Category Archives: Poetry

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.

not waving

06 Saturday Sep 2014

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I try to say good things; bad things tumble
out. And so my brain works that way. Crazy.

Ask me about home, I point to my skull.
Ask me about god, I point to the sea.

Home is chaos, uncontrolled waves. My brain
like the coast closes in fog. Dark creeps in.

Will you please forgive me for all the pain
that I leave you? Somewhere, a dorsal fin

breaks the water’s surface. That is love. Drown
or do not drown; love circles us, waiting.

It will consume and I will gladly give
up all of this for love, for you. Go down

to the beach, look out and see me waving.
The fin circles. Consume me, please, forgive.

TAKEN FROM THE BOOK OF TIDES: a sonnet sequence

04 Thursday Sep 2014

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THE CALL

Sing me up a good storm. Teach me to raise
a wild zephyr from a sun-bleached cottage

lost in fog on the red coast. I can gaze
in a pool to tell your fortune. A bridge

over flowing water is good shelter
from those who would do you harm. But sea-salt

and dried kelp are mysteries. Seafarer
I am not. I’m a child of bones, asphalt

and books, not brine and pink conch. There are flies
on my breasts and my dreams do me no good.

Shells, types of water, the winds; I go down
in my dreams to the bone-crushing depths, rise

into … what? But it calls. The tide, driftwood,
the sea. If I cannot learn I will drown.

][

NINE WAVES MAGIC

“Utilize the power of the Nine … this spell works best if you cast it on the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month of the year — September 9th at 9 am.” – taken from The Book of Tides.

][

This gray magic of yours from the ocean,
it is neither white nor black; like petrel

bones and shark teeth, it just is. A foreign
concept for those who think only evil

and good make up this world. Sea witchery
must be older than all that; since all life

came from powers that we blithely call sea.
I’ve read tales of the sea-gypsy, fish-wife

and storm-hag, mostly they’re patronizing
since they deal with women of the wild waves;

but they’re the teachers that I need to find.
Somewhere beyond the horizon’s fading

safety let me drift in a boat called Grave’s
End; taught by those that the land has maligned.

][

“The sand dollar with its perfect 5-pointed star, Nature’s pentagram.” – taken from The Book of Tides.

][

THE RESPONSE

Left at the water’s edge, all that’s been blessed;
gray tools to use if only I knew how.

Winter’s North Wind, Summer’s South. Autumn’s West,
Spring’s East. Shark’s rib. The tooth of a sea-cow.

Flow and ebb, High and Low tide. Fog. Lightning.
Abalone. Clam. Welk. Nautilus. Cockle.

Cowry. Fish hook. Ti leaf. Sea glass. Kelp ring.
Sailor’s knot. Bladderwrack. Ash twig. Coral.

Offerings made into a Book of Tides.
This is as far as I can go. Beyond

this I don’t belong, yet. The sea’s deep gate,
all your tremendous dark, requires guides.

Who will help me fashion my driftwood wand?
I wait. Like all strangers and gods, I wait.

][

note:

The Book of Tides is an online resource that I highly recommend. Someday I hope to learn what the nine waves in Nine Waves Magic actually are.

maw

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

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

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jaws3

jaws1

jaws2

I drag your jaws, all those crowns, all those teeth,
ordinary, divine and forever.

Hard with age, frozen honey, like beneath
the tongue all those funny bumps. My lover

sends me rude photos of gods and strangers.
I dig down to find the bomb at the core.

That which leaves behind a mark, a stain, blurs
what we shall be. I thought that shock and gore

would rouse you up. “The shark is a maw
with teeth,” they claim, since it’s only the jaw

that lasts. Consume me whole, little goddess.
Like all divine powers I am in awe

of what you do. Promise that you will gnaw
until there’s nothing more and nothing less.

][][

note:

The shark in question is the extinct Megalodon, one of the ancient gods that swam our seas 1.5 million years ago, during the Cenozoic Era. Still, my first thought in elementary school when I discovered that such beasts of the southern wilds once roamed our planet was, “cool!”

lovesick ghosts might

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

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“That mysterious force that everyone feels yet no philosopher has explained.”
– Federico Garcia Lorca’s definition of Duende.

Childhood is overflowing, burning rough
into dim adulthood. Lovesick ghosts might

poke a hole, shelter your heart, kiss the scruff
of your neck. The dead often do despite

voices stating that they’re not there. Hidden,
like flame, like paper lanterns in the breeze.

Paper birds. Paper burns, leaving ruin
behind. Call that deep magic, what gypsies

still call, “Duende.” A child’s first heartbreak
knows it when it hears it. Nothing can heal

that flame. There is no exit, no logic,
no voice. Even now, adult, you feel ache,

that’s your birthright. All of life is surreal.
What you call pain and children deep magic.