Category Archives: sonnet

at odds

09 Monday Sep 2013

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At odds I saw her in sunk tide, her crow’s
kiss, her arched ankle. She wore a crookback’s
slicker her breasts were unbound like Garbo’s.
These are a hollow child’s love poems, wax
from my ocher candle, dusty light. “Child,
whose love are you?” she asked. But, of course, love
between worlds doesn’t work like that. Exiled
spirits forget. She sang in an octave
only the ashen hearts of first love gone
sour can hear. But I love that ash. The thrill
that ache brings. Her arms were smoke, her kissing
was like water-glow. O blue amazon,
first love. We stood on the beach in the chill,
burning hearts burned, my spectral love laughing.

sea flow

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

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Where once your green knots spun their lunar-splice
now these two drowning jaws form my sea flow.
Now the dead turn up an eye. Vice is vice.
Vice where once the waters of your ghost blow
blew me. Sea faith. Mermen pushed their cocks in
to roe, to boyish winds, tripped through salt-root.
I loved a sailor boy who slept within
the drake down weeds. Brutish vice. Skin flakes. Cute
fish food in my mouth. Flaking hips. Black drips
on my fingers. I’ve played with him gummy.
So be it. If the one love that I find
is weed-wracked, it’s still love. Still the heart rips
from this touch. Sea serpent spending crazy
in my clutched palm. I make drowned boys go blind.

venus de la mer

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Poetry, sonnet

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–venus of the sea

Heartbreak housed in the side, my Butch Venus
break, a chrysalis of horn and fog —Ball
of sea, of water, leaden —Buxomness
with the rod of Lilith. Den of shape —all
her whelps shot through the fin, wrenched by fishers
men, their bud and plague. The long voice. Water-
handed grave and rancid; drowners —rivers
of blood. Country of sea, boxed. My lover
rises. Fathoms. Cold cross the bar —Inhale
her dead seeds, jelly-fish egg, the green grave
and the dew of acid —My lover’s breath
drove her on —up —out —gasp now —now exhale.
Breath you’ve come. In waves you’ve come. Waves, death, wave.
Crave the grave’s breath —de la mer —in for death.

blithe fish

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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mother ghost in a mother sea

Drop of dusk on Dyer Island, she pulls
her maw gallows, up the rays of her eyes.
Tubarão mãe, requin-mère, ma haai: bulls
make way and children scatter. There are spies
in the kelp off the cape. Swan-like, dusking
in the waves, she comes. We fear as blithe fish,
never leaving the sand and the landing,
killing her when we can. We are hellish
to that mother shark. I, young Cassandra,
cannot get you to listen. I have failed.
You do not listen. I speak of absence
in the waves. Soon the wharves of Africa
will be empty where these sea ghosts once sailed.
Saint shark hymning in the myth-hung distance.

notes:

Dyer Island, located near Gansbaai, South Africa, is famous for having one of the most dense populations of Great White Sharks in the world.

Tubarão mãe, requin-mère, ma haai are the words for “mother shark” in Portuguese, French and Afrikaans, respectively.

In Greek mythology Cassandra was cursed by Apollo with the gift of prophecy that no one would believe in or listen to.

zaptieh

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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“Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

Living and forever and me. Heh. Heh.
Heh. The drums of Hell kept beating —beating
—I fought next to General Zaptieh.
She was given the right rear flank, forcing
us to a stand still. I though my mind once
numb. As if all that heaven were a bell,
and that bastard —But an ear. I, silence,
some strange race born from a queer love, queer hell,
a queer fate —Our orders were to attack.
Instead we made a stand at the bridge. Drown
and drown in waves swept. Again and again
we fell. Rotten fate beaten falling back
through plank fell, faith fell, we dropped down and down
—We hit a world, dying and knowing —then—

matter

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Killer mine. Transformed—rendered into this
confining body, this bodiless brain,
abusive hole I smell the flood pain, bliss
of the carnal after a hurricane
the waves the pull the wailing to cover
letters written poems full. Sentinel
come to me loosen these brief moments blur
into this blood. Plain, like tryst, like carnal,
like sun. You believe in three gods and one.
You say chromosomes matter. What matter
comes from dark labyrinth? Matter: now please
come. A night bright, a black star, a dead sun.
Matter. What is this? Killer transformed. We’re
brainless, bodiless, a whole new species.

you’re blue

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Make it quaint like crack pipes, blow for cheap grace,
—resin residue, —dew in the eyes, —pink
eye, —this pleasure dripping over your face
in gobs. I drink and I drink glob I drink.
This high will do. Vodka then gin, thus we
begin. Do not make it ugly. Drivel
does not impress. Make it blade, a belly
cutting cute. Make it the only odd skull.
The last thing they’ll ever find of. You’re blue
by thy nature. Blue by thy blow. I can’t
care where you went to school, fool. What awards
you got and sold. Which old hippie you blew.
Scare me new. Blow my lid. Make me recant
poetry. I want not chaff knives but swords.

joy

02 Monday Sep 2013

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Thief. Grief. I’m a servant of the dog star,
the red vixen, the copper bitch. I’ve come
to bleed you dry. With an ax, a crowbar,
fingers, nails, I will reach inside. Your dumb
heart will slow, quiet now, a sulking bag
gone limp in my hand. Then I will replace
it with winter’s starved moon, that silver jag
in the sky that can never be full. Space
is full of holes. You have just one. Why grieve
over joy? Why grieve while singing this song?
The skylark knows this joy — so does the thrush
— that this world is best, we know, we believe,
without you in it. That agreed fact; long
joy of your absence. That smiled-upon hush.

skull crack

01 Sunday Sep 2013

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hidden vice—infidelity is dull
only cancer does not change even that
changes the need to feel guilty that skull
crack that let all these passions in. Hellcat.
Diamond dog. Nightmare. I have ridden you
all. So you fuck? you fuck that’s not divine
the more abrasive faith the more see-through
soul made-up by the mind, that is not mine,
nothing is mine. I leave empty. I leave
with a belly wound, dripping tripe. Grave dust
my guts, throne of faith. This play on release
madam will not do. The ghosts leave to grieve.
Grieving will not do. Just this. Just this. Just
this. You small thing. Pax now, O fool, soul, peace.

dirty snow

01 Sunday Sep 2013

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Then I would bear it clench myself and die
steeled with my pilgrimage’s pain the still eyes
in the dead face demon’s daughter beauty
born of love love indeed these carcass flies
and ash and funereal oak. Green bud, white
leaf, red snow. Tumble-down-dumble. The blade
lets slip my guts, cries havoc, as her night-
stained hands find a hold in my blood betrayed
O but why a big bush of elders. Dies
my why my why my why penetrating
deeper, dies my demons and false cherubs.
Dies this new faith, a three-person’d passion.
In the dirty snow you will find nothing
but meal worms fed on my blood and fat grubs.