Tuesday night, it was a Tweet Poetry (poetry jam) utterly unlike its predecessors, a kind of romp through the worlds of fiction and history through the eyes of famous couples.

The instructions from @tspoetry: Tonight, a party challenge: ‘Love in Character.’ All quotes from Julia Cameron’s poetry in ‘The Right To Write.’ Try to write poems in character. Famous couples (include indicator somewhere in poem). Pocahontas & John Smith, Jane Eyre & Rochester, Cleopatra & Mark Antony, Cyrano & Roxanne, Lancelot & Guinevere. Shah Jahan & Mumtaz Mahal of the Taj Mahal, Elizabeth Bennett & Darcy, Scarlett & Rhett, Romeo & Juliet, Samson & Delilah, Owl & Pussycat.

The owl and the pussycat?

The participants: @llbarkat, @doallas, @poemsandprayers, @mdgoodyear, @mixings, @calebjseeling and @gyoung9751. We also had three unexpected cameo appearances. One was @AnnVoskamp, who wandered into the middle of the poetry tweets (without realizing it) and posted a line that, oddly enough, actually fit the section. @PeterPollock did exactly the same thing. I don’t think either intended to do this, but we adopted them into it anyway. And then @publiceyestl retweeted one of my own contributions and used the #tsp hashtag. If you use the hashtag, you’re in.

Love at the Masquerade Ball

First prompt by @tspoetry: “Misery, I remember you before the hemlock,/I remember you proud and fierce…”

With kohl did Cleo paint almond eyes,
Marking time till Mark arrived to bid her well.
Antony: I remember you before the asp.
Cleo: I remember you before the sword.
[Timeless RT: Antony: I remember you before the asp. Cleo: I remember you before the sword.]
Asp did leave a mark
Greater than mine own mark on Mark.
Forgive me, Mark,
Your ship arrived;
My almond eyes
Could never let
You go.
Mine eyes hold you, Cleo,
As sun holds light.
We danced in the sand
Under the light of the pyramid moon.
On honey and bread we dined.
Mark’s ship goes out on sands of time
Cleo an uncontent to show
In kohl-burned eyes.

And yet the glint of thine own eyes, Mark
Leave me stunned.
Who said love was
Softer than the asp?
It bites the heart.
Does yet one bite of asp
Leave you for loss of tongue, dear Mark?

Interesting shapes
Do our sands foretell if there be
Pyramid moon.
She turned to fortunetellers
To see the lines of the sand.
Such be the Sphinx;
Enigmas be all we have.
Quick sand does pull us in,
Honey gives of too much that’s sweet
And on pea green boat do we wreak such havoc.
Mark’s ship goes out on sands of time
Cleo an uncontent to show
In kohl-burned eyes

Second prompt by @tspoetry: “Dreaming the dark places,/Caves and the back of stars…”

The caves of Ali Baba,
The stars of Jasmine’s eyes.
Vault of marble
Cave, emerald-studded
Calligraphy holds my love
For whom, at death
I plucked out
Artists’ eyes.
You strum on the strings of my heart.
Flying carpets,
Threads aflutter,
Magic lamps to rub and wish.
Mumtaz, would that
You could echo voice
Over this dry river
Through this dark tomb
Light my heart once more
Like stars.
Jasmine’s sweetest smell of all,
Turning heads.
Magic is one wish yet granted.
Honey drips from cave walls,
Leaving Ali and his thieves in sticky situation.
In all of India
No heart cries more
Than mine for thee.

Third prompt by @tspoetry: “The stars at night were someone’s baby teeth.”

The baby teeth of the angels
Swirling through the desert sand.
Teeth lie unfound in sand,
Covering a thousand lost wishes.

Fourth prompt by @tspoetry: “Our every slip of tongue is graceful./Our best syllables are silent.”

When you stepped
Under the Eastern Hemlocks,
John, I still had
A few stray baby
Teeth. You licked
Them sober, tall;
I left the shores.
My native ground
Scarce left behind,
I traveled to England,
John’s country.
A curiosity, they found me there,
Though John did soothe
My longing.
In John’s England did I
Find myself
A proper lady.
I still remember
How your bangles,
Whispered glass,
Love through the halls,
Your hair coconut fragrant,
Hands henna red.
in a boat of dreams we sail the indigo waters
Heart hears silence
As its call.
They said I was spectacle,
Eye-catching of courtiers
[@PeterPollock That's right... blame the English guy. Everyone else does!]
My skin be red yet soft.
John saw the difference,
Made of it a dream.
We dreamed together.
The redness of mine,
The whiteness of John’s,
Our skins peeled together
The curry leaf
Floats, curls
‘Midst black onion
Seeds, brown sauce
And I think once again
I taste your love
Upon my tongue.
I need not ask their courtesies.
My John saw to that,
Defended me.
The courtesies of courtiers
Were like sharpened knives at the table.

