Category Archives: Poetry

lurid

19 Saturday Nov 2022

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You know, in films, when a Twist-jane lounges

by a flophouse window, in crepe mousseline

drawers, that she must be glum; crooning, “Diva’s

Cathouse,” and, “Heartbreak Hotel,” and, “Virgin

Funk.” It’s always ten past midnight; next door

your love-worn gunsel answers on his horn …

keeping it low. The sad are always poor

in films. We slouch since love makes us forlorn

and lean and use words like, “hooch,” and, “barfly,”

and, “skint.” Twist-jane, you say? What lurid slang.

Lurid? No, tragic. Like ten past doomsday,

crooning, “I’ll be so lonely,/ I could die;”

like in films where your gunsel blows hard pang

and grief and the only colors are gray.

][][

Notes:

In the noir thriller, The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sam Spade uses the Yiddish term, gunsel (“little goose”), several times to describe Wilmer, Kasper Gutman’s highly problematic “associate.” According to Hollywood lore, the term got by the censors because they thought that Bogart said, “gunman,” though in reality it’s a slur for pretty boys kept for sexual purposes by older men. This being 1940s Hollywood, Wilmer is all that, plus every other gay stereotype the producers could think of: effeminate, soft-spoken and, of course, a psychotic killer.

onesie

15 Tuesday Nov 2022

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“Suckle me,” you said, unzipping the front

of your snow suit. “These are all my hungers;

feed me.” First snow of the year and your cunt

is a damp hint under all these layers.

Under this snow the gods sleep. Passions creep

about in queer forms. Wreaths of fog circle

your head as I wriggle two fingers deep

inside. “So cold,” you groan. “Yes, be brutal,

make my sweet heat come.” Something is coming,

with my hand down your onesie and your face

pressed to my neck … perhaps something wicked?

Perhaps even now the gods are dreaming

about your heat and how my fingers trace

runes in your cum, raw and sacred like blood.

chums & the eight of cups

16 Friday Sep 2022

Posted by in Armenia, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Q: What is the meaning of the Eight of Cups?

For me, the Eight of Cups is all about how we deal with problematic situations … and by “deal” I mean running away from it. It is a card full of disappointment and regret. This isn’t about being judgmental; the world is full of horrible, no-win situations that only get worse the longer we stay with them. It’s why we have the term, “Survivor’s Guilt,” which often accompanies PTSD. Free will can only take us so far. Or, as Goldsmith reminds us: “He who fights and runs away/ May live to fight another day;/ But he who is battle slain/ Can never rise to fight again.”

That might be true, but often it does not heal a spirit broken by shame and guilt. They say you never know how you’ll react during war until you’ve actually fought in one. I haven’t. I’ve been nearby but that’s not the same. A memory of my time in Peace Corps came back to me yesterday so I wrote this:

All through red suns at dusk. All through dark suns

at dawn. Those low rumbles. I’ve heard thunder.

I’ve heard earthquakes. Neither sound deafens

nor numbs me utterly like gun powder.

Once, while drunk (I was always drunk) some chums

and I drove to the outskirts of Artsakh,

“to watch the fireworks.” Back when my eardrums

were still naïve over certain noise. Raw

and green. The border guards turned us away.

Being dumb we parked on a hill to eyeball

the «pff-boom» flashes down in the valley.

That’s called privilege: turning someone’s doomsday

into drinking games. Fireworks fell. Nightfall

fell. We drank … numbing their rage and fury.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting for decades over an area of land called Artsakh (formerly known as Nagorno-Karabakh). While geographically it has been claimed by Azerbaijan its inhabitants are Armenian and since the fall of the USSR Artsakh has been a democratic republic, mainly unrecognized by the rest of the world. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted from 1992–1994. I was living in Yerevan in 1997 while shelling and guerrilla warfare were still going on. It wasn’t the only military conflict happening in the area, though. That same summer I watch plumes of smoke billowing from the foothills around Mt. Ararat as Turkish troops battled Kurdish resistance fighters.

malaise

25 Thursday Aug 2022

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It’s a beastly, sleepless night. The question that stirred me was, “What did the King of Wands say to the King of Swords upon meeting for the first time?”

At first I thought the answer should be a riddle … but I’m sorta crap when it comes to those sort of things. Instead, I turned to Syssk and her tarot deck. Besides English, the cards are translated into two other languages. On the left is Galactic Basic (Syssk’s native tongue) and, on the right, Armenian (the language, Lord Byron once declared, best to use when talking to God). The phrase in the middle, where these two cards come together, reads, “Ամեն ինչ քաոս է” (All is chaos) … for what else is there when wind and fire comingle?

Often, though, I don’t find the linear story telling path of English all that useful. So many ideas get lost between Point A and Point B. Memories crowd in on me and I have grown to abhor what my higher self considers worthy memento mori. Instead, I will answer this question with a sonnet, when the truth that needs to be spoken is less horizontal and smooth and more rough and deviating:

To flee from this sultry night heat I slept

outdoors. A slight breath filled the night. Restless

from stray dog days I heard how the frogs wept

for their dead, too, while moonlight cast monstrous

shapes; but all I could think of was the blow

when the Daimyo of Wands, “Lord of the Song

of the Turbulent Fire,” and the Daimyo

of Swords, “Lord of Raging Winds,” ran headlong

at each other. Blows that glowed into flame.

