Author Archives: babylon crashing

faux

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

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“I too Analyze,” the spambot confessed,

“with Safe and Sexy cam models!” “Big Dick

 

Trickle.” “Dajuana Cox.” “Mother Knows Breast.”

So much for my Shakespeare essay. Type, “Schlick,”

 

in by mistake and whole new worlds open

up. It makes research a tad hard, bastards.

 

Still, I’m sure friend Spambot had lots of fun

crafting wretched sex puns from all my words.

 

Kinda respect such asinine zeal

to the Absurd. Genet would’ve been proud.

 

Flarf. Faux Joejobs. Spoems. Ass-‘n-9. None

of it sparks joy … like Dick Trickle. Surreal

 

but not clever. Cold but not kinky. Loud

but not sublime. Zealot but not shaman.

][][

Notes:

Jean Genet is one of my favorite petty criminals and playwrights. Champion of Theatre of the Absurd he wrote The Thief’s Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers (where Divine, of Pink Flamingos fame, got her name). The idea of this poem came from Steven Frank’s Spamusement! which took subject lines from spam emails and turned them into single-panel gags. Flarf, Joejobs and Spoems do the same thing but, as I’ve often found, without the humor and self-awareness that makes Frank’s work a joy to read.

nostalgia

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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Around the time when earthly pinks and pearl

had been drained from the sky and the crows rose

 

in their trees to caw gray into the world

I stirred in nightmare, in sodden nightclothes,

 

in that sick sweat I get when pneumonia

curls cute in my lungs. I type in a fog

 

while in bed, one fingered, the nostalgia

of lust both heavy and out of reach. “Flog

 

a dead horse,” you text back. “Lust is all that

you write about.” Perhaps. These new gray days

 

of crow caws and ice match my libido.

Who do I turn to? Even my tomcat

 

retreats. Once I called lust prayer and could praise

pleasure. Now it’s less grace and more deathblow.

études

28 Monday Dec 2020

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Climax, crescendo and the Devil’s joy

wrung from her violin in the café.

 

Later she said: “Oui. You’re ah ‘ice fuck toy.

I weehl steahl you.” Soon she turned to risque

 

tunes coaxed from Paganini’s cursed fiddle;

four strings hinting at uncanny glamour.

 

“Oui. Zat despair een ‘is eyes, unable

to speak because, you know, lairynx can’cair,

 

as I slipped eet from ‘is ‘ands.” The dying,

she said, were, “ah ‘oot,” to fuck with. “Love eet

 

with zair, ‘but mon Dieu loves me’, attitudes.

Pourquoi?” Hers was a fugue seducing

 

glamour and the rest just,“’ippy bullsheet.”

Hints of crassest sex from refined études.

][][

NOTES:

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was an Italian violin virtuoso and believed by many to have sold his soul to the Devil for a legendary red violin. I go back and forth as to whether regional accents help a poem or hinder other people from understanding it. The truth is that I have a lot of fun figuring out various accents but there’s no point in writing something no one else can read. Here’s the translation if any of my fake Parisian words confuse:

Climax, crescendo and the Devil’s joy wrung from her violin in the cafe. Later she said: “Yes. You’re a nice fuck toy. I will steal you.” Soon she turned to risque tunes coaxed from Paganini’s cursed fiddle; four strings hinting at uncanny glamour. “Yes. That despair in his eyes, unable to speak because, you know, larynx cancer, as I slipped it from his hands.” The dying, she said, were, “a hoot,” to fuck with. “Love it with their, ‘but my God loves me’, attitudes. But why?” Hers was a fugue seducing glamour and the rest just,“hippy bullshit.” Hints of crassest sex from refined études.

constraints

27 Sunday Dec 2020

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Being Lilith’s child the young priest, pervert,

called you Vava, as in the ancient word,

 

Vavashot: Lust. Lilith, though, was desert

born and fell in love with the sea’s mothered

 

magic, naming you Tsovinar: She Strides

Upon Waves. Leave that sucka’ with his psalms

 

and scant faith, cousin. We’ve both heard the tide’s

long call. We’ve both felt that pull. Nothing calms

 

me the way She and tempests do. We’ve shed

all our cotton constraints at the shoreline.

 

Man-made gods have no sway out here. We’ve tread

upon billows and called the brine, “all mine.”

 

Leave dry land to priests who think that they know

something. They mistake lust for undertow.

