Category Archives: Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow

sick months

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Last year the sugar-making moon arrived
like my neighbors, who rendered fat, boiled sap,

finished their winter-time tales of how they thrived
in lean months. This April, though, has turned crap:

no sap runs, no tap drips, no urge itches.
The dead keep count of the throngs arriving

and each day passes without cure. “Curses
cest by gods,” some say. “Th’ End is Comin’,”

they say; as if there’s never been horror shows
before; as if spring won’t follow winter.

Maple, ghosts and spigots: “’tis not sugar
‘at kills,” in these sick months … just our sorrows.

Neighbors endure with their tales and laughter
and I listen, lean with this sick hunger.

red thread

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Passings and Death Notes, Poetry, sonnet

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— after a loss.

If love is what we make of it, then what
counts is not who we’ve lost but everyone

waiting for us at the end. “Love, spirit,
baby cat, I’m so proud of you. It’s done.

You’re safe. Sleep. Wait for me. I will follow.”
“His heart has stopped,” the vet said. I woke to

a strange empty bed. No nuzzling. No
medicine to prep. No deep sing-song mew

for food. Maybe my faith (“Love, wait for me.”)
is wrong? Maybe there’ll be no one waiting?

It’s hard when all you have is a red thread
joining you two. My altar looks lonely

without him sprawled in a sunbeam, grooming
his dark coat, burning with flecked shades of red.

plead

10 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, sonnet

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Last night, two a.m. at the hospital,
with your loved one’s blood on your jeans. Ruin

and his screaming are still stuck in your skull
the next morning, all that noise while someone

tried to save his life. I brought him home. He
slept pressed close to my side. Can a tumor

grow and bloom so fast in days? They showed me
some X-rays. What difference does it matter

if it wasn’t there on Tuesday? It’s there
now. Death takes in threes: I lost Kriszti last

week and maybe J.R. today. Then who?
One more shock. Two weeks ago I would swear

life was good but pain is subtle and vast
and I can only plead: “not yet, not through.”

best

02 Saturday Nov 2019

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Today I took my cat back to the vet
so that they can try and save his kidneys.

Three days. They will labor against this threat
for three days. “We’ll try our best.” But kitties

die just like the rest of us and, “our best,”
often isn’t good enough. After three

days then what? For years he slept on my chest.
For years he was my love, my refuge, he

witnessed what no one else has, what no one
else will. Three days of waiting, of patience,

of fear, of, “I did my best.” Is it wrong
when we say that? Grief, not sin, damns us. None

who read this will come in time. Let absence
break me. Today here, love. Tomorrow gone.

midway

24 Thursday Oct 2019

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“Midway through this maddening life,” you know
how this goes, “I found myself unredeemed

in a dark wood.” The “right road” was wrong. No.
The road was gone, as in, damned. What I dreamed.

What I blasphemed. Lovers of words must name
horror. I have swallowed demons before,

felt their workings in me. “Clock: tock-tock.” Same
shame. Same grief. Damn me with a touch of gore

on the cogwheel. Things slow down. In your heart
there is a murmur. You know how this goes.

X-rays show blood clots. Demons I can’t squeeze
out of you. That is my horror, sweetheart,

I’ll lose you midway … despite all of those
prayers and tears and pathetic “don’t leave me”s.

that question

12 Saturday Oct 2019

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In a way it’s just like loving a ghost.
Even on our “date” you vanished long

enough to be rude. “Only you,” you boast;
but as I read your new posts am I wrong

to doubt that truth? The problem with the dead
is that they don’t change. You can beg, threaten

and wail but it changes nothing. I’ve said
I hate not trusting you, but that question

refuses to die when I read your posts.
Why hire a soothsayer when I know I

deserve better? — Ghosts might even agree,
they just refuse to stop; that’s why they’re ghosts.

That’s why I’ve finished turning a blind eye.
Little ghost, keep posting. I set you free.

sirloin

11 Friday Oct 2019

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I’d hoped I’d have no need to get upset
though I’ve been others’ sirloin before, burned

outside but juicy in. Juice they won’t get.
I stopped being eatable when they earned

all their scorn; insisting that I just don’t,
“get it.” True, there was a lot I never

got from them, which is why they’re not a note
I sing, a name I’ll claim as a lover

who did me wrong. They’re dead space I cast down
like a jealous god; heartbroken to find

out what they did when I wasn’t around.
Odd how the hungry ones get left behind.

I’d say: Tell me that I’m wrong about you.
Show me that’s something you can even do.

cum mum

13 Wednesday Mar 2019

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Legs in the air after chemo. Truck seat
as pink as the cracks in your missing breast.

Back then our Lover’s Lane was the short street
near school. Adults were callous and depressed,

except you, except: “not there, pet, my ass …
put it there.” In the distance the school bell

rang as you came, as I flunked out of class —
as your muscle phat squeezed my cock farewell.

“Call me yummy mummy. Call me your cum
mum.” That was snark but I didn’t know snark

then — just plain child’s play and being wanted.
Plain as Big-O, Big-C, finding freedom

in who you fuck far too late. Plain as dark
in hurt flesh, brittle bones, corrupted blood.

coup d’etat

03 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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That’s the knife called: She Slits Open.
Once I sang that I’d slice open my gut,

reach in and drag out loops of intestine
if it ever got that bad. Before smut

and my sonnets I lived in Las Vegas,
crossroad of ghosts. I carried her with me

all the time: at the Shrine of the Goddess,
in class, at the gym. I was one sissy

hellbent on going out like Mishima.
Honor is queer, though: once it got that bad

only survival could prove them all wrong —
prove my fey soul is strong — Cosmic Vulva

strong — strong as the ghosts calling me comrade.
Stronger than this old belly-slitting song.

NOTE:
Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author and literary luminary, obsessed with beauty, homoeroticism and death. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his secret militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took the commandant hostage and tried to persuade the soldiers there to join in overthrowing the new pacifist government in a coup d’etat. When this was unsuccessful, Mishima committed seppuku, ritual suicide by cutting open his belly.

She Slits Open

old school

09 Saturday Feb 2019

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Lift your skirts and face the wall. Such good pain,
De Sade’s pain, takes a cane to make your pawg

wobble. With three strokes I’ll break you, again.
There’s an art to the trounce, the wax, the flog.

It’s how I flayed «Z» into your tush. Blush
with what smolders under your petticoat.

First the gush of endorphins, then the rush.
We drop loony toons, microdot, blue goat

so that old-school worlds open. Once I kissed
you. That was wrong. It’s hard being discrete

when it comes to craft but splattering cum
like paint is absurd. A flick of my wrist

brings forth new terror. New wisdom. New heat
freeing you from flesh. Bondage is freedom.