Category Archives: sonnet

études

28 Monday Dec 2020

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Climax, crescendo and the Devil’s joy

wrung from her violin in the café.

 

Later she said: “Oui. You’re ah ‘ice fuck toy.

I weehl steahl you.” Soon she turned to risque

 

tunes coaxed from Paganini’s cursed fiddle;

four strings hinting at uncanny glamour.

 

“Oui. Zat despair een ‘is eyes, unable

to speak because, you know, lairynx can’cair,

 

as I slipped eet from ‘is ‘ands.” The dying,

she said, were, “ah ‘oot,” to fuck with. “Love eet

 

with zair, ‘but mon Dieu loves me’, attitudes.

Pourquoi?” Hers was a fugue seducing

 

glamour and the rest just,“’ippy bullsheet.”

Hints of crassest sex from refined études.

][][

NOTES:

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was an Italian violin virtuoso and believed by many to have sold his soul to the Devil for a legendary red violin. I go back and forth as to whether regional accents help a poem or hinder other people from understanding it. The truth is that I have a lot of fun figuring out various accents but there’s no point in writing something no one else can read. Here’s the translation if any of my fake Parisian words confuse:

Climax, crescendo and the Devil’s joy wrung from her violin in the cafe. Later she said: “Yes. You’re a nice fuck toy. I will steal you.” Soon she turned to risque tunes coaxed from Paganini’s cursed fiddle; four strings hinting at uncanny glamour. “Yes. That despair in his eyes, unable to speak because, you know, larynx cancer, as I slipped it from his hands.” The dying, she said, were, “a hoot,” to fuck with. “Love it with their, ‘but my God loves me’, attitudes. But why?” Hers was a fugue seducing glamour and the rest just,“hippy bullshit.” Hints of crassest sex from refined études.

constraints

27 Sunday Dec 2020

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Being Lilith’s child the young priest, pervert,

called you Vava, as in the ancient word,

 

Vavashot: Lust. Lilith, though, was desert

born and fell in love with the sea’s mothered

 

magic, naming you Tsovinar: She Strides

Upon Waves. Leave that sucka’ with his psalms

 

and scant faith, cousin. We’ve both heard the tide’s

long call. We’ve both felt that pull. Nothing calms

 

me the way She and tempests do. We’ve shed

all our cotton constraints at the shoreline.

 

Man-made gods have no sway out here. We’ve tread

upon billows and called the brine, “all mine.”

 

Leave dry land to priests who think that they know

something. They mistake lust for undertow.

][][

Notes:

In the pre-Christian Armenian pantheon, Tsovinar (Ծովինար) is the goddess of water and forces the rain to fall with her rage. Lilith (Լիլիթ) gets associated with whatever fears and phobias men have about sex at the time; thus she is described as being everything from night-haunt succubus to feminist bisexual to free-spirit divorcee. This, of course, says nothing about Lilith herself, who came from the deserts of what is now modern day Syria to the shores of the Black Sea. In one ancient translation it says, “Լիլիթը հայտնաբերեց ծովը/ Lilith discovered the sea.” It says nothing of her sexual appetites, her loathing of Abrahamic religions or even her being the, “Mother of the Unholy Folk … a Mixed Multitude,” that she’s suppose to have given birth to up in the mountains. All that is racist and sexist modern fantasy. The only thing I feel comfortable in repeating is, “Լիլիթը հայտնաբերեց ծովը/ Lilith discovered the sea.”

revolveress

22 Tuesday Dec 2020

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Because rural roads have no lights. Because

rainstorms meant no one would follow. You parked

 

the car, turned toward me; as if menopause

ever cooled passion. I’d yet to be marked

 

with toff, hormones, my hex’d sex. Sleepovers

with your son’s chums left me all pearl-handled,

 

revolveress. Barking irons. Splatters

on your grip, your neck, your grin. Rains drizzled

 

on the bonnet while within you wiped from

your palm maelstrom. I said O and eased out

 

into ancient dark no one could follow.

You said, “Hmm?” Mishap: once I called you mom.

 

You laughed. Your gravestone calls you a devout

mother. Good. There’s no rain these days, just snow.

][][

Notes

Victorian slang has so many quaint concepts that never get the love that they deserve in this modern age. For example, a revolveress is a woman who, “uses a pistol with a great degree of surety.” (from, Passing English of the Victorian era, a dictionary of heterodox slang, 1885)

dispel

20 Sunday Dec 2020

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Dry ground and graveyards pale next to the sea’s

verge when uncanny malforms crawl forth each

 

night and roam. The same infected city’s

haze of lights that drown the stars cannot reach

 

into that dark, cannot dispel horrors

that have only ire toward our neon-fused

 

age and benign witcheries. The breakers

mark me as a false witch, how I’ve abused

 

my gifts for filthy lucre and coinage.

