Category Archives: Poetry

blithe fish

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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mother ghost in a mother sea

Drop of dusk on Dyer Island, she pulls
her maw gallows, up the rays of her eyes.
Tubarão mãe, requin-mère, ma haai: bulls
make way and children scatter. There are spies
in the kelp off the cape. Swan-like, dusking
in the waves, she comes. We fear as blithe fish,
never leaving the sand and the landing,
killing her when we can. We are hellish
to that mother shark. I, young Cassandra,
cannot get you to listen. I have failed.
You do not listen. I speak of absence
in the waves. Soon the wharves of Africa
will be empty where these sea ghosts once sailed.
Saint shark hymning in the myth-hung distance.

notes:

Dyer Island, located near Gansbaai, South Africa, is famous for having one of the most dense populations of Great White Sharks in the world.

Tubarão mãe, requin-mère, ma haai are the words for “mother shark” in Portuguese, French and Afrikaans, respectively.

In Greek mythology Cassandra was cursed by Apollo with the gift of prophecy that no one would believe in or listen to.

zaptieh

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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“Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

Living and forever and me. Heh. Heh.
Heh. The drums of Hell kept beating —beating
—I fought next to General Zaptieh.
She was given the right rear flank, forcing
us to a stand still. I though my mind once
numb. As if all that heaven were a bell,
and that bastard —But an ear. I, silence,
some strange race born from a queer love, queer hell,
a queer fate —Our orders were to attack.
Instead we made a stand at the bridge. Drown
and drown in waves swept. Again and again
we fell. Rotten fate beaten falling back
through plank fell, faith fell, we dropped down and down
—We hit a world, dying and knowing —then—

matter

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Killer mine. Transformed—rendered into this
confining body, this bodiless brain,
abusive hole I smell the flood pain, bliss
of the carnal after a hurricane
the waves the pull the wailing to cover
letters written poems full. Sentinel
come to me loosen these brief moments blur
into this blood. Plain, like tryst, like carnal,
like sun. You believe in three gods and one.
You say chromosomes matter. What matter
comes from dark labyrinth? Matter: now please
come. A night bright, a black star, a dead sun.
Matter. What is this? Killer transformed. We’re
brainless, bodiless, a whole new species.

you’re blue

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Make it quaint like crack pipes, blow for cheap grace,
—resin residue, —dew in the eyes, —pink
eye, —this pleasure dripping over your face
in gobs. I drink and I drink glob I drink.
This high will do. Vodka then gin, thus we
begin. Do not make it ugly. Drivel
does not impress. Make it blade, a belly
cutting cute. Make it the only odd skull.
The last thing they’ll ever find of. You’re blue
by thy nature. Blue by thy blow. I can’t
care where you went to school, fool. What awards
you got and sold. Which old hippie you blew.
Scare me new. Blow my lid. Make me recant
poetry. I want not chaff knives but swords.

joy

02 Monday Sep 2013

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Thief. Grief. I’m a servant of the dog star,
the red vixen, the copper bitch. I’ve come
to bleed you dry. With an ax, a crowbar,
fingers, nails, I will reach inside. Your dumb
heart will slow, quiet now, a sulking bag
gone limp in my hand. Then I will replace
it with winter’s starved moon, that silver jag
in the sky that can never be full. Space
is full of holes. You have just one. Why grieve
over joy? Why grieve while singing this song?
The skylark knows this joy — so does the thrush
— that this world is best, we know, we believe,
without you in it. That agreed fact; long
joy of your absence. That smiled-upon hush.

skull crack

01 Sunday Sep 2013

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hidden vice—infidelity is dull
only cancer does not change even that
changes the need to feel guilty that skull
crack that let all these passions in. Hellcat.
Diamond dog. Nightmare. I have ridden you
all. So you fuck? you fuck that’s not divine
the more abrasive faith the more see-through
soul made-up by the mind, that is not mine,
nothing is mine. I leave empty. I leave
with a belly wound, dripping tripe. Grave dust
my guts, throne of faith. This play on release
madam will not do. The ghosts leave to grieve.
Grieving will not do. Just this. Just this. Just
this. You small thing. Pax now, O fool, soul, peace.

dirty snow

01 Sunday Sep 2013

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Then I would bear it clench myself and die
steeled with my pilgrimage’s pain the still eyes
in the dead face demon’s daughter beauty
born of love love indeed these carcass flies
and ash and funereal oak. Green bud, white
leaf, red snow. Tumble-down-dumble. The blade
lets slip my guts, cries havoc, as her night-
stained hands find a hold in my blood betrayed
O but why a big bush of elders. Dies
my why my why my why penetrating
deeper, dies my demons and false cherubs.
Dies this new faith, a three-person’d passion.
In the dirty snow you will find nothing
but meal worms fed on my blood and fat grubs.

her foal obscene

31 Saturday Aug 2013

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And know there is more that you can’t see, can’t
hear, can’t know — except in movements. Inside
you it wants to get out. Like song. Like chant.
Shaman knows. Steadily it grows. Denied
as birth it will rip you apart. This thing.
This word. This language. Wretched wind that swept
space clean. Breathe in. We die in blood. Bleeding
inside. I wept because you were. I wept
riding the nightmare and her foal, obscene,
there is always more. Sister, I know why
I stayed. That movement. Fear. Can you forgive
me? I cannot. I scream. I scream. I scream
because we are all born in blood, and die
in blood, but for you, sister, please just live.

wither bone

31 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry

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Dumb glutton after reading Lolita
she looked once at her daughter and then fled.
Inamatus, bangtail, poor mute, daughters
of Lot pregnant with their leering father’s
observe this erotic Lent—and I thought
she had liked this gamahuching better

than she did. Than I do. Is there no more
exquisite a conjugation in our crude
anatomy than this where poetry
dovetails with the inevitable mandrake,
the Nebuchadnezzar, the three-penny

upright? To me, to me, to me the most
endearing is its unsuitableness
of such in books, magazines and Best Of
anthologies; and, conversely, the chief
wonder in hell (wither bone, I’m sometimes
transported) are these three sticky fingers
that I bring with me everywhere. Bite hard.

catch fire girl

30 Friday Aug 2013

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Blind, we follow her slant flaming sparks, spray
metal to the hammer, pound out sculptured
what, we do not know. A girl that can weigh
potency, that fell in love with the word
anvil. One who speaks to the heart of coals.
Make my hands large and sinewy, a prayer.
Let me dream in blade and sculpture. The soul’s
work is rare. How many can find rapture
over mallet sizes? Turn steel to doubt,
fizzle it, turn it soft again? Her swing
of sledge. Her smithy grindstone. The crack-smack
of each blow, blurring, sending us far out
as she beats and beats and beats, then, sweating,
the catch fire girl at the forge tows us back.