PSH: Poets of the Week

Week of April 20, 1998 - April 26, 1998

Janet I. Buck and Michael Wenzel

BECOME A POET OF THE WEEK

by e-mailing a few of your shorter pieces or one long piece to me ALONG WITH a bio of any reasonable length. (Include what city you live in) It's fun, it's easy, it's free. Impress your friends. Impress your mother.

Send to: POTW@PoetrySuperHighway.com

Janet I. Buck
JBuck22874@aol.com

Bio(auto)

Janet Buck lives in Medford, Oregon. She teaches writing and literature at the college level and is widely published in journals, e-zines, and anthologies around the world. Her poetry sites on the web have received more than thirty awards, including the distiguished "Predators and Editors: Author's Site of Excellence" and "The Circle of the Muses Award of Inspiration." "Writing," she says, " is a tuba in a long parade that chases pain and sorrow to its dissolution."

Catheters and Fountain Pens

Impervious to artistry
unless I really need to pray.
Windsor Castle dreams
becoming pillars for
the Parthenon and
other symbols of despair.
Dinner guests like static cling.
Stood-up expectations
hanging in the quiet air.

This pen is too related to
the wings of eagles pinned in flight.
Or clouds above election night
and waiting for the hand of fate
to slap its slap without
a glove like Arnold's
"long, withdrawing roar."

Admitting this is catheters
of nepotismís happy hour.
Writing this is dyeing hair
and other evidence of time
a lighter shade of bitter gray.
It nicely frames the agony
in pewter for the world to see.
Owning this is Demerol and
yogurt running down the throat
behind a tonsillectomy.

Wounded Doves and Open Eyes

Godiva chocolate sex appeal.
Melting in the mouth of years.
Tall and long and silk and right.
Barbie for your bust of bronze.
You had it all, or so it seemed.
I had well-digested dregs.
Satin slippers empty as a
disappointed Christmas stocking
Santa didn't stop to fill.

Manacles around my waist
that held the wooden parts in place.
Scoring flesh and heart as well,
despite the many surgeries applied
to lighten burden's bricks
like wheelbarrows hauling dreams.
In my mind and on your plate:
legs that matched Mattel's for real.
Upon the chaise as wires crossed
and playing music in my ears.
Upside-downing frowning crowning
glory raping what I had replacing thighs.

The night was long. It still exists.
Artistry is throwing sand, but all I had
to match such grace and elegance.
Unless you count the streams of will
that rest so unacceptably
at pity's raging waterfalls.
Or maybe puppets of a smile
that know the echo of the wind
as wounded doves and winter caves
and very, very open eyes.

Expecting Maps

For fountain pens.
Convoluted streams of ink
that borrow their integrity
from emperors and mistresses
that have me by
my fettered bones.

The threat that comes
with looking glassing
facing suns that overheat
from tragedy and
rolling, boiling evil eyes.

Expecting maps for artistry
and other obligations tied
to taverns of a smoking mind.
Manacles of dying love.
Under flesh upon the page.
Raw exposure to the dawn
with all its streaks and
screaming fits.

Roosters crazy in a pen
and waiting for the heavy axe.
Handcuffs of the metered sky
I need I need I need to pick.
At least a time or maybe two
before I drop and die.

Olivaceous Eyes

Your presence slick.
Like olives sliding from a can.
The darkness was acceptable
because you lost your job.
Then the shackles of regret
for selling assets of the dawn
to cater lunches meeting need.

Two-thumbs-up for fantasy.
I blamed it on the booze.
We both would move
like sliding doors that cross
a path and never touch.
Depressionís darts.
They ate the air and
melted plastic valentines.
A dozen roses C.O.D.
They're dying on the severed
vine of reciprocity in love.

Olives work in twos or threes.
No one eats entire cans
without regurgitating coal.
Hearts and minds will soon rebel.
Turn away the tragedy
like envelopes without a stamp
for traipsing on another soul.

Shackles and Chains

I'm not a shrink but
here's my take on pity's couch.
You ask me why you lost again
in rapids of romantic seas.
Shackles of your bleeding heart.
Cleaning guns of suicide
you waved like flags
above our heads.
She and I grew very tired
of hauling pity's books to school.
"Please don't dump me"
loose grenades.
Cashing in before the rain.

Impossible to stretch
the dimes of falling tears
to symbols of enduring love.
You told me that
I loved you too
so many times I nearly
bought bikini dreams
that didn't fit my soul at all.
So many times I nearly
traded in my own and
settled for your chains.

Michael Wenzel
processedcheesefood@juno.com

Bio(auto)

Mike Wenzel is 20 years old. My claim to fame other than being on the cover of the Valley section of the Los Angeles times is that I was the mystery reader at the publication party for the book "I Am My Own Orange County". I plan to publish a chapbook the year 2002.

Peanut Butter Girl

She truly enchants me
She is the most spectacular girl
She reminds me of the perfect
Peanut Butter and jelly sandwich
She has this real creamy look
Yet her personality is chunky

She has the sweetness of good jelly
Yet the high class of preserves
So she is my peanut butter girl
And she is so perfect
I don't want to consume her

The Phone Calls

She made two phone calls
Since I have been sitting here
One were she pointed in my direction
And another were she actually looked at me
I hope she isn't calling the police

And if she is I hope she is describing me in
...........an attractive manner

Pixie Stick Whore

Mandy was a cool kid
Never talked to me
'cause I was an outsider
I had cooties

One day I had a lot of pixie sticks
She asked to have one

I saw an opportunity
I asked for a kiss
She thought about it

Then demanded them all
We haggled a bit

I got two kisses on the cheek
She got half my pixie sticks
And the nickname
Pixie stick whore