Incomplete volumes

I'd lie with you wordless
in the backyard
mid afternoon counting clouds

midnight listening to stories
told by ancient stars
your head touching mine

my hand touching yours
two unknown bodies
placed silently beside each other

thoughts speaking volumes.

Kensi 'n' Tom - The wheel of misfortune

Listen to the full EP by clicking here.

:: Bee-ing - TB

Will this matter a year from now?
For now I am a honey bee
Hunted by hornets.
They try to murder my dreams
And deliver homilies of their own.
How doth the little busy bee
Continue living from hour to hour?
How long will she be free
To gather honey from every little flower?
Flowers are not as sweet as they once were
And seeds fall on hard ground.


:: Bee-gone - KC

I conjure these men
somehow,
men who can't do feelings.

Repeat old mistakes:
love them more than I should,
love them more than they deserve.

A discombobulated soul
I go into the world,
take the wrong turns.

They mute their hearts
so there is nothing I can use,
no North.

This is how they spell
begone.

N.B.:

-  TB writes Under the Toadstool. 

- These poems are shared with The Real Toads.

- Kensi 'n' Tom EP original photos and artwork by TB.

Boy walking tall down fiery street

He's got noble feelings
and big dreams
but small hands,
not made for fighting
- especially not wars
against the will and acts
of giants.

Weak and limited as he is
he still walks on
with the raging crowds,
pursuing the common good
above his own,
he was once told tears
will turn men into boys

by cracking open their chests,
their hearts made visible,
left vulnerable.
He knows now it's the
consciousness of vulnerability
and the imperative of self-preservation
that will turn boys into men.

(ab)sent

For an entire month
before you were reunited
with my letter,

I was afraid to have said too much
and then
to have not said anything.

How do we come to mean something
for each other
walking home alone from this far?

How do I come to love
the sound of your feet coming and going
around the house?

How do I come to love
all of your
silliest sounds?

There is so much I didn't say in that letter.
There is so much I don't say
when I can think about the words

when there's no rush to press send,
when I'm haunted but not scared
by the thought of your absence.

(Written for my dearest Michael's get listed challenge over at the Imaginary Garden) 

Time management

He leaves bed,
makes breakfast,
scans the news for news,

does the dishes,

listens to music,
checks his papers,

looks out the window,

goes over a couple of pages

of his current reading,
doodles, babbles, twirls
around the house,

goes for a walk,
hums random songs.

runs a few errands,

takes photos,
comes back home,

writes notes for poems,

gets sick,
lies on the sofa,
spends time with
the walls and ceiling,
forgets about me.

Never enough to write

Aşkim I've kept the letters.
I read them once a year.
Still wonder what to do
when the paper gets
too fragile to be handled,
when my mind gets
too weakened to remember.
I like to imagine you kept
your promise to never forget me
and I was on your mind
during the earthquake,
you touched a memory of us
and it helped you not to be afraid.
Was there enough time
to run to the kitchen and
get my heart from
the old coffee can
inside your cabinet?
Where have you hidden it
after that?

(This is a poem abou a deceased love. I revisit his memory every Valentine's, you remember him from this poem last year)

(Written for Karin's Sunday Mini-challenge over at the Imaginary Garden)

Kensi 'n' Tom - Happily miserable

Listen to the full EP by clicking here.

:: Grumpiness - TB

Smile he never does.
Smile he never wants.
And you think a smile it was.
It’s more likely to have been a grimace.  Smiling has been a while for him.
It’s like idle chatter.
Speak purposefully.
No time to natter.
Smile what for?
Smile I don’t want to.
Smile it’s a chore.
Smile, no thank you.



:: Being Eleanor Rigby - KC

I tried it many times.
The diary thing.

Then I noticed lonely days
repeated themselves
in a frequency I didn’t want to think of,
a frequency I didn’t want people to find out
because everybody feels sorry for the lonely people.

Even The Beatles did.
They came up with Eleanor Rigby. Poor thing.

See?
See what I’m doing here?
I’m feeling sorry for her.
I’m feeling sorry for the poor woman
despite the fact she might have only been a name
someone picked for a fictitious character in a song.

I don’t fully believe it though.

I don’t because she has the looks of many people
I see on the streets everyday
trying to go invisible in the crowd
they have the same taste for clothes,
the same haircut,
they walk at the same pace,
they all have Eleanor's
and my face.

I could be Miss Rigby if I weren’t so loud.

N.B.:

-  Mr. Grumpy Crayfish (a.k.a. TB)'s official residence is Under the Toadstool. 

- These poems are shared with The Real Toads.

- Kensi 'n' Tom EP original artwork by KC.

The Golden Rule

It's not about what people do to us,
but the way we react to what they do to us.
A younger me would have confronted the lie
and the man behind it with torn heart and teary eyes

because what could I possibly have
done wrong to be lied to?
Have I not been honest enough,
open enough, enough myself?