Fifth prompt by @tspoetry: “I am missing you./My ‘I’ stands like a lonely tree./This landscape is denuded.”

I watched them
shave your head
clean, strip your strength
In fallen locks.
Now I am missing
You, your hair like rope
Around my wrists,
Said Delilah, she of the Philistines.

Sixth prompt by @tspoetry: “I am lying about that./Lilacs are blooming./Apple trees froth with lace.”

Samson’s strength,
Shorn as a heart
In love might be shorn
Of dreams
When cut in two.
There is a love that binds and a love that frees,
He wanted stars
But was blinded by pokers of light.
Love that binds
And frees
‘Tis woman’s ways to find the means,
A single lock,
Its strength
Enclosed
In memory

I am missing you,
Rhett, the lilacs are in
Bloom beside the house
Like purple flame
Of pain,
Recalled
By light.
Frankly, my dear,
I wish for hand of lilac scent
To touch my brow.
Darcy, you too
Could know purple,
Could lie amidst the heather,
Let your eyes
But look on me,
Lost on Moors
From tower ramparts.
Do I wish to fling myself
If your love be denied?

Dear Rhett,
This is Juliet
Speaking. What
Kind of fool are you
To spurn love?
I would die for
My lover’s touch.
[AnnVoskamp Galaxies spin & stars, they swirl, and in the heavens there is a pillar of Words that never shifts, axis of the world.]
Will you remember me, tomorrow, Rhett?
Another tomorrow, another day.
With pride, with prejudice, perhaps with love.
Scarlet’s heart a scarlet tear
So rent by Rhett,
Cast-off,
Unlaced.

Seventh prompt by @tspoetry: “For what it’s worth,/I loved you.”

[gyoung9751 Ok, L.L, how difficult are we going to make the editing here?]
[llbarkat @gyoung9751 oh, now, there'll be less tweets Mr. Young! ]
[@doallas: Juliet might yet speak up, @gyoung9751,/showing you the way of words.]
[goodwordediting @llbarkat @gyoung9751 @doallas he is the east/ she is the sun/ stressed on both ends]

Shadows in heather
Do gather
The truth universal
Begins every love
Story worth reading.
(Sorry I’m late.)
Roxane, don’t ever doubt
It, for what it’s worth
I loved you
silent as the
stars.
A silly friar’s potion
Was all she needed
To test Romeo’s true love.

Eighth prompt by @tspoetry: “You were my green earth.”

I will love you today,
I will love
You tomorrow,
Happily
Ever after,
As long a nose
No lie might tell
Ever did my heart yearn for Roxane.
My green earth,
My good earth,
The soil of my love.
One’s own true love,
If she know it,
May be luckiest of all.
Lancelot, you were my green
Earth, the round table
Upon which my
Heart spun,
As the sun fair doth rise in the east
As the moon most pale doth set in the west.
Compare me to soil,
To dirt,
Wherein grows love
Like so many blooms unseen.
Just means
My secrets yet
Await you.
Guinny waited for her knight
All night,
Their story to retell.

Ninth Prompt by @tspoetry: “The air is silk./There is milk in the looks/That come from strangers.”

Strangers when they met,
Bonded souls when they parted.
The wind gnaws at our necks
And we wonder if this night
Will be as cold as the last.
And too soon did grow weary
Of spinning
Tales of Camelot.
Mumtaz, the air is silk,
Morning raises
Yet again its
Veil of longing.
Cold not,
If fire
We do build
To scorching.
In the cold mist did
Yuri touch
The pale cheek of Lara.
Who be left
On whom we cast
Such spells
As love might make?
Now tell me, who
is Yuri?
Yuri Zhivago.
The reds and the whites
He thought
Were no longer wines but soldiers.
Veil of longing
Dropped quietly,
For love steps softly
In moon’s light
And shadow.
Russian boots
Do stamp
Love out
Too quick.
Lara, I watched you through
The window,
Choked on the scent
Of goodbye.
The trees,
All aspens,
Sang of love and Russian nights
Or Gagarin who loved
The dark and cold
Of space where he said
He saw no God.
Soldiers’ whines
Of loves lost
Never to be recovered
In snow dreams.
Cold long nights
In Russia
Leave little else but time.
Was Lara the Russian Guinevere?

