You are viewing [info]lbangs's journal

Still Tangled Up...
 
[Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]

Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in L. Bangs' LiveJournal:

    [ << Previous 20 ]
    Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
    10:05 am
    Why'd You Do This to Me / Showing Me All I'm Good for / Is Watching You Sleep






    Spills


    Between the strokes
    He grows
    Fuzzy,

    A picture blown up,
    Indistinct grain,
    Dull color running over.

    She could be her sister
    A sloppy drunk
    Or a nun.

    Breathing is merely white noise.

    The razor sharpens
    Against skin surprisingly
    Tissue.
    Between the strokes,
    The spills and splashes
    Of raging red pearled,
    Of labored panting,
    Dim,
    Trail away.

    - 5/16/12





    Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
    11:49 am
    Don't Know About My Dreams / I Don't Know About My Dreaming Anymore / All That I Know Is I'm Falling






    Carte Blanche

    Leaving lipstick on her napkin,
    Pouring salt into her coffee,
    She's butane aching for a spark.

    He's going to step on that spring again.

    Prayers hit the ceiling like cigarette smoke.
    They crawl, creep,
    Cloud the muggy room,
    Floating out the cracked window
    Only to blow apart in the midnight breeze,
    Fragile cotton strands
    Haunted by a whisper,
    A sigh,
    A moan.

    "This red could not be drier,"
    She smiles.
    She has hurting on her mind.

    He's a hair-trigger,
    A dog ready at the bell
    Without reason,
    Too clueless for concern.

    The fan just moves the humidity in circles and waves,
    Above it all,
    Spinning only so much as required
    By the active current
    And the mute constraints of physics.

    - 5/15/12





    Monday, May 14th, 2012
    12:32 pm
    I Get Slandered / Libeled / I Hear Words I Never Heard in the Bible






    Consecration

    Pouring the cream,
    Skimming the suds from my skin,
    The grease and the steam,

    I am baptized blind and off my feet.

    The sky won't split,
    The doves are missing wings,
    But they sing,
    And maybe I understand.

    Slice the citrus and salted cheese.
    Everything begins again today.

    - 5/14/12





    Friday, May 11th, 2012
    4:36 pm
    It's Like Learning a New Language






    Exodus

    So many stops.
    Before I can leave.

    Saw Jesus behind the counter,
    Enjoying the shorter hours
    And the steady check.
    Somebody sent him that bit
    About Isaac and his old man's knife
    And a threat of legal action
    From a prominent protestant organization,
    Shot him from the sands to the States
    Once again by way of Cairo.
    Now he's settled down,
    Making change at the bank,
    Happy in the suburbs
    Serving the the midlevel accounts
    And calling the cops on the bums
    Lingering in the lobby.
    "Have you seen the return on treasure in Heaven these days?"
    He grins as he hands me a pamphlet on 401ks

    I cannot care.
    Every radical
    Starts off shoving down pillars,
    But they're soon used to prop up the roof,
    Worn past recognition.

    I'm just need money for gas
    So I can jump town.

    - 5/11/12





    Thursday, May 10th, 2012
    12:27 pm
    Served with Smiles and a Noble Intent / I Think This Waiter's Got a Fake Accent






    Tobago



    Trinidad.
    You never know the power.
    Carve a notch beside the others.

    On the boat
    The daughter of England's highest priest
    Sees the men hid deeply,
    Barely brown between the tall leafy green.
    She cares little.
    The trees command her study.
    She longs to garden, water,
    Cultivate.

    The crawling across your skin
    You hardly notice after forty days.
    You never shake the soggy weight.

    The portly saint defies the damp,
    Hoarding tobacco in burlap sacks.
    He carved a flute he played for months,
    Silent now beside the bags.
    The pilot once wrote poems,
    The children told me back at bay.
    Now, he scans the seas,
    His dry eyes the only life
    Behind a face layered,
    A closed volume leather bound.

    Some of us sought for gold.
    Some of us hurt for expedition.
    Some of us simply left home.

    The naked boy in Margarita
    Fingered his brow,
    Threw his arms around,
    And offered yellow flattened suns.
    "Eyes of god," said the pontiff's daughter.
    I traded twenty nails.

    I am sure
    I never can return.

    The girls of Venezuela,
    Barely fifteen,
    Are warm and still can laugh,
    Though they utter spoken lava rather than words.
    My wife knew lullabies.

    The captain knows,
    As do I,
    Though we never speak of it together.
    Some might suspect but choose to brush it aside.

    Inside the jungle,
    The leaves enfold above our heads
    So thick,
    The rays of the sun cannot find us.

    - 5/10/12





    Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
    11:42 am
    They're Not Making Plans / Because Now They Understand






    Autumn


    They've ripped down the movie screen.
    They're closing up the shopping mall.
    They made the televisions large.

    My pen rubs roughly over this letter
    Lying on top my wooden desk.
    I never see you.

