Due to their meter and rhyme, most of the following poems are appreciated best when read aloud.
A Bowl of Borrowed Brains
A bowl of borrowed brains, He set
To balance on this chin--
It governs all the on loan parts
Ensheathed within this skin
Though I call mine this spine, these knees,
This gut that churns sustain--
I will retain not these nor those--
Such temporary gain!
This throat, these toes, this packed ribcage,
Are my dole at this time--
They course with health, though dusty with
Their future dredge of lime
Beholding eyes, a tasting tongue,
A nostril set and ears-
Such to the head were granted--still,
Disintegration nears
The aqueducts of blood and bile,
I neither sketched nor built,
Nor strung the knotty net of nerves
And cords that screech or lilt
Each ovum dropping from its nest
And ev’ry fill of lung,
Tick seconds off as I descend
Another ladder rung
This fleshy ecosystem is
In constant ordered flux--
Each cell’s renewal ceasing is
The ev’ry mortal’s crux
To balance on this chin--
It governs all the on loan parts
Ensheathed within this skin
Though I call mine this spine, these knees,
This gut that churns sustain--
I will retain not these nor those--
Such temporary gain!
This throat, these toes, this packed ribcage,
Are my dole at this time--
They course with health, though dusty with
Their future dredge of lime
Beholding eyes, a tasting tongue,
A nostril set and ears-
Such to the head were granted--still,
Disintegration nears
The aqueducts of blood and bile,
I neither sketched nor built,
Nor strung the knotty net of nerves
And cords that screech or lilt
Each ovum dropping from its nest
And ev’ry fill of lung,
Tick seconds off as I descend
Another ladder rung
This fleshy ecosystem is
In constant ordered flux--
Each cell’s renewal ceasing is
The ev’ry mortal’s crux
July 2007
At the Embers
I know your love best when kisses are tense.
Lust does not purse dry lips,
Forcing out a decided peck.
Love, with its plain, honest face
Plods steadily toward the mark.
I see your love brightest when glances are calm.
Lust’s gluttonous eyes devour admirable objects,
Considering only its fickle stomach.
Love regards parsimoniously,
Lidding its eyes in famine.
Lust may precede love,
But after its flames
Have licked itself out,
Love sits by and breathes
At the embers.
Lust does not purse dry lips,
Forcing out a decided peck.
Love, with its plain, honest face
Plods steadily toward the mark.
I see your love brightest when glances are calm.
Lust’s gluttonous eyes devour admirable objects,
Considering only its fickle stomach.
Love regards parsimoniously,
Lidding its eyes in famine.
Lust may precede love,
But after its flames
Have licked itself out,
Love sits by and breathes
At the embers.
April 1996
An Ode to Benadryl
or
The Pursuit of a Minor Death of Consciousness
A serotonin dearth will drive
Me stumbling off to raid a hive
Of plastic placed above the sink.
Its swarm is silent, still and pink.
The dissolution of the dose
Prescribed could leave me comatose.
I’ll halve the ration prudently
To clinch my round trip ticketry.
The subway token vial yawns
Above my palm. A new night dawns
As to my hand, the beauties fall.
I pinch just one, but cherish all.
Beloved diphenhydramine!
You tiny, legal, potent bean!
Lethean drops solidified,
Safe opiates, freshly descried.
A slip of matter, barely sensed
Between my thumb and finger, tensed.
Though dryly dropped, it plumbs my throat.
I board the bus, embark the boat.
The pill is popped, the plea is prayed.
I’m biding now to be conveyed
To where one third of life is meant
To be in unawareness spent.
In faith, I sprawl out, prone again
As drowsing syrup dribbles in.
The thickened ooze coats my inside.
Thus slowly, starts the carpet ride.
With faculties in dull retreat
My smile is stupid and replete.
I hum a selfish lullaby.
The monkeys chatter as we fly.
An undulating, gentle sway
Grows stronger as my musings fray.
The thousand summoned servants lift
My litter high…I cross the rift.
Me stumbling off to raid a hive
Of plastic placed above the sink.
Its swarm is silent, still and pink.
The dissolution of the dose
Prescribed could leave me comatose.
I’ll halve the ration prudently
To clinch my round trip ticketry.
The subway token vial yawns
Above my palm. A new night dawns
As to my hand, the beauties fall.
