Rimbaud Revealed Magazine-Poetry

Poetry Page Part Three

All poetry written by the artist Genie and inspired by the acting genius of Leonardo DiCaprio.

7/31/99 'RomeoCar'
It’s different, driving to my destination
in my RomeoCar, with loud music vibrating
from awesome radio speakers
Sound juicing through my arms and throbbing
between my legs and up my bottom
And I bounce and I smooth and I croon
to the hiphop or Santana or Edwin McCain;
New Radicals, Sixpence; Tom Petty
Don Henley, U2, or, - god: just any
any hypnotic weave of magical sounds
my fickle fingers can find;
I’ll push your buttons Baby and you will
play all over me.........
And I feel safe and loved;
I have arrived
in my fast slick sexy
RomeoCar.
I feel successful and aloof and mysterious
in my sensuous new RomeoCar
Everything I ever wanted to be -
I imagine everyone sees in me
As we slide a slow corner or
arc in a counter clockwise dance
(He fits like a glove, that BabyRomeoCar)

And aren’t they all just thinking:
Incredibly lovely and almost a Star!
Who is she, she looks like Somebody
In her shades and her RomeoCar....
Is she SomeBody?
Where is she going
in her so very cherry RomeoCar....

Sept. 8, 1999 ‘Fallen From My Senses’
Somehow I have fallen from my senses.
Stepping off from a place that
seemed never to have existed,
but must have waited for the strength
of my surrender -

until the time was right.

For that fragile place that held my senses bound
requires an opening into willingness;
a stepping-out, a moving toward.
I am falling
farther now, and falling now again,
onto the infinite foundation I build
of senses
made of love.

8/24/99 'The Mini-Blind as Art'
From my perch at my computer
I can see the amber-pink ribbons of sunset sky
layer themselves against the lavender-blue ones,
which jet on course in perfect horizontal lines;
encased and guided as they are
by the pattern the open mini-blinds make.

See the roof-line of the apartments
across the parking lot,
just under the lacy treetops?
All in dark blue-gray shadow.
It’s a pretty, and comforting,
little skyscape: this view
from open mini-blinds....and;

It’s why I always have plain,
pale, half-curtained windows;
It’s why I can’t ever bring myself

to cover the tops of windows;
It’s why I even love it
when the slivers of color
within the apartment’s
mini-blinded windows
turn black.

8/18 "Love Walked By"
‘Knock, knock? Come In...’
I must have had my back turned
when Love walked by.
Several Notes just fell
from the sky.
It takes too long to
remember something good.

...Didn’t think to notice
Didn’t think to plan;
Missed another opportunity.

Left unawares in blissful ignorance.
A handicap ride. A tow truck hitch.
A sign in the yard,
and a magnet on the Fridge.

Preoccupied with something trifling
when Love walked by.

Last minute notice: the flag
went down. Attached
to a retractable pull-cord,
I snapped back! Discarded,
I fell to the ground -
I assigned a greater importance
to a little thing like me and
Instinct sometimes fails me
when cocky certainty closes in....
I must have had my back turned
when Love walked by.
And still I cannot learn my lessons
(and stayed up too late again);
I missed a chance
to take a chance
to chance, perchance?....
if Love walked by...
I didn’t pay attention!
Heads UP!
Aw, hell! It’s a case of
mistaken identity, grieving
for a lost cause -
holding on: to a bad dream.

Off with the old! On
with the new! Pencil me in
at your earliest convenience.
I really should be advised
if Love is dropping by.

So if I wake up again
at 4 A.M.
my heart all balled up
in a wad
from kissing cold,
hard, stationary surfaces:

and clinging to doorways that
lead me into nowhere -
Stubborn, stupid fear!
Oh, Love: Pay attention
to your mark!
Take better care
to summon courage to my side;
Allow a soft resilience
to penetrate me there -
Pass me a note:
and don’t
take
your eyes
off me.
I have to know
when Love walks by.

8/19/99 Rock Bottom
If I research a bottomless thought,
only to discover there a small
and ancient rock; a stone that was witness to eons
of longing -

Would my attention penetrate its inner peace
when my tear-soaked lips graze its warm and grainy surface?

'An Orchid for Edwin McCain'

Can you be taken
with someone's name?

I miss my mom.

