Saturday, December 26, 2015

27/52: Calling

The demon calls my name
and the world drains of color
and the food upon my tongue turns to ash. 

I am become a voice crying in the wilderness:
alone, alone. 

Sunday, December 20, 2015

26/52: demon bicycle for two

So this begins with me standing in the street naked, as many dreams of humiliation do.

My demon produces a rotary saw of cartoon proportions, and when she flicks the on switch, it howls with heavy metal guitar riffs and the crying of unmet desire. Sparks fly. And of course no one notices as they go about their business, making their way to the doctor's office or going to the DMV. They jostle me sometimes since they are texting while they walk, but they do not notice that I am naked, or that my demon is lowering the saw to place it between my legs.

She begins to cut me starting at my penis. She cuts it perfectly in half, shrunken as it is in terror, bisecting the urethra, setting a testicle to each side. She then proceeds into my bladder and my anus, my pelvic girdle gives the saw a moment of resistance, then up through my intestines (which somehow choose not to spill forth like squirming worms, but instead choose sides and remain still), my stomach, and then my liver to one side and my pancreas to the other. Then it's on to my sternum, and the grinding of metal on bone until she reaches my neck and there is a soft relief and she whispers, "almost done!" but then she is cutting through my jaw and it's all bone and smoke as the vibrations come on through my nasal cavity and my brain.

I cannot speak or move as she does this. She moves with the pace and precision of the Inquisition. Flame around her all the while, or is it blood, I never can tell. But it is not my blood - I do not bleed. I am simply sawed in half like un-bleeding fire wood.

I stand there, split. I can see a bit of light shining through where once peripheral vision showed the bridge of my nose.

She steps back, cocks her head and admires her work. Then she turns the saw on herself, going from head to crotch in one smooth movement.

"There," her separated lip halves say, "now we are ready." Somehow the two halves of her move smoothly despite having only one leg and she pries the halves of me apart, one half to each of her halves. She separates me neatly, and joins a matching half of her to a half of me, so that we are man-demon, and demon-man.

I, both halves of me, draw in a breath to our one lung each as our conscientiousness merges with the demon's. I strangely have triscopic view - each of my halves see through the combined demon-man, man-demon's eyes, as well as some assembled mash up of my own eyes, though they are separated by space in a way they are not meant to be. I retain my whole, but share now with another - another who happens to be a demon.

I have no control over either half of my body. I am entirely dominated by the demon - even half a demon is more powerful than a whole mortal soul, and I have only half a mortal soul in each half, if that makes any sense, which of course it does, because this is a dream.

My right half, coupled with the left half of my demon stands with fists on hips, flame rising from one half, blood dripping over the joint, while the other half walks with awkward gate to fetch a bicycle built for two.

Soon enough we are pedaling down Main Street, naked and on fire, and no one looks up from their phones.

I am singing, an I that is half demon and half me, split on two seats for a bicycle built for two:
I’m half crazy over the love of you
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford a carriage
But you’ll look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two
My eyes roll because being joined to a creature of fire and blood after having been sawed in half is a thing of excruciating pain. But it is also a delicious lick of immortality. I am at once both a body sawed in half and an immortal being of power beyond any human imagination. The human half screams as nerves continue to be burned and blooded and burned again, but at once relishes the infinite reach and the limitless morality that has been lain over.

We ride on and wave and smile to the people we pass by, singing our song. No one notices we are naked and on fire.

We make the loop around town, peeking in the window of the pet shop at the puppies - who do, by the way - notice that we are naked and on fire and shit themselves through the grates below their puppy feet.

When we are done, she reassembles me with a large bottle of super glue.

"What fun!" she cries, as she claps her hands. And then she is gone and I am standing at the corner of Main and Court, and suddenly everyone around me does notice I am naked.

That is how it ends.


audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/demon-bicycle-for-two

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

25/52: harvest

thinking of the prisoner
who had reconciled himself to a life in Angola

we can reconcile ourselves to anything -
adapt to it
and make it ours.

he had no children.
no one to remember him.

he learned to paint -
he wanted to make art
and give it to people who would

take it away with them.
away from Angola.
to living rooms with big screen TVs
and ottomans.

Monday, September 28, 2015

24/52: for Barbara

I feel like a song
would be appropriate -
it's what the Greeks or Asyrians would do.

Don't each of our lives deserve a song?

It's something we've forgotten,
embarassed by having overcome
what portions of life did not kill us.

I don't mean a sappy doo-wop,
or a whiney country twang,
or the empty angst of rock,

but maybe something chanted to a drum -
to capture the fact that each of us
wakes up each day
intending to do the best she can do;
to be the best she can.
Until she cannot,

and the drum would go silent
and the words would trail off

Monday, September 21, 2015

23/52: waiting for my wings

The bones losing calcium
becoming fragile, hollow,
are just waiting for the wings to grow.

