Human of the Year

Walking through the romanesque columns of dirty marble
the floor pounds the echoing beats of the faulty heel
the arched domed ceiling seems to ever so slightly rise...
the sun shines and bleeds like paint on flimsy paper
the bloody paint cascades through the tall gaunt windows of glass
it covers the floor in a messy pool of wasted elements

and now they approach, the epitome of animal
the paragon of all beasts
the intellectual of all the breathing, crawling, gnashing organisms

the single brain of nerves and tissue of perfect gold and silk
soul of the richest cumin, saffron spices.

the Vitruvian enters

 -Pamplemousse

The first food I ever tasted

It's kind of dark in here- very hard to see.  I'm in an auditorium, at a bluegrass concert.  The friend on my right side has come into town to lecture and wanted to spend the evening with me.  I go to school here.  This is actually my lab notebook- I used to carry around little artsy pads of paper in my pocket in case I had anything to say but I rarely did, and they wasted pocket space.  Now I do have something to express, if I can.  It's hard to see the edges of the ink; I am writing by the blue and red stagelights. 

Three hours ago.  She and I were seated across from each other at a small round table really made for couples.  She was paying- it was decided- although since this is my town really I should have.  But you can't expect broke grad students to pay for white tablecloth with wine and a jazz band, and you can't expect visiting professors to eat at MacDonalds. 

Used to be I'd find it funny, speaking to grown women as friends.  My best friend and I would call them old people if they looked over 25.  But it would really only apply to those who had made the emotional leap.  There were forty year olds who weren't old people (musicians mostly), because they weren't yet at that transition.  The one I'm in the middle of, when I can't pay for, but don't seem out of place in, this eatery.  I don't feel strange in my hose and heels either, although lipstick tastes funny on my tongue still.  I could always tell when the women passing in and out of my life still felt uncomfortable in their lipstick, but rubbed chic legs together habitually.  They kept patent leather shoes under desks and taught in stockinged feet, then slipped them back on and waltzed to the teacher's lounge.  I would laugh- I really enjoyed watching them have children, and with their bloated looking ankles work foot indents into the lining of those shoes. 

It's really very hard to write in here- what is ink and what is air?  I forgot what my last line was.  I think I'm in the restaurant. 

In tribute to the maps she had drawn me I drew an S shape (representing a winding path) in the white tablecloth with the tip of my pinky; a miniscule S, pointing to her.  She didn't see, it was orange gray mood dark and her eyes sparkled because she was watching the jazz band.  Three black men dressed crisply.  One had on a striped fedora- the man with the upright bass. 

The corners of her eyes are really very crinkly now- folded over and over like an old paperback.  I held the edge of the tablecloth and wrinkled it a little to match.  When we were first introduced, the wrinkles in her eyes were what gave her away to me.  She didn't need lipstick and I could only immagine that meant she didn't like it yet.  But her eyes caught that thought, they were just sharp enough.  Just to be sure, when I went home that day I drew her on my whiteboard.  Wrinkly eyes.  Young wrinkly eyes?  I used to hate conundrums.  I couldn't do anything but her black hair and her dark eyes and the skin between them. 

I guess a week afterwards, I remember going to a concert and getting rough nosebleed seats and I remember opening a notebook, but never writing anything.  I just felt the edges of a page.  My best friend and I had our sneakers up on the seats in front of us. 

My best friend was rarely surprised by me, not then.  She knew by my face I was writing a person down, thought the ink still in the well would eventually represent me, but as I started scribbling in the dark it wasn't me.  I guess I still write in concerts. 

This table is quite small.  I suddenly was aware of distances in the room- how close we are, and to the band, how large a room.  I smile in her general direction with an old person smile I am very comfortable in.  Even at sixteen I laughed at who I was at sixteen like this.  She smiled back at me- asking why I laughed- in a friend kind of way.  A new voice.  I wanted to say her new gray hair made me smile but I couldn't put the edges of that notebook out of my fingers.  Yes I am in this room but my fingers are also in the dark, sixteen.  I remembered crispness still.  On that same corner of tablecloth from before, I rubbed my palms together.  The motion hunched my shoulder forward like against wind. 

