Category Archives: Poetry

nothing’s shocking

03 Sunday Mar 2013

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i’m gonna kick tomorrow
— Jane’s Addiction

I put on powder blue socks this morning.
The snow is melting. The puddles, rosy
with the sheen of gasoline, are calling
me to come on out. My final empty
cup leaves me well-caffeinated. First wine
and then tea; I’m giving up my vices.
Perhaps my discomfort at such benign
temperance shocks me? No. When the muses
whispered to me: that was shocking. College
shocked me too. Today, inexorable
as it seems, my hands do not shake. The gods
seem far away. Pictures, a quick montage
of words, make me drunk, fill my head, baffle
me that I somehow survived all these odds.

a friend who will stay

03 Sunday Mar 2013

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I pour myself a drink;
no friends for company
— Li Bai, “drinking
alone with the moon.”

A thief has been drinking my wine. I think
it is Li Bai. I thought drowning after
falling overboard stone drunk would make drink
somehow less bewitching, but a lover
of the moon and wine will always love moons
and wines. My poor Li Bai found you cannot
hold the moon’s reflection or a typhoon’s
fury while on the water. Once I caught
him in my cup, offered him sex instead
but he’s a cold-eyed and dispassionate
ghost at the best of times and turned away.
So I’ll remain sober and old deadhead
here will remain dead drunk. Such is our fate.
At least now he has a friend who will stay.

* * *

Note:

Li Bai is regarded as one of the greatest poets of the China’s golden age of poetry during the Tang Dynasty. Legend has it he drowned when he fell over board trying the embrace the moon.

parry and thrust

01 Friday Mar 2013

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Put out and lonely, Razmouhi wandered
the halls of her mother’s house. Day after
day, in the courtyard, training, still awkward
in her body. Her name meant, “girl fighter.”
“Mother teaches me the way of the sword;
but I want to be down at the lake shore,
lost in the dunes.” Batu Khan’s Golden Horde
had laid waste to her town the year before.
It was why she was taught how to parry,
thrust; so that she would not have to witness
Hayk’s soldiers trampled in Tartar dust.
“Enough dreaming, my daughter.” Razmouhi
blinked, sighed. “What girl,” her mother, all grimness,
asked, “is worth spit who can’t parry and thrust?”

* * *

Notes:

The ancient name of Armenia was Hayastan and they called themselves the Hayer, after one of Noah’s sons, Hayk, who is suppose to have founded their kingdom after his father’s ark settled upon the tip of Mt. Ararat.

Batu Khan was a in the 13th century Mongolian warlord who led his horsemen in an army historians have dubbed The Golden Horde, which lay siege to kingdoms and cities along the Black Sea and up through the Caucasus mountains.

with wild heartache

01 Friday Mar 2013

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enyo tames her horse

enyo tames her horse

* * *

Once, long ago, a small girl, Enyo, tamed
a war horse. This was before she was known
as the “waster of cities” and was famed
for her blood-lust; being “Ares’ backbone”
in war. The horse came down from the rooftrees
of Mount Ita. Enyo heard his snorting,
clearing his nostrils to read the cool breeze.
At six she barely reached his nickering
muzzle; yet she did tame him. Strong of brawn.
Strong of bone. You know the rest. How the two
remained life-long comrades until he fell
at Thebes. How she, a myth from a bygone
era, went mad with wild heartache and slew
countless men, earning her name Queen of Hell.

Notes:

Ares is the Greek god of war and Enyo (sometimes described as his sister or his lover) has been described in some texts as “equal in violence” as the god, as well as being a war goddess herself.

Mount Ita (also spelled Ida) is one of two sacred mountains in Greek mythology. Both being called Ita, one is located on the island of Crete and the other in Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey). The mountains are associated with the goddesses Rhea and Cybele.

bezaliel stubs out his cigarette and begins

28 Thursday Feb 2013

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ghost baby and devil doll

And so last night I became a father.
Who would have guessed at my age? The baby
came, as babies always come (a neighbor
had to point this out) in an Oui Toffee
tin I picked up at Marks & Spencer. Small,
blue and semi-transparent, I held it
for days. It seemed to like watching football
… but not Chelsea. Then it began to shit
itself. Odd. I thought bladders of the dead
were like their vast joie de vivre, all dried up.
I guess I’ll have to give it a name. Good
parents do things like that, or so I’ve read.
One more fallen imp raising a lost pup.
One more old wolf mellowed by fatherhood.