][][

Notes:

In the pre-Christian Armenian pantheon, Tsovinar (Ծովինար) is the goddess of water and forces the rain to fall with her rage. Lilith (Լիլիթ) gets associated with whatever fears and phobias men have about sex at the time; thus she is described as being everything from night-haunt succubus to feminist bisexual to free-spirit divorcee. This, of course, says nothing about Lilith herself, who came from the deserts of what is now modern day Syria to the shores of the Black Sea. In one ancient translation it says, “Լիլիթը հայտնաբերեց ծովը/ Lilith discovered the sea.” It says nothing of her sexual appetites, her loathing of Abrahamic religions or even her being the, “Mother of the Unholy Folk … a Mixed Multitude,” that she’s suppose to have given birth to up in the mountains. All that is racist and sexist modern fantasy. The only thing I feel comfortable in repeating is, “Լիլիթը հայտնաբերեց ծովը/ Lilith discovered the sea.”

revolveress

22 Tuesday Dec 2020

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Because rural roads have no lights. Because

rainstorms meant no one would follow. You parked

 

the car, turned toward me; as if menopause

ever cooled passion. I’d yet to be marked

 

with toff, hormones, my hex’d sex. Sleepovers

with your son’s chums left me all pearl-handled,

 

revolveress. Barking irons. Splatters

on your grip, your neck, your grin. Rains drizzled

 

on the bonnet while within you wiped from

your palm maelstrom. I said O and eased out

 

into ancient dark no one could follow.

You said, “Hmm?” Mishap: once I called you mom.

 

You laughed. Your gravestone calls you a devout

mother. Good. There’s no rain these days, just snow.

][][

Notes

Victorian slang has so many quaint concepts that never get the love that they deserve in this modern age. For example, a revolveress is a woman who, “uses a pistol with a great degree of surety.” (from, Passing English of the Victorian era, a dictionary of heterodox slang, 1885)

dispel

20 Sunday Dec 2020

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Dry ground and graveyards pale next to the sea’s

verge when uncanny malforms crawl forth each

 

night and roam. The same infected city’s

haze of lights that drown the stars cannot reach

 

into that dark, cannot dispel horrors

that have only ire toward our neon-fused

 

age and benign witcheries. The breakers

mark me as a false witch, how I’ve abused

 

my gifts for filthy lucre and coinage.

There is no grimoire for sale that’ll let us

 

command the tide. Coven’s pride. Ghasts that feed

on brine-caked bones know this. You can’t sage smudge

 

the sea, they guffaw. They name us hubris

and crawl from the surge at the scent of greed.

resolve

19 Saturday Dec 2020

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It’s not like we’re puppet and puppeteer;

I’m balls deep in yet you grimly retain

 

control. The sheath of your ass. The severe

gape left behind in your behind like pain

 

each time I nearly pull out. Each time you

grip the sheets so that your daughter, drawn by

 

your cries, crouches in the grove of bamboo

to watch the living play. We could still ply

 

her with love, let her sleep between us, but

you can’t see ghosts. Your world is her gravestone

 

and grim resolve; rough sex won’t return her,

or burn this pain out of you, meat puppet.

 

There’s no strings for that. When you cum you moan

out something like, “daughter, daughter, daughter.”

requin

18 Friday Dec 2020

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Far-off wave, depraved. Nali leans over

the edge of the dugout, shakes her rattle.

 

She calls: “Big Sister let my Small Sister

come to me.” She does: out from the coral

 

shadows a shadow rising, a shadow

vast, vast as the tide’s rip, twisting current,

 

rising into song. I was there. I know

you don’t think women can do this. Pregnant

 

ghosts will scorn you for that. They love Nali,

though. I rowed. She sang and Femme de requin

 

came to have her snout rubbed, to feast on prayer.

Sisters swam here until men trawled this sea

 

down to its ghosts. The price of a shark fin

is when you call and only ghosts answer.

][][

Notes:

Femme de requin is French for shark woman. The inspiration of this poem came from watching Dennis O’Rourke’s 1982 documentary, The Sharkcallers of Kontu.

flares

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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She was dead and encased her exquisite

curves in the sort of sequin disco-flares

 

called posh before I was born. Her velvet

tube top bled. Her long cadaverous hair

 

couldn’t hide the hole where the girder

had punched clear through. “Let’s do lascivious

 

things,” she’d said, rising. It’s hard. We linger,

hoping for love. The living see darkness

 

in sex and quail. The dead are beyond doubt

now that it’s too late. Randy ghost of ghastly

 

flares, you have spawned unease. If lusting for

dead things is freakish then let me freakout,

 

old-school style, with kisses, with sodomy.

Fuck’s crux. Putting the core back in hardcore.

fettered

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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Night frosts. Fettered gales. Sauna sun rise. Steam

fit for queens and concubines. After school

 

you came, brought her with talk of romps, extreme

and droll. “Not in her rump,” was your one rule

 

as I slipped out of you. “Only in mine.”

All day the sauna’s pine walls soaked up heat.

 

When you two arrived, frigid as frost’s shine,

we puffed and passed, shucking off our clothes. Cheat

 

ice-sleet like this. Mellow lay, they say. Stoned,

you laughed when she impaled herself. I laughed

 

when you kissed the spot where the two of us

joined. She laughed and came. Others have condoned

 

this. Meh. You asked to learn my queer witchcraft;

craft built from libertines and the Goddess.