Oh, I said, I took a jazz class from the trumpet player.  We both stared at him for a moment, a set, a salad.  Both of her toe points tapped to the beat- the song ended and lights raised by incriments.  It must have been too long ago to expect him to remember me, I said.  The secretly, and I appear the old person now.  Was I willing to go up and shake his hand after he stopped looking so intense? with vestiges of swing in his posture.  I went before the swing left the room. 

He did remember me, curiously, and I thought about asking about the time... no, he wouldn't remember that.  I'll still put it in my memoir because its a memoir kind of story about being new to an instrument and the jazz teacher not knowing about strings.  Nobody knowing. 

My friend's eyes sparkled when the trumpet player patted me on the shoulder like a friend. His hair was all black still- I remembered pepper but I don't mind him having dyed it to play better jazz.  I still found the clean white tablecloth interesting when we sat down.  Staring at it when I asked her questions and listened. 

Then (this was very strange) a gray circle- a perfect cirlce- appeared like seeping water- out and out.  it went quickly, I almost didn't have time to think Something is darkening my tablecloth!  The shadow was covered by a plate of steaming food, and I brought my hands out from under the jazz club couple table, let go of the now wrinkled material, so my hands could soak in the lights.  Pink steak.  Broccolli.  Tomatoes.  The colors were inexplicably bright.  I caught that eye, the young old eye again, and smiled, really smiled, for the first time that day. 

After dinner I took her to a folk music concert.  I paid- a guy I knew preformed and had extra tickets.  That still counts as paying, right?  I am writing this in the dark still.  I wish you could see the colors of it though.  She pulls at my shoulder when she wants to point out a player to me, like my best friend did when I was sixteen. 

I had not tasted food before that dinner with her at the restaurant with a friend, jazz band, tablecloths and wine. 


-Citron

machine

oh sleek shiny panel
suave silky box
i sit in pajamas of flannel
and think, jumble of tiny fancy rocks,
what secrets lie behind your locks?

Robins

I step off the school bus.
another day.
Accosted by robins!
I did not know that robins travel
in herds!  Flurries! 
Ears overtaken
I've never heard a hundred robin calls.
Seven lawns a street, covered.
They all seem the same to me
But I do not doubt each
red chest's importance.
A robin flock needs a hundred robins
throating mightily from small-boned
casings.


-Citron

the cove of the dove

The dove flew to his high perch,
At the summit of the duke birch
He proudly looked about
and said, "I, he with the biggest pout
am truly great and the grandest bird
of my mediocre measly herd.
I arrogantly stand as big as a goose
my pride mighty and my tongue loose.
All you, miserable scraps of feathers
if all of you where weathers
you would be the breeze lukewarm,
and I would be the thunderstorm.
I am the tempest of the species
among the fluffy pillows of the fleecy
I am the granite rock in the cave
looking down at the pebbles that slave
wearing down the foundation
to create a slight indentation.
But when I fall from my niche
I crush you all to dust that itch,
merely itch the grand rock's belly.

I am the phoenix of the woods,
I dare you all! Challenge me!
You might need your knighthoods
to fight this monstrosity.

At these words, the dove with eyebrows raised
lifted his wings to fly to the heavens
to gain his rightful throne next to the sun
and scoff down at everyone.

But then...

a shot.

.

into the large white living cloud's chest
a large mass of red blood seeping
a feathery disarray of blood and lost honor

I guess they thought he was a goose.

-Pamplemousse

I want to be a nun when I grow up

When I blink my eyelashes
hit my glasses.


-Citron

The Song From Last Week

Serenely sitting in mass.
The angelic voices sing their chants.
The men all kneel in khaki pants.
I, I too sit in the congregation
I in my straightened hair
I am calmy sitting there,

with irreverent lyrics raging through my head like a stampede of attacking water buffalo.
my friend she said, oh! listen to this! at least a week ago. We giggled about it, jested a bit.
Why have they crawled from their file of forgotten-ness crawled up my dress
devilishly climbing into my ear?
at first just a whisper, in mid-service,
I shoo it away as a pesky fly
but then, it becomes a blaring fog horn!
beating and beating the irksome tune inside my head.
and beating and beating and beating and beating.
playing the same horrid line over and over and over again.
Dear god have mercy on me, this is torturous!

