back to Basic website
Sentence of Myself
by Leah Stone
leah@basictheband.com
first published online June 2007
last updated 18 March 08
Sentence of Myself, copyrighted © -- use Leah Stone's intellectual property with caution
Forward by the Author:
This is shorthand.
Water Gun
I like this a lot
the boy said
– squirt squirt –
Opium
Here, become brave
not falsely. If you think
you're in love, you are.
Beautiful Day
A dog shits on the sidewalk.
Incremental Meddling
How can we shake hands
without thinking of making love?
Gravity
You are pulling at me.
Understand?
Impregnated
the hook
is took
Why
we can only conjecture – why's of little use
and littler consequence.
Hindsight at Midnight
do right
sleep tight
I'm Writing a Poem
I'm writing a poem
called Poetry Is Dumb
but this isn't the one.
Haiku
Malcolm and me daze
on the single bed, not big
as one small person.
Roses Are Red
Hatchoo!
Hatchoo!
Naming Us Woman
It could have been worse. They might've called us Man's.
Placating
Are you obliged to talk sweetly, to treat my yearning to hear?
I yearn! It is not just my biological spell.
Menacing Triangles on the Top Stair
for a young boy's nightmare
I want to shout, "Look out!"
Now it's too late, and you're 38.
Rhetoric of Autonomy and the Meaning of Individual
You may come to me to comfort yourself.
I may come to you and lose myself.
Things get muddled here.
Alienation
Whoa! No one will sit next to me
although I don't have leprosy.
Miscarriage
Your friend, he's a painful passing;
I will be the one to bury him who never lived.
Graze (a Near Miss)
three white horses
on the open hills.
baby, what does it mean for us?
we're driving past.
they're jawing grass.
Airing after Illness
If you spill your guts,
aim for the bucket.
Else the maids will – slaving –
demand better pay. But,
there is nothing more than this.
Only us chickens, pecking.
Vibrator
I had you
where I wanted
you, puny thing. I turned on
the porno. I turned on
the porno. I turned on
the porno.
Blasè
The moon is full;
these days are dull.
In the night sky,
celibacy.
She is starved
but alive.
Look: moon.
Day soon.
Solution Orienteering
A motivated mind asks not
how will I get out of work, only how will I
get through it.
Autobiography
My first poems were rhymers
when I knew all the old timers:
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Plato
amassed at the desk in my room
(with the rest) next to Playdoh.
Was I happy then in the pen, where things
(though roundabout) appeared in lines.
We saw a dead dog in the road –
Aunt Betty ordered, " Write a poem about it."
"Aunt Betty," I groaned, "I'm nine."
Sentence of Myself
There we were, both I:
butt in the mud, mud in the eye!
A Möbius Sentence re: the Question of Professional Poets
The teacher's job is not just a description
of what it isn't.
Before the Common Era
You know the famous fresco
found in the Palace of Knossos?
Three people in bright colored loin cloths,
girls and boys, acrobats leaping bulls.
They did not leap elephants or horses.
Such artifacts among bones and sculptures
of bare-breasted snake handlers in skirts
ring of 15th century high culture,
pre-Grecian Crete, Minoan history.
Clear as it is, honey clouds your tea.
Throttle
Trees don't die off
every winter, they hibernate.
So do the cold blooded.
I knew a motorcycle guy
who misguidedly buried his iguanas
alive, yet refused
to unearth them in the sun,
then moved
to Florida.
Single
Bread, milk, coffee
tin. I,
pregnant
with a twin.
Nuance
Chief differential
between poets in the practical
and poems that are but practically.
Old Boards
All of these old boards for discipline
remind me please to get back working.
Fast grow weeds of a slipshod gardener,
some sanguine, some wizened.
End Quote
return carriage
spell check
period stop
break
to touch myself
stop
new paragraph
same alphabet
Singularity of Molestation, Heartbreak, Insanity
Blitz! I'd been taken
by the glass house, half in pajamas, half out.
Madame, how wholly unsophisticated.
The solar system turned into the last quarter
and my heart fell through my ass.
Me, a mute in the forest, trifling
among trees transpiring against me.
Wet rag!
Terra Nova
I'd love to tickle you with swatches
of flowering cattails
between your toes (and my Japan)
as you read aloud,
uprooting your subterranean show voice
from the lilting watershed of your throat.
Under petals I'd flung to your feet,
seeds have begun opening.
The Letter J
Why must the letter J be so burdened
by that crossward line stunting its head?
It would make more sense if the capital J wore nothing other
than its actual curve, and leave that dot to better things.
Now, the hard sound from the crown of the lowercase g,
its loop serves a purpose. Still, the character
might be shaped like the lower case j, but with the flat line,
as that vocable drowns in the throat.
Then, the loop onto the unadorned j curve
could say a soft g sound, the zjh.
The dot, lastly, would appear within the circle
of the g's lost loop, sounding the specific medium g, the dj.
The Letter W
We outgrow these doubling of u's, one letter
better pronounced wah.
A Redtail Hawk Skims the Canyon
Moving from person to person, stones to cross a river.
A river of what is going on?
and its tributary, I shouldn't've said that. But,
to recall an utterance
is to gather feathers on the wind.
These 2000 Years
Hesús maketh me smile.
He lived so short a while.
He died when he was 33,
Three days done, returned to thee,
Antediluvian style.
Smart
I'm nothing unordinary,
but I know in the gallery
there is art. In the library,
Sartre.
Everyday Suicide Note
I kill myself and carry on
as if I'm dead. I cry for the grief
my conclusion could bring.
Instead of You
Pleasant thoughts; bounty!
Mystery (Man)
Have I already botched it?
Butchery! Blood on the apron.
Surprise
Love, the one thing I did
not think of.
I'm a Bird!
You pored over me
though, oh…
like oil.
Follow
Think I see
circuitously
my tail in
perpetuity.
Married to Myself
I'm not alone.
I'm Leah Stone.
I Transposed You All
Everyone who kissed my mouth
Sucked in my soul
One's Feminine Issues
The curse, or is it a sneeze? Many bless you's!
Leave me to bleed – spenditure of tissues –
ahhh
just relieves, even through the off weeks.
Machine
You didn't call before – why you calling now?
I've died; hang up with your so saddened life.
Cold
You don't love me now
I've gone mad; I cough
And you're ticked off.
Most the Time
I aim so hard I miss.
In the face of all this loserness
most the signs say quit.
I really try to focus on doing just that
but then I persist.
Pocket Poet
I can sure put out two good
lines a week. Cassis of a sentence.
What is that? (What's it look like?) -- O
about four lines every month. They go
pretty quick but come on so slow.
Age 'n' Stuff
I said I'm old enough.
He guessed, "eighteen?"
I flashed my eyes, surprised.
He paused. "'Older,' like twenty-five?"
Signs
Boys always ask how old I am;
I draw them in as their young friend.
When will they see the lines
on my face like I can.
Beached Party
You were lying in the sun.
High and dry, some brilliant mysterious beast,
I believed!
Weighing the Pros & Cons
This isn't the first time
I recall
that this
isn't the first time
you've begun your list.
Spying
Before the pane
I see you.
What's in a Name?
She, her body
of work.
Chittyville School (Halloween '05)
He was an artist, so I let him finger me. We were standing
in line. Some twelve year olds just glanced
discreetly, really, this big hand down my pants. The haunted house
wouldn't be ours for another hour. That was ten bucks, and kinda cold outside.
But it was free to stand there, how slowly we moved
through the ropes, me in a warm embrace
getting fingered.
Tiger
Most people can't discern the orange
from the black. ...You are not
a crowd of zebras!