Category Archives: Poetry

glee of the wind

26 Thursday Sep 2013

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Frozen Lake Michigan, a flat ocean
of ice; a sight that I don’t want but will
come and find me, like the night to the sun,
or two headlights to a deer. We say “chill,”
we say “cold,” but what barefooted pilgrim
could walk these beaches and still be happy?
What warm sympathy could the winter’s grim
love have? hidden in our houses the glee
of the wind is both orderly and daft.
Singing but what does that mean? Storm shamans
might know, but there are none left to answer.
Winter! I would defeat you if my craft
would do so; but such magic and options
aren’t mine. So I must live with your burdens.

faith is faith

26 Thursday Sep 2013

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window

What was it like on your first starry night?
the one thing we all have at least one of.
If you’re old enough to understand light,
to be able to raise your head above
your chin then you’ve seen stars. You were not born
back then, for me. And all the love and hate
and small words we use to describe well-worn
emotions meant nothing while all the great
weight of the heavens hung over my head.
How is it that just then the child is sure
that we are part of something far larger
than just ourselves, but later call faith dread?
Before faith was a faith is faith. Before
we had words for enemy or lover.

the song of wandering aengus

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

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the song of wandering aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

—- William Butler Yeats

metal never forgives

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

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all the ancient classic fairy tales
have always been scary and dark.
—- Helena Bonham Carter

How much cold can you abide? If you kissed
me now you’d hear how the wind mews and talks
to you. Across the tundra of this tryst
you called me, like the warmth of a snow fox
in the endless night. I come from the west,
dreaming about blackberry juice; roughly
watching it trickle down your chin. Tongues pressed
tip to tip, although warm flesh on icy
metal never forgives. Little candle,
moppet, June spark, I would lick the hoarfrost
from your breasts, if I could; I think you’d just
sputter, though, warmth being such a fragile
play thing. How far will you go, my star-crossed
flame? The winter dark is my name for lust.

trying to explain the internet to my dead aunt

25 Wednesday Sep 2013

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The ghosts of my hard aunts all called themselves
butch and worked the graveyard shift making jeeps.
I am a fey thing, in love with bookshelves
more than pool and Patsy Cline, one who keeps
family close in this wild new age. Type
in “aunt,” “jeep,” “butch,” and, “Squirting on my truck’s
gearshift,” appears. Aunties, my waiting past,
where does Stonewall fall when these finger fucks
cock sucker blues can be found anywhere?
The dead give little reply. I’ve built worlds
on their broad shoulders. Love is a small price.
Just know your daughters and sons are a prayer
unasked for but here all the same. Your girls
and boys love you, I hope that will suffice.

yes, sin

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Slowly, summer waking, you rise, lovesick
beastie, cacophonous, the way all fucks
before dawn make noise. We’re not awake, slick
in dream, wet under the sheets. Your stomach’s
end, the last stopping point of pubic bone
before the drop off and the hard column
rising before me. Wheeling in a blown
sky we are only voices. Come, we cum,
sea fire berries so ripe we cast shadows
on the waves like a Berber tale. Slowly,
with North Africa’s heat, rise. Are you sin?
Yes, sin. You pull away, crying like crows
denied their due. I’ll sail to Barbary,
aboard a tramp steamer, The Jianzhen.

what sleeps inside

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

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“Know thyself and all will be revealed.”
― Pamela Theresa Loertscher

Find what they would do but cannot. Find what
sleeps there, the other nature, disjointed
but still distinct. Words that we use — hag, slut,
bitch, dyke — all have their sacred counterpoints.
The witch, the lover, the queen, Brynhildr’s
shield maid who’ll stand by her side at World’s End.
There are other dreams, of course, ones that stir
sleeping souls. Rose and amber. The girlfriend
who dreamed of a necklace — white, frothy, thick
— hiding each breast — then along came a tongue
and left them slick. The soft ball coach who aches
for war like a field marshal. Be you sapphic
or straight, pink or brown, rich, poor, old or young,
tell us whats inside, what rises, what wakes.

notes:

Brynhildr : Old Norse legend name from the Nibelungenlied, queen of the Valkyries. Her name is composed of brynja, meaning “armor, coat of mail,” and hildr meaning, “battle,” from which we get: armored warrior woman.

suffer fools

23 Monday Sep 2013

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You said, “steal only from the dead, rarely
do they file plagiarism charges.” But
we the dead do not suffer fools lightly
in all your hundredweight and penny pound.
You don’t even know what a banyan tree
looks like, so how can you sit under it?
Mecca means nothing but Robot TV.
Instead you rip off the Jews, yet omit
the small detail that those words are not yours.
So, you say, what does that matter? We built
our world on the shoulders of the Other.
Plus, they are our words now, it’s what our wars
prove. Yet you still don’t know the word for guilt?
Odd, that theft to you could ever matter.

note:

The line “hundredweight and penny pound” was stolen from Johnny Cash’s song “When The Man Comes Around,” and it doesn’t even rhyme with“but” … But …!

low-tide

22 Sunday Sep 2013

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Take me to the unexplored dark once more.
I know all about this pressure. Without
you with me I’ll never get to drift pure
in these deep waters again. Ignore doubt
and the shaking needle of the meter.
I do remember you holding your hands
out to the far surface, your face under
pressure was beautiful. Then failed commands,
screaming, rupture. Once love you kissed my skin,
breathed me in until I filled you. You should
have lived on love instead of air. Hell bound
you could only see yourself escape in
rising sea foam, while the rest of us stood
at our posts, watching you flee as we drowned.

ugliest words

22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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It’s a weird world. She tells me of a date
and how later they both fornicated.
Yeah, that’s the word that she used, “fornicate,”
one of the ugliest words to describe naked
lust, sex magic, lucid pleasure. But she’s
foreign, recently dead and her English
broken. What do I know? I lost the ease
of my tongue when I passed, too. Her anguish
and fear with sex, especially anal,
remains, bit daft, since she’s lost her booty.
She’s more mist, more soul made froth. You living
call lust sin; but if you’re not a lustful
soul death tends to be … shocking. Poor banshee,
love won’t hurt you. That’s what death is: loving.