My head opens like the San Andreas Fault,
shoots of neon yellow stars spring out
tye dye flames spill over the bowl of my brain
tiny blue creatures hike up the side of my head and leap out
with high pitched glee
lions roar and giant cats explode from my eyes
shoes of different sizes fall and beat the same beat
they dance and surround me, dancing with the rainbows
green sludge oozes from my ears and spills,
half drowning me
the noise is unbearable
drums and screaming and shrill laughter
scraping and grinding and trumpets
My vision sees nothing except sheer lunacy,
brilliant madness, a cartoon of utter chaos.
I can barely stand it, it is too much to handle
I feel as a water balloon bursting with liquid,
a tight jean stressing the seams
no, make this all go away
I can not stand it!!!


And then it is over, I have not moved a muscle,
from my hard pew, I see that nothing has changed,
Unassuming and unremarkable, I sit, as any other normal person in the Church.
Except with that same whisper
That same steady beat, wearing down my sanity.

-Pamplemousse

Switch

We train passengers pass a BP station
very fast
in the dark. 
               All the good things
               -lights off at night.
As I walk the trains corridor
all the doors shake
a girl begins an anecdote with
my uncle's pants caught on
fire yesterday. 
I wonder if it will be told still
in ten years and where.
I don't stay to listen
it is not mine.
I sway,
the black men lean out of my way into each other
the white men do not.
Sometimes, I hate the South when it is a proper noun
and not a direction.
Disembartking, two women embrace
Don't cry yet honey!
and their breath fogs around us all. 
Sometimes I love
               all the good things.


-Citron

The Plastic Works

Observing would be hot and unpleasant
I say I would like to see it
get research funding from somewhere?
not to write a paper on it! 
I do not come to be employed
at the plastic works
althought I have strong arms
and know organic chemistry
Observing would be hot and unpleasant
I walk with the men who lay train tracks
Used to be with their hands
I step on the meadow beside
bare foot to boot
my ticket in the pocket of my sundress.


-Citron

Hotel Room Dream

Salt and gold rain down from the sky,
a catcher in the rye.
I stop children from falling from the cliff
off of this field, oh but only if,
It can be like this forever,
To be the life over death lever.
Spinning on the carousel
I hear a rather strange hoarse bell.
Climbing off the bus I see
an ice mirror from tree to tree,
a glaze of milky solid glass
coated like cream over the grass.
I stand in mid street.
and see some houses geometrically neat,
I see a girl step out a door
and feel my heart fall down to floor.
For she looks strange and alien
with a vacant look as seen in aboriginal Australians.
I see a scar upon her cheek
and instead of mouth she has a beak.
But she looks like a friend I have...

Yes, I consider myself my friend.

-Pamplemousse

Dust

I like you human.
That smile that always dies but remains a print.
That hair that blows in the gasps of wind
Your skin that for some, is a mark of loyalty.
A mark of resentment.
The genes that produce mechanically
Affect mentally, emotionally.
But human, I find it charming,
That you blame yourself for your chromosomes.
Quite comical in my eyes.
Dear humans, how I am raptured by your quaint ideas
Your nuances of life and fate.
But you small miniscule iota of a human
It always astounds me how you care so much
You care so much for the thoughts of other specks.
You are all specks. And you are on my floor.

-Pamplemousse

Ode: To The Library's Snack Machine

Skipping scanning, reading Freud
Bright light- in my way- annoyed
over the top of a book
surprisingly near.

Didn't notice when I sat
eyes focus farther- what is that?
I gave it a dirty look-
What's it doing here?

Focus broken between Ids
and Ego's to this well-lit kid
for it was a snack machine
three bookcases away.