I would have read her these lines.
I'd have written, 'Steve Howard.'
She'd say:
'That name sounds familiar...'
I'd say:
'We were necking in a corner,
and once on a summer's evening
I took him outside, and
pushed him hard against the house,
and kissed him 'til I came.'

And I never got over
the lilt of their names;
or the wing of a brow,
or the shape of a jaw;
or the necks that I clung to
and kissed 'til I came.

And Mom's favorite word
was 'fabulous!'

Today I brought home
the white orchid;
I bought it for some new
Fabulous! memory,
with an equally
Fabulous! name;

I brought it home
for all of us;
And I bought it
for the music
of Edwin McCain

8/24/99 'I Had the Lines’
I had lines for a poem
when I soaked in my bath,
but not having written them down,
they floated away.
Maybe it wasn’t a poem;
my thoughts like to think they become ordered that way:
In some rythmic seduction of intimate expression
to get your attention -to make you my own...
I’m gathering in my soul mates.

August 29, 1999...5-Subject Notebook
Carwashes are as good a place as any to pull out a notebook and start writing.
Especially if it’s a brand new one.
And if the music on your car stereo rocks.
This happens to be a large, thick, 5-subject notebook, a virgin one at that;
I found it on the bookshelf today in Mom’s bedroom.

Mom’s bedroom: tiny, itty-bitty box of a room, chock full of notebooks, needlework
magazines, assorted novels, journals, crossword puzzles, volumes of verse,
and delicate china boxes handed down from grandmother to grandmother.
Everything a dedicated note-taker,
list-maker, artist, and overall ‘fiddler’ could ever need to occupy the hours spent in a tiny boxed-up bedroom world.

I walked back into the den with 2 canvas totes filled with a selection of mostly coffee table
tomes I had given to Mom and had secretly coveted over the years. And this notebook.
Kind of feels like this notebook is the real prize.
But there’s also 3 Mitford novels by Jan Karon I always meant to read.
And the diminutive white tea set
from the Dollar Store
I bought for Mom a couple of years ago.
She kept it in the pie safe
Dad had made for her,
along with the expensive antique china.
I left the good stuff with Dad.
"Good stuff" is such a relative term, anyway.
And I brought home the little pillow Mom assembled,
using the miniature quilt top I had made;
the pattern we fell in love with: ‘Kimonos’.
My first and last attempt at miniature quilting.
I had no idea it would be such a pain in the ass.
It’s awesome, though.
And I found that last remaining volume of poetry Mom published and gave it to Dad:
some friend of hers wanted it.
He read the verse on the last page and cried a bit.
‘So, did you know I’ve been writing now, for a year?’, I asked him.
He took his eyes off Tiger Woods
and looked questioningly at me.
'Oh?’ ‘Yeah.
I call it The Voice -
I write all the time: poems, essays...it just comes...’
I’m being so fucking nonchalant,
I hate that;
but I don’t know how else to say it, to Dad.
.....Tiger Woods in the lead.
Those men with the soothing golf voice-overs
are excitedly droning on.
It’s so cute that everyone loves that Tiger Woods!
I tell Dad about the blonde dish
in the G-string at the British Open who surprised him with a kiss.
Dad got so tickled he cried.

30 years ago, he would have been scandalized.
Hell, 30 years ago, Tiger would’ve been an underpaid caddie.
Ain’t ‘99 great?
We love that Tiger Woods.
We love Dad for loving that Tiger.

‘Yeah, I always shared my poetry with Mom’.
Dad’s still watching sports,
but he’s listening to me.
'I wrote a poem about missing her recently’...(Dad’s watching me now)...
’it’s...I’d share it with you, but...it has a couple of naughty bits;
I could share the naughty bits with Mom,
but I’m afraid they might embarrass you and me’.
‘MMmmm...,’he replies.
And Now For Something Completely Different.
I asked him if he knew MontyPython re-runs are back on TV.
'I was watching a Mr. Bean marathon last night,
but I had to change channels’, he answered.
Suddenly, he’s crying again.

‘Mom loved Mr. Bean’, we say to each other.
As suddenly as it started, our crying stopped.
Cheerfully, I tote Mom’s treasures out to my car,
refusing to take a useless, space-gobbling
microwaving gadget he desperately wants to get rid of.

