The only truth I can rely on is your lies.
Do the feathers from angel wings make extra fluffy pillows?
Plenty of Fish? Online dating is a load of carp.
Even the moon has craters if you look close enough.
Does my poetry matter even though nobody ever reads it?
These works by Beth Murch are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Do you like cherries? I mean, do you really, really like cherries? Do you like cherries enough to go to an entire festival devoted to the celebration of cherries? Good! Then I will assume that you will be coming to watch myself and some other gifted poets from the Kitchener-Waterloo Poetry Slam spit some tart verses (and possibly some pits?!) at the Cherry Festival at Cherry Park in Kitchener!
Check out the Cherry Festival website at: http://cherrypark.blogspot.ca/
Summer is here, and things are heating up! Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, is hosting the Summer Lights Festival, “a night of exploration and discovery in Uptown Waterloo and Downtown Kitchener”. The festival runs from 9PM-2AM on Saturday, June 21, 2014…take a nap so that you can stay up late! I will be performing at the SLF Lounge, on the Yuk Yuk’s stage, in the Walper Hotel, at 10:30PM – 11:00PM. Rumour that the theme is all sexy and burlesque-y (it’s a word now!), and so I shall be performing some of the erotic poetry that I don’t normally get to “whip out” in public (see what I did there? Huh? Huh? Yeah, you saw.). I’ve been working on a new poem in honour of the event which will either be epically amazing or epically awful…but either way, it’s going to be epic, and you don’t want to miss it!
Oh, and did I mention….the show is being hosted by Miss Drew – none other than K-W’s most famous female impersonator. The only time *I* wear high heels is when I am flat on my back – that lady can do spiffy things like dance!
http://summerlightsfestival.com/stages
This is an approximation of an erotic photograph of me. Meow! 😉
“I don’t know what I want”, I always say,
But it’s really a lie
Because I know exactly what I want.
I want to know the secret of some girls’ collarbones,
How they are delicate like the wings of birds
And have hollows where you can drink spring water and float daisies,
While I clunk around like a soup bone in a dented, old stock pot:
Fleshy, stringy, juicy, tough.
I want to know what it is like to step with graceful, long legs,
To carry only polished stones beneath my tongue,
And to stretch myself wide across the horizon,
Before flying away with the sun warm on my face.
I want to know why my body has a biological imperative to survive,
When waking in the morning feels like a hammer blow to the teeth,
And I can only get through the night cradled by booze and cigarettes.
If every breath feels like it should be my last,
Why do my lungs insist on sucking in more air?
Stuck on a rubber raft, shipwrecked and floating somewhere out in the middle of my thirties,
I spend my days peeling off the dead skin from my sunburn,
And waiting for either sharks to eat me or a cruise liner to rescue me.
My money has always been on the sharks.
I want you to write me a poem in pen,
For the words that have been caught in your throat
To be committed to paper with the kind of urgency
Found in burning newsprint caught in a chimney’s updraft.
Send me your ashes and sparks in an envelope that leaves my mailbox charred.
I want to run my fingertips along the crooked lines you scrawled with such purpose that they left phrases inscribed on other pages.
I want to read the Braille of everything left unspoken between us.
All of this is really hard to say to someone
Who probably sleeps soundly
Contoured as a question mark
On a mattress that smells like daisies and spring water
Wrapped in the wings
Of delicate birds.
And yet –
I know what I want.
This work, “A Poem In Pen” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
I want to feed the monkey on your back bananas. #tenwordpoems
Is this your photograph? Let me know, and I will credit you!
This work, “Orange You Glad This Poem Isn’t Any Longer?” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
That’s what blogs are for, right? Anyway, I am Kitchener-Waterloo’s slam champion for 2014. Huzzah!
24/30 Prompt: Write About A Windowless Room
They say that G-d never closes a door without opening a window…
But what happens when the room never had windows and doors to begin with?
Depression is a mausoleum,
A stone cold building where there is no escape.
There are no windows in mausoleums,
Because no one wants to watch the dead decay.
There are no doors,
Because we don’t want the dead to slip from sepulchres to dance between tombstones
On nights where the full moon shines bone white bright
Or else skeletons will play ribcage xylophones with skull percussion.
Depression is being sealed in a crypt while you are still alive,
A kind of horrific mistake where no one believes that your heart still beats
Even though you cannot cry out.
You can barely catch your breath,
With every inhalation you can feel the oxygen levels in your prison decreasing,
And you know that it won’t be long until you suffocate.
Your fists are raw and bloody from where you beat them against the concrete walls,
Every knuckle is like hamburger,
And although you cannot see anything in the darkness,
You hear that the rats can smell your fresh meat,
And that they are gathering together for the picnic that will take place
When you finally rest your face on the stone floor.
You pray for a seam of light,
For a single spot of shoddy workmanship
Where you can wear down the torn nubs of your fingernails
Picking away towards freedom,
Or apply your mouth to suck the sweet, fresh air
Moist with dew,
That you swear you will never, ever take for granted again
If only you can be spared this fate.
The worst part
Is that even if someone could hear your ragged breathing,
Even if someone could hear you scrabbling frantically against the unyielding rock,
They could never reach you,
Because you have been bricked into your isolation.
You are forever alone,
With no arms to hold you,
With no lips to kiss you,
With no one to say your name one last time.
G-d may never close a door without opening a window,
But He does create rooms that are sealed without exits.