I pinch just one, but cherish all.
Beloved diphenhydramine!
You tiny, legal, potent bean!
Lethean drops solidified,
Safe opiates, freshly descried.
A slip of matter, barely sensed
Between my thumb and finger, tensed.
Though dryly dropped, it plumbs my throat.
I board the bus, embark the boat.
The pill is popped, the plea is prayed.
I’m biding now to be conveyed
To where one third of life is meant
To be in unawareness spent.
In faith, I sprawl out, prone again
As drowsing syrup dribbles in.
The thickened ooze coats my inside.
Thus slowly, starts the carpet ride.
With faculties in dull retreat
My smile is stupid and replete.
I hum a selfish lullaby.
The monkeys chatter as we fly.
An undulating, gentle sway
Grows stronger as my musings fray.
The thousand summoned servants lift
My litter high…I cross the rift.
July 2007
The Earth's Parade
Each instance of the Earth’s parade
About its maypole sun
Officiates a year’s demise--
Declares four seasons done
A year is meted out oblong
And into twelfths is sliced--
The portions thus produced are months
Which into weeks are diced
A week sequesters seven days
Of hours, twenty four
Which julienned with sharper tools
Make sixty segments more
Each minute’s divvied sixty times
Into tidy seconds--
Today spins into yesterday
As tomorrow beckons
All lives are measured constantly
And shorter ever found--
Each period unrolls outstretched-
A skein of yarn unwound
If cosmic brakes applied could halt
The planet’s pirouette
Or stop the sphere’s race ‘round the sun,
To tick would clocks forget?
About its maypole sun
Officiates a year’s demise--
Declares four seasons done
A year is meted out oblong
And into twelfths is sliced--
The portions thus produced are months
Which into weeks are diced
A week sequesters seven days
Of hours, twenty four
Which julienned with sharper tools
Make sixty segments more
Each minute’s divvied sixty times
Into tidy seconds--
Today spins into yesterday
As tomorrow beckons
All lives are measured constantly
And shorter ever found--
Each period unrolls outstretched-
A skein of yarn unwound
If cosmic brakes applied could halt
The planet’s pirouette
Or stop the sphere’s race ‘round the sun,
To tick would clocks forget?
June 2008
Souls Untethered
Each soul untethered exits life through diverse means to death--
Each moment moves the masses on to a conclusive breath--
The many ways to oust a ghost, one can’t enumerate
For there’s no dearth of death on Earth with which all consummate--
Through drownings, riots, crashing cars, are new cadavers born--
In horrid wars, vitalities from mortal shells are torn--
By leaden slugs a soul’s dislodged— by cancer crowded out--
By lack of air, a spirit’s loosed— by thirst unquenched in drought--
Through malformations in the womb, such little ghosts are made
While entropy undoes the old, who sometimes simply fade
A life may jar out with a jolt from trauma bluntly dealt--
The coups de grace of lucky ones are quick and never felt--
Extremes of heat create a husk, conversely so can cold--
Many lonesome deaths play out with details left untold--
A painless passage can occur, a pleasant ferry ride-
More often though, the shucking shocks the one whom Life denied
The unwrapped essences of us, the Judgment Hall will fill
Since each physique’s fragility defies the fiercest will--
And once the lease is not renewed, one ceases to infest
Their corporeal figure here--
We’re all a body’s guest
Each moment moves the masses on to a conclusive breath--
The many ways to oust a ghost, one can’t enumerate
For there’s no dearth of death on Earth with which all consummate--
Through drownings, riots, crashing cars, are new cadavers born--
In horrid wars, vitalities from mortal shells are torn--
By leaden slugs a soul’s dislodged— by cancer crowded out--
By lack of air, a spirit’s loosed— by thirst unquenched in drought--
Through malformations in the womb, such little ghosts are made
While entropy undoes the old, who sometimes simply fade
A life may jar out with a jolt from trauma bluntly dealt--
The coups de grace of lucky ones are quick and never felt--
Extremes of heat create a husk, conversely so can cold--
Many lonesome deaths play out with details left untold--
A painless passage can occur, a pleasant ferry ride-
More often though, the shucking shocks the one whom Life denied
The unwrapped essences of us, the Judgment Hall will fill
Since each physique’s fragility defies the fiercest will--
And once the lease is not renewed, one ceases to infest
Their corporeal figure here--
