Poems by Thom Hart

January

The sweet aroma

Released from

The pores of the earth

As the frost

Steadily thaws and

Spring is made

Apparent, yet it is

But January

Love

I will love

You as long

As love endures

As a cliff

Resentfully juts

Out above

The sea.

I’ll find you

And I’ll search

High and low but on

The mountaintop I will

Find you waiting.

Do not leave me.

Look

Look out the window,

Look, it’s me,

Or my soul.

Look, it’s a popped

Balloon, hanging

On a dead branch.

Look, I saw your

Face today, but

Every time it wasn’t

You.

Look, my friends are in the crowd.

You

Blood vessels straining

You dare them to

Push their limits

I yearn with every

Inch of my body

Every breath,

Every thought,

Involves you.

Monet

Music on my eyes,

Relief, contentment

I am happy

Thank god,

finally,

A Monet.

queens

poem by Tyffany Richards

Colored

What are you?

Call me colored but I won’t be offended.

Just means to me I’ve got more shading

Than a black and white portrait

Different shades

In one picture

But aren’t you black?

In a way

More like mahogany

Smooth almost dark brown with a red undertone

Not shiny blue black

Brown like the soil

Or tree bark

Like cardboard boxes

Like coffee and milk

Where are you from?

Not here not there

Everywhere

Where are you from?

I’m from many places around the world

But I am from my mother and father and the earth itself

Who are you?

I am me.

Mahogany brown skinned me

Who identifies with everything and everyone

Colored.

Not Black entirely, nor White

Not Asian or Latino

Nor Indian

Not entirely.

Just

Mahogany brown

Colored girl

Congratulations overdue! to Tyffany Richards, for having this poem chosen to be read at the ASAP Celebration of Young Writers at the Washington Town Hall in 2011. The poem was recently recovered and we thank Tyffany for sharing it with us. 

project/installment 4. by Yea Weon Kim

Poem by Sarah Shulman

Cry baby cry.

Actually no, you’re giving me a pain.

Slowly progressing, sometimes depressing.

Your dog is rude; it bit me in the face.

Yes it hurt.

Cry baby cry.

Your unshaven face is a playground for my fingers.

Your baby blue eyes, a universe, which pulls me.

Slowly progressing, sometimes depressing.

Travel the world, and try new things.

I’ll culture your belly, like it or not.

Cry baby cry.

Eight days a week I would make my self available.

While you check your twitter,

Slowly progressing sometimes depressing.

Please, the sand is running thin,

Get off your screen, and let me in.

Cry baby cry.

Slowly progressing, sometimes depressing.

songs, photos and writing by Thom Hart

Recommended: Thom Hart's bandcamp site. Have a look and listen. Also, check out Thom's writing here.

Three from Facebook Notes by Thom Hart

pieces

by Thom Hart on Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 1:38am

I hand pieces of me out. 
they rarely 
if ever
are returned
it's a funny process

getting away with murder

by Thom Hart on Monday, May 17, 2010 at 8:11pm

romance is dead 
chivalry is dead
Latin is dead 

what else have 
these modern times killed?

thinking moving wasting.

by Thom Hart on Monday, May 10, 2010 at 11:07pm

wasted time
wasted faces
look around
and see the places

you could have been 

[Editor's note: Thom Hart has shut down his facebook account.]

From the long overdue (re)readings (XI)

Occasionally, at different times of day toward the end of the week, one can see groups waiting at a crossroads for a train. One is never sure whether the train will come at all or where it will stop if it does. It often happens, therefore, that people wait in two different places, unable to agree where the stop is. They wait for a long time standing in a black, silent bunch alongside the barely visible lines of the track, their faces in profile: a row of pale cut-out paper figures, fixed in an expression of anxious peering.

Bruno Schulz, "The Street of Crocodiles" (1934) in The Street of Crocodiles (Penguin, 1977) Trans. Celina Wieniewska. 107.

The Trusty Horse (after Hawthorne) by Ian Riley

As I neared the end of the pass, the bridge which I knew to look for came into sight, soaring majestically into the sky with the cables drawn taut, so unlike the skin of the ancient face with which I looked on. It had been designed in my youth, when the birds flew high in the sky and the sun shone gloriously as they swept past on their migratory course, unaware that man had now conquered the expanse of the skies above the canyon as well. My horse beneath me gave a cry as we drew closer, for the road was blocked ahead by several fallen boulders, which stood guard as the pass drew toward its end, closing all that was open, closing indeed as well upon my only way of departure, for the way back had been made impassable by a cacophonous rockslide which occurred as I rode by and my horse let out an even more obstreperous burst of flatulence. This was likely the result of a meal of beans eaten each day for the previous fortnight, and yet I saw how this could be an advantageous situation as we approached the newly fallen barricade. I turned my horse about, with his posterior facing the boulders, and prepared to wait as long as necessary for another bout of vapors to come over my animal. It was not a long interval before I noticed that my horse’s countenance had assumed an appearance of great distress. The sound echoed for miles around, and the way to the bridge was clear of boulders, though now blocked by a cloud of noxious fumes. I held my breath and ventured on, happy to be on my way.

My Clock Pants (after Vallejo), by Renee Waller

​My clock pants cripple me. I can never get them off even when I try to break them with a hammer. I try to run out of them, away from them, but nothing works. I'm trapped, entangled in a fabrication and no matter how much I grow, I never outgrow them. The sun tries to give me directions to its house. Out there my pants can't exist and then I can be free. Every day for a good twelve hours the sun keeps trying to help me but on the thirteenth hour it gets tired and gives up. I stay glued to Earth waiting for the sun to show up again. My clock pants limit me and often scare the sun away. My clock pants know I'm trying to get rid of them and they can't stand the idea. Jupiter helps my pants by putting me to sleep so the pants can grow tighter around my waist. I desperately shoot a bright red bullet wanting to pierce the fabrication but it doesn't work. I'm trapped in time.

project/installment 3. by Yea Weon Kim

fragment

I am a stargazer
I ride on the wings of angel's prayers
And craft works of art from angry tirades
I carry my heart in a slingshot
And wrestle with the aggression of others

- Tyffany Richards