When I come back in
I report that the little spit of rain we got last week
only succeeded in dirty-ing up my RomeoCar.
Dad registers mock horror:
‘You’d better go wash that Romeo!’, he admonishes me.
We laugh.
Dad doesn’t know it,
but that is exactly where I went before going home.
Maybe I wanted to show My RomeoCar
how much I care,
or maybe I just wanted to hurry up
and get to the carwash,
so I could start writing in Mom’s brand-new, 5-subject notebook.

September 12, 1999...That’s What I’m Up To

Sunday night: as usual,
my internal clock runs contrary to the world’s time.
I should be relaxing, preparing for bed, for the busy week;
but I’ve got a head-full of steam,
vacuuming with a vengeance.
And frivolously rearranging poetry books
and tiny tea set displays on the hutch;
what’s that all about?
Shouldn’t I be painting my nails,
or at least ironing my Monday frock?
...I can’t decide what I am up to.
I am restless and excited.
A friend has given me a poetry page in her web site
and I’m pretty much beside myself over it.
I think I need to write this down,
but I want the new 5 subject notebook -
there it is -
and the turquoise ink pen
a very dear friend who lives across the sea, sent to me...where? -
I have 15 damn good pens but nothing will do except...
there it is: right where I moved it:
to a special place where supposedly,
I would be sure to find it!
I drive myself nuts sometimes: everything must be ‘just so’,
as if I were laying the ritual
for the Art of Tea, before I can begin.
I try to control what I can try to control.
I hold my life-thoughts dear
in a sort of naive reverence;
for this I believe is the magnificent gift
of the art of the mind that all souls seek to Say.

I Need To Say.
And if there is no one to listen, that’s all right.
I can Say on paper now,
and by some miracle (ah, it’s a sweet and knowing order; this universe of ours) -
will I touch another soul?

I’d like to picture a ‘stranger’ in my mind’s eye,
as dear to themselves, as I am to me;
if they read something I felt the need to Say....
if I can ‘see’ them bite a lip or a nail,
nod their head, chin resting on hand,
elbow on...computer table?....
and I hope they think:
‘I’ve felt that way! I’ve done that!’
Well, then. That is what I am up to,
on this particular Sunday night.

Back to Home

	7/31/99 'RomeoCar' It’s different, driving to my destination in my RomeoCar, with loud music vibrating from awesome radio speakers Sound juicing through my arms and throbbing between my legs and up my bottom And I bounce and I smooth and I croon to the hiphop or Santana or Edwin McCain; New Radicals, Sixpence; Tom Petty Don Henley, U2, or, - god: just any any hypnotic weave of magical sounds my fickle fingers can find; I’ll push your buttons Baby and you will play all over me......... And I feel safe and loved; I have arrived in my fast slick sexy RomeoCar. I feel successful and aloof and mysterious in my sensuous new RomeoCar Everything I ever wanted to be - I imagine everyone sees in me As we slide a slow corner or arc in a counter clockwise dance (He fits like a glove, that BabyRomeoCar) And aren’t they all just thinking: Incredibly lovely and almost a Star! Who is she, she looks like Somebody In her shades and her RomeoCar.... Is she SomeBody? Where is she going in her so very cherry RomeoCar....
	Sept. 8, 1999 ‘Fallen From My Senses’ Somehow I have fallen from my senses. Stepping off from a place that seemed never to have existed, but must have waited for the strength of my surrender - until the time was right. For that fragile place that held my senses bound requires an opening into willingness; a stepping-out, a moving toward. I am falling farther now, and falling now again, onto the infinite foundation I build of senses made of love.
	8/24/99 'The Mini-Blind as Art' From my perch at my computer I can see the amber-pink ribbons of sunset sky layer themselves against the lavender-blue ones, which jet on course in perfect horizontal lines; encased and guided as they are by the pattern the open mini-blinds make. See the roof-line of the apartments across the parking lot, just under the lacy treetops? All in dark blue-gray shadow. It’s a pretty, and comforting, little skyscape: this view from open mini-blinds....and; It’s why I always have plain, pale, half-curtained windows; It’s why I can’t ever bring myself to cover the tops of windows; It’s why I even love it when the slivers of color within the apartment’s mini-blinded windows turn black.