Sixteen Forever
She was a beauty of red hair
And Skechers sneakers
In the back row, farthest seat to the right
Where she’d hide her copy of Lolita
And feign a bored stare
Of the ‘anti-Shakespearian.’
The boys in sophomore English
Used to make fun of her,
Groaning her name like an orgasm,
“Ooo-pheeee-liiii-aaaaaa.”
Yesterday was a black candle
Burning it’s wick to a flaxen end
In a fall fair too small for even
The back roads of a Mississippi town.
They would wind their way through
A maze of carnival side-shows
To a tent for the pro-exhibitionist
In her red pump heels and fake diamonds.
She’d gaze into a ten dollar crystal ball
And tell the men from the Harley’s
All the grimy little things dirty men
Like to hear when they’re half stoned.
She was married quick at seventeen,
White shoulder strap of her wedding dress
Dropping so the single men could catch
A glimpse of her second-hand skin.
Her husband worked long hours
So she’d dance at Old Shady’s bar and hub
For some extra cash and a good time.
She made all the old men with flaccid penises
Feel a whole lot younger for just a little while.
Marilyn Monroe was her favorite hero,
And at night she’d dance naked in front of her window
With nothing on but the radio.
Waving to her fake fans and blowing
Hot red lipstick kisses to the cracks
In the walls where the moans of all
Her secret lovers would lie in wait
Of that centerfold perfection.
Naked and writhing in her sea-gray eyes
And hail-storm hair, her voice cooing
And moaning like an aphrodisiac
while she asked them to say it just one more time.
“Say it like you mean it, dahling.
Ooo-pheeee-liiii-aaaaaa.”
- Stacy Lynn Mar
(featured in the poetry forum 01.18.10)
Sophia
She crawled into all their pockets,
Even the boys with red hair and freckles.
She would leave sweet nothings atop their pillows
And be gone before morning, leaving a scent
Of strawberries and cream to wake them from their
Adolescent-boy lullaby dreams.
The first few times she fell in love
She wrote them poems that reminded her of Mary Shelley.
Each one unique, depicting scenes of brash decisions.
She would say things like, ‘love is nothing like a red rose,’
Or ‘nothing but your touch can shame my heart.’
Sometimes she loved, but only their touch really.
On the loneliest nights when the darkness dropped it’s shade
The shining skin of some blue eyed boy
Would help her to self-medicate, slippery and forgetting
The open wound that was her heart.
She couldn’t forget though, demure as she meant to be,
The dropping o’s of their drawn out moans and the
Quickened heat of their greedy, stubbed fingers.
A one man quartet that poured echoes into her soul,
Reminding her the repellent of her fathers words
And her mother, gun to her blond head,
A slur of syllables threatening Russian Roulette.
The boy with a cap of black curls would moan
In his sleep while she counted his freckles
And read his tarot cards, chanting softly a lecture
Of Latin chatter, grinding ten cigarettes against a sea shell
While a lone white candle burned it’s inevitable flame
Against the wall, and Sophia sang the blues.
She’d touch the skin of each strange boy and imagine
Sophisticated pubs and intellectual locations like Boston or L.A.,
Sadness of her voice negating the undertone
of some warning signal, a siren for all those lonely sailors.
- Stacy Lynn Mar
(added 01.18.10)
From Cover to Cover
Between the pages of a Time magazine
Some no-name’s intellect illustrates war.
I shut the words back between their covers,
And wish I could shut inhumanity off
The way a wrong moan crosses the libido,
A clumsy fumbling before giving up.
I notice my own reflection
In our fifty inch flat screen TV
And imagine the starving children in Africa,
Bodies of their sick mothers crippled
And turned in upon each other like identical enemies.
Beside the TV a black shelf hangs itself,
The books it holds sprawled atop each other haphazardly
Like spent lovers or mortar cemented in vain.
Five books my lover brought to me two weeks ago,
College literary journals, too many fancy words
Cloaked in gloss white, too little talent and too much ego.
Cover to cover, cardboard to ink, nestled between
The numbers of pages lay someone’s best work.
The work of the meager, words of the egocentric.
Brought to me out of love, he’d said.
Love for my work, love because if I would submit
My poetry, perhaps he would too.
So instead of marveling the masterminds
And setting match to watch someone’s best burn,
We read of the wannabe’s, the slammers,
The one-day-rich-and-famous.
