PUBLISHED POEMS By Daria Tavana
Andres Eyes like a newbornsofter than gold. Symphony of a smile that sings me to sleep. To sound absurd, his allure is a mystery. I know few things of Andres. The craters of the moon are no match to his soul’s depth. The sand hides its face in envy of his terracotta skin. The sun rests in despair for it is less brilliant than he. I don’t know what to expect. Not sure what to regret. No other muse keeps me at the tip of my tongue, by the point of my pen, on the edge of my seat, as Andres does. Published in Derailed Enlightenment (Vol. 4, pp 4-7 March ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Baseball Boy’s Ode (in secret code) Now, me-ow, he knows I’m so smitten, kitten. He buries his bible when we burrow our bodies. O, My knight is a boundary of a borough who mocks other brittle lines! He used to be a drummer. This manly baby unleashes his toes, despite the winter. Mr. Writer is he- an Antarctic giraffe and the most cosmopolitan of Eskimos. I’ve purchased Play-Doh, play’d 52 Pick-Up with my life.
Our peers know not the elasticity of morality. O, Sweet cherub, I’d bomb them all but they are the cockroaches in this nuclear war! Our teachers and preachers are consistently inconsistent. Though ever so intricately plain, neither has enough heart luster to soul muster. Some Thoreaus find their version of truth in a puddle of leaves or in a pastor of grass. I, like garbage men, could find reality in a mountain of rubbish. I taste Manhattan and believe paradise is pollution and Eden is an island.
I know my Baseball Boy (a 79% Swedish Fish, razor-wing’d butterfly) drives slower than a color printer, yet when purple, gossipy walls tittle-tattle, I don’t hesitate to hack off their tongues. When we bond, my blushing brain burps. Weichert will start to sell jets. O, We shall smoke Amsterdam air and ruminate in Rome! My schedule is seething, but I make boxes of time for us in a forgotten factory. Let’s plow Magellan out of employment! Let’s pulverize this planet through a granite toilet! Published in Walt Whitman Newsletter (March ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Beneath the Eastern Wheel Grant me my goggles, my mental canopy, so I can read again. Grrr. God is a monster. A furious, fuzzy felon who devours my distraction. He stalks me like he’s Santa. He gawks at me like a retard. Mommy has my mind down to math. She knows I can’t hula-hoop or dance. I don’t study like an Asian or get A’s like a Danny, but I can rhyme. I can ADD. Select a station, or twist those radios off. My entire country is under greater pressure than Queen. Sick. Click. Kaboom! Hypochondria killed Columbus. Covered in coma. Smothered in Soma. There is no cure for cancer or synonym for synonym. Just to spite sin, I sip gin made from concentrate to concentrate. Keep it down, professor, we’re almost home. Dies ist mein leben. My 7:51 to two eleven. Dungeon. Dung. ding. Tap out before clocking out DING Published in Derailed Enlightenment (Vol. 4, pp 4-7 March ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Brew, baby, brew. Eleven cauldrons overflow with rhyme and potato chips and spite and Hemingway. Blue horizons are so boring and humor is so hot right now. Push the envelope over the Alps and salsa barefoot on the sun. Throw your voice into a soggy sandbox, catch a cold in the most cordial of puddles. I broke my leg and fractured my sense of smell. Like your brother, I foretell myself, and deny it in the blink of a blanket. I own four dollars in my pocket. Eating soup makes me sweat. When I hear Coldplay, I remember September, sugar plum. Where was I? Oh, yes. I’m a mezzo-soprano and a shitty guitar player. I am so blind, I can’t hear. Magnesium puts me in a coma, and I’m deeply afraid of losing you. Give me incentive. Give me feedback. Enough to unearth one more method of letdown. Sing me Sinatra until I shiver. What’s that word? Incandescent? Fluorescent? Forget it. It’s getting late and so are you. I need to wake up early. Published in Derailed Enlightenment (Vol. 4, pp 4-7 March ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Bunkered Up! in this so-called bungalowhello, Apollo’s halo. if you’re so gold why don’t you stay? mug like a hearse-shaped pill, smell like a pack of new erasers, mouth like a spoiled brass doorknob. angel officially frozen, forever my wedding’s white banana’s bruise party’s purple bleach’s blonde black! upon white upon black! You are the yellow-most part of the egg and the bright corona of mi cuerpo. I won’t barrage you with baggage or claims curled like commas. Tell me that today this makes sense. Save all that stolen sorrow for tomorrow. Published in Glass Poetry Journal Online Magazine (March ’08) © 2013 Daria Tavana
