Category Archives: Poetry

NECROMANTICA: a sonnet sequence

11 Thursday Sep 2014

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Some of us wear out, some rust. Devilkin,
dead love, what happened to you? I’ve passed through

gateways, played with a girl in a seal-skin,
slept with a wood sprite called Puck; I’ll tell you

why they call him Robin Goodfellow. But
you seem to have some unresolved business.

Like me. The first time that I was called slut
I burned the world down, in my head. Eros

does not protect those he touches; and, ghost,
we all need protection. If you kiss me

will you shatter in a shower of coals?
Or will you, like me, want more? It’s almost

dawn, do not leave. I’m alive and hungry.
Let us both resolve what’s damning our souls.

][

Freedom is not for the living, obsessed
with their soul’s salvation. The dead are, too,

but with their lost sex lives. You can be blessed
all you like, yet how bizarre the breakthrough

when the recently deceased realize
it was about being rude and smutty

with the gods through orgasm. All those lies
about how it’ll make you go blind, only

the hell-bound would say that. Orgasm
comes to you without need for a payment

or a promise. But why am I telling
you? You, who claims to know about freedom,

must know what it’s like to be pregnant
with mad need, praying to be touched, praying.

][

Grace flits by, a moment of bliss, then dumb
logic closes in. I drink and drink and …

I am a child of clay. Come, mold me. Numb
me. Tell me of salvation and dreamland.

Necromantica, indeed. Sparrows
fight near my window, then die, undaunted.

Each night a dead girl sucks on my ribs, flows
through me, the closest she’ll get to warm blood.

There are rational gods and there are mad ones.
I want neither. Just bliss. My stigmata

diaboli hurts. A kiss; now the air
withers around me. I have fucked legions,

sweated grace. I’ll save you from your dogma.
Come with me, cum with me, and rise like prayer.

untended

11 Thursday Sep 2014

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Somewhere within your untended hedgerow,
somewhere tufted and leafy, sleeps curled up

a small hibiscus demon, all aglow
with need, like a drunk on rot-gut julep.

Aren’t we like demons; our souls are stingy
with love but underneath we weep for not

being touched, kissed, possessed. Celibacy
is a myth, darling. I know what you thought

that you could live – or at least love – alone.
I shall part your hedge like Moses, go down

into your bower, find that plum-blossom
brute, kiss it awake, watch it gasp and groan,

watch it purr; soothe your pain, smooth your frown.
Love shall make us a threesome.

grace’s skin

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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“In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.”
–Wilfred Burchett

6th PRAYER:

Coming home in Lilith’s arms must I mount
the sand storm and shamble on toward ancient

Djenne-Djenno; together our names count
very little. What you call pussy, cunt,

bitch, I call mother, niece, aunt. I won’t be
the one who burns your vile house down. You’ll do

that; you’ll raise your own hand, for my story
is of a goddess who said no and who

met a priest wearing authority, cast
out First Wife, First Lover. If you must know

me then enter me like proverbs, grace’s
skin. All those words of yours, like a bomb blast,

simply damns you. Call me a Skank. Tease. Ho.
I am proud to be the child of Bitches.

one great truth

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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“The vastness of the desert frightened her. Everything looked too far away, even the cloudless sky. There was nowhere you could hide in such emptiness.” — James Carlos Blake

2nd PRAYER:

To talk of Her is to talk of Eden,
a new religion barely two thousand

years old. The girl chased footprints while the sun
made tracks in the caravan path glisten

leading to one more heat mirage and what
do they make of that in Djenne-Djenno

voices on the wind where no one sleeps but
the girl herself and what did the pharaoh

know of the wide divine that you yourself
did not save that there is no one great truth

that all paths lead to a dried up water
hole. When I count bleached bones I count myself.

You pray to an old man, I pray to youth,
to a girl, I pray to the First Lover.

breaking down babylon’s door

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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“Once, my mother told a whole host of angels that she’d rather die than go back to a man she didn’t love.” ― Brenna Yovanoff

5th PRAYER:

I is I, Lilith is Lilith. Mama
who came out of Babylon will save us.