A younger me wouldn't have been able
to deal with a man assuming her to be
less than her clever self and therefore
would have confronted the man and the lie.

I have now lived long enough to know
It's not about what people do to us,
but the way we react to what they do to us.
This is the energy we send out in the world.

The post-apocalyptic assumptive world

You're a room
which only opens
from the inside,
I was told,
whose furniture and walls
I anticipate through a spy hole.
But what we see when
we look at things
doesn't really depend on
what is there,
I learned.

Upright

A fourteen-year-old
eyed me unblinkinly
around the classroom today,
as if instead of his plump,
clumsy English teacher,
I were one of the ballerinas
of the Royal Ballet,
flying over the desks
in a grand jeté, 
and offered me a hug
in the end of the class,
for he was carrying
no bouquet.

The art of walking upright here

is the art of using both feet.

One is for holding on.

One is for letting go. 

~ Allen Curnow 

Chaos

If you leave,

stay gone.

I will open the door for the

same butterfly just once.

I'm a woman

and a Gemini,

I have just the 

decent amount 

of chaos in life 

I can take.

That's enough 

vertigo.

Crimson red

I dropped a
favorite coffee cup this morning
blind with anger
and sat on the floor with the shards.

I, who have always wished to be made
of iron, am reminded
I am not past the porcelain state,
crestfallen in a puddle of crimson red.

Blackout recipe

This is how you erase
two thirds of stars
from the sky:
you grow up and apart
from the people
you are loved by,
then you mark
your path back home
with lamp posts.

And thus we became friends

A wounded animal

I was, 

aching and scared

when we met,

hiding behind

a raging mood.

He watched my 

breath and waited

for a miracle which

wouldn't come.

Yet he didn't flee

or shoot.

Kensi 'n' Tom - La vie dans mon ciel

 

Listen to the full EP by clicking here.

:: La vie dans mon ciel - TB

Spin around,
Round and round
The windmill of my mind.
Spin around the many sides of me.
A child with curiosity brimming,
The art of asking strong women
about the world, the weather, the whys.
The art of looking at the world with new eyes.

:: La vie dans mon ciel - KC

A yard,

for dogs and a tree I'll plant 

when you come into being, 

little one.

I'll watch you climb it up

and fall from it a few times,

dear sovereign to your own

kingdom,

before you have learned the distance

from the top to the ground

- this I cannot teach you.

But I will kiss your bruised knees,

and tell you about the persistency 

of clouds.

N.B.:

- TB lives Under the Toadstool and here. 

- These poems are shared with The Real Toads.

- Kensi 'n' Tom EP original photos and artwork by TB.

Titan

Do you understand

my universe is
so little

I carry
its celestial spheres

like a pendant
on a necklace?

It's so delicate that
by rolling over in bed
sleeplessly
I turn the heaven
on their axis,
causing the stars
to revolve. 

Bouvard et Pécuchet

It is probably my fault.
I ask difficult questions that lead us
into everlasting discussions every time.

Is competition to survive necessary for organisms to evolve?
How friendly is causal entropy maximization?
Is world peace an achievable goal? I ask.

It was twenty years ago
I read Flaubert and wondered
when I would have my own Pécuchet.

It took time, but we've met.

(This is a poem for my best friend, Erick, who never gives up on me.)

Kensi 'n' Tom - Naked as we stand

Listen to the full EP by clicking here. 

:: Honest reflections - TB

The light seems to brush
My left shoulder.
It leads all the way down
To my elbow,
Which on this occasion digs
Into my ribs.
Left hand gripping my brown locks.
The awkward pose leads me to ask
if my feet are on backwards.
Bruises paint my left leg.
Hair stands on end on the right.
There are the dangling bits
And the gangly bits,
The toned and the honed parts.
The toned and the honed parts
Must be mocking the floppy.
Whatever lives in that belly?
And why does it rumble like a bear?
My face is what I usually study.
On this occasion I forget it’s there.
I glance up and down
Each time checking if anything’s changed.

:: Laws of reflection - KC

You 

make it a habit

to stand before the looking glass

and face it proudly

like your own super hero.

Tonight you’re Wonder Woman.

(If only you brushed your hair on Sundays and 

had a cool tiara somewhere

to improve the immersion experience)

Note here these stretch marks,

this body,

a straitjacket to contain your rebellious soul.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

The moment you made your mantra

your war paint, 

you could no longer be contained.

The first gray hair shows

to honor you 

for your restless efforts

over the years 

at being a better human than your reflection.

This vessel will fall 

with everything else in the world.

You never cared about 

keeping anything but your spirits up

anyway. 

N.B.:

- TB's official residence is Under the Toadstool. He likes to hang out. I like to have him here.

- These poems are shared with The Real Toads

- Nolite te bastardes carborundorum is pig Latin for "don't let the bastards grind you down." The phrase comes from Margaret Atwood's book A Handmaid's Tale and is tattooed on my chest. 
- Kensi 'n' Tom EP artwork by KC.