    My friends and I spent college days
    Two to room,
    Painting the world we'd carve out
    From the ruins left us.
    They live away.
    Their cars are fast and gunmetal grey.
    Their words set off the laughter
    Of beautiful people.

    I doubt you drive at all.

    The evening we practiced breathing the fog
    While spinning slowly among the apple trees
    I still recall more sharply than any hour yesterday.
    I hear the earth give way beneath our feet,
    Crunching softly like a whisper,
    And the bark so spongy scratches
    Through the back of my wet cotton shirt.
    Can you smell the sugar rotting heavy,
    Sticky and sweet?

    It is dark.
    The alarm clock will blare before long.
    I miss you.
    Please write soon.

    - 5/9/12





    Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
    1:09 pm
    You Make Me Late for Work / You Make Me Late for Church / So Hold to Me






    Never Meeting

    You blow it apart
    As the furry dandelion
    Decorates a sudden gust.

    Yet your smoke won't spread
    Your future.
    You're just losing in the stream.

    You never know where those eyes end,
    That vision dyed kaleidoscopic,
    That lemonade always lacking sugar.

    - 5/8/12





    Monday, May 7th, 2012
    3:35 pm
    Take the Poison of Your Age / Don't Lick Your Fingers When You Turn the Page






    Insist

    I don't need beans,
    But I steady my sightline
    Through the stacks of cans.
    She's drifting
    Over.
    She's one of the ones
    Mistaking unconcerned with unawares.

    She sweeps away my words
    With her open hand
    And wonders why my focus won't wander
    Down the valley of her molded chest
    Open for exploration.

    Her eyes are plastic jaspers,
    Her routine intimations
    The set frosting
    On commercial snack cakes.

    She persists,
    Her shoulders square,
    Her forearms awkwardly approaching each other.

    She can't know
    Her bleached brown-sand body
    Bundles nearly everything
    I hate about the bored,
    The unanchored,
    The finished and the desperately confident,
    The America of the obliviously,
    Opulently worthless and wasted,
    The eternal mouth open

    I won't be stuffed inside.
    My pleasures are more acquired than they appear.
    Requiring longing not immediately saturated,
    Attention sustained beyond three minutes and thirty-three seconds,
    Half an hour,
    An evening with a definite career.

    I'm leaving with a tin of the black.
    She'll fill her own blanks tonight
    Or wash a little down the aisle.

    - 5/7/12





    Friday, May 4th, 2012
    12:23 pm
    They Call Me Adam Yauch / But I'm M.C.A.






    Casting

    The core is a clod of stone,
    Figure without form,
    Devoid of detail,
    But the shell is breathtaking,
    Carved concave with mourning mouths
    And eyes upcast in sorrow.
    You can barely believe it does not breathe.

    The wax between fired
    Pours out
    Cascading.

    The molten metal
    Drains into the still hot hollow,
    Liquid days
    Until finally set,
    Inhabiting the hole.

    The exterior,
    The exquisite ecstasy of anguish,
    Is cracked and pulled away in crooked sections
    Like the shelling from a hard boiled egg,

    The obsession of months destroyed
    Releasing the masterpiece beneath.

    - 5/4/12





    Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
    10:53 am
    Every Day I Look at the World from My Window / But Chilly, Chilly Is the Evening Time




    So that amazing woman I wrote about last year,

    the achingly lovely, fiercely intelligent one way beyond my reach,

    and I are getting married in a month.

    It has been a very good year.
    10:40 am
    Baby, You Own Some Strange Control Over Me / Yeah, It's So Wild, It Hypnotizes Me






    31 Days

    The air conditioner is ear fuzz everlasting,
    Demanding.
    The book splits apart to the chapters on Chicago,
    Norman,
    North Dakota,
    New Orleans,
    Ink set on pulp,
    Colors contained by territorial dashes
    Bounding,
    Promising.

    It is a little too cold in here.

    Cucumbers mixed with mango and honey
    Are hardly noticed,
    Though curried tomato sandwiches
    Ripe with mayonnaise
    Mandate a pause in poring over bohemian hotels
    And museums of obscure miscellany,
    All pulling with the gravity
    Of a promised future embrace.

    The breathing of the wall stops.
    The discomforting warmth subtly resumes.

    Through the curtains,
    A glow of scattered gold
    Undenied
    Weakens slower than sight
    Can catch.

    The temperature won't settle.
    The loveseat is too large today.

    - 5/3/12





    Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
    10:51 am
    I'm Hungry / And the Hunger Will Linger
    (I was home sick yesterday, so there's no poem for May Day. I'm sorry / You're welcome.)






    High Pile

    The black hat
    On top the lacquered table
    Only hints,
    Never states or proclaims.

    A nylon snake
    Curves across the high-pile carpet,
    Slyly suggesting.

    The glass ashtray is sated.
    The bed is sharply made,
    Crisply flat,
    Clean.

    There is a strip of scarlet
    Starkly soaked into an ivory throw
    And a bowl of butterscotches
    Beckoning above.

    We still do not open our mouths
    Since they have ceased.

