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w   _____          ____   1  333 333        "The Dregs of My Poetry"         w
D  //             |    \ 11    3   3             by Yancey Slide             D
* ||  ____        | || |  1  333 333                                         *
G ||    || \    / | || |  1    3   3 issue #133 of "GwD:  The American Dream G
w  \\___//  \/\/  |____/ 111 333 333 with a Twist -- of Lime" * rel 06/10/03 w
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Sweet

My black-sugar baby in a pretty plastic dress
Hums a bubbly bit for me, a thrill when
I can't find none, in class, at work
Just anytime, my baby is there, 
Sweet as ever, to keep me on top.

But when the top stays off, baby gets
Cloying sweet, sticky, nasty, mean, all the
Fun's let out.  Baby ain't bubbly, pour her out.

Always another baby; ain't but
Two bits apiece.

(2/11/03)

We grew up in Texas but
when it was time to marry
Kailas came north, to
where she was from
New Hampshire
where it's pretty.

(In Trivandrum,
the city blushes with
saris and songs,
and smiles to see the 
easy English name retire
behind the coconut trees
of Thiruvananthapuram)

Two families, two weddings,
Like a brother I'm invited, to India
but I can't go, there's no way
to pay, there's no Atlantic train,
smoky, stuffy, and stuffed-
full of smoking men, 
sprouting from windows, like
bald Ben Kingsley
as Gandhi, coming home.

(Kerala blooms, and families,
like flowers, drift down rivers
that are clean like holy things are
to meet the foreign girl, and send
her down the river, to drift, 
like flowers until she's clean 
like holy things and families are.)

New Hampshire,
A nice day, a nice service
I officiate, as compromise,
not collared priest or
inscrutable ascetic; acceptable
to the families, I walk them through
a nice service, with 
flowers and a song.

(Ganesha leers at Vishnu's spear
on brassy gongs that ring
in wedding songs, as her hands
are henna-bound, in nut-brown
whorls that stoop and twist
around her wedding band and
the flowers given to the fire)
	
In New Hampshire, Christ 
is satisfied, his service done; 
Ganesha waits his turn
while I sit on the steps 
and think of him
and Thiruvananthapuram.

(2/17/03)

Sidling, I slipped in late,
twisted through the angry knees
that stiffened as I snuck a peek
from a far-back seat, too far to see
if you were smiling, and too far for you
to see me if you looked;

I smiled, but didn't stop, I just
kept creeping, closer to the stage,
past any empty seats,
as long as I kept moving, clambering
seeping through the angry knees, I wouldn't
sit and see you not seeing me.

I picked around the ragged line
of laps and furled programs, rolled
like sweaty cigarettes to smolder 
in impatient thighs that snapped as 
I folded mine, pristine, to prove 
that I was there.

I slunk around the jutting, pointing feet
of honest folk, who pointed toes at me but
sucked it in and twisted while I scrabbled,
penitent but unpausing until I was close
and you could have seen me
if you looked.

I hunkered, stretched, and touched the stage,
to moor against the crests of knees and shoals
of hooking ankles, and watched, to see
if you were smiling; when I knew 
I cast off, reversed my course,
and climbed back out again.

(02/25/03)

Green dream

A tree buries its head, and roots
its proboscis and ten thousand tongues
into the earth, where it eats, constantly,
and mulls the green dream of swarming,
beetle-bright leaves that frothed on brittle
stick legs and crawled against the wind.

Manic, it will not bear red thoughts of fruit
when the million facets of its one bright eye
have stared into the sun and burned brown
and dropped, like flies, to creep into the dirt
that it chews.

(03/03/03)

Ghazaline

I will spare one eye for you to keep in the light
a gecko that waits and sleeps in the light.

To brew a sweet tea, we'll eat herbs
and pool our sweat to steep in the light.

Purple is a night shade, that ferments
in bars and looks cheap in the light.

A spasm sends your skirts out, to skirl
and stretch out to sweep in the light.

A lozenge pins my teeth to either side,
and spat, dives deep, deep in the light.

The grit in my vein is a platelet, plaintive
it wails for a wound, to weep in the light.

Put your lips to my ear and Call into the night,
   "You sot!  Open up!  Let seep in the light!"

(03/11/03)

1.
My books fold space around themselves
like black-letter black holes; they are
too heavy to bear thinking about.

The train can only bear so much mass,
before it would curl in on itself, 
and throw me back to work.

My brother's couch is padded
with stinking cat hair, but warm
and so much like home.

2.
My books smother space and time
and immure me in law, like 
black-letter black holes.

My ticket prods the train to climb
and shudder on its tracks, straining
to lull me while it pulls me from the well.

My brother's cats obliterate me
but even their stinking hair
doesn't make it less like home.

3.
My books smother space and time
and immure me in law, like 
black-letter black holes.

My ticket prods the train to climb
and shudder on its tracks, straining
to pull me from the well.

My brother's couch is padded
with stinking cat hair, but warm
and so much like home.

 (3/18/03)

Fourteenth Edition

Every thing in this room orbits
the black-letter black hole
that buffets me from where it sits

and warps my desk into a bowl.
I teeter on the lip, and feel the prod
of guilty conscience make me roll

faster than I'm inclined to plod
to work when there's a TV set to lull 
me with a cheery bright facade.

I'll ward myself against the pull
of all the cases I should be reading
by thinking just how dull

the law can really be, but heeding
inexorable dutiful gravity;
there's no chance of my succeeding

against the terrible depravity
of this textbook's awesome cavity.

(3/18/03)

Law is a gullet
that does not swallow
ever.

(3/19/03)

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Issue#133 of "GwD:  The American Dream with a Twist -- of Lime" ISSN 1523-1585
copyright (c) MMIII Yancey Slide/GwD Publications            /---------------\
copyright (c) MMIII GwD, Inc.  All rights reserved           :LASERBEAM BOZOS:
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