I perfectly oriented
Super-ego was offended
as it could not be unseen
for the rest of the day.

I wish its motor would shut up
and my hunger would just let up
Coughing during symphonies
You're ruining them all for me.

Though I do appreciate
the evidence that it creates
I'd rather see another shelf
than psychoanalyze myself.


-Citron

Nightmare

Specter, specter, why must you haunt me so?
With your pendulum swinging to and fro,
you drag me down to your sulf'rous abode,
menacing my face with your acrid goad.
Why will you not allow me slumber and rest?
I implore you to hide that face I detest!
Those malevolent sanguineous eyes,
that laugh and mock all pitiful cries...

Why you chose me to torment I know not,
but you lurk behind every gaze, every thought.
I have not slept for semesters on end
I know not if my tired soul can withstand
these never ending nocturnal tortures,
much longer until my will ruptures.

Searching for wonderful

I was seeking a profundity
and, unsure about where to look,
asked "Are the wonderful things outside?
Or am I the wonderful person?"


-Citron

Nameless Here for Evermore

My dearest darling Poe,
Don't think me bold dear Sir,
for this daring, brazen hello.
I do not pretend
to be your friend
or even a near equal Thoreau.
A skinny juvenile girl,
a rather gritty pearl,
is all the shining glass
has ever led me to believe.
I am no lovely Annabelle Lee
no shining knight as he
that searched in sunshine and in shadow
for the land of El Dorado.

I somehow envy you,
you must truly think me mad,
I'm sure that I am one of few
that would ever be jealous of you,
the owner of a grisly life
if life it might be called.
I try to create a small world
inside my head all whirled
my own poetic tragic universe,
however it is false and despicable,
for I can not replicate true pain
especially not for selfish gain.
I love your poems more than myself
that sole collection up on my shelf.

Oh if i could have but one book
far one would not have to look,
for it would be that text of crystal clear
that one with the imprint of a shedded tear.

Let us switch, i'll be dead in my grave,
and you be a juvenile victim, society's slave.

-Pamplemousse

The Big Bushel Basket of Onions

I wish I could walk.
I can move my legs like walkers do,
like Ghandi did, or Thoreau,
but I am always going somewhere.
That is, apparently, a good thing.
Someone said once (I forgot who and when)
to be layered like an onion.
On a walk-like journey, I disagree: 
The person said so because they saw
someone's plastic rings fall away
How else do you know onions have souls? 
I asked my right sneaker.  (Whenever I step, its soul flattens)
Stop layering- the earth warms- without sweaters and vests
in a bushel basket, more little soulful bulbs fit
I need to pick up shorter lines at the market- mine are lengthy
with prepositions and terrible similies.  Stanza length. 
I do not condone knives but, instead, shelling off.
It will feel like growth from your point of view, but this is because
your insides will touch the world immediately
also, the onions packed in beside you
smallen too.


-Citron

california english

With his gloves all neat and proper,
he was the paragon of grasshopper.

-Pamplemousse

Film, Crystal, Stained, Scum, Translucent (partially)

Math is blue glass.
Novels are pink glass.
Non-fiction is purple glass.
Musicians wear psychadelic colors when they play.
News reporting is red glass.
Introspection is green glass.
Judicials have gray eyes.
because of their gray tinted glasses.
The famous sometimes wear black sunglasses
once they are famous. 
Churchgoers see pious and dirty brown.
Children invariably have half-formed eyes
that haven't come out of where they were first,
but that is nice I think.  Then they pick up lenses
at the grocery store and the bank
in paper bags from old homeless men who eye them funnily
through Scotch tape frames of their own.
And noone can tell exactly
why the novelists say things are pink. 
The mathmaticians start- and stare-
what is this pink?  I used to see pink
when I was a child. 
Obviously you are a child.  Pink does not exist-
the world is most defnitely blue. 

This poem is clear glass: 
I took a beach walk to find it
polished by water and sharp granules of sand
instead of by grammar books and laser machines and economies-
It used to be the side of a wine bottle
now I hold it up to my eye
and see. 
Haven't you ever wondered why poems
could tell all the colors?


