Category Archives: Illustration and art

wait

23 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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waiting for themyscira

waiting for themyscira

* * *

“He says, it
cannot be done,
But it is given,
(and mostly as punishment).”
— Wong Amy, A Lesson

You might have left for the Himalayas
or the island of Themyscira, somewhere

I won’t go. But you didn’t. The Muses
know I will never find the rhyme to share
your fate with the world. You were a creature

of war. I valued peace, provided I
didn’t have to give up any leisure

comforts. I know why you left. I know why

I stayed, too. The flip side. I use to brag
that long ago I’d be burned as a witch.
How posh. What airs. But that ignores our fate.

You will always know blood lust, while I’ll drag
my feet in this world and the next. I’ll bitch

but you’ll hear the call. You’ll go and I’ll wait.

* * *

Note:

Themyscira is the fictional island where, according to DC Comics, Wonder Woman and her sister Amazons came from.

um tarot suja: the fool

22 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Illustration and art, tarot

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Um Tarot Suja: Fool [final draft]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [final draft]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #1]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #1]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #2]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #2]

I had been working on a tarot deck a couple of years ago, Um Tarot Suja, a sex magic deck (or at least that was the idea going into the project). I wanted to stay relatively faithful to the Rider-Waite deck. So, as they say in The Sound of Music, we’ll start at the beginning.

It helps me, at least, to think of the tarot as a narration of a spiritual journey, each card progressing down the path, as it were. The first card, The Fool, has a care-free youth starting out with his/her head in the sky, not paying attention to the abyss at they are about to plunge into. At their feet is a small animal (usually a yapping dog) which tries to get the Fool’s attention. We’ve all been there, starting out on a project full of excitement and idealism, having no idea what is in store for us.

My first two attempts (the bottom two cards) had the Fool stepping out into the (literal) darkness of the unknown. There isn’t a cliff, just the nothingness of the unknown, stepping into a blackness that has no form or shape. In the two cards both women have their hands stretched out to their spirit guides, a cat and a fox (what can I say? I like cats and foxes) and while technically either card to constitute as a Fool, neither really satisfied.

The final draft has the Fool transported to a unpleasant, godforsaken alien landscape (Utah) and the abyss, the start of our journey, is a stairway to (wait for it) the heavens. The Fool must take her first step up the stairs and into the unknown, accompanied by her guide, but once she does she can go anywhere in the universe she wishes, both literally and metaphorically.

[crypter] [crypter] [crypter]

22 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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gynoid

“Crypter, crypter, crypter.” “Clear.” It is right

here. The whorl in my ear. The whirl in my
dread. A smear of Morning Star by starlight.

A touch of evil, perhaps. Which is why
it is hard to believe in it. Evil.

I’ve taught it to sit, roll over, play dead.
I read it Shakespeare. It has no menstrual
cycles, though it leaks. What flows is blood red
and grease. Gears. Oil. It’s queer innards. But “it”?

Designed to look female. I’ve been inside.

Touched its cogs. Tightened screws. It just says, “shit,

man, a machine is a machine …” Its cried.

I know that. Tears are also tears. I know

there is more here than chrome and an afro.

one more reason george lucas does not deserve your money

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry News

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female rebel never to be 1

female rebel never to be 2

female rebel never to be 3

Three rebels that didn’t make the cut.

* * *

In the first movie none of the heroes had skin darker than goat’s milk and there was only one token female, but she needed saving (which is odd, since Princess Leia, being Luke’s twin, theoretically could have saved herself if she had wanted to “trust her feelings.”) In the second movie it turns out there is only one black man in the entire universe … and he’s a con man. In the third movie there are some women with no speaking lines that appear in the beginning of the movie but they’re answering telephones in the background (making them more or less intergalactic secretaries, you’ve come a long way, baby). Women do not fly spaceships in the Star Wars universe. They don’t get glowing swords or have heroic music played in the background as they blow things up. Space … it’s a man’s place.