Its been a long time since Joshua marched down the walls of Jericho –
If you haven’t heard a ram horn by now,
You can be assured that your fate is sealed.
This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
23/30 Prompt: What Wakes Me Up
Hail Coffee,
Full of beans,
Blessed art Thou amongst liquids.
Blessed is the fruit of thy roast,
Caffeine.
Holy Coffee,
Mother of Beverages,
Awaken us dreamers now
And in the hour of our alarm clocks.
Amen.
When I say that I am on my grind
I don’t mean that I am getting my hustle on –
What I am really trying to say is that I have a $100 machine
Making approximately the same sound as a 747 during takeoff
Pulverizing my organic, fair-trade, ethically cultivated coffee beans
To the perfect level of “coarsely ground” that my French press appreciates most.
Is that a little bourgeoisie of me?
Hell yes!
I refuse to apologize.
My diet primarily consists of rice, pasta, and lentils.
I have no partner, no children, no time share, no car.
I work seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day,
I haven’t slept eight hours consecutively for three days in a row
In six years.
If I am going to have to spend thirty hours
Coaching some labouring lady through a brow presentation
Without getting paid and without getting a break,
I deserve to have excellent coffee in my Thermos.
The poster of Che Guevara over my bed
Admonishes me:
“Revolution. Rebellion. Resistance.”
I totally agree, my dear sir.
I fully intend to end oppression,
Dismantle patriarchy,
And overthrow the government…
…but not until I have my damn coffee first.
This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
22/30 Prompt: Write About Packing Up Your Place
You think it would be easy
To leave a place that was never yours to begin with,
But you are no Bedouin –
You like to settle.
You would prefer to force your roots up through concrete sidewalks,
Punch your branches through aluminum siding to reach sunlight,
Grow on an angle to dodge buzzing power lines,
Rather than simply move…
Rather than disappoint someone.
So,
Even though you hate that the kitchen has no counter,
You think the painting of the giraffe is ugly,
And you resent picking up his pants from the front hall everyday,
You still cry tears of regret as you shove garments into garbage bags.
Do you do the dirty dishes in the sink before you go?
Do you make him one last glass of chocolate milk to leave in the fridge for old time’s sake?
What can you do to make this more “okay”?
You want to touch things,
Leave fingerprints all over the apartment like a crime scene.
You want to write apologies on the walls with your blood,
To carve out the bullets of his words from your body
And place them on the table he bought from Ikea
That he told you that you loved so very much.
You know that he would only tell you that these bits of metal ugliness
Still coated with strings of your fascia
Clashed with his décor.
The truth is that every bit of who you are
Has never co-ordinated with the couch,
Your soul has never matched with the china,
Your heart never snapped into place when it came to his life’s puzzle.
You leave the picture of you together on the mantle,
The one where he had your face pressed into his chest
So that he took up the entire frame except for your back.
Once, that photograph made you feel like he was holding you,
Keeping you safe, warming you with his very heart.
Now, you realize he was trying to smother you,
Killing you with what came from his core,
Absorbing you into his body until you were no longer separate.
You vomit when you remove the mezuzah
Knowing that technically, he’s more Jewish than you’ll ever be,
But you are the only one who kisses it,
And he will just throw out that holy scroll with G-d’s name written on it
Just like he threw away his grandfather’s prayerbook,
Just like he threw away the gifts from your bridal shower.
You are the one leaving,
And yet somehow, you are still the one being left behind.
You take one last look at “your home”
Because you know there will be no going back
For forgotten items,
For missed opportunities,
For stray kisses that might have been pushed under the couch during vacuuming.
Although you have your boxes of books and your university degree wrapped in the quilt
Someone bought you as a wedding present,
You know that you are leaving things behind.
There will always be fibres of your being floating with dust motes in the air.
There will always be pieces of your heart scratched into the laminate flooring.
There will always be the whispers you spoke into that hole in the closet where the drywall crumbled.
Will the next people who live in your place
Catch the lingering fragrance of your pain
In their clothes
When the windows have been shut too long?
This work, “Untitled” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Prompt 20/30 Getting Ready To Go Out
There is a sexy, delicate, ladylike way to put on a bra.
I never learned how to do it.
I yank that bitch on and she gets as twisted as my humour after half a bottle of wine.
I wish my garters clung to my stockings half as well as
The cat hair sticks to my clothes.
Panty lines? Seriously?
Shit, you’re lucky if I remember to wear panties at all,
I don’t worry about anyone seeing that I am actually covering my bits.
I do worry about the fact that this 24 hour outlast lipstick
Is smeared on my teeth…and chin…and cheek.
Liquid eyeliner is the creation of a sadistic mind –
Why is it that I never fail to make one eye smokey
And one eye look like I play Quarterback?
Patchouli.
I put on a lot of it.
If your eyes are watering from my hippie-stink,
You won’t notice that my blouse is buttoned-up incorrectly
And that my skirt is being held together with pins.
Dreadlocks are a great – tie them up in some kind of knot and you are good to go.
I always have the right shoes for any outfit
Because I only have one pair of shoes
And that makes them the right shoes for any outfit!
A fashion-forward day means that I’m not wearing any of the following:
Meconium
Breast milk
“Spit up”
Blood (mine or others’)
Food splatters
Toothpaste blobs
Paint
Noticeable bleach stains.
Whatever.
I never claimed to be a
Role model.
This work, “Getting Ready To Go Out” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Beth Murch 