Tuesday Poem: Dachshunds with erections can't climb stairs" by Les Barker

 

Each night she's on the balcony
He loves her from afar
His soft, sad eyes are hypnotised
She shines down like a star.
His heart will break forever
His kind can't have affairs
For Dachshunds with erections...
Can't climb stairs.
His home's a humble bungalow
And her's a penthouse flat
He cannot go where she can go
And that, they say. is that.
He never can be near her
Although she knows he cares
For Dachshunds with erections...
Can't climb stairs.

You want to win a woman?
Just be cool... be aloof
The dog who doesn't hit the stairs
Can make it to the roof.
The dog who doesn't care
Will be the dog who wins the day
You'll never get to heaven...
With your chopper in the way.

The spirit soars, the body falls
And heavy lies the heart
That cries out with the pain of love
Be still my broken part.
How painful is the passion
And painful the repairs
For Dachshunds with erections
Can't climb stairs.

by Les Barker

For more information about poet, Les Barker, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Barker

National Poetry Day 2023: "How Poetry Got Her Hooks in Me" by Andrew M. Bell

It is an ancient Poet

and he stoppeth me.

“Beware of poetry, my son,

She’s a gold digger.

She’ll chew you up and spit you out, 

leave you penniless and lying in a gutter,

drunk on absinthe,

while the rich novelists and scriptwriters

step over you, laughing.”

 

“Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon!”

Unheeding, I slunk off to my garret

to compose a villanelle, 

heavily derivative of Dylan Thomas.

 

I only wanted to get girls,

but before I knew it

I was roaming with the Romantics,

bopping with the Beats

and cruising with the Classicists.

Popping some Pope, shooting some Stevie Smith

or hitting up Heaney,

I was hopelessly addicted.

And I never did get the girl.

by Andrew M. Bell

Photo credit: Alison Gilmore

For more information about poet, Andrew M. Bell, see:

https://ambell4.wixsite.com/andrew-m-bell-author/bio

Tuesday Poem (Song): "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure

"Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick
The one that makes me scream", she said
"The one that makes me laugh", she said
And threw her arms around my neck

Show me how you do it
And I promise you, I promise that
I'll run away with you
I'll run away with you

Spinning on that dizzy edge
Kissed her face and kissed her head
Dreamed of all the different ways 
I had to make her glow
"Why are you so far away?", she said
"Why won't you ever know that I'm in love with you
That I'm in love with you?"

You
Soft and only
You
Lost and lonely
You
Strange as angels
Dancing in the deepest oceans
Twisting in the water
You're just like a dream
You're just like a dream

Daylight licked me into shape
I must've been asleep for days
And moving lips to breathe her name
I opened up my eyes
And found myself alone, alone
Alone above a raging sea
That stole the only girl I loved
And drowned her deep inside of me

You
Soft and lonely
You
Lost and lonely
You
Just like heaven

by Robert James Smith/Boris Williams/Laurence Andrew Tolhurst/Porl Thompson and Simon Johnathon Gallup 

Robert Smith, in my humble opinion, has tended to be underrated as a crafter of perfect pop songs. When I use the term "pop", I mean it in a positive not derogatory way. A perfect pop song is a thing of beauty and although it might sound as though it was easy to write, it was not. Robert Smith and his co-songwriters get in and get out in 3 minutes and 30 seconds approximately because they understand what makes a perfect pop song. Always leave the listener wanting. There are not many perfect pop songs in contemporary popular music, but I think Just Like Heaven is a shining example.