Tenth prompt by @tspoetry: “The wind like kisses,/The music in the soup,/The group of trees laughing.”

Too many questions
Do make of love
A bitter ending,
Camelot,
Lost to darkness,
To a time gone by.
Stop asking
Questions, Mr. Darcy,
With your dark brown
Eyes. Kisses need
No answers.
Goodbye,
All lovers
Bid
Sooner or later.
Before goodbyes
Leave us all
To other dreams
So cold the stars,
So white the snow,
So still the sleigh,
So goes the day.
Loves and lovers sail away and love,
Yes, love is here to stay.
You remember now,
Don’t you, Ronny,
Me and our time
Together in blue and white
Forever?
Enough
To know somewhere my love by heart
And nothing more.

Of all the famous loves I’ve known
Across the pages of imagination,
None surpasses my own true love.

Concluding prompt by @tspoetry et al

@tspoetry Parting is such sweet sorrow! Thank you all for playing along with this challenge.
@gyoung9751 Applause all around! (this is the part where we stand around and congratulate each other.)
@Doallas Tis difficult/and yet/methinks we did/quite well./Evening ends in Lara’s song/of knights/and nights/and Jasmine/Juliet’s sorrow at end.
@llbarkat  And they danced/by the light/of the moon, the moon/and they danced by/the light of the moon. (Goodnight all.) Great one! Good luck Mr Y.
@Doallas Applause to all. Goodnight on this note.
@poemsandprayers parting is such sweet sorrow…loved it.
@gyoung9751 I’ve captured all the tweets in a Word doc. Now for editing. If anyone wants the unedited tweet-doc, let me know and I’ll email it.
@goodwordediting HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME Goonight @calebjseeling. Goonight @llbarkat. Goonight @gyoung9751. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
@gyoung9751 And thanks to @goodwordediting, too!
@poemsandprayers goodnight owl and pussycat.
@Doallas Advance thanks to @gyoung9751 for magic you’ll be working on our words. Looking forward to seeing lines shaped by hand.
@llbarkat Goodnight, Mr. @goodwordediting.
@Doallas Buena sera @llbarkat @poemsandprayers @goodwordediting @tspoetry @gyoung9751.
@Mixings Good night dish, good night spoon.
@llbarkat @AnnVoskamp timely, for our poetry party! Maybe you didn’t know you’d come?
@Calebjseeling: @llbarkat I found out about #tsp just in time and had to think of a quickie. Um, Reagan–famous couple, right? Thanks for letting me play.

Updates:

See also L.L. Barkat’s Ticket to Party.

Glynn’s Reflection on a Tweet Party.

Maureen’s Tweets of Love at the Masquerade Ball.

Our next Tweet Party (poetry jam) is set for 9:30 p.m. (Eastern time) on Tuesday. Oct. 27 on Twitter. Just show up, wait for the prompt, and jump in. Don’t forget to use the #tsp hashtag and follow @tspoetry.

It started as something of a lark. L.L. Barkat, Eric Swalberg  and I, with a little commentary from Bradley Moore, decided to do a poetry jam on Twitter. Only L.L., Eric and I actually participated in the first session; Bradley had to take a shower after cleaning out horse stables all day for a project at work (I am not making this up).

We had a great time, talked it up a bit, and then started making plans for the second. At some point between the first and second sessions, L.L. suggested creating a site to house the Twitter poems and do other “poetically related” things like recommend books; Eric said he would be up for setting the site up; and I volunteered to edit and manage content. And just that fast, TweetSpeakPoetry.com was born.

Pulling all of the tweeted contributions together into some kind of coherent whole was relatively easy for the first two jams. The number of participants was three or four; we had gotten to know each other and each other’s writing through Twitter, Facebook, our blogs and email.

With the third session, things had begun to change a bit. From a contributor’s perspective, the “Twoems” (Twitter poems) are becoming wonderfully more varied and creative. And they’re also becoming more complex. More poet/tweeters are involved (a good thing), all write extremely and creatively well (another good thing), and all get involved in the jams in very individual ways (a third good thing and what makes the twoems so creative). But it makes for some challenging editing.

