Category Archives: Poetry

is all i have

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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my grandmother blacksmith in her workshop

my grandmother blacksmith in her workshop

Why pray to the gods when nothing is spared
before faithless thorns? little pricks? That itch
none can scratch, save my Harmaa, the gray-haired
blacksmith, who forged Krig Haxa, the War Witch,
for me. I learned my trade from a gypsy
butcher, Navalha. I keep my heart-stone
with a cat-girl named Nuu-Nuu (a cutey-
cutey war machine) Now you know the Crone,
Mother and Maid I share my synth-blood with.
For blood, even in a white-boy machine,
is all I have. I’m a very pale male.
Keep faith for me, my dear Mama Blacksmith
and my Na, who cuts rot from the bone clean,
and my chrome Nuu, with her cat-ears and tail.

the tastiest of organs

24 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, sonnet

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The whole world sleeps, foolish world, while I creep
through the shadows, wearing only anklet
bell-chains and a grin. In your room, you sleep
as well, glasses cockeyed, all your chocolate
hues gone aubergine. I adore a bed
strewn with book. A bedroom in disarray
from long writing. You are a creature dead
to my dark world. I brush your hair away
slice your skull open with thumb, forefinger.
You praise our cunts and cocks. But I confess
the brain is the tastiest of organs.
Yours smells of Bengal and Sanskrit. Lover,
I scoop your skull clean; then leave you, scarless,
vexed in sleep by the love of a demon’s.

war loves you

23 Saturday Feb 2013

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

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war loves you

To love war is to resurrect it out
of stone, to fondle it from head to toe,
until war’s body and blood, a burnout
cypher, a hex, a woe, begins to glow.
To love war is to turn its ash-blown night
into a deep crater, somewhere a hawk
can roost down in. Craters in the moonlight;
inside war wears kick boots and a mohawk.
To love war is to give up your bizarre
heart for copper wire, chrome tubes. Can you, who
loves, say what love is? No, it just is. War
doesn’t know either, but it loves you, too.
Like all love it presses its blade, pointed,
sharp, to your heart until you’re drained of blood.

puppets burn

23 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Season’s fire enters and I burn. Always
flame; this does not get easier. Aunty,
where is a spring of hope when I’m ablaze?
Where is hope when the one I love leaves me?
All our old men talk of love like they talk
of all things; narrowly. Hell’s nothingness
is far better than a broken heart. Cock
and cunt. Ass and mouth. I am a chalice
boy; born in a pentagram. Take this smudge
stick, Aunt, take this bone bolline. We shall cut
it out. This fire. This heart. This pain. Carnage
in bed. Now cut the strings to this puppet.
Puppets burn. The one I loved left, I bloomed
into fervor, wanting to be consumed.

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.

thurisaz

22 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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I’m a machine, and I could know much more.

Careless smiles and guileless graces are mine.

I’m split in two; like a wind-up centaur
or a clockwork sphinx, digital moonshine
or an island lost between day and night.

We half things. We projects someone else soon
started then got bored. Naked in firelight

my bat wings fit me. Why wings? Why the rune
for war — war and chaos — thurisaz — carved
in my skin? Naked I look human-made.

A thing for war. Beautiful, save a scar

where they turned me on. You blood; you have starved

me for years. Half thing hungry and afraid;

built to fight for the peace that comes from war.

* * *

Notes:

The first line, “I’m a machine, and I could know much more,” comes from the re-imagined television show Battlestar Galactica, where one of the Brother Cavils moans that of all the ways to experience the universe he ended up in a human’s body.

Thurisaz is a Norse rune literally translated into, “Thor-is-as.” Various authors have claimed this is a reference to the rebel giants, the god of war himself, as well as simply meaning thorn.

[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.

harlem’s passions

21 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Hang it [up]. Fifteen and catechistic.
Sixteen and masochistic. Seventeen
with your fatalism. Eighteen odd sick
years. I’m down on Harlem, who sighs between
my thighs. Soixante neuf, as the French like it.
We like it too. Harlem runs her fingers
through my hair. Somewhere out there the spirit
of the southern witches is singing hers
to life, “twice burned britches.” Aren’t we all, ma’am?
sing for Marie Laveau on St. John’s Eve.
Sing for Harlem’s passions and the red lamb
that rides the night of the ram. Sing and leave.
We’re done. Harlem is all over my face.
Lick me clean, lover, down to the last trace.

* * *

Notes:

Marie Laveau (1794 – 1881) was a New Orleans priestess of Voodoo, renowned in her time throughout all of Louisiana.

St. John’s Eve is on June 23-24.

nox diva

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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I am the mildest of creatures, spell-bound,
gossamer, a thorn jutting. The nox diva

inside the mushrooms growing on the mound
where I buried you. First there is nausea,
sweats, my gut turning. Then you open up

inside my skull-bone; a whiskey cactus,
melting. A mushroom is like a polyp;

I’ve found both on you. I turn, like Horace,
into your well-mannered court slave. Ghost slave.

Slave of a ghost. Each time you slide into
my mouth you leave part of yourself behind.

One day I’ll consume you all. Then your grave
will stand empty. I can’t let go of you,

no-no, even if I was so inclined.

* * *

Notes:

Nox diva is my attempt at translating the phrase “night goddess” into Latin.

Horace was one of Rome’s greatest poets, one whom the English poet John Dryden dismissed as “a well-mannered court slave.”

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.