* * *

Note:

According to the Book of Enoch, Bezaliel (The Shadow of God) is the 13th Watcher, one of the fallen angels that waged war against heaven. The fact that he is also a chain smoker should not worry the reader, since ghost babies are, by definition, unaffected by second hand smoke.

lost in the clouds

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

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lost in clouds

Reading in the cold of the afternoon
I grow sleepy, stand up to get my blood
flowing. Under my window there’s a dune
of snow, a hillock. I have tried acid,
hashish and opium, but none of them
bring me such visions as that half-way state
between our life and death. When the warm phlegm
freezes in my throat, and all my deadweight
pushes upon my heart, then the dreams come.
Then I leave this body, cold as iron,
and fly, as Basho said, like “wild geese lost
in the clouds.” There is a lovely wisdom
to be found, lost in clouds. When I return
I find my poor body covered in frost.

* * *

Note:

The Japanese poet Matsuo Basho wrote the haiku I’m quoting part of. The whole poem reads: “Friends part/ forever — wild geese/ lost in cloud.” Ah, heartache.

varghonans

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

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... varghonans is swedish for female wolf

… varghonans is swedish for female wolf

* * *

It has turned bitter. The mountains look scarred
and blue in this light. Up from my village
is a waterfall; last night it froze hard.
Ice scares me. Far out in the dark savage
spaces I can hear wolf calls and other
voices, too. The rays of the setting sun,
ghostly, shines through our cooking smoke. Lover,
you are with your pack. Your clan that you run
with, that would kill me for blood sport. I hear
your song that hovers up in the cold air.
A song of the wild hunt warming my hut.
No one knows that you love me, for you fear
for my life. It’s why you keep our affair
from your Varghonans sisters a secret.

bride of the yellow river

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

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bride of the yellow river 1

This is a way of telling a story.
Wash it down your throat.
— Wong Amy, Narration

* * *

I knew a girl once, a farmer’s daughter
from Wu, who was married to the Great King
Yangtze. Yeah, that’s what they said to her,

as their sole explanation for drowning
her, one more sacrifice to the Yellow
River. One more River King’s Bride. Soggy,

I could taste in her kisses marsh gas, woe
and weeds. “There was no king,” she once told me.
“So I’m no bride.” On her face a smile brimmed,
swollen and in flood until I too drowned

as I went down between her thighs, her trimmed
black curls, her mons pubis, her venus mound

that made her rain cloud burst. I thank Eros
we met for death made these passions endless.

* * *

Notes:

Wu is a region of China near the mouth of the Yangtze river.

Historical records tell of the custom of sacrificing a young girl each year to the spirit of the Yangtze, a “bride” to the god of the Yellow river.

gou and mao

26 Tuesday Feb 2013

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Tonight I am alone in the mirror,
which is odd, since dark glass is where I met
you both, twins, as if you came to answer
that one question about when a duet
becomes a trio or when a couple
becomes a threesome. Two peony buds
on a branch with your dead eyes and soulful
Yangtze flexion. You taught me new methods
to cum the night both Gǒu and I slid deep
inside Māo. Inside the mirror we pinned
you to the bed, feeling Gǒu’s cock throbbing
a mere breath away from my own. I weep
now in the glass alone as the night wind
tells me love is not meant for the living.

ghost milk

25 Monday Feb 2013

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It is not needed, Mama Ghost, for me
to bleat, “Mama Ghost! Mama Ghost! Mama

Ghost!” each time we meet. Unlike the fruit tree

you will not bloom. I know that in Ghana
ghosts of mothers weep blood while their breasts ache
with milk never to be tasted. Come here,

little mother, I’ll do it for your sake.

I don’t need to call out your name to hear
heartache. I’ll drink you dry. Make your chill-blue
bones flame into wild honey. Suck so hard

even the dead will gasp in pure delight.

Mama Ghost, give me ectoplasmic goo,
the ghost milk, in you. Feed me on graveyard

dust from your nipples as I suck and bite.