What helps is how certain themes will repeat themselves. In the third poetry jam, held Sept. 30, various kinds of fruit trees kept popping up, and I was able to use the idea of orchards to frame the twoem, entitled it “The Orchards of Desire.” For the last one, held Oct. 6, the phrases “ruby moon” or “ruby-red moon” kept recurring, and provided considerable help in editing eight pages of printed tweets.

The editing process has its own mystique. I’ve edited a lot of documents during my professional career – speeches, news releases, articles and stories, even book manuscripts. But I haven’t edited poetry contributions tweeted on Twitter in a poetry jam. And it’s a collection of contributions that are made at different levels and different entry points, and with different perspectives on where things should go. And then you add our tendencies (including mine) to interject comments and asides, and it gets quite complicated.

What helps is to love the language. To see what comes from our poetry contributors, writing in short bursts of 140 characters, is absolutely amazing. Many of these contributions are startling, almost shockingly beautiful, and you just think “Wow~!” when you see them appear on the screen.

I resist the urge to edit the words. That’s an urge common to all humanity, and especially lawyers. But I resist it. I may add a comma or semi-colon; I may move an entire line or two to another place because the fit is better. But I leave the words alone. I even leave the words of my own contributions alone, even if I see where I can improve them after the jam is over. That kind of editing goes against the spirit of a Twitter poem in the first place – writing tightly and quickly within that 140-character limit. So despite all my editing and structuring, there is still a sense of spontaneity – joyful spontaneity – about the finished whole and its component parts.

It’s tremendous fun. And more than that, it’s humbling and instructive to work with such talented writers.

Poems of the Ruby Moon

On Oct. 6, we held our fourth Tweet-Party, or poetry jam, on Twitter. Seven of us participated. The first three jams were similar in how they developed; we veered in a different direction with this fourth one. What was different was that some of us followed the prompts from @tspoetry, and some of us didn’t. No one was consistently consistent in following or not following; we’d get caught up in the words of a particular section and stay there, continuing to tweet for that section, or we’d move on to the next prompt. Or do both, and simultaneously.

It’s great fun. But to edit all of the tweets into some kind of coherent whole? Well, let’s say that was a challenge. (Remember the Wall Street Journal’s definition of a challenge – a problem with no known solution.)

So it’s taken some time, some parsing, some rearranging, considerable rereading and, finally, the understanding that this wasn’t one poem but more like 12. And there did turn out to be a thematic link running through most of the contributions – the idea of a ruby moon. So, below are the 12 poems of the ruby moon, tweeted first on Twitter and then edited for publication here as something approaching a coherent whole. I hope.

All of the prompts you see below in quotations by @tspoetry are lines from Wendell Berry’s Given: Poem (2006).

The Poems of the Ruby Moon
By @llbarkat, @poemsandprayers, @TchrEric, @jazzvigil, @doallas, @necessarywords and @gyoung9751; facilitated by @tspoetry

Behind the Wallpaper

@tspoetry: “We may be living on an atom/in somebody’s wallpaper.”

Peel it away
With a light touch.
Stories within walls
Bid us tell tales, and tall ones,
Tall Tales a Poe never wrote
So darkly
From a hand undone
By drink
On the streets of Baltimore,
A falling down
Caught between a wall
And a hard place.
Feeling all alone,
In need of comfort of tea and onion rings a bell
“Call me if you hear/anything…”
He is as twisted as his tie
And she,
Her twists of another
Sort.
She was laid off and he on a lay over
At the news of one more layoff,
Ineptly done,
Strait-jacketed,
Left cold
On city sidewalk,
A Poe nevermore
To ring the bell.
Forsake me not,
Despite the news,
The gods,
The mantras preaching,
Wait
Within the walls,
Peeling wallpaper back,
Again
A-dreaming.
Even the laid off
Have dreams.

River of Light of the Ruby Moon

The dust motes float
And swerve in the sunbeam.
The sunbeam filters,
Dust drops into pools
Of light.
Motes and cracks,
Mortar breaks,
Wedged between beams.
Smoky aroma fill the air
Gold flecks sifted out
From river of light.
Light pools into golden flecks of mirth
Dancing on walls.
Clouds of smoke pass over the ruby moon.
Daybeam,
Window road,
The galaxy peers in on us.
Light of moon,
Yellow white and ruby red,
Light appearing,
Peering light,
Filtering into darkness.
Headlight
Moth caught flutter;
Dusty wings.
Moon’s ruby-rubbed
And shadowed light
Cast my reflection back to me,
The shadowed light reflection
Showing not what I want but
Giving what I need.

