catching up on my backlog

So. Here I am catching up on my backlog of poetry I wrote last week/weekend.

This first one was from an exercise where we had to use the first and last lines from other people at random.
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The cancer of corruption oozed through the city's orifices-

The growth was not as strange
As what caused it;
Flowing through the natural
Impulses in us all
The body is sick
The cells revolt;
Organism subject to
Individual will.

The body kept alive by electrical pulses
In Dr. Zhivago's Fabulous, Wonderful
Museum of Things Magnificent and Strange:
A beautiful woman, neck slightly distended
Hanging, by guy wires gently suspended,
The puppeteer's art is here magnified;
The lady in white seems almost alive.
A turning assemblage of cogs and flywheels
Gives her the semblage of thoughts and feelings.
A bladder of air in her throat
Makes her seem to breathe and choke-
For in this pale-eyed fantasy
The corpse is paraded about in a play.

To set the stage, the voltage is
Applied to our delicate subject.
Our audience confused to cause and effect:
Our lady seems to react and move.

At that moment, as a discreet signal, the back door swung open and Desdemona received her second shock.

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innocent love

In the shower this morning I had some difficulty
Thinking of you that way, for the first time;
I tried but you seemed to slip away;
I tried but I couldn't put you in that frame.
You're a watercolor to me now,
When I see you, when I talk to you,
A distant lifeline on the phone.
Last night we were close enough to touch,
I only thought to hold you, keep you safe -
My thoughts of you are innocent, awkward,
Like a kid. I can't imagine
What to do.