Misuse of power? Gall? The worst of those two

Lords rests in me. I know I should, “Come praise

Visions that bring Wisdom;” instead, stiff shame

rattles the bamboo. Love, I called for you ––

I called and curs squelched back through the malaise.

fae

20 Saturday Aug 2022

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Twilit sea. Twilit swamp. Twilit bedroom.

Uncanny times. Uncanny sex; since all

sex is uncanny. From womb to the tomb,

I’ll show you. Go down by the broken wall,

down by the ash tree’s roots: blood and mud, clay

and moss. I’ll show you your loss. Unwombed thing;

unborn ash and ember when the moon’s fae

is on you. Before your birth blood, stirring,

the way all chaos stirs, forced you into

physical form, you lived with me, dearest.

It’s why I’ve been abstaining for thirteen

years. You were my loam, my shadowy blue

soil. I was your roots, your muscled cock, lust.

Now you’re flesh and I’m an eldritch obscene.

Notes:

While popularized by Lovecraft, the term, “eldritch,” means something strange or unnatural, especially in the way that it inspires fear … which, I suppose, means, “Eldritch Horror,” is a bit redundant.

buckle

15 Monday Aug 2022

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I learned to walk when the rolling sea ceased

to roll like the earth. I learned to sleep on

billows when you taught me about your creased

lips that tasted of lime. With your tampon

between my teeth I ached for that other

low tide. I didn’t blame the moon, that time,

when you pulled your swimsuit aside. “Lick her.”

I won’t blame it now. Let the sea’s stars climb

the sky, I will not drown while going down.

Without sea legs I drank my fill between

your hips. Rising. Falling. Groaning

of a ship’s hull about to buckle. Drown

with your tampon between my teeth. Sea-queen.

Argos-eyed. You are the vast Deep, moaning.

to: bureau of ocean energy management (boem)

06 Wednesday Jul 2022

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You have forsaken oil platforms dotting

the coast. Locals call them eyesores. I call

them a queer Muse. Sadly, they’re bewitching,

ghostly and waiting for the perfect squall

to rift under. Instead, let one live out

its long golden years as a shrine, an art

commune, a haven for all us devout,

seafaring witches. We’ll bring all our hearts

and Craft to this sanctum. Eh? No, listen:

it’s like H.D.’s Sea Garden –– we’ll transform

flotsam into lore. We’ll live without sin

or oil spills. We’ll turn other’s pollution

into the realm of maritime brainstorms

and myth-making. This is how myths begin.

gran frè

29 Wednesday Jun 2022

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Water laps against the hull, against swells,

against ebbing. In times of fight or flight

this tricked-out catboat has served very well;

enough room for us to curl up, out of sight,

in its bottom. Slow hours; your back pressed

against my chest, your bottom pressed against

my cock, my fingers pressed against your nest

of curls. Each time your nipples and clit tensed.

Each time you groaned, “Wi, gran frè!” Paul Gauguin

would have loved seeing you squirt up sea spray;

your blue-coral hue soaking my fingers ––.

When we sail back to Jacmel, your cousin

will frown at these new stains, at how you sway

as you walk, at how your smile now lingers.

][][

Notes:

In Haitian Creole, Gran Frè translates into, “Big Brother.” Jacmel is a port city on Haiti’s southern coast. A catboat has a single sail set well forward in its hull. Winslow Homer’s 1870s painting, “Breezing Up (A Fair Wind),” features a catboat riding into the wind. Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist artist whose work featured Polynesian women in various stages of undress. 1900s Paris couldn’t get enough.

this

03 Tuesday May 2022

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

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Now words are rare. Whatever synapses

let in the Divine are misfiring. ––

Neurons fail. Neural pathways do not please.

Now words are a struggle. I’m struggling

just to write this. Once I said I’d go turn

a tramp steamer into a library. ––

Sail from port to port, sharing that stubborn

love of books with all who live by the sea.

Now I’m struggling just to write this. Now

I sit in my chair and –– stare. There are no

books here. Words, like the water, turn brackish

each time I go down. Let me drown, somehow,

instead of this decline. Instead I know:

first I floundered, now flail and soon perish.

pestilence

20 Wednesday Apr 2022

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Rise as the nightly scourge of a sanguine

people—Illusive as a ghostly stroke

across one’s cheek. Not a spring-heeled villain;

be that other sort of pestilence—smoke

smitten, unfettered, the Azalea Crypt

of quick caresses that makes flesh quiver.

I think of the moon bent; how cum once dripped

from your smile. A conked smile that grows fainter

in my mind as all memories grow faint

when you’re no longer haunted by a bent

figure pressed to the window. I know why

you’re gone. A scourge would need to be a saint

to slake my passions. For nightmares hellbent

on wet dreams I am where they go to die.