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Archive for the ‘poems’ Category

Luster

Luster,

came away in one of those not-so ways& I want that Luster, here.   Back. Keep your handling to your hands.  You’ll mind me if I want you to  mind me & I don’t want your minding   … now                                                      or….yet…. 

If I say it won’t be, do  you think that it won’t be because I say it that it won’t be because I am a Lady? I can be all close-like,

 all wet-legged  & bellering.   (& is that luster coming away or my way?) because I’m not one of those women but I can stand the things I can stand & I’m trying to whet this. I’m not saying it’s not puzzling, but I can go where I want. No one’s got me.  I’ve got it all inside this, here. I am playing my instrument & recording every tune.     

©Umansky 2012

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After putting away the 75 seeds, he felt harbored yet chilled. In the after-part, the Collection was secure. It was made tight and finely made. Nested and nestled in their perma-frostings. He knew, with his turn of the key, each seed would heed the Call of the Wild. There would be no more controlling; no more sun to answer. Each was a fugitive for their own justice, now. They sat in the thick and plotted. Others, turned their backs.

 

A light went on. First, the Marigolds and the Dandelions entered the Boiler Room. Then, the Cloves, followed by the Thymes and Parsleys. The Wheats and the Barleys joined limbs and cuddled next to the Yams and the Rutabagas. As they stepped through the crowd, they could see, in the distance, the local soils alongside the African Oaks. A catcall was heard, in the direction of the Squash. (She snickered and took a seat in the front). Two by two, they entered. Two by two, they took off their histories of space and time. They were tired. All of that depositing and classifying; sifting and labeling. They longed for the temperate but got the raw.  Then, a scuffle was heard. Old Bran organized a meeting at the third black box to the left with Hickory, Marjoram, and Maize.

 

Let’s keep the humans out of it, said Squash, A flood is coming.

 

And the news spread to Mustard, then to Clover, then to Chick and Lima who went round back and whispered it to Soy, who then whispered it to Wildflower and with a snap of her hand, turned out the light. They were happy in their vaults. Happily mingling in the cold. They held banquets; drank vodka. (Sometimes, they did the polka.) They were ready to marry. Ready to go forth and prosper for when the world fell to her knees, they’d be ready to harvest a new one.

 

© 2012 Umansky

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Chess

Women have restrictions.  Boundaries. It’s nothing new.  We startle. We unnerve the opposite sex. We put our own kind on edge. We can anticipate your every move –especially in chess.

Don’t be flashy. Put away the Dior, Zsa Zsa.

                                                                                    (Tut-tut. You should know better, girls.)

Women make their own moves now. We roll the dice. We move the pieces. We finish first.  We take care of ourselves. We say when. We say how, but there are rules:

Watch those thumbs. You can’t unbutton anymore than the top and second buttons in a dress shirt. (You wouldn’t want that ample cleavage turning on your opponent’s knight and asking your rook for an after-dinner drink at Chez Lancelot.)

No one really smells like roses.  Watch the body odor, and the perfume.  We don’t want the pheromones taking charge. Chess is a game of strategy and precision.

Lastly, don’t be gauche.  Pretend you’re back in Tolstoy’s day – you wouldn’t want to be distracted on your move. Be coordinated in mind and outfit.  Your jewelry must be in line with your garb.               (You wouldn’t want the judges giving you the boot, right?)

Be ordinary. Put the bling away. The game’s been played since 600 AD.  Times might change, but the game is always the same.

© Umansky 2012

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Times have changed. Your savy-ness dims, and your disk space just ain’t holding what it used to.  Your memory is fried. Your nerves are shot. You’re forgetting your history. You don’t know your RIM from your ROM; Your resolution seems foggy,      but,                        here,                   take my hand.

Tell me the understory.  I will notice the agony.

We’re so used to getting it in the palm,  that we’ve learnt to look past what used to be right at our fingertips.   If we could only give it more legs.                                                                                    Watch it walk.

Let’s leave the humans out of it. It turns on exactly when I want it to. It’s good at listening and calculating, and  doesn’t give any back-sass. All it needs at night, is a soft little nudge into dreamland. 

                                                                (so, come on give Siri a rest already)

Listen to this processing. It’s computer science.  Is it so unnatural to want a little nip and tuck? So, your computer wants a  little [Hotspot], and here’s what you gotta do: [plug] in or ship out.  

Remember,  Beauty is truth; truth, beauty.

 

© Umansky 2012

 

 

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A Model

The great gorgeous of the hollowed will suddenly tank. Sweetly, canaried, we will crook our way through the skimming.

If  thrown:

1/watch the eels slip in and out among the reeds

2/sense the ocular with the good of anyone’s graces

3/hush the minusculed  and succulent and render it felt.

 

Taking out whatever it is we have made here; something grandiose and other worldliness, know that the remembering has grown in me. Through what is ventured; through what is vented up, vent out and vintaged in such tended-tendering that the past is re-imagined in absolutes.  

[I don’t want this darkened] 

I do not want to be darkened.  Or obvious. Or unzipped in how deliberate this sounds. 

See the way that this is gossamered.

