Found poems--literally

I've been "cleaning" my apartment for the last week, in the process of rearranging furniture (read: "books") and I keep finding fragments of poems I seem to have written in strange places. I have no desire to lose these, but given my track record...
Presenting, Poems Found in Amy's Living Room

Prose poem: The month of May

If it were warmer and my head were clearer, I'd do yoga on someone else's lawn at midnight. Why bother crying? The film makes it obvious: Icons link the unknown dead to the known, my desires to my dreams. The History Channel mutters at me things I already know and mixes these with sleep. The need to fly east drives my eyes to the clouds I believe I can reach--I used to fly.
Why can't I ask about the star sickening my cheeks, my teeth, my gums? The scene was on the screen, and it bent my innocence back by degrees of horror and logic. If I ask, the door will be opened, but the words are coded too deeply in too many individuals who keep bleeding into each other, onto the floor which accepts their tissue and enlightenment ensues.
The furniture is above ground and I cannot sit still.
The door's wood feels fake, and its grainlessness makes me recoil my fist--I will not knock; I am not supposed to be here. The edges of my skin fade into the damp night, and being flashes for a moment: This is real, I am alive, and there is no one else who can hear my heartbeat.
Infinity for a moment, the flap of a butterfly's wings remiding me that I can, in fact, burn in hell. A brick wall between you and God--18 inches--if it's not from the heart, it's not praise. Where is my evidence, my salvation, but in my ends?
When I fall asleep, I tell myself lies about what will be--not the Beast or the bloody water, but of scenes of my own redemption in fractal forms. Sacred art, the cross around my neck, that snake I love for its unsealed mythology--worshiped representations shadowing the touchable. It is black or white or yellow. Be reverent as you circle round one another, triangles and stars and goats with piercing horns nailing him to a cross, driving through the varely holding sheath between This and That, the red on my sheet telling me it was more than a bad dream.
Let's dance and revere some new myth. It's not about divinity or truth holding or an Englightement. It never was. This represents the blood and mine has been impure for so long that I keep asking the wrong questions, forgiving the wrong sin. I know it's not your fault.
On the eve of the millenium, we'd have been under peach street lights, arguing about goodness and goddesses. I hold his body sacred and imagine his death and repentence playing on the lenses of my sunglasses. I want to dig my nails, my heels, my soul into him, but the star on his hand would burn me. He makes me narrate to myself all the time I do not have, rubbing together icons until they become my own raw fingers. Is it fear of death that makes me mourn a dead man's jump? Is it fear of dead things that makes me shudder in wonder or love? For a moment, silence the awe with another full moon and just sleep.

Lincoln Hall (YES, Kari. THAT incident)
Forbidden.
Do not enter here.
These doors cannot be opened again
once they close behind.
Trapped eternally in a place where
your deepest temptations all reside
and you break beneath the pressure of the brick walls.
Once you enter
you cannot exit.

But what if someone finds you here?
We brazenly played until midnight
but it is forbidden
and these old bricks hold many sins
--a dirty bachelor pad
smelling of old socks and of too much aftershave.
Recklessness inside these stones
older than the offenders' grandparents.
Here, where the red-haired boy flips his personality
on and off
more easily than he does the lightswitch (crusty, moldy)
that finally brings him darkness at 3 a.m.

Here is where his secrets lie
of the immoral deeds they speak of
in inside jokes at the dinner table.
This is where his decisions are made,
where he'd rather not be
because he hates masquerades,
and it's all so confusing and chaotic
in his cramped room here.

(Insert comment about our lost innocence here).

Blufton, Ohio (written 11/17/99)
My own breath
fogs my vision
when I step out the door

The morning is too bright
so I can't see the light

My eyes are still closed
lost in
that too real dream
he left me with

The sun shines through
I can't find you.


Ideology of Disability (Fall 1999)

The heart swells
it reaches out and moves beyond
the confines of this wretched body
it stretches to encompass the world--
Love!

Shrink smaller
the pressure causes cringing
shrivels the heart into the soul
egocentricism and anger
mix to hate another's life
hate a soul, hate God's feeble creation.
Survive.

The Fabulous (A parody of "take my water")
I'm having visions of your khaki pants hanging loose and suggestive and your silk shirts rolled up and your pink lips mouthing that word that makes the base of my spine shudder into swoons, and the pucker of your chin when a cigar is placed where my mouth should be.
I'd make your life a satire, and end the brooding and open those blue eyes always lowered humbly in beauty. I hear you now, your voice in my inner monologue, my dialogue of me and me and now you, for certain words, the words I've heard you speak, now splice into my own. Those vices make me grin until saliva drips uneasily.
I see you hate evil, you hate women and human emotions that weaken your alaredy low self-esteem. So short--you know what they say about the size of the chain. Those chained ringlets on your head--I fall down, spilling chi and feminism. Allen Ginsberg and your image are sensual combinations. I cannot help the chill.

Fragment
That stack
later found under the carpet
flattened,
making its own book recording
of our readings, never in my handwriting
nous le savons plus que les mots sur le peau

Fragment II
Suddenly I can't remember all those water meanings
eyes and miracles
something about whales and instant storms
Le centre--
que veut-il dire
quand nous dirons
"returnez!"
Il port un visage de la Morte.

Fragment III
Kiss the gall from her exchange
save yourself from the hours between one and four
(closed eyes, to shut from the fissions)
Fear of death of dawn, the morning mother of the day.
Proliferate, but not of sublimation, ecstacy,
loving each other in chants.

Beavers with Brains
If you keep the door locked and admit you have no chance, you can be guilty without consequence. The liquid screens are communal, the doors are close together, and every key opens every door to reveal two big beds unruffled of their silks. When it begins to snow, I run, tank top straps icy already, to where the two stains meet, up and down, in a no-place, which transports us back in time, back inside. Back to the deep purple caverns, bright with romantic glittering diamonds. Wait, please, wait behind the clapboard. There by the stones is our rage, is our fate. The hunger borne of low steps, of a need to see the watering colors of the fog.

Found poem (for real) in Robert Frost class (2004)

It's much safer to resurect him.
The people run onstage, then run way
A collection fo virtues opens
sounding of Judgement to
the tawny meadow that truthfully faits
un tempete. It cuts cross Hermes' purple sheets.

Most absolute, that known which says with will "I make not!"
most unconfused parent of opposites, most central tautness, across the chest.

Speed on, bonds we speak of only once separated;
post rivalry, post duel, poast the fade out snapped frame
where the metal becomes the hilt
where the weapon meets its sheath.