Category Archives: Poetry

what lasts

23 Friday Aug 2019

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I lost the graveyard today — Lilith’s tree,
Her owls and crossroads; all the souls and shades

I’d call on each night that would wait for me
because I loved them — are gone. For decades

I searched for connection to our dead kin;
though I’m not gifted with Sight, wasn’t born

to walk between worlds. Is a grudge a sin
when it’s over all that left you lovelorn

and lost? They came, tore down Her tree today,
smashed Her altar, stole my gifts. It’s what lasts

when Love is elsewhere. When Love is elsewhere
it’s what I need most. This isn’t dismay,

just a sign that Lilith still loves outcasts;
those of us who live on prayer and despair.

should’ve

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

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Three times, before I was one, something tried
to pull me back. When the San Gabriel

fault-line shook. When the firestorm and landslide
consumed the Malibu hills. When I fell

in the deep end at the Lil’ Angels Fun
Pool. Yes. There were other attempts, later,

but those were my failures. For eleven
short months in L.A. earth, fire and water

strove to claim me. Some curses get to hide
from us. Call it misfortune, my mom did.

Before I was her mistake she called me
her bad luck baby; one who should’ve died.

I’ve no memories of being that kid —
just what came after, what taught me to flee.

despite

01 Thursday Aug 2019

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Gorged on hope you forget your place. Desire
won’t save you. If you’re the stuff of dreams then

you’re a safe flame for those afraid of fire
… a vague vulgarity. Who’d ever sin

on your behalf? There is no Orpheus
for you to sing you out of hell. Your place

is to warn others that all the lewdness
in the world feels most often like disgrace

and woe. Smut won’t save you. All this is true,
but I still give thanks for smut. I praise those

who’ve praised me with their libidos; who’ve taught
me lust sublime and passion’s true virtue …

I love that, despite all my griefs and woes,
despite feeling so broken and distraught.

sprung slow

25 Thursday Jul 2019

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This hour. That hour. Staring at six normal
flowers someone brought you. My discipline,

when it comes to waiting in hospital
rooms, needs some work. All I do is listen

to your coughing wheeze while outside night struts,
all sprung slow and rooted with shadows from

the day. Once I thought that love was wheel ruts
in an old road … Or maybe a maelstrom …

Or some other metaphor. All I know
is that I’ll have to let go when you let

go. That’s love, too. I have no one to tell
this to in this room without a window.

Just six flowers and the reek of death-sweat
and a love beyond their heaven or hell.

devotion

17 Wednesday Jul 2019

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They don’t bring horned gods home. In forest, in
trance, garbed in garlands … a slow cavorting

flame in lush curled-black leaves. There’s no sin
to be the chosen one, no crime pricking

yourself on flesh callous as oak. Do you
still think of what we did as devotion?

Do your nipples still stiffen thick? Mine do.
Gods are man-made. I’m no different. Most shun

these acts in time, for I burn a queer fire,
my tongue pressed in the middle. I’m at odds

with how I was born: abandoned in green …
I don’t serve faith, only function. The “sire”

in your desire, which dies, just like old gods,
once it’s no longer so strange or obscene.

crosscut

28 Friday Jun 2019

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I could not sleep in such heat and what dream
came was no dream. Santísima Muerte

parted her robes to press her wet blaspheme,
as priests call all cunts, to my lips. Doomsday

tastes like death in heat. “Tu madre,” she said.
“Chinga tu madre.” Once lust couldn’t carve

through this thick air, couldn’t slash through what bled
from these lips. Have faith, you said. See? You starve.

Who has fed you like I do? — The riot
in your heart knows what you want. The chaos

that dreams of dissection loves you, too. Press
that blunt tongue here, in my groove, my crosscut.

Stroke, you woke with that taste; lust born from loss,
born from death, lovesick, lifting up her dress.

NOTES:
As a personification of death and guardian of marginalized people Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Holy Death) is a folk saint found in Mexico and Mexican-American Catholicism. Chinga tu madre is, of course, one of the few things Santísima Muerte (Most Holy Death) can get away with saying, since death is the mother of us all.

essence

09 Sunday Jun 2019

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Locked in her bathroom, her dirty hamper’s
pheromones bewitching while our fragrance,

once stirred by my tongue sunk in your pleasures,
stirs in the air, too: skunk-spice-herb. Essence

of what we once were. I dream of hemlock,
hash and cum pooled around your collarbone

haunting cleavage once wrapped around my cock
bud of your cunt’s bouquet a low down drone

drenched. When she knocks on the door the fragment
that is you flees. Where? Somewhere far above

me. You forgot? I keep remembering
what we once were: lascivious as scent,

ethereal as a ghost who’s found love,
desperate as this bust-ass flesh still searching.

nix

07 Friday Jun 2019

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I know the picture — this rubble was once
houses of prayer for a ruined city’s

people. Not all loss is the same. Absence
is pure fate for them, born for the Furies

that break city’s bones. You weren’t expecting
that. Fate was. Furies will help hook comely

scars in your flesh, nightmares in your dreaming.
Fate can’t help but love you, dear soon-to-be

survivor. All your talk of abstinence,
praxis and law means nix once Furies gut

man from man-made. Chaos is the virtue
gods call divine; all else is ego. Once

you claimed to be saved but from what?
Not this. Can you sense it coming for you?

fell

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

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“Does it help you to have a place to go?”
I had just lit all of the crossroad prayer

candles; just said, “I love you,” in their glow
and dusk fell and I glanced up to find her

walking into their light. “Where should I take
my mom’s ashes?” I hope that what I said

helped. We are all haunted with raw heartache
but few come to graveyards to ask the dead

for help. I don’t feel cast out in twilight.
It helps. In here owls love me and I burn.

Out there? I’m numb. I didn’t see her leave
or fade. She was just gone. Perhaps tonight

she will return with her ashes, return
to where we’re not forsaken when we grieve.

offhand

02 Sunday Jun 2019

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two figs testicle fat sat in my hand
come I offered there is a cunt inside

run your tongue all through it I said offhand
come back here after school you’ve been hogtied

before waiting through classes for misfit
kisses that’ll split you wide like fruit you bruise

when played with so carelessly but once split
all that soft sweet meat with plum and pink hues

tastes just like yours right before you climax
before your homework bites hard this hardcore

meaty sweet comes urgent takes what we need
with spice and ginger with cum and hot wax

comes with what’ll help you through this sophomore
year lots of butt-stuff you said lots of weed —