Scattered Rhymes: Paige Taggart

[audio:https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30420929/Scattered%20Rhymes/PT.mp3|bgcolor=0x000000]

from THE  NOTEBOOK

the shoulder has zero light
the shoulder has no reason
to rotate its discus in
perpetual motion unless
it is seasoned for a
tennis serve, I swerve
when I talk, let my
speech reply, here is an
audio grandstand
a launch into the public
biosphere, oh dirty
laundry how crumpled
and full of sense, this is
a poem where every object
take on meaning, where
it extends its
existence into the
voyeur’s eye, there is no
needle to rescue in
the haystack, there is
no in the sack to recoup
from, here everything is
a velvet potato
a perfectly lauded gift
set on its own
blessing, if I give this
to you all you owe me
is respect in the form
of food, like cooking me cabbage
then laying it out like
pillows, this is all written in
my will so no need to try and
memorize it just yet
this is where the
poetry turns, this is
where it becomes genius
this is where the doldrum
uproots itself, this is me
apologizing to my brother for
rubbing his eyes with tiger balm
this is everything that you
ever wanted to coming true
this is real historical
mass, mass on the subway,
mass in the form of many
strangers falling asleep
at once, they almost look
hypnotized/head-slumped
forward, the subways
hum sings them to sleep
I have a pie at home
and a window full of the
paperless things I can’t see
past like white lies
& karate smoke & an abandoned
bicycle, there are the kids
jumping rope, jumping fences w/age
award reaped benefits for
a singular provider, here somebody
is turning over on a white horse
a location is building-up
in the vein of prestige
I am putting my French
sunglasses on, reordering the
oracle, a frosted wishbone
how absolutely still the pie
lies, how begetting of circumstance
the trolley is delivering eggs
throughout the neighborhood
there is localized insurance
if you fall skateboarding
an elder will clean your
wound, rehabilitating the oxygen
cavities takes a nexus of
cytoplasm, reverberated
toothbrushes, through the gold cap
everyone’s a dentist who needs
a friend, try quitting
smoking for a change, melodramatic
knight in shining armor
rescuing your lung from the curse
of a violent death, willpower
ensues, try sleeping with
lesions, with the biggest wound
in the woods with a cabinet
builder insisting on finishing
the bookshelves at 3 am
prying the orange paper machine
apart in your sleep
like a Chinese character bent
sideways, contingent on its
placement lending it a new
meaning, if I were to walk
around town on hand & not
foot, how might the fabric of
my belief change, the brash
cause to wrap my fingers with
gauze, or an elliptical—
imagine that, that we
dance holding feet, so attuned
to the clever immobility
when the risk of losing
action makes its way into
the poem, the risk is boredom
how there are many ways of
losing where you digest
a loop, like that game
of pickup sticks on
the trottoir where nobody
is talking not noticing the
eagle eyes unflinching for one
who drops the stick
can never recreate a habitat
is it inhibition that makes
the sucky people keep on sucking
the lack there of I meant,
but instead I was busy
catering the floss to my teeth
some sort of tectonic
light bulb needs to go off so a
posse of angels can come down &
bless me, I’m mad ungrateful
sometimes to have a job
feels like the opposite of
survival
I fear that once we start we won’t be able
to come down from this mountain,
domino effect on the inside
where all the pride gets dismantled
and takes the form of a rock
I’m trying to come back to some sort
of original way where you don’t
want to fix the poem cause
the poem is alive, an inverted
tent takes its shape from the
wind, so many meaningful
pictures spread-out so full of
language tropes you just
have to be the one to color them
in with whatever kind of
vision you can stick with
it’s difficult to swing the
lantern all the way through
a mystery caught on the
outer-hinge causing the
little metal hinge to swing open
and whisk out the light
or however you want to
label this effect
it’s not a defect unless you
struggle w/it everyday

              have you ever walked across the
              floor to find another floor?
              how to be desperate, I mean
              in a situation where you’ve
              locked your keys in your car
              why do my wheels spinning feel
              like triangles, clunk,
              clunk, clunk
              batter up— hit the
              dinghy across the bay

all that was selfish became
prismed by our desires
to keep one another healthy
in the most acute perceptions of
our lives we’ve managed to keep
one another holy, with all the
growing sounds around us & the
obtrusion of light in our sleep
like whisks of smoke
that hold the ground by fire
after the wolves attack
after love is one of the causes
for fantasy that holds
the vinegar into the
lemon, sometimes such taste
such sour artifice recedes
into a velvet damask
this is what I say, what I fear
that we are all fake, no real
compass or station to hold
as I once was a sergeant
in my past like the dream of
myself inside a space shuttle
like the self that came
before the self before I
fingered the wreckage in
the dark before sifting
through the silt of an
underwater vessel, after
we were all attacked
and leaned back and attacked
others and saw that it was
identical, the same thing
standing in the same way
of one another, the
record breaking human
condition, the active body
of peoples, the peoples like
the squirrel’s acorn if we
were god that’s what sight
would be like, all a seen
protocol, the same for sadness
one takes washing-off
& clutching to a library of panic
“the pain parade”

—

from Gift Horse

you carry me
I bend
I bend so you can
carry me
I carry me you bend
you bend
beggetingly

—

the earth is on
crow fire
don’t forget
to powder
your wig

—

I’m a museum
with a hat of gold
my education only comes
once a year
I am w/out friends
standing in a field
my imagination is a hinge
endless swinging door
upon grass and pale sky
the frame
the only obstruction

—

yr. dog bites off
yr. doll’s talky head
dripping with starch
you bury the head in
a lilac field
plastic bones
bloom
begin again

—

my plastic Neanderthal
has a tongue ring
carries a flag
faux gravitas
etched with lions
somebody should
really stop him

—

into the black sky
one wing open
a French door
unlaundered by intuition
rain come over me
still prism
black market holiday
the new symbolism

—

root canal in summer
a hot bleeding waterway
lift your head to the nurse’s call
Gideon’s crossing
you slap your cheek against it
it’s gonna save you

—

I have a big gift
for a horse
a quilted water vest
you make your mark
across the lake
shimmy a row by
aren’t we all adults?
I stand in
as proof

—

POST SCRIPT

Buy Paige’s handmade jewelry and make sure to check out the impressive selection of poems she has published online!

from Poor Claudia.

forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press.

forthcoming from Doublecross Press.

The gentleman who collaborated and experienced paranoid delusions with Paige’s brother.

Paige’s brothers’ music: