2011+Week+1

=**Week 1!**=


 * Welcome to Week 1 of Slllllllaaaaaam Poetry Club! We shall begin our year long foray into po-imes with the classic "Here are some words now go write a poem" approach. Take these words as your tools and sculpt something great.**


 * Salsa**
 * Needle**
 * Hot Air Balloon**
 * Polka Dots**
 * Turtleneck**
 * Scallop**
 * Karaoke**
 * Scale**

Post Here:

Eat all the salsa. Scald your tongue. Do it for me, not you, because you, me, we, care about ourselves too much. So often we are like balloons, filled with hot air, close to a burning flame. Also, beware of Nair, I hear it burns too. Wear a turtleneck, but not to disguise the hickey from last evening. Wear a turtleneck to show off your neck, your sultry swishing swinging swan neck. Scallop your heart out of your chest, hold it to your breast, and throw it in a pit filled with syringes, and Rusty needles. You won't //need// it anymore. Don't watch the karaoke words, dancing across the bottom of the screen. Write your own words, make your own scale. Excited to fail. Adam "Poopdeck Crushing Mystery Machine" Bourgault
 * DO MY BIDDING.**

You, my dear, are salsa music. You are the rhythm that moves me, the sound that begs the world to dance and the dancer who leads them all. Your love can scale buildings, flying higher than hot air balloons and taunting them to chase you. Your gaze is pins and needles, your smile leaves burn marks in my eyes like polka dots, your touch leaves scalloped holes in my skin and I love every second of your attention. Forbidden love. Painful love. Pining love. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Love that makes you so scared <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">that you draw your neck in like a turtle <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">and try to hide behind your own shoulders. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Love so strong that you could get up <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">in front of the world and sing <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">karaoke in a key two notes too high <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">if it would prove your devotion. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I would do it all for you. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">I can't do anything for you. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">No one can. <span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;">We're too far gone.

<span style="color: #404040; font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Ellyn "Indulgent Nonsense" Touchette

//Fire of the Pain//

Hide your breath,

Lift the collar of your turtleneck,

Shield us from the fire of the salsa,

The fire that swoons in the hot air balloon,

The fire that swallowed you up in a blaze of red and yellow

Cinders.

Little needles, pin pricking your skin,

Little polka dots of pain,

You can’t quite describe.

How can you weigh the weight of torment,

On a five year old, five pound wrong,

Rusted bathroom scale?

I’m not talking about the pain we feel

When we sing a wrong note,

In a karaoke cover,

On a Friday night.

That’s the pain of a few seconds,

And little more than pain to the ears.

That’s not the pain I speak of.

I speak of the pain a scallop feels,

Clammed up in its shell,

Not once moving a mussel,

Left in the sea of oyster blue,

And the hidden hue,

Blood of red,

Black of dead.

I’m talking about the pain

Millions feel each day,

And the sedatives they call friends,

Who just turn away.

-//Lincoln "Ferigerator" Gray//

Look!

Funny how time falls away like the land under a hot air balloon And the rider feels nothing Blood vessels unknowingly constricting with the cold air in the stratosphere You have no clue until you look over the edge Somehow 4372 feet slipped away and you are no longer capable of seeing details you once could: jack rabbits hopping in fear, leaves of woody perennial plants or squirrels scaling trunks The surface of the earth is a collection of multi-colored polka dots But you never felt a thing Where was the wind? How did you end up here? Last you knew, you were standing in a basket, enjoying the heat of the flames Well son, the flames keeping you afloat aren’t your whole world Pull your head out from the stifling gray polyester of your turtle neck Because what would you do if I took a needle and popped the balloon you’re depending on? If I prohibited you from repeating anything you’ve done in your past? You would meet a spicy woman salsa dancing, make a fool of yourself singing karaoke, swim with the scallops And come to appreciate the vast, distinctive world in which you have been floating, unaware

Lia “Loopy Laney Lilly Laurie Lila” Van de Krol

The Opportunist

Taken on a scale unknown to many. The one that threads the needle through. Through the quilt of memory, of meaning, Or as simple as attaching the turtleneck To a sweater to make a new kind of classy. A chance.

Taken on a scale unknown to many. To take flight in a hot air balloon To feel the open air, Not like the air on the ground But the air in the heavens. A chance.

Taken on a scale unknown to many. A chip dipped in spicy salsa. Scallops fished up from the sea. A shot. A one in a million shot. A chance.

Taken on a scale known to all. The humor in amateur karaoke, To see those polka dots of confusion Dancing in front of ones’s face. The open hand waiting to be taken. The stride.

The chance.

Jason “Filsburner” Meuse

There you sit, stigma stricken with your scalloped out insides Spoon feeding yourself salsa because a chip is thirty-five calories Thirty-five calories, for one hot moment of indulgence, Like a sin. You’re the quintessential cliche, so lifeless and lacking. The happiness moments polka dot your memory, in needle pinprick points. You’re unique! You have a story too! You work so hard. Every morning you wake to read the karaoke words on the screen of your disease And the through your bleary eyes you see the hot air balloon girl, the fat girl. The girl at whom they cluck their disapproving tongues The f---ed up girl, the sick girl. Pull up your turtleneck collar, Protect yourself from their lunges to your throat Skeleton girl, step on the scale, Measure your weight Measure your worth So stoic and powerful in it’s position It looks you dead in your sunken eyes and says; I’m sorry, you suck Charlotte "Madeline" Feinberg

Imagination.

When you are going along looking at the poke dot clouds in the sky Driving the hot air balloon of your dreams Looking down on all the people stuck to reality like scallops in their shell And you think to yourself what if I was like that

But then the the weight of your doubts fill up the scale That you will never be an astronaut or a fire man if you want. And as you grow up the needle of false dreams and reality makes you come crashing down to earth. Because for some reason that song on your karaoke machine has stopped playing

Your endless Hot air balloon of imagination has been brought down by all of your worries and doubts. But don't you remember when you were that goofy kid with that turtleneck telling your 3rd grade teacher what you were going to be when you grow up. So innocent and so pure

so whey can't we just try and hold on to that hot air balloon Tell the needle that is going to pop your dreams that your not welcome anymore Tell the world that you may never be an astronaut but by gosh you'll try. And then maybe just maybe that dream that you always wanted to come true

will finally come true.

By Jacob(the Amazing)Clowes.

Up

Grandma took a hot air ballon up to heaven.

That’s what her Daddy told her.

He said that the ballon had polka dots.

Big red dots with a lemon yellow backdrop.

Daddy tells her this so she will be brave.

“Think how brave Grandma was, flying high in that hot air ballon!

The needle will only pinch a little! Be brave!”

The girl closes her eyes and screams silently as she gets the shot.

She stares at the casket.

She pinches back her tears and hides in her black turtleneck.

She questions her father,

“If Grandma flew up in a ballon, why is her body down here?”

“Because it was her soul that went up in the hot air ballon, not her body,

but don’t cry, Grandma wouldn’t want you to be so sad.

Think of Grandma when her soul had not yet flown away.”

So the little girl tried.

She thought about last winter, last Christmas,

how Grandma had all of the family over.

The laughing, the yummy salsa dip that Aunt Betty had made.

How Grandma would warm up her voice for karaoke

by singing a scale.

The little girl smiled, and she looked at her Grandmother.

The poor old women looked like a scallop,

her shell the casket, and she was the creature.

Grandma went up to heaven in a hot air ballon.

In the ballon with polkadots.

Big red ones, with a lemon yellow backdrop.

~Nicole "middle name?" Gile