Ripe Pears
You drizzle golden honey over ripe pears
Ruby moon,
May apples,
And you beneath
This galaxy, peering
Light at me.
Misplaced
Heads nod,
Begging forgiveness.
She sips from the cup of corporate blood.
Drizzle me ripe
With honeyed tongue.
I walk in darkness,
Hard-pressed,
Waiting to be undone.
For pears
Over ripe do leave
A scent best left behind in pool of darkened honey.
Pears, alone:
What could be sadder?
Maybe a wedge,
Barely edged
Into the crack
Of a weathered
Beam.
You, unnamed, who drizzle
From your perch
The drops of corporate blood,
Do cap your cup too late.
You pull your cup
Too close,
Spilling ruby red blood onto the moon.
Ruby tweet,
Bloody invitation,
To seat your passion.

Sleeping Dog

Sometimes I’m as happy
As a sleeping dog,
A sleeping dog
Awakened by light escaping the dark,
Filtering into eyes.
A dog alone,
A bell,
The comfort of tea
Rringing me
To attention.
I pat his head
And smile, sigh,
As a sleeping dog,
Dozing on a quiet sunlit stair
While the blossoms of cherry
Offer the scents of spring.
The sleeping dog
Does wake;
Aroma strikes the trail he follows,
The scent of blood-red blood
As magic
Turns this carnival of words.

Umbrellas Up
Umbrellas up,
When turned upside down,
Can catch mayapples
As a bucket catches rain.
Mayapples,
Mayflies,
May rain,
May flowers
Smear the colour across the sky;
Irises open
Stung by
Rising motes.
The night is long,
The stay may be short
But we shall enjoy this time
Of Mayapples and tea.

The Pressure of Words
@tspoetry: “Shall I teach/you the way/of a blossom/the way of a cherry/twisting beneath/her stem/shall I”

Into a path we know not
How to follow,
He feels the pressure of the words on his fingertips.
Eyes eased of scrum of night
Of trails too long and rocky
Dreams disturbed by moon’s bright flash
In woods.
Rain
Smears my face,
Iris tremble-ache
Does break the trembling face
In the mirror,
And rain-tears send the heart skidding
Where no bell rings
Morning’s sweet call.
The touch of ivory keys
Pleases the thought less
Than curved fingers,
Fingers curved around notes,
Notes stuck to fingers
To forsake the getting.
And so the wait
And yet all possibilities.
Breathless,
I accept the ivory pressure
The curved touch,
If only to ease this moonless
Path, disturbed
And empty woods,
Fingers on the board,
Music of the Gods released,
Pleasing to the soul;
Cacophony of sound,
Improvisational delights.
Words’ pressure builds till hands find cause
To type the mantra his therapist recommended
In a strait.
The songs they sing in empty woods,
The notes they play inside their heads,
Ivory pressure,
Perhaps the notes of pianos played over and over,
No merrily piper leads.

Song of the Wild Geese
tspoetry: “How fine to hear through the music/the cries of wild geese on the river.”

But the song beckons,
Not from the main
But to the undisturbed, quiet side
Pulled by the soul of Frost,
Returns the wing,
The cry,
The song passing.

The Key to the Lock

tspoetry: “He found a good farrier’s knife,/an awl, a key to a lock/that would no longer open”

The lock lost in the woods,
The key lost in the plain.
Inside their heads are clues to woods
Where dwells the man,
Strait-jacketed,
Laid off,
Howling at the ruby face of moon.
Frost my soul
With your song,
Your cry like a
Crystal-coated
Key, unlock me.
Unlock thee not;
I know not
Who goes by the name of
Frost,
My soul no icy sole
For thee to use on me.
The lock clicks,
Unclicks;
The spring opens
Into a new heart.
Awl all leaves me shot through
With pinholes
With which to thread the soles of souls
Left empty
As locks without keys
No longer work
The thread from which good farrier’s knift
Is slung.
Farrier’s knife
Pinned the lady
Down ’til she cried.
Let me dance
A dance for you.
Sit with me on the grass and feed me sweet, sweet lies.
Tis all sweet lies
Our friend does tell,
No corporate blood
Did run
Through his steely heart.

The Fiddler’s Dance
tspoetry: “Do you remember how we danced/And how the fiddler played?”