On the next stage of the journey
I can't be carrying all this extra luggage,
all that extra rock,
I'm leaving that behind
with a healthy serving of meat and fat.

I'll be just an outline
of the grounded being I was
when my wings grow in.

What will be left will be the pure me.
The essentials only -
I'll be unmistakable, 
all the confusing stuff gone,
the pure form when I leap toward heaven
and don't come back down
because my wings
have grown in.


Friday, September 18, 2015

22/52: #whathappensonEarthstaysonEarth

if a star booked a week's vacation on Earth
(7 days, six nights, spacefare not included)
and racked up the millions of light years
on her miles account

why would she take the form of a human?

weak, slow, half blind and stone deaf
by comparison
to the other package options.

the marketing department of
Celestial Leisure and Recreation, LLC
would be better to offer her
something beneath the ocean -
perhaps a blue whale -
to dive beneath the sea

something completely foreign to her experience -
to be embraced on all sides -
held and caressed by the water
as she ribboned through the private dark,
or gluttenously passed through clouds of plankton -
mouth wide, swallow and
rush.

she would crave something other
than the wide open expanse,
not to see her sisters would be such a treat -

she would have stories to post on
the stellar social media when she returned,
but they would be vague with innuendo
about someone dark and strong,
but mysteriously musical and filled with song,
concluding with that new old slogan,

#whathappensonEarthstaysonEarth



Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/whathappensonearthstaysonearth

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

21/52: The Time of Open Windows

when we opened the door in June
after months of the house standing, waiting
for us and our truck from San Antonio,

the still heaviness of last year's wood smoke
thickened the rooms
and seemed to swirl around our legs as we walked
through the sunshine on the floor and walls

we happily wandered through and opened every window
to let in the cool June breezes.

because June in New Hampshire is
The Time of Open Windows.

and in The Time of Open Windows
the windows stay open,
as you might imagine,

and the world's edges blur along the lines
of inside and outside.

Yankees know air conditioning is a sign of weakness;
a character flaw associated with dependency.
Of being too close to New York,
or worse, LA.
To not live in New England is a sign of weakness
to a Yankee.
we are glad to be home again.

in The Time of Open windows
we live a little inside and a little outside;
we breathe to the rhythms of the cicadas
and woodpeckers.

in the morning the coffee steams;
in the afternoon we sweat;
in the evening we lie still under the fans.

there is a greater possible range
when living in The Time of Open Windows,
so many things seem so possible,

until the leaves begin to fall
and The Long Winter sets in.

we dread a bit the time
when everything is closed,
and things are rushed
and huddled,
and the lines are sharpened:
this is inside,
the fire and life;
this is outside,
the cold and the darkness.

one must survive,
until The Time of Open Windows
comes again.


audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/the-time-of-open-windows

Sunday, August 23, 2015

20/52: deep dusk

It is deep dusk
with just embers left in the sky

the humidity has already begun to settle
on the grass

born again as droplets
now on my feet.

The evening damp of a New Hampshire
August night

is something entirely different
than what we have left behind

in Texas.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

18/52: not tonight

how did the water get on to the counter by the sink?
set aside that I've been washing dishes for the last hour -
I didn't put it there.

It's a puddle
snaking around like some country dreamed up
by a colonial conquerer wearing a hat
with a big feather
straight in from the 16th century -
he hasn't even taken his muddy boots off
before trodding in to the kitchen.

It's a bent thing that is not supposed to be there -
an Easter Island head
that has grown up from under the formica,
a little froth on the side of its mouth.

I'm tired
and unwilling to give into this harassment.
I'm not giving up the towel
to this interloper. Not again.

Not tonight.





Thursday, June 4, 2015

17/52: an answer

where are you going in the rain?

the concrete sidewalk is darker with puddles

here and there.

you are barefoot

and the wet on your feet is cool.

the summer heat is melting away,

running off into the grass

and not burning your toes.

the gray of the sky is all the answer

you or I are likely to get.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

15/52: orange forgetting

it's only occasionally that I go through the effort
of getting a knife to cut into the rind of an orange

usually I drive my front teeth through the skin
vampire-like, rupturing

then rending with my thumb,
pulling back the protective layer, chunking it

but it's also only occasionally that I toss the scraps
on the ground, not placing them in the trash can

the peels from last year, the last time
I was heedless, was callous

are still there by the roots of that tree
the edges turned up, but still accusingly orange

these transgressions, however small
in the face of the universe

are not forgotten
in the grass.



Wednesday, May 27, 2015

14/52: tanker truck dream

I'm driving my tanker truck through town -
a short one, just 10 wheels -
the hoses neatly rolled on the back, thick
and heavy,
the stainless steel nozzle locked to the side.

