hopebe

[hopebe]

Oh, it's sunshine, I try to explain—comatic aberration can sometimes look like a ghost across the lens, something like apples containing more fiber, and oranges more vitamin C; but never would I discourage a conversation stemming from an idea; lacus somniorum, lake of dreams, 37.56° N, 30.8° E—did you know, they had already named it? A sudden whirring to life of these magnificent glass propellers, our time machine—oh it's                                                                                     sunshine. Hard to describe how anything begins: a wave through a lens; never would I dream of explaining this beautiful distortion,

what if we just commune with the other side?

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #11 line poem #november

[hopebe]

the church: in disrepair condemned; the yellowed light slanted against overgrown boughs to cast perpetual shadow; a banshee framed in the gothic clerestory glass—her son, dead; and all the grief, a container that could not contain her; you can't avoid this fight, toxins leaching into the soil; or echoed in the groaning trill of the whip-poor-will nightjar, or the black walnut in autumn when the fruit has fallen, stained fingers and concrete; you hear her, maybe, a rustle, a cold breath, and distant screaming, shrieking, bawling, wailing, roiling——but in this life, we can still separate the precious from the worthless; be not still nor suppressed, silent; what you give will not return.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #11 line poem #October #banshee

[hopebe]

Soft, a sheet in the sky, a haze passing down over my eyes as short-lived as the halflife of Astatine and as hot, you burn yourself up. And salt follows down the line of your neck, salty—and I am to shock as you are to awe; I lose to you so easily, as if we stand on the shoreline of Seven Mile Beach and I hand you a barometer. You don't understand, you say, why can't you just have taupe? I have misheard you again, or mistranslated. I am to lost as you are to love; I lose you, so, yes, it's not enough.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #eleven line poem #september

[hopebe]

We finally persuade the birds to build cloud cuckoo land. Rebecca was supposed to take me there, or we were going together; like the color basil, or the taste of basil, or the aroma of eugenol. Khanda, which cuts through ignorance—trust me,                             she said. I did,                             for a century or more. Gravitational potential energy, released, kept pulling us down, apart, together again, down down down. Heat, deformation, and the sound of impact. I will live in a city in the sky, for you, Rebecca, and for me.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #August #11 line poem

[hopebe]

If I thought to hold a bee hummingbird laced between my fingers—fffffttt—200 beats per second, oh I watched your left hand move to your lips, your left                                      so water meets fire, you knew how to follow,               swallow a line of subtext, killing the bass and asking how big should my subwoofer be? meanwhile, you, in a tie-dyed crop-top, and beneath drifted miles of blood vessels, deified, or I say to you "no lemon, no melon, potato, kombucha—what's the difference?" in love

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #july

[hopebe]

You, you, you are sometimes represented by fig or pineapple or yellow—I think somehow impaled through me, in me not warm but searing, um-like, do you remember Polly Pocket?—stripping away plastic clothing, like we were flexible, once, maybe, color-flash afterimage illusion with a centerpoint of heatprick, static, electric                                         cicatrices               I think somehow, scars, yes, and fallen leaves falling in patterns, until we are bare and have let it all go—            so, anyway, how are you? You, you are         a sweet fig, gripping me, ripening during summer.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame

[hopebe]

Any given Wednesday—seems to be the day people can carve out a little time for me. Tulips, that's what I like, and I've said it. Or, I bought these old ankle weights from Good Will, a yellow- gold 70s vibe, because I'm trying something new, passive exercise, for mental health. Or maybe I could borrow your attitude, for a spell, a bright blue lobster, a sign of good fortune —I wonder if you would use me however you like. I like to be useful. Or bright blue, a field, a sea of tulips, and sunlight. You see, the trick is: saying so much with so little. That singular moment when someone you love brightens in your presence.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #May

[hopebe]

Early in our breath, we had the corpuscular theory of light, a straight line an atomism, of amaranth, and we explained physical reality through material interactions, touch— but rectilinear propagation of light as waves, Huygens— Fresnel principle: waves emanating from different points mutually interfere. We stole a feather from the firebird, diffraction—what, were we jealous, craving difficulty?                                               a new beauty to exploit, lens through which I viewed you, something that breaks, and breaks me in the process of flight; we never caught the firebird, destructive interference.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #sort of optics