We danced with life
Throbbing in our veins,
Love pulsing in our hearts.
My hand
Enfolded yours,
Your smile
Enfolded mine.
Lock
Like a pinhole,
How am
I supposed to
Ease my way
Into your heart?
She was no lady, her locks of hair undone
The fiddlers haunting melodies
Gave rise to memories,
Dances danced,
Lovers loved
By dancing,
do you hear?
By dancing in the ruby light of moon
Among the shadows
Where smile might stay on chaste lips to touch,
To reach into the eye of beauty
To see the holiness of the night
To touch.
We get caught up in hands
And smiles,
Forgetting the business
We first did come,
To bid
Dance on,
Dancing on
Love unbound
By fiddler’s broken strings/and rusty bow.
But broken strings
And rusty bow
Still play a melody of heart.
Let us feast on the music and dine on the dance
Hands bid beyond what pockets hold;
Fiddler rusty must remain
And sour notes to play;
Melody a broken chord.
i smell the smoky aroma of repentence,
an aroma of repentance and the rising song of prayer.

Fiddling on the Roof: An Aside

Tradition! Tradition!
TchrErc is fiddling on the roof
Fiddlesticks! I suppose next you’ll be proposing to matchmake?
But only if he were a rich man,
he was a rich and twisted man
Twisted and searching,
Not realizing where his riches truly lie (or lay).
Hah. The only couple
I ever “matchmade”
Divorced after five years.
Not I, my friend, not I,
Not in my profession.
Twittering tweets do wake
Our laid-off friend.
He fears all the purple prose we make
Match-make.
Our laid-off friend,
You say?
Aye, if can tweet with twitters in his heart
And do hands’ bidding
When words work not.
Tis all sweet lies
Our friend does tell,
No corporate blood
Did run
Through his steely heart
Nor tip his mind to thoughts of matchmaking.

My Hand’s Bidding

tspoetry: “The bow lies/the music breaks me/lays me down/to your hands’ bidding.”

My hands’ bidding
Is to serve
The music singing
In the heart.
The music was Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring,
Alas, it was the winter of his discontent,
Rich and twisted
Lips he sported;
No music from his mouth did issue
Even in the moonlight,
Even in the shadows.
But music sounded
Within his heart
To sing a silence
Within his very life.
Spring holy
And holy the discontent
Of winter’s last breath,
Angered release.
Ay, be there a priest near
To take confession
On this sorry night?
Not the priest of Juliet
But the priest of the most holy.
Should I confess
The lies,
The sorry smoking
Wedged in alleys’
sweet release?
Minutes before the end does come
The knife he laid on table
Takes up the plot
To teach beauty
How the night might ravage
Even the best of us.
Knifed
Apology:
Can you trust
It for even
A minute?
A knife that cuts to harm,
A knife that cuts to heal
To please my own sense
But to serve a larger sense
Of beauty.
Sweet grass, sweet
Lies and mayflies
Ravish my soul,
My heart.

Farewells to the Ruby Moon

tspoetry: “Because of it you made/the beautiful things you made/for yourself alone, and yet,/ I think, for us both.”

I bid thee a farewell and godspeed,
My thanks to all
An enjoyable eve was had;
Weary souls depart
For much needed comfort and rest.
Feast well on sleep
And ruby dreams
When twittering tweeters play
Out a game
Beneath a ruby-rubbed moon
Peeling back wallpaper.
For both of us
Does bring apology
To forgiveness
And confession
Bold,
A sorry tangle of words
Making no sense
Unless a lawyer be held in tow.
And so another
Twoem
Comes to an end
And then, we did drift away.
Good night, sweet poetry friends.
We drift, we separate
But our little boats
Travel the same stream
Beneath the same moon.
A moon whose beams did light our way
Again this time.
Good night;
Loved this
(even with my migraine).

We had another poetry slam on Twitter last night. Seven of us participated — the most yet. And I’ve got some editing to do — the result will mostly likely be several twoems, or Twitter poems.

In the meantime,here is the edited version of the slam on Sept. 30.  All lines in quotation marks are the prompts, and all are taken from John Poch’s book Two Men Fighting With a Knife.

The Orchards of Desire

By @llbarkat, @arestlessheart, @poemsandprayers and @gyoung9751, with a cameo appearance by @mhsteger.

“Pater Noster
What can we learn from a 1913 toaster?”