There is no grimoire for sale that’ll let us

 

command the tide. Coven’s pride. Ghasts that feed

on brine-caked bones know this. You can’t sage smudge

 

the sea, they guffaw. They name us hubris

and crawl from the surge at the scent of greed.

resolve

19 Saturday Dec 2020

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It’s not like we’re puppet and puppeteer;

I’m balls deep in yet you grimly retain

 

control. The sheath of your ass. The severe

gape left behind in your behind like pain

 

each time I nearly pull out. Each time you

grip the sheets so that your daughter, drawn by

 

your cries, crouches in the grove of bamboo

to watch the living play. We could still ply

 

her with love, let her sleep between us, but

you can’t see ghosts. Your world is her gravestone

 

and grim resolve; rough sex won’t return her,

or burn this pain out of you, meat puppet.

 

There’s no strings for that. When you cum you moan

out something like, “daughter, daughter, daughter.”

requin

18 Friday Dec 2020

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Far-off wave, depraved. Nali leans over

the edge of the dugout, shakes her rattle.

 

She calls: “Big Sister let my Small Sister

come to me.” She does: out from the coral

 

shadows a shadow rising, a shadow

vast, vast as the tide’s rip, twisting current,

 

rising into song. I was there. I know

you don’t think women can do this. Pregnant

 

ghosts will scorn you for that. They love Nali,

though. I rowed. She sang and Femme de requin

 

came to have her snout rubbed, to feast on prayer.

Sisters swam here until men trawled this sea

 

down to its ghosts. The price of a shark fin

is when you call and only ghosts answer.

][][

Notes:

Femme de requin is French for shark woman. The inspiration of this poem came from watching Dennis O’Rourke’s 1982 documentary, The Sharkcallers of Kontu.

flares

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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She was dead and encased her exquisite

curves in the sort of sequin disco-flares

 

called posh before I was born. Her velvet

tube top bled. Her long cadaverous hair

 

couldn’t hide the hole where the girder

had punched clear through. “Let’s do lascivious

 

things,” she’d said, rising. It’s hard. We linger,

hoping for love. The living see darkness

 

in sex and quail. The dead are beyond doubt

now that it’s too late. Randy ghost of ghastly

 

flares, you have spawned unease. If lusting for

dead things is freakish then let me freakout,

 

old-school style, with kisses, with sodomy.

Fuck’s crux. Putting the core back in hardcore.

fettered

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

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Night frosts. Fettered gales. Sauna sun rise. Steam

fit for queens and concubines. After school

 

you came, brought her with talk of romps, extreme

and droll. “Not in her rump,” was your one rule

 

as I slipped out of you. “Only in mine.”

All day the sauna’s pine walls soaked up heat.

 

When you two arrived, frigid as frost’s shine,

we puffed and passed, shucking off our clothes. Cheat

 

ice-sleet like this. Mellow lay, they say. Stoned,

you laughed when she impaled herself. I laughed

 

when you kissed the spot where the two of us

joined. She laughed and came. Others have condoned

 

this. Meh. You asked to learn my queer witchcraft;

craft built from libertines and the Goddess.

dwindling

11 Friday Dec 2020

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There’s my Bayou shark, requiem, nimble

through swamp and misty fen. I’ve seen her twist,

 

turn and sashay away. A wolfish girdle

flitting through cypress bogs. When frost and mist

 

cake this lake, though, I can find no old souls;

just ice flows and shadows. I got conjure

 

and shine but as this wintertide gale rolls

through mud and bone I find my warm water

 

guide is blind. She cannot find me. Iced lakes.

Sightless seers. Gods fade in this pallid

 

polar light. Dwindling surf’s boom. What can

a shark haunting the Gulf know of frost’s ache?

 

Nothing good throbs under my closed eyelids

since words make a poet, gods a shaman.

nor’eastern

07 Monday Dec 2020

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It’s gray outside. Gray inside me. A thought

full of dripping clouds. Dingy to boot. Dim

sway. Dim tumult. Trifling waves that trot

along the lake shore. Shades too cold to swim

in. All my life I’ve fled winter drizzle’s

bliss. Now, even in my sick bed, I spurn

those vast rains from Canada. These crackles

in my lungs are just like a “Nor’eastern” ––

all foam, blood and drift, sundering pain.

In my sick bed I hear the ‘plash spume hiss

each time I breathe in. In my sick bed you

ask how it goes? Listen. That’s frosted rain

in my breath. Once I could’ve weathered this.

This time there’s no safe harbor to flee to.

][][

Note:

I live near the shores of Lake Michigan. Cyclones out on the north Atlantic are called Nor’easterns. It’s a fitting term to use here too, though there is a difference. Because the lake is so shallow (compared to the ocean) any winter storm coming down from Canada almost always turn extreme, generating riptides, huge waves and freezing temperatures. Often the danger for sailors is not drowning out on the lake but freezing to death.