-Citron

terra

horizontal on the bed, he listened to the sounds of the wood
the walls were thin and his heart was open
the rustle of the leaves made his hair move as if blown by an invisible wind
he closed his eyes and nearly felt the dew on his cheek
the sun was on his face
the sounds of the forest overwhelmed him

but no, something is all wrong
he has never felt the wind, nor heard the howls
he has never, and will never see the wood

only the blind eyes inside can truly see

-Pamplemousse

the desert and an ending

I try most of the time
to exclude the feels that aren't
especially interesting
but my version of interesting
veers towards original
like a bycicle
that I just froze
on an Arizona highway.
It neared the white line
that marks an end
and it took me a while
to figure out that this,
this wasn't heartburn
or a pulsing purple vortex
that changed the world
somewhere between my front chest plate and my spine.
This was longing and leaving, and getting ready to miss terribly. 

I felt the jolt
as the bike
left the road. 
Be a romantic, shouted the desert.


-Citron

Every morning

I have a morning routine. 

First, I am a teepee dweller
breathing in steam swirls to wash out the dreams.

Then I am an Inca king
sipping my coffee and planning the day.

Then I am a Roman soothsayer
picking around the gray morning in my robe and sandals,
bending down, taking the news from a bag.

Then I am an inkeeper's wife
scaring eggs around the pan.

Then I am a Russian aristocrat
reading how the world goes to tell my family later.

Then I am an old midwife
looking out the window for a sign.

Then I am a medicine man
shaking icemelt gravel on the steps outside.

Then I am a Geat hero
because the ice growls when I turn my back.

This is how all my mornings go.

-Citron

Stranger in the Windows

I can not view your face
For it is invisible through this glass
I can not know that you are even real
Through this magical screen
Behind this window I can only perceive
An unending shadow of words
The cloud of mystery of a person that
I can not see
Through the windows.

And this frightens me.

-Pamplemousse

Waiting for my soul.

Sitting quietly, very quietly, in a wooden chair
with a hard back. 
Like a jungle member I watch and wait
for pretty soon my soul will creep out from wherever it is hiding,
towards the wooden chair in the middle of the jungle.

I love her because she has a soul.
I love old people in general- sometimes they have caught ten
and sew them together to wear like fur coats
and sit by the fire and drum.
When their arms move the souls flap and bunch up.
The old ones become a thing else, the thing I want to be. 

We the young paint our faces
and dance around trees, naked as anything. 

Some of us won't ever find our souls
but instead, through the dances round and round,
life will spatter through us in bursts like some kind of spin art,
Once you stop you'll find yourselves. 

But she is the Rothko to your Pollock. 

And I, naked as anything, sit in my chair
and wait.

-Citron

the smile

it mutilated and gorged my brain
my heart
it disappeared into the plain
the land
it pierced my heart and made it bleed
a dart
i grabbed it with unselfish greed
the smile

-Pamplemousse

The sometimes snow.

It's snowing:  I smile out a window
and catch snowflakes on my tongue.
But not when the snow is six feet deep
and not when the snow makes a tree fall down. 

When I'm tired of the snow I play with Play-Doh and whipped cream.
I make a mountain
I make an ocean
I make a fire hydrant with a man beside it.
I like them. 
It makes me happy to put clay into a good shape. 
Sometimes, I flatten my hand and destroy them all
and mix the colors up
and put the puke-colored glob back in the jar
so no one else can like it. 

When I'm tired of the clay
I read fairy tales
like the one about a Chinese farmer.
It is a riddle:

"He went to Hell, and everyone
Held chopsticks about three feet long.
The feast was prematurely done."
So went the first part of the song.
"In Heaven the man was surprised
For Heaven was Hell in his eyes.
All of the sticks were oversized,
Yes, but nothing was wrong." 
In Hell they only served themselves-
They helped others in Heaven. 
In fact, that Heaven would be Hell
Sans its forward direction."
I close the book. 
I like the book- it makes me happy. 