Tuesday Poem: "Recension day" by Duncan Forbes

 

Unburn the boat, rebuild the bridge,
Reconsecrate the sacrilege,
Unspill the milk, decry the tears,
Turn back the clock, relive the years
Replace the smoke inside the fire,
Unite fulfilment with desire,
Undo the done, gainsay the said,
Revitalise the buried dead,
Revoke the penalty and the clause,
Reconstitute unwritten laws,
Repair the heart, untie the tongue,
Change faithless old to hopeful young,
Inure the body to disease
And help me to forget you please.

by Duncan Forbes

For more information on poet, Duncan Forbes, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Forbes_(poet)

Tuesday Poem: "3.10" by Maggie Milner

Some mornings, leaving my girlfriend’s
     house, I’d glimpse my whole existence,

all its eras, as a single arc—unified, unbroken.
     I saw a person who kissed mostly men,

wrote poems in the prevailing style, owned a cat.
     I saw a different person after that,

and before, I saw a little girl.
     What was I saying? That there were

these different selves—I need you to see them—
     they were shapes made out of lines, and then

one day they all began to cross, the lines,
     as if by some obscure design

the analysis of which became the purpose
     of my life. Or maybe the pattern was 

my life, and its analysis
     merely my living. Sexuality is,

after all, a formal concern: 
     finding for one’s time on earth

a shape that feels more native than imposed—
     a shape in which desire, having chosen

it, can multiply.
     And isn’t love itself a type

of rhyme? And don’t gender and genre share one root?
     Maybe I really am a poet,

needing as I do from these imperfect sets,
     which constitute a self, the lie of sense.

 by Maggie Milner

See:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maggie-millner

Tuesday Poem: "Homage to Sharon Stone" by Lynn Emanuel

It's early morning. This is the "before,"
the world hanging around in its wrapper,
blowzy, frumpy, doing nothing: my 
neighbors, hitching themselves to the roles
of the unhappily married, trundle their three
mastiffs down the street. I am writing this
book of poems. My name is Lynn Emanuel.
I am wearing a bathrobe and curlers; from 
my lips, a Marlboro drips ash on the text.
It is the third of September nineteen**.
And as I am writing this in my trifocals
and slippers, across the street, Sharon Stone,
her head swollen with curlers, her mouth
red and narrow as a dancing slipper, 
is rushed into a black limo. And because
these limos snake up and down my street,
this book will be full of sleek cars nosing
through the shadowy ocean of these words.
Every morning, Sharon Stone, her head
in a helmet of hairdo, wearing a visor
of sunglasses, is engulfed by a limo
the size of a Pullman, and whole fleets
of these wind their way up and down
the street, day after day, giving to the street
(Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh, PA)
and the book I am writing, an aspect
that is both glamorous and funereal.
My name is Lynn Emanuel, and in this
book I play the part of someone writing 
a book, and I take the role seriously, 
just as Sharon Stone takes seriously 
the role of the diva. I watch the dark 
cars disappear her and in my poem 
another Pontiac erupts like a big animal 
at the cool trough of a shady curb. So, 
when you see this black car, do not think 
it is a Symbol For Something. It is just 
Sharon Stone driving past the house 
of Lynn Emanuel who is, at the time, 
trying to write a book of poems.

Or you could think of the black car as 
Lynn Emanuel, because, really, as an author,
I have always wanted to be a car, even 
though most of the time I have to be 
the "I," or the woman hanging wash; 
I am a woman, one minute, then I am a man, 
I am a carnival of Lynn Emanuels:
Lynn in the red dress; Lynn sulking 
behind the big nose of my erection; 
then I am the train pulling into the station 
when what I would really love to be is 
Gertrude Stein spying on Sharon Stone 
at six in the morning. But enough about 
that, back to the interior decorating:
On the page, the town looks bald
and dim so I turn up the amps on 
the radioactive glances of bad boys. 
In a kitchen, I stack pans sleek with 
grease, and on a counter there is a roast 
beef red as a face in a tantrum. Amid all 
this bland strangeness is Sharon Stone, 
who, like an engraved invitation, is asking 
me, Won't you, too, play a role? I do not 
choose the black limo rolling down the street 
with the golden stare of my limo headlights 
bringing with me the sun, the moon, and 
Sharon Stone. It is nearly dawn; the sun 
is a fox chewing her foot from the trap; 
every bite is a wound and every wound 
is a red window, a red door, a red road. 
My name is Lynn Emanuel. I am the writer 

trying to unwrite the world that is all around her.

by Lynn Emanuel 

For information about Lynn Emanuel see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lynn-emanuel