It's about time I finally posted these, eh?! Thanks to everyone for your patience and for some great poems. And, of course, with each new word list comes a new winner of the Dante's Ass Prize, picked by the flip of a coin. (The name of the prize, by the way, is from Alice Notley's Disobedience: "Dante's ass a noble prize." Check it out.) This week, the prize goes to a damsel named Janice. Right on.


THE SKY IS A WONDERFUL GREY
by Janice, Damsel In A Dress

Hey.
This is always the way.
Hush.
Wear your chucks until they're worn out.
There is no way out.
Check it out.
Deflect.
Pay your rent.
Chip away at your epigraph.
In your sleep.
Drip drip onto your cotton sheets.
Wake up with amnesia.
Just like yesterday.
Hey.
This is always the way.
Hush.
Wake up.
Toss your sheets up.
This is the greatest throe of passion you've had in months.
Feel them sink onto your body.
Close your eyes.
Get out of bed.
Follow the leader.
Strawberry your toast.
This is out of control.
The sky is a wonderful grey.
Hey.
This is always the way.
Hush.
Look in the mirror.
Stare at your lurid face.
Say grace.
Self-hypnosis.
Blink.
Win.
Lose.
Your adhesion to reality.
Take your determinacy out for coffee.
Write on napkins for a while.
Your protrusive smile.
You sucker.
You sapper.
You're in way over your head.
Hey.
This is always the way.
Hush, hush.

*

EULOGY
by Michael T.

Oh, my sweet leader,
I’m worn,
I’m worn out,
I’m rent,

Your strawberry
The morning’s epigraph,

As, still, I’m protrusive,
Lurid,
Beneath the sheets,
The hushed cotton sheets.

The body seems forgetful,
Ignoring the morning’s throes,
Amnesia settles in,

Determinacy
Reconsidered,
Adhesion to history
Deflected,

Self-hypnosis?
I really doubt it,
As this activity will certainly
Be my death.

When you speak
My eulogy
Consider this old sapper
Kindly.

*

IN THE PRODUCE AISLE
by Jimmy Nickles

The protrusive seeds of the strawberries,
so lurid in the vegetable light, cotton
to the eye like beads of water on
a glass, deflect my trajectory away
from the unspectacular fennel.

The bliss of the supermarket is a hush
of abundance, a refutation of hunger
pangs, a cornucopia on every shelf,
a climactic self-hypnosis saying
that anything can be what's for dinner.

The tiny apparatus above the peaches
mists sibilantly at intervals; an
adhesion of droplets to skin, beads
to rind, a wet, bikini-like voluptuousness
fit for the cover of a magazine.

The amnesia brought on by exotic fruits,
throes of indecision at the pomegranates
the bruit of tumbling radishes, corn husks
rent, revealing the many nipples, yellow
Dianas of Ephesus, luscious things abound.

The names of the wares are never worn
out, an epigraphy of greens and organics,
delights to read as I push the cart, my
rickety-wheeling leader, whose metal belly
is the determinacy of how much to get.

The end of the aisle draws near, bath
and beauty is next, sappers of the effects
of age, and as I leave the crisp air
of the icy-fresh well-stocked shelves,
I slip back to a can and cardboard mode.

*

BLASPHEME OF THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
(Verbophobia as through Marvell)
by Mike County

1.
My love is of a strawberry as rare
As ‘tis for amnesia strange and high
It was begotten by Determinancy
Upon Impossibility.

2.
Protrusive Despair alone
Could show me so lurid a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

3.
And yet I quickly might deflect
Where my cotton soul is fixed,
But Rent does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

4.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their adhesion would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic leader depose.

5.
And therefore her epigraph of steel
Us as the distant Poles have placed,
(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.

6.
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some worn convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

7.
As lines (so loves) oblique may well
Themselves in every sapper greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

8.
Therefore the self-hypnosis which us doth hush,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the throe of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

*

"UNDER THE ION HAMMER"
by Michael Helsem

Master of kiteslipt Spetznaz, amnesia is our leader;
Determinancy gone, abductee is our leader.

The tenuous adhesion of a cotton hush
Yields prismatic derangement whose rent church is our
leader.

In strawberry fields of self-hypnosis i too roamed:
A maple sapper of the charcoal is our leader.

And your good squirm of lurid flashbangs now
protrusive
As kudzu, cannot fail to dub you as our leader.

Leader! into caverns worn with jackboot march
No throe may deflect; epigraph: flambeau is our
leader.

*

WHY I'M NOT ZEN
by Chad Parenteau

In the throes of self hypnosis
I try to converse with myself,
who deflects questions at first
by faking amnesia
before admitting
he doesn’t feel like talking,
needs his breaks
as much as I do
when not attempting poems

In my determinacy to tap
the world outside
during my cross-legged hush,
I’ll open a window
to hear better,
but apply small bits of cotton
for some adhesion to the rules.

In the story with the tigers, the cliff
and the protrusive fruit,
I’d be chucking strawberries at their eyes,
as I’m already dying enough to know
that life is the ultimate comfort food.

*

Happy Holidays...

So. It has been quite some time. My apologies for not making the time to post and to generate a new list. This coming Sunday night I will post all the poems that I've received, along with a new word list. Thanks to all for patience!