    With the bulbs burned out,
    The lightning throws electric sheets
    Below the raised bamboo Venetian blinds.

    We should have never come here.

    - 5/2/12





    Monday, April 30th, 2012
    11:16 am
    Gentle Impulsion / Shakes Me / Makes Me Lighter / Fearless on My Breath






    The While

    The wail of the train
    Muffled by the water
    Amasses space.
    Is the spattering rain always so blue?
    Distance bedevils me
    Constant.

    The dull pulse of the tracks
    Trails into the clicker clatter of keys,
    Another rhythm of wheels
    Racing.

    Minutes are not miles.
    Running will not erase
    The churn of the engines
    While we chug away,
    Waiting with fingertips aching.

    - 4/30/12





    Friday, April 27th, 2012
    12:13 pm
    Realms of Bliss / Realms of Light / Some are Born to Sweet Delight






    Melos

    They slammed slim ships into the shores.
    They swarmed like suds streaming toward the falls.
    They buckled the gates and splintered the portals,
    Pushed over blocks cemented hardfast for generations old,
    And cleaned up with conflagration after the sword
    Hacked the old and forced the young
    To mean ministrations unspeakable.

    The inhabitants held up virtue as a shield
    And arms as inverted vaults,
    Praising the protection that would surely save the saintly.
    The pious paraded the past
    Festooned with deeds historic
    Proving constant charity and mercy
    While they awaited deliverance from the arrogant, amoral aggressors.

    Now
    See the occasional half-stone embedded in earth
    Or the broken piece of ploughshare stripped and partially peeled
    Lying alone and still
    Under the aloof sky.

    - 4/27/12





    Thursday, April 26th, 2012
    12:00 pm
    They All Have Hills to Fly Them On / Except for Lin Tai Yu






    Boundless

    They don't scurry for a door
    Or hurry toward the window.
    They absorb
    Imbibing you,

    As the atomized sun
    Soaks your skin,
    Making half moons
    Below your worlds of luminious seas

    Surviving near a wooden red nebula
    Curling about space unexpectedly creamy.

    They don't dash from.
    They travel astounded around.

    - 4/26/12





    Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
    10:20 am
    I Was Drowning My Sorrows / But My Sorrows, They Learned to Swim






    Half

    She holds half a heart in her hand.
    Proclaimig in curly cursive,
    St Ends,

    Patron to the completed,
    The arrested,
    The left and forgotten.

    Rubbing the glass
    Only smears and smudges,
    Blurring observing behind.
    Whisper to the golden deaf ear.
    Maybe he can hear.

    St Ends,
    Heal us all,
    Baffled and abandoned.

    - 4/25/12





    Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
    11:17 am
    My Bones Have to Move and My Skin's Gotta Breathe / You Pick up the Phone and I'm So Relieved






    Ours

    Ground,
    Banged-up,
    Hacked, blasted, and bashed about,
    It still maintains
    A shape of sorts.

    The scalding steam
    Yields no naked inch
    Open to grime.
    The onslaught of pounding abuse
    Leaves no free moment
    For rust to settle like a stain,
    Spread.

    There are some behind glass,
    Admired in museums by millions
    Momentarily distracted from the famous
    Glimpsed on glossy pages
    Decorating coffee tables.

    Those are beautiful
    In their ways,
    Untouched by ungloved fingers.

    We've the worked,
    The handled and utile,
    The worn and relied upon,
    Oxidized and worthy of unutterable wonder.

    - 4/24/12





    Monday, April 23rd, 2012
    4:28 pm
    Go to Him Now / He Calls You / You Can't Refuse






    Finally

    Money is thick down at the bottom.
    Everything you put your palm to
    Is greasy,
    Spongy.
    You have needs,
    And you have needs.

    Memories of sandboxes and jungle gyms
    Feel fictional,
    A fantastical flight to shelter
    Always rotting to a cruel teasing taunt.

    You've left a scorchmark diary
    To tell all.
    The perfect pit calls.

    - 4/23/12





    Friday, April 20th, 2012
    11:55 am
    He's Not Like the Boys We Used to Have / Not Like Them at All






    Deployment

    Tonight
    I sat staring at the screen.
    I don't know if the flat bodies maneuvered
    To trigger funny bones or saw at my heartstrings.
    I only know you're away again,
    Away where the flower of fire
    Or the flying metal
    Might impound you forever.

    It's like living near the ice poles.
    Summer months see sun without cease,
    While winter wants for light,
    The late months
    Black and scraped with the scurrying of unseen creatures.

    - 4/20/12





    Thursday, April 19th, 2012
    12:03 pm
    What You're Doing Downtown? / Tell Me, Baby






    Punge

    I drink
    As a parched man greedily swallows
    Mango juice,
    Open-throated,
    Implacable.

    You pull up shafts of wild green onions,
    Raging zestful and sweet.

    I drink you straight
    Until the world
    Warms and pulses
    Plushly.

    - 4/19/12





[ << Previous 20 ]
About LiveJournal.com