Then I go out and play
but not when the snow freezes over and makes me fall down like a tree
and not when it keeps an ambulance off a road
to save someone's life
or not to. 
I like life. 
I like the snow.
This snow I smile at
but I don't smile then.

-Citron

the literary carcass

a stuffy old bookcase
no frill or lace
about its musky wood
filled till it could
tilt and smash to the floor
a grisly gore
of mutilated books
with morbid looks
spread out before my feet
sheet after sheet after sheet.

-Pamplemousse

The Owl

The owl looked at me sternly
through the round glasses I perceived
were circling his eyes.

-Citron

une fleur d'or

I could not find my golden locket
so i reached into my pocket
but I felt no metal  smooth and cold,
but a living breathing marigold.

Some petals had sadly fallen astray
and on the ground they sadly lay,
the tint of the sun's luscious locks
at the highest point of the equinox.

I picked up every last lost petal
and placed it on my golden medal,
and thus it stayed a perfect flower
but only so, a fleeting hour

For then a faint breeze stirred
the East wind's sigh went not unheard,
and the rays of my sunstar
were scattered much too far,

for me to have hope of gathering them,
the citrine gold off my diadem.

-Pamplemousse

Parapluie

J'ecriverai
jamais
la poesie
en francais.

Le son
est plus bon,
oui,
mais c'est
ton son.

Et puis,
j'ecrit
des parapluies:
Je ne peut pas les
construire sans l'anglais.

Pardon.
Je sais.

-Citron

crack in the sidewalk

while observing the prints of storming strides

the remainders of a compassionate quarrel

with eyes down

i walked alone on the walk

i could see every trampled flower stalk

each uprooted root

if these cracks in the cement could talk

what man would they disrepute?

some things know all secrets,

each dastardly wicked role

the minute dirts and grits

that lie,

        fallen, 

        within the deepest cracks of our soul

-Pamplemousse

A Boating Trip

Can we go on a boating trip?
I'll be the boat,
          like when we played equestrian
and you can captain.
Can we rock and bob
          like the dances went
          when we learned them?
Can you take me somewhere wonderful?
Even when you disembark
          like today,
sneakers will have worn your path in the floor
and the wheel will remember your hands.

-Citron

A hypocrisy of sounds

Villainy poisons, corrupts,erupts
It kills and maims and shames.

So i wonder why I feel
That if i did not know it's meaning
The word villainy i would find quite pleasing
The short vowels that act as a string of pearls, mellifluously sliding into water
The ells in the core that sound as two small fingers dipped in honey, gently gliding over smoothest glass

If i were ignorant to the meaning i would perhaps guess that villainy,
Were a romantic vine crawln up a tree
Or a pretty girl with poetic eyes
It seems absurd that such an ugly word
Has such romantic sound

-Pamplemousse

Ados

Do not give that boy
the body of a man.
(Don't give me the body of a man either-
I wouldn't know what to do.)

already?  I was not expecting this
at twelve weeks a fetus could fit into my hand
but it is working somewhere else, out of reach.
The heart is bigger than most any other part
pump. pump. when it beats my baby is dancing.
It has fingers, too.

Devon got a pickup truck yesterday
it was his uncle's
I looked in the bed, and saw some dirty rainwater
that looked like syrup,
and moved like syrup.
it wasn't syrup,
before I even tasted it.

When I have a house of my own
it will have no doors.
there are too many doors in this house.
doors are to cry against, or lean on when telephoning.
to close.  My house will have no doors. 

children get fat
on chemistry they do not understand.
sometimes they die
from diabetes
that I understand.

men and women were made for each other
there is so much besides the heart now.
they close the door on the child.
inside and outside:  there are always two sides to a door.

pump. pump. somebody bothered to name a brick for me today.
nobody told me what a brick was before. They make walls. 
walls are good
except the ones with doors.

no.
walls are bad
at least doors can be opened.

Who is that man? 

-Citron

Let us begin:

Two interesting people
writing interesting poems
every day.

We're learning with you.
Watch and see.

-Citron