You could mistake me for an oil man
delivering liquid heat
for dark nights when the neighbors' houses
seem a thousand miles away
across a tundra of unshoveled snow
but that's not me -
not what I'm doing.

I've got a tank full of soul,
I've got bottled light -
follow me down to the Square
I'm going to unroll my hoses
and fill the fountain
with song

a geiser ablaze in color will burst forth,
the pennies and nickels
will transform into streaks
of silver and gold
rushing through the air
between the mid-day shoppers
and the hipsters drinking coffee
on Main Street

Yeah, yeah, yeah!
I'll shout, right hand squeezing the trigger
to keep it all flowing,
left hand waving wildly in the air

but you'll know what I mean
when you see me in my white overalls.

there'll be someone that says
damn fool
but we'll ignore him or her

till the tank runs dry




Friday, May 22, 2015

13/52: possible


I'm on again, off again
on the whole subject of mortality.

I mean

they say everyone's got to die eventually
and on Tuesdays
that sounds perfectly reasonable.

But today is Friday.
and the ironcladness of that statement -
the rigidity of thought behind it -
the sheer conservative dogma -
generation after generation just giving in -

come on, people!

let's make pizza from scratch tonight
we'll have flour on our hands and pants
the sauce on the stove will fill the house
with the aroma of basil and tomato -

let's take our glasses of cabernet
out onto the patio and watch
the airplanes fly overhead - lights blinking.
We'll contemplate the fact
that they said man wasn't meant to fly.






Sunday, May 17, 2015

11/52: and in the night

and in the night
I am on my toes
going from room to room
like a sneaky ballerina
(really, is there another kind?)

people are sleeping
and only the moon sees me
come and go -

we share the secrets of the near dark
these are the secrets that are knowable
if you are awake
when everyone else has drifted off

Friday, March 27, 2015

10/52: winter's fist

winter's fist is melting open
fingers suddenly loose
we can begin to wriggle free
and breathe.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

8/52: when I think of you

of the things you said,
only the final words remain.

do you remember records?
do you remember how
the concentric circles could look uninterrupted
and you could be playing one
with only the slightest hiss over the hifi
grooving to a song about love
or forever
or how even the nights were better

when suddenly the needle
would get caught on this hidden pit
you completely missed before
and the sound would go
from sweet
to ear knives?

nothing could get you to listen
to that record again.
the memory of that moment
stares at you with gouged out eyes
and you want to forget all of it.

you long for DJ Charon
and the smooth water tracks of Styx
to wipe away not just the last moment
but all of it.

and that's what I want
when I think of you.
to sell our record to some hipster
who doesn't actually listen to vinyl
but has a wall full of them
to show his friends.





Saturday, February 21, 2015

5/52: refrain

what are the dimensions
of a man's life?

you think you have the measure,
you think you are ready to cut

but the pattern is not so discernible,
the length of the string not so absolute.

you are just one man
and the Greeks believed it took three Gods
to spin, apportion, and sever.

6/52: I'll try again



The only thing is
to be able to make sure
you save any questions about
your experience.

I'm sure that you can also use
a different post
to show up in my mind.

I'm sure you have to be able
to make a decision.

I'm sure you get the latest version of the day.

I'm not sure if I can see the full story
of my life.

The first time
I had the opportunity. 

Please note that you are not
an option for the next day. 
I'm not going anywhere
for more than a year,
I will not be able to make it.

The other hand is
a good idea.

I'll try again.

**
 
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

the entire text was generated using text suggestions provided by  my phone. I'd wanted to try this for a while. It seems like Austin Kleon's black out poetry.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

3/52: storm song

The snow is falling like down,
signaling my heart to rest
even as my tires slip a little
and the traction light flickers
on the dash board
warning me against the white song.
On through the storm I push
wishing I were on a horse
covered with a wool cape
and a brimmed hat,
easing along through the woods.
Yes, agrees the song -
this is what you want.


Tuesday, January 13, 2015

2/52: into the night

behind
like a black wall
like some life-sized Transformer
the semi's cab reflects
the orange of the sunset
in my rearview mirror.
the silhouette
ringed with fire
like a dark angel
pursuing me
out of Memphis and into the night.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

1/52: not like a storm

the thunder is here and there
like someone playing with the balance knob
on my father's old hi-fi -

and then the flash behind the blinds
like my sister's dance strobe -
the one she bought at Spencer's -
she and her friends playing music in the basement
hair, arms frozen in ice light.

and then comes the rain
   on the roof
   and against the windows.
it's just like the tracks on my mother's meditation
tapes
the ones she listened to,
and nothing got wet.

tonight is not like
a storm.

***

goal for 2015: 52 poems. I know it's modest, but I tried 365 and it was just too hard. I figure 52 I can do. Not necessarily one a week, but 52 does have nice symmetry.