Except that this wasn’t always true. It might have taken George Lucas three films to get there but there were three female rebel pilots in the last of the movies, which were cut in the last minute. Huh.

You can say the movies reflected 1970s thinking, if you want to. You can say they helped expand the science fiction genre and gave children in China jobs by cranking out all the plastic crap Lucas sold (I’m not joking here, if you bought a toy in the 1970s with “made in China” on the back it came from a sweatshop) but selling Star Wars to Disney for $4 billion dollars? That’s just obscene.

like cherry blossoms swift we fall

19 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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like cherry blossoms swift we fall

If she dies? She has her hand on the hilt,
aware of herself; aware of what she
must not do, not yet. Nothing has been split
out of her, yet. She knows of the red sea
and the purple stars. Her father told her
about the witch-queens; how that long ago
one of them helped save the world. Her mother
taught her the “Way of the Sword,” Bushido
and how death in war is the greatest gift
any samurai could hope for. What’s death
next to letting down your mother? Afraid
does not work here. “Like cherry-blossoms, swift
we fall,” the poem goes. With a deep breath,
she took a step forward and drew her blade.

* * *

Note:

Bushido, “the way of the warrior,” is a feudal Japanese word for the samurai’s code of ethics. It has been compared to the Western concept of chivalry. As a philosophy, it stresses loyalty, martial arts and that death in battle is the greatest gift a warrior might receive.

one-girl outlaw

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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spirit daughter of oya

spirit daughter of oya

* * *

I’ve seen willowy women before but
she was different. More barky with green sap.
There is a tale of a female bandit,
our one-girl outlaw, who had the mishap
to see Oya (she of the black horse tail
and the swirling skirts that cause hurricanes)
undressing. Oya is more than female,
more than male. She is both, neither. She trains
Yoruba women in the art of war.
Some say Oya turned the one-girl outlaw
into a tree, which I doubt, since others
say the girl died in Lokoja’s bazaar
due to a hex. I’ve been to Lokoja,
that makes sense. It’s a city of horrors.

* * *

Notes:

Lokoja is located in central Nigeria, a port city on the Niger river.

Oya is a West African goddess of war, cemetery gates and personification of the Niger River.

a long moan of a word

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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"erica jong, 1971" collage work (2013)

“erica jong, 1971” collage work (2013)

I.
Dear Erica. You said, “woman’s a long
moan of a word with a man in it.” Damn.
Girl, I pronounce girl, “vrouw die.” That strong
Dutch word that ends in murder. Like a gram
of coke, it is how we use it that counts.

II.
Like fire storm whirlwinds. Like The Madonna
of Blood, who serves up slaughter by the ounce.
We’re all guilty of myth-making. Mama

III.
Poet, your daughters wander this dream world.
I’ve seen them (not once with a man inside).
Dreaming is all I’m good at. Demeter
went to hell for her daughter, found her curled
in the pit. I want to wake up. I’ve tried.
I’ve tried. Anything for my big sister.

* * *

Notes:

* Erica Jong is an American author, known for her works, Fear of Flying, Shylock’s Daughter and Seducing the Demon. We all must give praise to our literary matriarchs, as it were. Without her book Fruits & Vegetables paving the way I would not be writing what I write today. It is as simple as that.

* According to Google translate, the word “girl” can be rendered “vrouw die.” So they say.

that’s enough for me

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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putney in wintertime.

putney in wintertime.

London and a diet of shrimp curry,
Southern Comfort, hashish; I can recall
my poor hip pressed up against your icy

wall. We spooned all “winta.” Your Gravesend drawl
made me giggle. We loved Aladdin Sane.

I won’t list faults. Complaining kinda blows.

Why should I complain about love? Complain
it did not work? As if no beasts, heroes,
singers or thinkers ever once fucked up.

We don’t talk about redheaded witchcraft
or She Who Cannot Be Named. Talk is cheap.

Betrayal poems cheaper. I’m grown up.
You’re dead … so what? Once you told me you laughed
with joy as I lay in your arms, asleep.