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Little Red

When the stove called to the kettle, she clicked         [send]

She waited to [reply] but was cautioned that [home] was down a long dark path; where the [end] was dark and the trees [shift]-ed in their claim for light.  Where the wolf [cntrl]-ed the beckoning of good in the woods and she felt she should [esc] She [backspace]d herself into something lyrical. Dreaming of another person; an action of living and [enter]-ed the house by the stream where she felt founded and felt safe, there, in that sweet-mulled and [scroll]-ing place beneath the [alt]-ernate sky.

 

© Umansky 2012

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I.

The boy is sitting on the plush blue stair.The father embraces the boy on the stair with a repetitive narrative or pep-talk. In his gardening, he is presenting a great inspiration. Down the hall, the mother is sprinkling the wash and putting it in [gentle].  A smile sprouts across the boy’s face. He is about to go to school. Hungry.

The girl needs a source – a yellowing.  She’s growing, taller every day, and lean–like the way the sky is leaning on the house. The way the blue is stretched lean like the girl’s arms. She bends and curls herself into the lightened; beneath the chandelier. She pirouettes around the living room sofa.  She wants to be starry and glowing. She wants to grow taller in her father’s heart; in her mother’s eyes. She takes off her shoes, then her socks, and beneath each foot’s arch, or mouth,  is a small nurtured space. What blisters in the rug-hair  is dirt-spent and burnt, but fertile.

II.

 

The children need

                A watering          a personage

 

that will substitute the piece

                that will become the story in their life

::the watering is situational::

                what is in the end

is un-named.

 

what parentage?

                What spark         or spark-led thing

determines  the throwing

                of light  into heat?

 

of beauty            into the slightly-wrecked

                the wreckled thing

 

::the beauty of sub-secretive foresight::

 

like the way the mother brings the wonderful

                 to the breakfast table                   and the children eat

like good-little

bulbs.

 

© 2012 Umansky

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They were craving for more and wheeling for meaning. To open a place of their own. It might have lead to triumph, if they hadn’t wolfed all the accents: the flounderings and the groundlings. A round letter ate a flat, then a flat ate an accented, then one whispered, Viva the Revolution.

 

One held a banner under his chin.  One played a flute in the corner. One practiced marching at night on the lawn. One was vain. One got the boot.  One brushed his horse, ready for battle. One wrote love letters. One filed invoices. One memorized the Bill of Rights. One braided and unbraided their hair in the mirror. One dreamt of a brighter day of equality where all members would be free.                                                                                                                                                     

One fled.

 

They were all in-betweening, all careening and just believing, They were all lustfully-bleeding for an inn of their own.   A claw-footed tub; a window seat with ruffles; a canopy bed, and of course a hot plate. Then, the meaning came a-wheeling. A feeling they were stealing, and then they were  suddenly craving more. 

 

They were ruthless and borrowed monies from the grocer. They paid bills at the bank, and scuffled in alleyways and side-streets. Their knife-fights were calculated and contrived.

 

 

Blood was spilled. It stank. It stank bad and badly stank. They could smell their time was coming. They could feel its cool hand at their door. They wanted to be inviting and humble and kind. They wanted a guest. They needed a guest. They put an ad in the Town Crier.  They taped signs to lamp posts, to school buses, and to dogs.  They sent carrier pigeons.

 

They did not discriminate against other variables.  They replaced and painted the gutter. They hung a sign. When the TAX ID came, they felt justified and justiced and justly appointed as bearers of the night.

 

© Umansky 2012

 

 

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Storied

The conversation included a dead person talking about “the loosed.”

Must is better than should, they said.

Then, they turned a shoulder and began to naturalize

                                                                                           and mull.

 

It must be about ________________, they said.  It must be about ______________.

A finger shook.

Then the lights went out and

we felt wind-hatched.

If it dies – who will feel the story?

Who will kindle the tale in bed with their daughters? Who will salt those close corners and worsted spines?             

 

To know it is not the same as to hear it.

The heard tale never reached here.                       

                                                                               

                                                                                                                                [or here]                                                             

The scrabbled life is still understood over-easy.

 

 

No one wants this in another style.

 

I want what is storied.

 

                I want every move:         Front, back, side, diagonal, in a shimmy.

                Will the day come when the story is inside?

 

 

I want to dedicate this to what’s coming.

But you, you should know what’s out there.

(c) Umansky 2011

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The First

Out of that small naked, that small, very small, naked space, came a charm of feature; a charmed-feature; at a bare-brokened bough.

The wormed balm of pity, the sail being now past, now was closed in the four; closed as a door  is closed when left slightly ajar. This must make. Must make; must-must make it:  best. This must make it: good.

This tang? This tuft?                 That tuft?  This curdled snare and hair? This golded sweetness so plain in the palm               and plump in the midwaist.

 

                        ‘Eat of us,’ said the moonlit thing.

 

We swallowed and the swallowing went on        and on      and on.           

The swallowing went on for eternities.  Centuries.  Time zones.

The moans slid through time. Into the depths of the deadweight. Beyond the beyond and to what doesn’t compete with the dark; and what doesn’t compete with the stars.

                                                             

 

(c) Umansky 2011

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