We’re all a body’s guest
July 2008
Family Tree
An
egg that burst forth from its berth
Had docked with patience till
Its personal predestined pop-
A mittelschmertzic spill-
Then met the very salmon that
Swam up the stream and won
The convoluted river race
Which millions had begun
When only once this act occurs
“A miracle!” some say
But much precision was required
For me to be today-
Each couples’ copulative act
Conveniently transpired
Exactly when it must have done
For me to have been sired--
The wonder then is magnified
Thus exponentially
That all the random jointures could
Have somehow fashioned me
The slurry of the elements
Concocted by the glands
Was the exact mélange required
Of all those “greats” and “grands”
Had just one headache been declared
By a reluctant dame
The chromosomes o’er centuries
Would not have paired the same
Each man possessed a sack of seeds
And tool with which to sow--
Each woman’s furrow fertile was
With room for fruit to grow--
Some may have loved each other well
Though others lusted just--
I breathe because they seized the day
Before they fell to dust
November 2009
Had docked with patience till
Its personal predestined pop-
A mittelschmertzic spill-
Then met the very salmon that
Swam up the stream and won
The convoluted river race
Which millions had begun
When only once this act occurs
“A miracle!” some say
But much precision was required
For me to be today-
Each couples’ copulative act
Conveniently transpired
Exactly when it must have done
For me to have been sired--
The wonder then is magnified
Thus exponentially
That all the random jointures could
Have somehow fashioned me
The slurry of the elements
Concocted by the glands
Was the exact mélange required
Of all those “greats” and “grands”
Had just one headache been declared
By a reluctant dame
The chromosomes o’er centuries
Would not have paired the same
Each man possessed a sack of seeds
And tool with which to sow--
Each woman’s furrow fertile was
With room for fruit to grow--
Some may have loved each other well
Though others lusted just--
I breathe because they seized the day
Before they fell to dust
November 2009
An Ode to Snot
When mucus, thick as long-stewed jam,
Obstructs the passageways
And clinging mulishly to cords
It coarsens lilts to brays
Phlegm morphs the songbirds into crows
And debutantes to hags--
It mocks as sinuses it blocks
And uvulas it gags
When loosened, gruesome globules are
By Fortune forced aloft-
A mortifying greenish drop
May shame the one who coughed
Obstructs the passageways
And clinging mulishly to cords
It coarsens lilts to brays
Phlegm morphs the songbirds into crows
And debutantes to hags--
It mocks as sinuses it blocks
And uvulas it gags
When loosened, gruesome globules are
By Fortune forced aloft-
A mortifying greenish drop
May shame the one who coughed
September 2010
The Fullness of Forgiveness
At dying day, the shining sun cast final rays of light
Through lengths of linen gently falling ‘round the young girl’s waist
Creating there a silhouette of Mary’s thickened form
Distinctly seen as months had passed since Gabri’l spoke her name
The maiden now was swollen with the breadth and bulk of Grace
Made manifest within a womb untainted by a man
Betrothed Joseph, being just, decided how to act
Until an angel quelled his fear and charged him with a task
“Not Mary, no!” wept those who loved the highly favored one
Recalling what it seemed the scrolls directed them to do
While others snickered, pleased to utter scriptures to themselves
Reminding them of their upright and honored ways of life
They thought to reach for rocks as hard as any blameless heart
Despising Fleshed Salvation that was forming in their midst
Through lengths of linen gently falling ‘round the young girl’s waist
Creating there a silhouette of Mary’s thickened form
Distinctly seen as months had passed since Gabri’l spoke her name
The maiden now was swollen with the breadth and bulk of Grace
Made manifest within a womb untainted by a man
Betrothed Joseph, being just, decided how to act
Until an angel quelled his fear and charged him with a task
“Not Mary, no!” wept those who loved the highly favored one
Recalling what it seemed the scrolls directed them to do
While others snickered, pleased to utter scriptures to themselves
Reminding them of their upright and honored ways of life
They thought to reach for rocks as hard as any blameless heart
Despising Fleshed Salvation that was forming in their midst
August 2014
copyright © 2015 Aimee Walnofer