Call it Djenne-Djenno. Call it Jeddah.
City of Souls. Mankind is still lawless,

despite Allah, Christ and Yahweh. Your laws
are what you ignore. Why not, then, condemn

such men? Eye for eye? Aiii, I won’t, because
war, rape and killing, that’s your gifts, they stem

from gods acting like men. If I follow
let me follow your mothers and your young.

I will march to your city’s gates, pound on
your doors, demand entrance. I do not know

what will happen next. Perhaps I’ll speak in tongue,
perhaps I will rise like the sun at dawn.

][

note:

Jeddah and Djenne-Djenno are ancient cities, respectfully. Djenne-Djenno is considered to be among the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa, while Jeddah is located in western Saudi Arabia along the Red Sea coast. The ruins of Babylon are located in modern-day Iraq.

mother monster sire lady

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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“Madness plants mirrors in the desert. I find their meaning frightening.” ― Floriano Martins

4th PRAYER:

What could catch Lilith? A djinn’s brass bottle?
A song? A prayer? No one could catch Isis,

and she was twice as old. A human skull
is not constructed to house a goddess;

She is vast, like a sand storm, like a djinn.
Mother monster, sire, lady. I am Thirst.

I am Hunger. There isn’t enough sin
here to feed a soul. Sin, like a sun-burst,

is far beyond human control. Make me
arch. Make me dreadful. I’m nothing but loss.

But I believe. Hunger. Thirst. These answers
will not save my soul. I am vain and She

who I’ve caught in a bottle, like a cross,
like a book, will always hate her captors.

summoning

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs and gleams …” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince.

1st PRAYER:

Wake and watch dawn pour over the desert;
as it does everyday in the city

of Jeddah, in Babylon. She searched for
Lilith among the corpses the raiders

leave for the vultures for she has waited
lifetimes, another dawn, one more sunset,

for this. Out on the Sahara’s low lip
something entered her wrists, thin fingers stirred,

touching, just once, nails kissing each other.
All I tell you is a secret, a need

beyond word, beyond sound, silence, until
the silence releases something like prayer,

like song. She sat in the sand, drew circles
with her curved horn-blade. It is hard not to fall

in love with blades, with rage, with a war like blades.
It was a summoning from the silence,

from Lilith, the First Wife, the First Lover.
She threw down the curved-horn, turned to the south.

A Bedouin widow sat on a dune,
watching the girl watching the vast sand storm

approach, washing over everything; pulsing
with what the ancients called destruction of life.

by moon and crossroad

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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3rd PRAYER:

Mother of a mixed multitude, seeking
Lilith but not her flesh nor the image

of her flesh not the bone nor the clicking
of tongue not the brain wearing its damage

as mask not the mind with its false color
and not this and not that I have followed

the dim tracks of the Bedouin mother
following the girl by moon and crossroad

following the sand storm. I love rough seas.
I love their power. I’m not smart enough

to get out of their way. I want the myth
of the desert to fall in love with me.

Consume me. I call upon the mischief,
the sand, all that they call Mother Lilith.

underground

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Living on a hill, rain water would run
down, she’d follow its path to the gutter,

moon moths playing in her hair, a vixen
at her heels, to watch it vanish under

the street. Underground water works this way.
In the desert it has no other choice.

As a child she was taught fencing, gunplay,
and wit, verbal repartee. When the voice

from the chip implanted in her skull spoke
she would obey. The fox was always nice,

the moths didn’t scare her. She liked watching
the rain fall in the street, letting it soak

into her, making the rain smell like spice
and the underground vast and bellowing.

sulfur and breath

07 Sunday Sep 2014

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Rising up from my bath snorted the ghost
of a bull, all ruined from some bastard

picadore’s lance. From where I sat, almost
all of his soft, looping intestines swirled

in the water, and the sulfur and breath
from his nostrils hissed. He had gored the man

who had slain him during the “third of death,”
“tercio de muerte,” fight. What began

as a haunting ended with me sewing
the bull’s head upon the matador’s vast

corpse. But being a vain ghost, I also
sewed his cojones, leaving them hanging

below his knees. The rest of the day passed
with us snogging mad in the back meadow.

][

note:

I’m using terms here taken from the lexicon of the Spanish blood sport called bull-fighting. A picador is one of the horsemen that jabs the bull with a lance. Tercio de muerte is the third part of a bull-fight where the matador finally plunges his sword into the weakened bull. Cojones are, of course, testicles.