06 Wednesday Mar 2013
Siamanto (1878-1915); Armenian poet assassinated during the first days of the Armenian Genocide, author of the poem The Dance, an amazing example of Modernism that was sweeping the poetic world at the time. Similar in spirit and emotion to Federico Garcia Lorca’s A Poet In New York.
Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Armenia, Illustration and art, Poetry
05 Tuesday Mar 2013
Tags
Asterion, bisexual, cyclone orgasm, Greek myth, homorerotic, Mino's Bull, minotaur, mythology, Theseus, yaoi, zipless fuck
And then, lying deep inside you, I wait
to be kissed. But your face is pressed into
the wet grass, fast asleep. You are deadweight
under me. Is twenty minutes all you
have to offer? I was just warming up.
Tsk. I was born in Crete, far to the east.
A beast-like child. “They will fear you, worship
you,” father said. But he wasn’t a beast,
only a fiend. I was Mino’s Bull.
My real name is Asterion. Theseus,
wake up. You are seeping and flooded, full
of my love; fagged and shagged, fashed and lifeless.
Child of clay, I want another tumble.
I want to make the ground scream and rumble.
04 Monday Mar 2013
Posted in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet
Tags
blizzard, childless father, daughter, fallen in batle, grief, pride and joy, sorrow, without, woman warrior
Daughter, how many years does a woman
have? You are now shapeless and I a lice
ridden old man. You knew all the Koran
by heart. You could wrestle any boy twice
your weight. The long bow sang only for you.
So did the war ax. Now I itch with grief.
From the vast and bleak steppe country a few
worn sobs can be heard. There is no relief
for the father I’ve become. I despair.
I’m lost beyond words. All I know now fails
me; all because of some mongrel swordsman.
Somewhere in a grave you hide; with your hair
that has stopped growing; and your tiny nails
that will never need to be cut again.
03 Sunday Mar 2013
Tags
a girl named death, bridge to nowhere, crossing over, death personified, home as metaphor, long hair, pearl diver, sonnet, storm soothsayer
Muzzy, a rope support bridge. Rain blurring
in this hinterland mist. A thing air born,
apart. Tonight I am leaving. Leaving
for its other side. This is a well-worn
path; still, I’m lost. Muzzy, up by the rocks
on the east side of the harbor I asked
a pearl diver the way. Her long dreadlocks,
hanging down, gave her a death-head, face masked.
I have been following rain all day long.
A storm soothsayer. Rain led me out here.
Led me to a bridge I crossed over once,
mother. When Death picked me up in her strong
arms I knew a once nameless fear. A fear
named by seeing home off in the distance.
03 Sunday Mar 2013
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.
03 Sunday Mar 2013
Tags
Chinese, drowned trying to embrace the moon, Li Bai, Li Bai dreams of the moon, mythology, poet, sonnet, Tang dynasty, The Golden Age of Chinese poetry
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.
01 Friday Mar 2013
Tags
13th century, Armenia, Batu Khan, Golden Horde, Hayastan, Hayk’s soldiers, Mongols, Razmouhi, sonnet, The Way Of The Sword
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.
01 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet
Tags
Ares, Enyo, Greece, mythology, Queen of Hell, sonnet, war horse, Waster of Cities, with wild heartache
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.
28 Thursday Feb 2013
Posted in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet
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.
27 Wednesday Feb 2013
Posted in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet
≈ Comments Off on lost in the 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.
memories of my ghost sista 