“Through the sunflower field (the off-yellow
pollen fallen onto, staining my shirt)…”

The texture of toast is better now
Than years of 94.
I am drawn to the flavor of serene;
The smock of Van Gogh
In pollenish paint
Mimics the swaying sunflowers.
Pollen toasted,
Roasted to bronze
Would feed my love
For painted days.
Serena was her name,
Her hair a flavor of plums.
Pollen fallen,
Pixie dust staining swaying breeze,
Sunlight scattered.
Summer dies;
Sunflowers,
Serene,
Flavor the plums
With golden light.
Light filters through gold,
Pollen through wafts of scented air.

“…the violet glass that must have once adorned/the windows of their houses…”

She slipped into yellow dress,
Breathing plum-sweet,
And prayed her crimson lover
Home.
My breath hanging in mid air,
I catch myself unaware
And whisper.
Violet pixie
Scatters summer;
Plums fall,
Smash, paint earth.

“Hungry, you call me by your name. Under
Barbed wire and up arroyos I come crawling…”

“When the eggs hatch,
The nymphs drop and crawl through vetch.”

Must adieu ,
releasing the call, though hunger
Lingers sweet;
Crawling beneath sheets for little love
And sleep.
I plum smashed them eggs
Like glass;
Go ahead, call me;
I am left hanging by the wings.
Adieu restless heart
Drifting like pollen
Over the face
Of night.
It flows like yellow hot wax from a flame.
If plums had wings,
Would they fly
Past arroyos,
Teasing coyotes
Purpled with hunger?

“…our fathers gone,
our mothers scrubbing through a collar stain…”

“…MADE IN JAPAN
with wood shipped from the USA and back
again, the lamp is worn with years of smoke…”

There is hunger at every turn; the sheets will burn and swim.
Life worn like wood/steals labels to explain:
Made in Japan,
Made in the USA,
Preshrunk,
Keep out.
A change of mind;
The room spins like a long, long tale.

“Her purblind eyes the pearls of memory”

Whad’ya mean
“Made in Japan?”
I never heard ‘a
Such ‘a thing;
Plum, ain’t all sheets
Made in China?
Pearls spin
Past pain,
Burn my eyes
With sheeted
Memories.

“… the doubt
of history extinguished with a mirror…”

The luxury of clear thought of blue marbles in glass jars,
To be aware of sunflowers touching the sky
And not care why.
Blue pearls
Smashed like glass;
My thoughts
Careen and
Flee.
Smoke and wood,
Haze and sun.
If sunflowers
Touched us lightly
As pollen on a
Blue day,
Would we not
Care, again dream?
Lamps to light the night.

“An unscathed apple under the pines like a cone
Stopped me. Buoyant in my hand, it shone…”

Apple, plum,
Pine.
What would it
Take to rouse
Your heart again?
Taken from the shrine,
It shone like pebbles on the beach

“The screens were torn–we woke to insect needles…”

Build the shrine,
I told him.
Build it with apples,
Plums, pebbles.
Light a flame
Torn from the
Flowers of my
Heart;
Replace the falling star in the blue of night.

“I leapt at the walls like Mars in love with Venus.”

What is night?
Mars, Venus,
The promise of torn stars,
Falling.

“We need nectar: this orange tree, this jasmine-
hung patio. Look how an orange has veered…”

Jasmine, orange,
Plum,
The bowl tips
And I stain my fingers
With nectar-scented
love.
Collect the scent of the burning leaves,
Paint a picture of the stars looking through the trees

“Imagine me applauding
Your skirt and loving the suspense”

Trees embrace
Cobalt night,
Drink starshine
As if from
Burning bowls.
Imagine
The scent,
Your skirt burning
Jasmine
Like flowered
Stars.

“crackling the whistle of a darker darling,/beak yellow as cucumber flowers”

Wrap around me your warm soft jacket with the scent of autumn.
Jasmine would not
Crackle; it is too soft for that.
Whistle it might,
A sweet song of
Goodnight.
Bring to me the gift of time upon a sapphire pillow.
Life is a thief;
Its victims defy number.
Scotland Yard and FBI miss their mark.
You mustn’t slumber.
The wind whistles above the pine as the fire crackles and burns;
Toward the east, the poems are silent within a dream.
The words travel west and swirl around in the dusk and land at the foot of the pine.
The apple drops to the ground; the words no longer make a sound.

It was supposed to have been a poem, but you know what happens when you get a bunch of poets together on Twitter? They tweet away, is what they do. Boy, do they tweet. So what was to have been a “twoem” (Twitter poem) took on overtones of a “twepic” (Twitter epic), and the result is below.

