He has a pencil and imagination.
He sits above a marble tabletop
a commanding plateau aloft -
shadow-shades of wintery geese.
A sea swept fable
overlooked by a high stool
and a six-year-old Zeus.
Eggshells grain and creamy caps,
a crystalline surf slaps swirly shores,
blue veins score billowing stone
deep unto watery bone.
Contours of light
shelf, trench and darkling nights
there jabberwocky did roam.
A vast wave engraved realm
where pencil-thin old salts
jig, and swing
upon deck or land.
Grand fleets stand
flogging savage coasts.
Guns hammer truculent hosts
with smokey enfilades
and thick odors of bacon.
Odyssean voyages are lost
in greasy spots,
while an embattled buccaneer
spreads his buttery art across
a voluminous chart.
Then he, the breakfast boy
bends above the roving,
the erstwhile and damned,
sketches a gull or three
with a sailor's hand.
With a god-like paw
the child draws shallows, sandbars
reefs and more
swallow or befog a seascape,
while great ships converge to rescue
a bold seaman
and his bandy-legged dog.
She haunted me as a child,
Staring quietly from her watercolor world.
Her strange presence called me.
Powder-white skin and rouge cheeks,
Pencil-thin brow over
Dark-rimmed eyes
Shedding a single tear,
A pale rose between slender fingers,
Seeking its fragrance.
Quietly she slipped away,
I never asked after her.
Years later, her likeness appears.
Same raven cap,
Impossibly flagrant and frosty ruffles,
Porcelain cheeks without a hint of blush
Wide eyes tinged with sorrow,
Flowerless hands,
Her watercolor world mixed to black.
Then they came to me, together,
A dark evening in Paris.
Delicate in their lightness,
Impishly prancing in the streetlights
As if giddy with some tantalizing secret.
The first hands me her rose
As she cups my face,
“Dear one.”
They move to either side,
Taking my hands
And we run.
We run until we reach a dimly lit park
Where we sit cross-legged in the damp grass
Silent except for the panting of labored breaths
Returning to their natural rhythm.
“Tears bring fullness to life.”
They wandered off into the night
As suddenly as they had come.
Leaving me to deliver their rose
And share my tears with the people.
This day
in the deep country, the sky it is high, blue, and vertical,
with no hand holds, nor anything for the eye to cling to.
In the city we don't get 'big sky, we get pencil thin rays
to sweep our dusty ledges, we have elevations
where the sky fades to gray on viewless windows.
Far below, down on the hemmed-in streets
a few trees, stretch, reach like mountain climbers,
In the ghetto, doors clutch at pidgin cluttered roofs.
Mostly
we give no thought to the sheer narrowness of it all;
how the city closes in on itself.
it's no wonder some choose to leap,
rather than foot-slog up an ever-descending
staircase.
Before I became a bag of potatoes
I used to be as pencil thin as any salty chip.
I had a pencil thin mustache,
pencil thin legs,
pencil thin neck,
in fact all my appendages
were said to be pencil thin.
You might suppose that my pencil is thin,
but no,
it is actually a fountain pen
and it is as fat as a potato
I carry it behind one of my cauliflower ears.
The sky has climbed over
its usual low cloud cover,
today it is high, blue and vertical
with no hand holds,
those places for the eye to cling to.
In the city we don't get 'big sky'
we get pencil thin shafts
that sweep the dust off ledges,
we have foot-slogging
staircases and elevations.
where the sky cannot rise beyond
one last viewless window.
Far below
upon those hemmed-in streets
some seem forced to grow
into hybrid creatures
that must suck upon
each other's fears.
There are trees, a few stretch and reach
like mountain climbers,
yet all that high air above us is not reassuring,
it creates a feeling of smallness,
our arms too paltry to grasp the infinite.
Mostly we give no thought
to the sheer narrowness of it all,
and so with only these
manmade clifftops to jump from
it's no wonder some choose to leap.
An actor returns to his Beverly Hills mansion –
blows his brains out with a 38 special.
I must have dozed off,
cops at my door,
a line of chain-smoking flashbulbs
in baggy turn-ups.
I watch myself being taken away in a body bag.
The movie is badly spliced.
Black Packard’s keep morphing into flying saucers.
We are all wearing hats,
even the writers in the backroom
are wearing wide-brimmed hats.
The women are wearing hats.
They wear pencil thin skirts,
and talk out of the side of their mouths.
A screen flickers;
a skinny man behind an obscuring microphone
apologizes for the delay.
Meanwhile, space aliens have landed in Brooklyn,
and are exterminating people in hats.
It’s a radio show hoax,
but I don’t know that –
until I wake-up
into a world filled with terror and chaos,
there are no aliens and few brimmed hats.
I can’t sleep.
A slip of a girl, button-cute, pigtails flying
her first figure-eights traced on roller blades
Effortlessly following the crude colored chalk lines
Emily aced the whole field her very first time
Number eight was magic, no matter where it appeared
In hop-scotch, in jump rope, or even in school
She traced it flee-flowing, vibrant with joy
Little Emily, the envy of even the boys...
She began to understand where all this might take her
to nationals, world capitals, and always the Olympics
in the back of her mind every four years, thinking that
the gold would be hers, no nervousness, no fears
At sweet sixteen she ruled the world, a pencil-thin body
with soft hair and curls, racking up 10's on those figure eights
Emily was a kewpie-doll sensation on skates
Sure that top honors awaited, she circled the dates
Now, of course, you are waiting for Emily to fail,
to fall, to prove that she's human
But forgive me, dear reader, you see
there's a wee bit of Emily,
in every leaf of my family tree
Dogs recognize me, own me,
cats tolerate the space I move in.
