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memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

memories of my ghost sista

Category Archives: A Girl and Her Submarine

barco (iii)

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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a girl and her submarine, conversations with imaginary sisters, dama de aguas oscuras, grave glow, loathy dark, santa muerte, sea poem, sonnet

Dama de aguas oscuras, last night

I dreamed of phosphor under a starlit

 

dome. Far above such unending ghost-light

the gales harangued (as gales do). Your half-wit

 

brat sat in low, loathy dark; wheezing down

the last air in his rust iron coffin.

 

Lady of dark waters, they say to drown

is abysmal, but if I can return

 

to you through your blessed sea or ill ocean,

then I’ll slip my box’d boat through opal waves

 

to rest my grave under high tide and slow

sea-swill. Lay me, if it’s your will, all shrunken,

 

alone, calling this dream fate. Glow of graves,

Santa Muerte, lost in the tidal flow.

][][

Notes:

The Bony Lady, Santa Muerte, has many names; “Dama de las aguas oscuras,” Lady of the dark waters, is one of them. The idea of this poem actually came to me several years ago when I was reading about the early attempts of the Imperial Japanese navy to build their own submarine. In 1910 one of their first prototypes sank during a training dive in Hiroshima Bay. Although the water was only 18 metres deep it proved impossible for the crew to escape while submerged. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Tsutomu Sakuma, patiently wrote descriptions of his sailor’s efforts to bring the boat back to the surface as their oxygen supply ran out. All of the sailors were later found dead at their stations when the submarine was finally raised the following day.

barco (ii)

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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a girl and her submarine, before the storm, Dama del Mar, gale's dirge, narco barco, santa muerte, sea poem, sonnet, squall's lament

Santa Muerte, I cannot pluck banjo

strings like Sal, nor compose on a guitar

 

like my brother. I do have magic, though,

of a different sort. I scrawl in the air

 

and the words jell and congeal. Even now,

Dama del Mar, with husky, haughty lips,

 

I reel across the deck each time we plough

through ten foot swells; each time salt water drips

 

in my eyes while sliding down swales to surge

up each peak. Below, in the engine room,

 

womb warm and sacred, one of your altars,

heart and cunt of this boat, keeps beat: gale’s dirge,

 

squall’s lament. Make this submarine my tomb

and I will gladly play shaman to sailors.

barco

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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mamá roja, narco barco, Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, poem, Poetry, pretty lady, santa muerte, sonnet, submarino del poeta

Santa Muerte, escúchame. Pretty

Lady, hear me. It’s not alms that I crave

 

but a submarine for my poetry.

Submarino del poeta. With wave

 

and tide, with cat and book, I’ll learn liquid

-rolling verbs, new words for endless motion.

 

Is a boat too much? I’m not craving blood.

Mother mine, mi madre, if your children

 

in FARC have one, might I too? They call theirs,

“Narco barco.” But mine will be your shrine

 

in the brine; a place to write, sail and pray

under a seafaring sky. Hear my prayers,

 

Pretty Lady. Mamá Roja Divine.

Grant me: Templo de la Santa Muerte.

][][

Notes:

We call her Our Lady of the Holy Death (Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte). She is a folk saint, unrecognized by the Catholic church but worshiped by both members of law enforcement and Narco cartels. Outcasts and outlaws are drawn to her for it is said that she answers prayers immediately and protects against violent death. I use several Spanish words and phrases in the poem. “Escúchame,” translates into, “listen to me.” “Narco barco.” is slang for any sort of boat used in drug smuggling. According to the BBC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) once utilized homemade submarines for that purpose, each costing around £1.3 million to build and could hold a crew of five.

zigga

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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a girl and her submarine, cunnilingus with a kick, erotic poetry, Great Thatch, poem, sonnet, st. elmo's fire, uncanny queen, zigga

Hit it hard. A simple request. First time?

Charging batteries at night off the Great

 

Thatch. We were both filthy with diesel grime,

crude oil, acid flashbacks. We had to wait.

 

We sat up top. We passed the zigga back

and fro; enthralled with each Uncanny Queen –

 

Sappho’s term for starlight. Waves made low thwack

-lap noise in the dark. You made low obscene

 

noise, too. Smut puppet. Slush galore. A tongue

curling you up. Translucent trails all glow

 

in the waves. Surge dripped from your thighs. Hit it

hard. You clung to the sub’s drunk hull. I clung

 

to your soused conch. Writhing wraiths. Purge and blow

while Saint Elmo’s Fire played across your clit.

][][

Notes:

It would be grand to run away to sea in a submarine built for two (plus cats). Great Thatch is a derelict of an island, part of the British Virgins in the Caribbean. It’s named after Edward Teach (the pirate called Blackbeard). St. Elmo’s Fire appears as blue lightning, all squirm-dazzle in the rigging of tall masted ships, heralding an approaching storm.

fever dream

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Prose

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1944, a girl and her submarine, children called to war, fever dream, Hiroshima, memories of dead girls, prose

In 1944 a ghost, a mossy gray-green girl once, stood at a village train station, waiting. I’ve heard this story before, how that she will be forever barely sixteen, a volunteer, leaving behind her hand-me-down dresses for a hint of military pantaloons and horsehide ankle-boots, her name stitched inside each new collar. A reflection appearing in the dark glass, unsubtle trying to tell me something as night rolls in.

My world is full of the memories of dead girls, how this one left behind the twisty roads of Mount Hiba, where Izanami, the goddess of creation and death, was buried, how the wind in the red elms over her parent’s house announced a storm, how brown leaves mixed with the elegance of her family’s graves. Are ghost stories maudlin?

I am unshaven, what do I know? Except that ahead of her all of the Pacific is burning, one town after the next will be consumed and finally Hiroshima, a mantra she can’t stop repeating.

Over and over she will practice introducing herself to her new shipmates (Yo-ro-shi-ku o-ne-gai-ita-shi-masu / Please take care of me), she will imagine how they must look, village girls just like her heading to a big city. She will look eagerly out the train window as it pulls into the stations at Osaka and then at Okayama, and then again and again on each of the platforms as they pass by.

Today it is a bullet train, sleek, crammed with office workers and it is impossible to imagine any memory staying alive long enough to ride on it while years before the girl rode out of the mountains and down to the sea and I can feel the rails singing failure, because there will always be children called to war while the sun sets over the mountains with the lights of Hiroshima spread out down below.

Quote

quote unquote

09 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, quote unquote

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quote unquote, The Imperial Japanese Submarine Handbook, Trust no demonic being under any circumstances

A smile of friendship is a baring of the teeth. So is a snarl of menace. It can be fatal to mistake the latter for the former. Trust no demonic being under any circumstances.

from The Imperial Japanese Submarine Handbook (1939)

age difference Alejandra Pizarnik anal sex Armenia Armenian Genocide Armenian translation art artist unknown Babylon Crashing blow job conversations with imaginary sisters cum cunnilingus drama drowning erotic erotica erotic poem erotic poetry Federico Garcia Lorca fellatio feminism finger fucking free verse ghost ghost girl ghost lover gif Greek myth grief Gyumri haiku homoerotic homoerotica Humor i'm spilling more thank ink y'all incest Japan Japanese mythology lesbians Lilith Lord Byron Love shall make us a threesome masturbation more than just spilled ink more than spilled ink mythology Onna bugeisha oral sex orgasm Peace Corps photo poem Poetry Portuguese Portuguese translation prose quote unquote reblog Rumi Sappho sheismadeinpoland sonnet sorrow Spanish Spanish translation story thank you threesome translation video Walt Whitman war woman warrior Yerevan

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