The Tweet-Party was held on Sept. 22. In addition to the official tweeted contributions, there were occasional side comments on a variety of things. After looking at everything, I realized what we had here was something of a play, so that’s how I loosely structured the final compilation. Warning: It’s LONG. But it’s good.

Tabloid News, A Twepic
By @llbarkat, @TchrEric, @arestless heart, @redclaydiaries, @doallas, @mhsteger and @gyoung9751, and a slight contribution by @shrinkingcamel. Officially published by @tspoetry.
Continue reading »

For the first Tweet-Party on Sept. 9, three of us assembled via Twitter (turned out @shrinkingcamel couldn’t make it). Laura and Eric started, while I was wolfing down dinner. You’ll see the point at which I enter the party and the point where Eric leaves (he had to grade papers). This is how the Tweet-Party developed, in chronological order. I’ve removed the hashtags (we used a different one the first time). If you then look at the posting after this one, you’ll see how the individual tweets were edited into one “twoem.” We won’t do this listing of chronological tweets for every Tweet-Party (the one on Sept. 22 generated more than 100 tweets), but this should give you some idea of how these unfold.

Each one of the tweets could almost be a poem in and of itself.

llbarkat: @gyoung9751 @TchrEric @shrinkingcamel Questions, from Poemcrazy: “Who were you in my dream? What were you eating, wearing, etc?”

llbarkat: I was the mermaid/afraid of ship’s shadows/seining the shallows/for seaweed red/drinking black ink/ the octopus bled.

llbarkat: I was the tears/trailing white/taking flight from/clown apple/cheeks/afraid of living.

TchrEric: Snow white hart/leaping just out of reach/as rivers of tears/streaked frost bitten cheeks/that desired my touch
Continue reading »

On Sept. 9, L.L., Eric and I participated in our first Twitter poetry jam. We’d hoped for a fourth — Bradley Moore, aka @shrinkingcamel — but he had other commitments. So the three of us tweeted away (49 tweets in all). Then I was given the privilege of crafting our separate poems into one big poem, and we decided to name it in honor of our absent friend.

At the Oasis, The Camel on Caravan
By @llbarkat, @TchrEric and @gyoung9751

Who were you in my dream?
The mermaid asked,
Herself the tears that feared to live.

I was the snow white hart, leaping from the touch.
I was the fish the mermaid shadowed.
I was the story in the burning book.
I was the fork, golden and shining.

I was a clearing
Ringed and shadowed
With evergreens.
I was the altar flickering blue,
The moonlight ringed by heaven,
The ever in the green.

I was the candle burning lonely.
I was the panel of glass,
The wind that knocked at the glass.
I was the lateness in the night.

I was a drop of wax aside the candle.
I was the sound of shattering of gold.
I was the chattering night, wishing sweet dreams.
I was the kitchen fire, the fire hearth,
The flame that laughed at goodbye.

I was the camel that knelt
At the eye of the needle.
I was the memory
That lay behind
The departed.
I was the threatening slumber.
I was the memory
Cluttered with stars.

I was the awakening of the stars
To a new day.

I was the twittering
That arose from dark corners.
I was the black hole,
Filled by grace.
I was the crimson-laced grace.
I was the curtain that brushed your face.
I was the morning
Mourning the night.

I was the oddness
That twisted the light.
I was the wholeness that became the holy.
I was the mourning
That wept.
I was the tears,
Coursing down cheeks.
I was the clock
That ticked near the wall.

I was the wish
For a teacher and a camel,
Who instead became
A pastel artist
Of prayers and seedlings
And green inventions.

Who were you in my dream?

It started as a rather odd idea. Could we, a group of poets and writers who had found each other on line in blogs, email and Twitter, do a poetry jam? Specifically, could we do one on Twitter?

We decided we could, and we scheduled it, and we did one. And then we did another, and then another. The number of tweeting poets started growing, and we decided we needed a place to house the “twoems,” or “Twitter poems.” Actually, one of the twoems turned out to be a “twepic,” or “Twitter epic.” We began to think about the possibilites for twodes (odes), and twonnets (sonnets), and well, you get the picture. You have to be careful around people who work with words.

So welcome to TweetSpeak Poetry. We’ll be posting our existing efforts shortly, along with scheduled poetry jams, notices about poets and books of poetry we like, and perhaps a guest poem or two.