He felt like a better person, he felt charitable
As he declined a documentary on Bigfoot
And we drowned our silly sorrows in popcorn and cold beer.
It made the war seem a little farther away,
The night was a bit brighter and I became all the wiser
Because their words made me feel so.
- Stacy Lynn Mar
(added 01.18.10)
The Poem-Gift
There's a part of me
That is crazy about myself.
I adjourn the poetry reading,
With a sparkle in my eye,
I am my own star,
My own banner of repose.
Tonight I am also omnipresent,
My belly full of moon glow,
I fade behind the shadow
Of a park bench,
I am the concave of singularity,
I am the 'o' of my own noose,
If I dare not write, I strangle.
And the words,
I draw them out like a web,
Like a bizarre Bermuda Triangle.
Don't venture into my twisted words,
Lest you never find your way back.
I am slap-stick happy, I am me.
Tonight my heart smiles,
My blood boils to a simmer,
And all those men, all those faces,
They ogle my shoulder-straps,
Their stares stroke the malignancy
Of my narcissism, my smile spends itself.
I watch the sky, the stars are men,
A girl as flighty as me
Can never look at just one.
Somewhere in the male species
There is a secret society,
Heartbreaks and love benign,
Like orangutan's, they gather.
One day you will read this,
With doubt in your eyes,
The corners of your mouth
Drawn out in shame.
The canary of your soul
Will falter in it's ability to sing.
You'll ask me what my words mean,
And I will tell you,
'Darling, my poems,
They are gifts to myself.'
- Stacy Lynn Mar
(added 08.10.09)
Gods of Chance
This is the June of 3am,
The time of night when Summer
Lifts the skirt of her thighs,
A discreet dance of ‘rings around the moon,’
I watch atop my balcony the boats
As they make love to the laps of cerulean waves
And dream myself a constellation atop the water.
I imagine each woman is a piece of me,
Right down to my paint-stained poets hands,
When at night Monet whispers into my ears
The sins of each sunflower, the seedling, the lie.
How I try to mimic his short thrusts and strong strokes
Beneath the naked spark of a moon beam.
Sometimes when I paint, and paste, and rearrange
The magnetic parts of me, truth slaps me
Like a raw circuit of copper wire,
And I manage to believe I’m not married,
Have never born the noose cords of romance,
Dry as a dead rose petal, it’s browned thorn menacing.
I fall into the abyss of starving-artist reverie,
Pretending there’s no new lover in my bed,
Bathing my sheets the gasoline-stink of sex.
I listen to folk songs and try on the single life
Like a pair of old jogging shoes, lying empty
All these years, but awaiting another mornings run.
And I remember the Norse campus in my head,
The woman sentiment of empty pockets and dreams
Cracking the center of my core like antique China tea-cups,
How life found me living amongst empty yogurt cartons
And the bland taste of tuna fish straight from the can,
Amongst words upon lines upon notebooks of bleeding prose,
Useless without an agent, or so they preached it vehemently.
Back then I believed dreams were things you folded
And stuffed into your pockets, quotes from dead Presidents,
Classic vignettes of famous poets,
Haiku of the immoral Victorian feminists,
They were whims atop a bruise-stricken thumb nail
A penny-well toss to the Gods of fate and chance.
- Stacy Lynn Mar
(featured in the poetry forum 08.10.09)
I Love You, Goodnight
My heart, it is a metal comet
Spinning atop your fingertip,
Slipping along the surface of your skin,
Intrinsic, unduplicated, authentic in it’s beats.
I am there, though I’m not substantial,
Flashing before you at daybreak,
The pink on flesh you feel beneath your hands,
I fall across your abdomen like rain.
I twinkle, the resonance of starlight shadow
And a wrinkled photograph,
I lay there in your pocket,
A stow-away, a cat in the corner
We are the biggest of my biggest dream,
You, with too much logic in your eyes,
My spotlight hero,
Dazzling in your jeans and in your sins.
My love, in messy hair and quiet freckles,
I take you as you are,
You, of cigarette ashes and nicotine breath,
You, of doubt, and your dirty car seats.
You are the abstinence for my hands,
Still holding, my tiny fingers still typing,
The emails that wind down to sweet nothings,
And the poetry that flows forth, the girth of my words.
I know you miss me most at night,
I know your hands are empty shells left floating,
And alcohol is the quicksand you drown
Your doubts in till dawn, where the sun
Catches our, “I love you, goodnight.”
- Stacy Lynn Mar
(added 08.10.09) |
