not allowed to get them. I am pleased when I see warm blacks and whites, scorching and wired photographs lit with nostalgia and carrying on in the way of the wild, the maze of a memory, dusted with cool soft hues and glowing, pale as the twilight, moving in a close-knit group like trailing specks of light chasing after a night sky. Here it is too much to talk about before it happens. Her hands are closed and getting closer. Her back is being pulled by the streams of stares coming from her eyes. Up her leg a glowing shadow creeps out from inside her, we are too young to watch, too nervous to break stride. From the leaves comes a roaring, absurd likeness- a familiarity that we both have sought and seen, an absurdity that has put such stickyness in our pockets, left us choking on our own saliva, stalking an argument from inside of itself while each of us on our own has had the floor come up and rip us down from the top of our knees. I am uncertain of elevation. You are the teacher of light. I came with a storm, rapt and upset, whet and wound in its wetness, while you churned the sky I was your witness. We both were stranded, upstanding, and reacting to afternoon with such extraordinary uncertainty. I am at the seaside writhing. Caught in a trench of worthwhile curiosity, stuck on the last line of a leftover love letter; the same encapsulating enchantment that captured me two years and three months ago on September of two-thousand and ten the seventeeth. With sand in my nose in the throes of an absolute fit of melancholia I'd thrashed above my sanity-line and proven myself to be useless, my catastrophic end was nearly guaranteed. It's the standard of the Chanel table-side books, the white walls, and the staircase. The two sisters and the brother's room in the middle of the hall. I'm observing catastrophic ends, lifting and setting down my feet in the depths of a pin pile quite like my adolescence. The absurdity is familiar, the girl withstanding I'm just unsure of the situation. Each state I'm in proves to be heartbreaking like the one before. Please join me in the small room with the window above my eyesight, my skin thrones of threat, my syndrome of toxic shock knock, knock, knocking at my door. Being used to every thing and every one short of fantastic I peel my pear meat back swallow four inches of my fall fruit. Please be the one that unfolds me. I'm still in my crescent-shaped bawl, overthrown by the sadness, the myriad horrors I live every day in uncertainty.