Long nights have concertinaed the days
into narrowing perspectives,
yet still a pencil thin sunrise
is worth getting up for.
I hear a train coming
it is loaded with happy waving children;
they lean out of the window
their gaily colored scarves
fly in the wind.
O no, another train
coming fast
on the opposite track.
O no, everyone is headless.
I am headless
even though I was not on the train.
The dogs are yelping, the cats
are as stiff as statues.
My eyes are half-open
like train carriage windows.
My head is rolling now into 2020,
apart from the sink holes, fault lines
and cliff edges, it will be, of course,
all downhill,
and I'm thinking:
'it's great to be alive.'
An actor returns to his Beverly Hills mansion –
blows his brains out with a 38 special.
I must have dozed off,
cops at my door,
a line of chain-smoking flashbulbs
in baggy turn-ups.
I watch myself being taken away in a body bag.
The movie is badly spliced.
Black Packard’s keep morphing into flying saucers.
We are all wearing hats,
even the writers in the backroom
are wearing wide-brimmed hats.
The women are wearing hats.
They wear pencil thin skirts,
and talk out of the side of their mouths.
A screen flickers;
a skinny man behind an obscuring microphone
apologizes for the delay.
Meanwhile, space aliens have landed in Brooklyn,
and are exterminating people in hats.
It’s a radio show hoax,
but I don’t know that –
until I wake-up
into a world filled with terror and chaos,
but there are no aliens and few brimmed hats.
I check that my Glock is loaded.
I can’t sleep.
She didn’t have the classic big blue eyes.
She had eyes the color of chocolate.
Ones that glowed when she smiled,
Ones that twinkled when she laughed.
She didn’t have pale, porcelain skin.
Her skin was tinted
From hikes
And from beach days.
She didn’t have blonde,
Glowing hair.
Her hair was dark
The color of fresh soil.
She wasn’t pencil-thin.
Her cheeks were filled out and rounded.
She had a soft chin
And a full belly.
She wasn’t long and tall.
She was shorter,
5’ 3”,
And looked up to see the world.
She didn’t notice these things.
Until the world told her as much.
But she put on a bright yellow raincoat
And let the world slide down and away.
She wasn’t the prettiest one.
But she still glowed.
Down that street. The big house, teeming transmissions
of penciled degrees from paper thin ‘pedes,
has basic nature themed accommodations.
Mud wiped under feet. White fresh carpet steamed
and obvious windows certainly so
I walk on hands. Here’s a photo I can’t hold.
Denver on rental skis on stolen snow
a sneaky crook took (much later it snowed).
Pencil thin frames. Too much foundation. Here’s more
in the kitchen. A pumpkin on the counter top
hands over a knife. I open a door
then I carve through a window. Snow hasn’t stopped,
but Cinderella (who’s a lunatic)
undressed before one (still) looks pretty thick.
12/17/2018
She jumped the cables of this earth and landed on their stratosphere
not much was interlocked inside that interstated space except a high
the coded silence telegraphed in tetrotonic voice was plugged in near
twas' all she heard... computer telepathic knots and sounds of nigh
She had been in an MRI machine and she was saturated in their vibercy
she was a conduit to their human questionaire and viaduct's enscry
pitching her a high pitch sound they pierced the quiet longtitude of chi
then rocked her world with their achromatic lense and telescopic pry
They asked for her binary code dumbfounded and in lack she kept to mute
for it was long ago and way back when the numbers of her match encode
imprinted on the fascmile of mind's extole. Adrift in the sky with no refute
she glided on and found that life is different when your not a metal node
She was sent back to earth with a mind erase and a pencil thin memory
and it was so that when they came to find her many years from then
the only thing that she recalled was the momentary freedom's history
twas' all she knew... that once upon a time she was coded in their glen.
The End.
October 20, 2018
The Stiletto Life
Her Infectious smile and rhythmic click-clack on the pavement,
Mask the pain from her eight-inch, pencil-thin Louboutin heels;
Flying, neat, long dreadlocks, trail her incredibly steady strides,
As, gracefully, she sashays past, turning heads and dropping jaws;
Her white dress, a slightly revealing flutter in the breezy drizzle!
June 8, 2018
Written for "She Walks" Poetry Contest
Sponsor : Julia Ward
UNSUPPORTED CODE
I don’t care what you think of me
Or the label that you give
I don’t care what box you’ve found
Cause in there… I won’t live
I don’t care what thoughts you think
Or how you judge my soul
I frankly couldn’t give a damn
If shaming is your goal
I don’t care you think I’m base
Too fat, not pencil thin
I don’t care, cause you know what?
Your judgment is YOUR sin
I don’t care, I do not CARE
I do not give a DAMN
So scroll on by or disappear
Or get caught in this SLAM!
Eileen Manassian Ghali
People see what they want to see....nothing more...nothing less...
This is a sample of SLAM poetry.
I woke up this morning
Sporting a Beret
Speaking in a French accent
Parlez-vous francais?
With a scarf around my neck
A pencil thin moustache
Afraid I might have woke up French
A slight giggle to my laugh
With a strong urge for fresh Baguette's
I head to the grocery
I told my cat that I'd be back
He looked at me... Cest la vie
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