New York City Blues I am not sorry for writing that play, and I am not sorry for failing to leave you with any kind of dignity during its aftermath. But, here. Have this cigar. See it as a token of my eternal detention, where I am forced to remember that dirty letter; that dirty letter is always in my hands, even when it’s not. Have this cigar so you can’t talk when I admit I miss you without reconsidering how non-sorry I seriously am. Have this cigar because you can’t have me back. I smoked a whole pack after I found that dirty letter- way later, way after I forgave you for leaving me without reason. I read that dirty letter to the silky sound of my roommate asleep and the thought of you having sex with someone else after you left my bed and told me you loved me. “I love you,” you told me. Have this cigar even though I know you said the same thing to someone else. I know I meant the same thing to you as someone else, too. I know I meant nothing to you and that’s what happens when you marry an actor. I meant nothing to you. So I put excerpts of your dirty letter in my newest play and I’ve felt real clean ever since. Have this cigar because it fell in the toilet and you’re already full of shit. Published in The Fordham Observer (p 22, April ’10) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Soapbox in Salem Tampered tales go untold; our needles wait for thread. Stem cells and paper planes rally manly messengers composed of clichés. Sitting on my ceiling, I paint make-up and glue glitter on communal falsehoods, just so my president can grow from an embryo into a Floridian flamingo. Shush! She was born blind. Compact the Mayflower. Control me, sleepy sniper. Breaking news breaks windowsa playhouse of drama. Lies inflate faster than a hot air balloon and her conscience weighs a won-ton. A closetful of violins allows each jingoist to rape three nihilists. Fax me the facts when Puritans are aborted and the seams seem to split. Peel me off the backburner. Place me on the barbecue. Grill me, Senate. Press me as if I were crumpled clothing. I’m ready to testify. Published in The Philadelphia Inquirer (p L10, April 1 ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Still Life with Blue Shirt The Musician is between two women holding Heidegger in his hands while unsure of the snow. His shirt is blue, but the lighting is bad and I am about to write a poem. Simplicity is in the cigarette stuck to the front of my love-hate relationship with One Fifty-Five West Sixtieth Street. I feel fine. Solid. Like a stripper pole made of sandpaper, know what I mean? The Musician smiles like a surgeon on vacation. That’s a good sign. He’ll live a long life. Back to those two women: one screams into a cell phone, the other stares into lace like a stuffed animal stuck in headlightsneither bleeding, nothing happening. Naturally, The Musician and I laugh. I never want to know anything more about this moment yet promise to write a poem called A quarter past four pm on the am dial. He doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe in poetry. So I make something up. Something like a unicorn’s eyebrow eats an ear of corn and grows and grows and grows and growls while giving birth to a baby dormitory. He says he can’t understand the unicorn part. Okay. So the story has to stop. Next, we visit our friends. One tool uses the word incredicool while the other mutters every word! is weird. Neither answer me when I ask about the weather- and, who cares. Not me. Definitely not The Musician. We smoke and that’s it. Published in The Fordham Observer (p 22, April ’10) © 2013 Daria Tavana
Torso After 16 years of sprinting, you’re more refreshing than a gallon of Gatorade. Talk to me in text. Take me on a vanilla vacation. It’s Saturday, so games are on the schedule. Should we play Phone Tag or Hard to Get? These curve balls swindle me, sweetie. I pray and press and push until I’m far from the trampoline, falling face-down and flattened out. I disregard the miles of slimy smiles since kisses are more delicious in the dark. Contrived? No, no. I write what I’d read. I walk with peccadilloes on my forehead and your letter on my chest. “I love you, Gerard.” As a rosary loves a razor. Like the ladies love Jack the Ripper. I’ll be over at 10:37. We can study Alchemy. I have a whole football team of homework to tackle. Published in Schuylkill Valley Journal (Vol. 25, p 42, Feb. ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana
You Should Call me more often. Tell the Whitman of watercolor your favorite restaurant. Tell the Picasso of poetry how you like your eggs. Tell me lies, lovey, because they make me feel like a feline. Pledge allegiance to the pedophile who steals everything you touch. When you sweat, I sweat. My pen, the pendulum, rocks only for you. This bond is thicker than a Shakespearean plotline, so come over on Thursday. Refuse to leave me alone. I have excuses to eat your words and it will rain music notes. Huge, pink music notes made of muck and cement. When I sweat, you sweat. I’ll tease your velvet scalp and tickle your clean feet when you remind me of me. Promise to remind me of me. If my craft soothes no fires, if my verses bust no levies, if I die an American Death of a Salesman, do not leave your room. Call me. I’m in a meeting but my phone is on vibrate for you. Published in Derailed Enlightenment (Vol. 4, pp 4-7 March ’07) © 2013 Daria Tavana