[hopebe]

an experiment with the Sicilian tercet:

light takes the shortest path—all at once, mo- ments bleeding without filter. Jamais vu, everything unfamiliar, unknow—

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #sicilian tercet #like iambic pentameter with an arrhythmia

[hopebe]

I am thinking of that dress, I was surprised, golden fern leaf yarrow, an early summer flower, dried and ground to spice, full sunlight. You radiated confidence, a familiarity. Spill lightly, a very gentle danger, water in the mouth, lips, acqua in bocca, please, but you have ways to reveal intimate details about strangers, a form of cold-reading mentalism. If only…well, I wonder, do you know—? Do you understand, there are mountains beneath the sea, less explored than the face of Venus? It’s Sunday, and Sunday I think of ways to engage you in conversation, only failing to bring you land, or sea, or sky— Pfft—aeroelastic flutter, destructive feedback of control forces.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame

[hopebe]

If it were as easy as believing it were possible, you would have already died, in some compromising position, at the bottom of some great height. And so, efforts were put forward to understand thrust and lift, and maybe air foils at first and eventually jet propulsion. Until we simply purchased a god- damned plane ticket to move us more efficiently through time and space.

I am not made of magic; I adhere to the laws of physics. I won’t stand here and sing about the ways in which I have spent my life compensating for perceived deficiencies.

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #defying gravity

[hopebe]

Outside is a whisper of distantly glowing neon signs—liquor shops, gas stations, and Car-X. Wind lashes its tongue and throws powdered snow into eddies over ice, and I wonder if I will sleep tonight. Clouds, nothing in the sky. For a moment, the moon is a lithe pale circle, almost alive, and then lost to haze.

How common. I am tired, aren’t I, moon? I have already decided I won’t leave, I won’t leave, whether I am sleepless or heavy with stars.

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #sleepless nights & starless skies

[hopebe]

But, you see, what I learned was that it’s not any healthier to simply state your opinions louder, in the wrong context; a vice— through the clear hyaline your hands reached to mine, like glass, placid and cool, deceptively transparent. No, no, in that moment, I asked for oxygen, but you were already consuming it by the lungful. How gentle is my anger against the bladed edge? of glass—I faded from words— held out my wrists, like water, transparent, and if you cuffed me with any restraint, I slipped away, taking, taking nothing.

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #hyaline handcuffs

[hopebe]

I lost something again, was frustrated, and thought of you— like, like I think I’m looking for norepinephrine, euphoria? I may have written poetry, again, just to tell you, I want to tell you a slotted spoon is sexier, than what? –the quint- essential, always a decision between quantitative and qual- itative measures, with me. I know it’s hard. Every empty space, at Walmart,

I reshelve and face the misplaced product; I can’t be this way—you keep crossing my mind—this frustration, but today, I haven’t found space to live outside of the parenthetical.

#poetry #smittenbypoetrygame #I started with the spoon and wrote the first line about frustration last

[hopebe]

Yes, even I remember origami bones, eventually. We began, as we always do, with paper. We could fold ourselves into shapes, hold your corner to mine. We twisted into such structures around each other. And then we calcified, a living history. We didn’t move or breathe. When we fractured, we splintered into shards. Still, it was beautiful, however unsubstantial.

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #origami bones

[hopebe]

She crosses her legs and uncrosses her legs. Her eyes Are dark and alive. How does she begin? How does she—

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #frozen in time

[hopebe]

all we have is now—but that's not really true. If it were true, this would be easier. I don't know, life, talking to you, hoping we can build towards something. We have the past, ah, like those trod neural pathways, deep ruts, deep deep grooves. If you look, you can trace the origin stories of embedded concepts which became wildly monolithic, maybe fractals, iterations stacking, or the skin scarring over. We have the future, and I am trying very hard to remember your birthday, several months off; when you mentioned it, I casually put it in my phone notes, hoping I'd remember to look. We have what seems to be rapid change or stasis, or maybe I'm restless. I've had a few moods pass between moons like phases like cool water against lips like volatility without stabilizers. Here's the break from reality because we also have the counter- factual and the anxiety and the imagination that damns or frees you, let's you consider the many versions of you, how rich and varied, what you could have been, those fragments you thought you had lost, have lost, are afraid-will be eroded into fine powder, and yes, even what you could become—and don't you want that, everything?

#poetry #writerscreedchallenge #all we have is now #is this optimism?