Suze Bienaimee Nominated for a Pushcart Prize!
Loves Executive Order!
Loves Executive Order features a new poem each week about the Trump presidency as protest, commentary and rumination on this part of the American story.
Creative Founder of Loves Executive Order:
poet Matthew Lippman
Please enjoy:
The Equation: Moments Stolen = A Lifetime?
by Suze Bienaimee
From Barrow Street Journal: Congratulations to our Pushcart Prize nominees Edward Mayes, Stuart Greenhouse, Lance Larsen, Bernadette Geyer, Suze Bienaimee, and Fred Marchant.
There are 6 more poems below:
| The Art, The Love | Tell All. Secrets. |
| He in 1993 | Caw Caw Caw |
| TV Game Show | Ideal Cities |
THE ART, THE LOVE by Suze Bienaimee
Look. Don’t tell.
Uncluttered. Everyday
simplicity to reach
the heart
like a stack of rocks
balancing in my hand.
A room
of sunlight-smooth-glow-gold —
breathing in
and breathing out.
Raise the brush.
Stroke.
Tell all.
Secrets.
Solitude’s gift.
Now.
Now, grasp the pen.
Every miracle in the day: breath, song, breeze.
Speak.
Every miracle
in the dark. Run.
Run
to me.
Run to me
you.
by Suze Bienaimee
TELL ALL. SECRETS. by Suze Bienaimee
I’ve been waiting to tell
you, but I don’t have
the guts. So sitting in a grove
wearing a cabbage leaf
dress, my hair wild corn and multi-
colored kernels red, blue, brown,
golden. I think I have a headache
until just now, shucked. A bird
lands on my head. No song.
It flies away. Back now. It sings.
Tells all. Secrets. I’m an old man
sitting in a grove, cane
in hand. Days long gone from
the war running faster than wind,
rifle at hand, dodging shots,
dressed in warrior garb, weapons, armor,
my hair pumiced. Bald now. No peace.
I kiss the wind and wish.
He in 1993 by Suze Bienaimee
He cast a long shadow
in the doorway as the sun
slipped on to the west
and warmed his face eighty-eight
years in the making glowing
gold in the fading sun and his memories.
He wasn’t out of the woods.
Well he wasn’t literally in them.
But just for a moment, let’s say
that it was woods. Dark, deep,
lost in the woods and berries.
He lived on berries, nuts, bark, grasses.
And he was Black, an African-
American preacher left on the land, stayed on
the land, cleared, for crops a hundred years
before. He choose the land even after
his congregation was gone. Mostly.
Services now every fourth Sunday; a handful
came from miles and miles to the one room country
clap-board church because he was that good. Be
good. He would preach like it was 1940 standing atop
his eight foot step-worn-grooved handmade cypress wood
ladder calling out: “Hallelujah” and “Resist Temptation”,
with hundreds there, seeming to float to the sky,
the overflow outside, singing high, low, clapping. A hush.
Now most moved to Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland
and couldn’t get to the South on Sundays. Flat. Mississippi
Delta flat. Lost in the Delta. It really doesn’t matter. Does.
Love. His perspective preserved him. He stood in the long
sun. He and his long shadow and the sun.
by Suze Bienaimee
CAW CAW CAW by Suze Bienaimee
That crow is calling me. Come,
come. Bring your body, your eyes,
I’ll give you wings and we will fly
far into the night tonight,
to hear the orchestra of stars
and never mind I’m feathered
and you are human and never
mind. You
there in the bus with that hat knit
over your ears. Eyes. It’s springtime.
It’s summertime. It’s eighty degrees.
You stepped on my foot when
you passed calling, calling, calling
Never mind, mind. Mind.
by Suze Bienaimee
TV GAME SHOW by Suze Bienaimee
There are few rules in Fast-talkers
Smart-talkers, but the point
seems to be to talk, win prizes,
guffaw, jump, even spin like a dervish
or vomit a little or not and to jump the host
like he’s a tree with a wild boar after
you. Anyway, I still don’t really under-
stand the talking part of this or any of it really,
but I went on it with a friend even though I’d never
seen it on TV. I didn’t jump
or hump the host or anyone else either. And the flashing.
It’s lights. Lights. Spinning. It was the strobe lights.
Maybe it was the questions: vapid,
spinning, flashing. The Fast-talkers seemed to be
winning. They said more words in a minute
than my team’s Smart-talkers. I said
nothing. And the room continued to spin
with words speeding past like vicissitudes and
numinous like I was reading from a circus motorcycle
in a cage and the whir was deafening. The speed,
the swirl, in a hurricane of words,
sounds impossible to hear, see, say. The spin
of the words. Spiraling. Swish. All those words.
So I shrieked: “STOP” and the Smart-talkers won.
by Suze Bienaimee
IDEAL CITIES by Suze Bienaimee
The path enters
the park in ideal
cities and carries
chatter clang
to hum and silence
as my mind flies
free and back out
again to horns,
steel drums, small
truck jangle and long
eighteen-wheelers screech
contort, wrestle the curb
captured —
wildebeest from the
prairie fast lane.
And some only heard once
now
jazz jam of traffic horns, lights
synapse in my brain
from my Carnegie Hall quality
front row stoop steps.
And in ideal
cities minds
are fresh, organic,
poison free.
And hearts? I keep
mine in a glass-
breasted-box.
Bloody.
Beating.
by Suze Bienaimee
MORE POEMS COMING IN 2018: Artist Book/Chapbook Poems and Paintings, by Suze Bienaimee. Spectrum Contemporary, Publisher
ART BY SUZE BIENAIMEE is in public and private collections in New York City, across the United States and abroad. Suze Bienaimee is currently the featured artist on ArtNow.org — a website with the purpose of presenting artists’ work free from the chaos and clutter of the internet — fine art for inspiration, questioning, wonder…
FOR INSPIRATION: StudioSeeds.com Conversation for inspiration — the seeds of creativity. What inspires artists, poets, environmentalists, scientists, doctors, historians, collectors — people?
TWEETS: Suze Bienaimee @StudioSeeds
INSTAGRAM: Suze Bienaimee @StudioSeeds_Inspire
TRIBUTE POEM: JabberSping.com Suze Bienaimee is the guest blogger in a tribute in honor and in memory of James Lee Byars, Artist
Suze Bienaimee is pronounced: Suzi Be-in-AH-may