Category Archives: sonnet

after reading a poem about how monogamy is “the bourgeois prison”

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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“When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.”
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi
(tr. Coleman Barks)

* * *

It’s so hard to transform monogamy
into wild verse. It just sits in your mouth
like you have been gargling balls. Prissy
folk are all for it in the same way drought
loves its sunny days. This isn’t to say
polyandry is much better. In fact
it’s just the flip side of the coin; cliche
among radicals. But if you subtract
your damn ego — if you’re doing all this
for your Friends, your Others, your Shams — your verse
will be wild, child; no matter what your bliss
looks like. Do not turn love into a curse,
like those who try to define it. Freedom
looks like nothing I’ve found in your poem.

deathbed

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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Forgive me if I laugh, too, Grand Ma’ma.
You are so set in your ways, yet so wrong.
Look at me, I’m all rib bone and lockjaw.
But I know eternity isn’t long
enough for all that crazy love offers.
So what if your lovers were all bastards?
They’re not here. It’s your ego that whispers
in your ear. I lost mine with my innards.
Ego says you’re too old, too gray, too set
in your ways for love. I died at fifteen.
Age is so meaningless. I’ve made you wet
and sweat and scream out words that are obscene.
Nostalgia is meaningless to the dead.
Come back. Without love this a deathbed.

a response to enrique diez-canedo’s “la bruja joven”

04 Monday Feb 2013

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“al que a tu misterio de acercarse trata,
le halagas primero, después le rasguñas.”
— Enrique Diez-Canedo

For a certain type of man it’s easy
for him to transfer all his vast loathing
of girls and women into a story
about witches. Because he is living
in a world that does not value women,
he knows no one will challenge him when he
defames the craft. “You are foul;” “In the glen
you dance the Witches’ Sabbath;” “Devilry
is your love.” Really? I have a mother
and a sister and a witch lover, too.
Let me tell you, Enrique, you’re a liar
and an asshole. A man without a clue.
Get this: the only sin we have is hate;
that which makes us the devil’s advocate.

charlie lima india tango

04 Monday Feb 2013

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She was — how can I say this? — burned alive
out on Salem’s green for knowing too much.

She taught me the physics of the beehive,
honey’s craft, and I taught her where to touch
to find her [[Charlie, Lima, India,
Tango]]. She had come from a small convent
in Rome, modeled nude as a madonna.

I knew Mother Superior had sent
her to the New World. How the Puritans
found her, she doesn’t say. When I hold her
I get ash under my nails. But so what?

Love is love and she is randy, her nun’s
hymen not withstanding. This is our hour;
when life trumps death and our love runs riot.

sweet-bottom grass

04 Monday Feb 2013

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There is enough sweet bottom-grass around
this, your pleasant fountain, to keep me drunk

all day. Some eat to excess. I have drowned
in my own swampy needs, in others’ spunk,
as if cum were a rare commodity.

When I’m in collar and chains I will lick
it all up. When you show me your country
life, I delight in your porn and chronic.

I get grave stone in your sweet bottom-grass.
I stay down for days. But what sort of seed
does one need to plant where wild sassafras
grows wild on your clit? — all goo and honeyed.

There’s no seed. Just tongue up on the downstroke,
drowning, swallowing you until I choke.

the liquid dew of youth

04 Monday Feb 2013

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“Fear it, Ophelia, fear it,
my dear sister.”
Hamlet; act 1, scene 3

Child, don’t open your buttons; the liquid
dew of youth is a charmed broth. You’ve had thorns
in your credent ear, and we’ve spilled our mud
in the rear of your affections. My horns
and stones fit nicely there. Ophelia felt
Hamlet’s calumnious stroke; it drove her mad.
We have no need for a chastity belt
against contagious blastments. “My comrade
wears a condom.” Do you? I have unmasked
all my virtue to the moon. I’ve drifted
down the silver thread of moonshine. I’ve asked
Queen Mab to bed and not once fouled my blood.
Child, why worry about your maidenhead?
I’ll teach you other ways to cum, instead.

born without wit, shame or tact

04 Monday Feb 2013

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“Item: she is curst.”/ “Well; the best
is, she hath no teeth to bite.”
— William Shakespeare

You bore with talk of what’s lewd. Can you milk
a cow and brew up frothy ale? “Item:
she has no teeth.” I am smooth; just like silk,
or fresh rot. “You care not” for my ruined gum,
black gape, my drained smile. “But we do love crusts.”
Scabs and pocks and sick that taste like nausea
are not rare treats for my friends, sodomists
from the bad side of town in Gomorrah.
“The Two Gentlemen of Verona:” act
III, scene 1, still hold some gut-turning shocks.
“I care not” how syphilis can attract
fresh love in an era of diseased cocks.
Only that you were born without wit, shame
or tact; the things you call “lewd” we call “lame.”

rain like doomsday

04 Monday Feb 2013

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On that day the worse rain in thirty years
poured down, killed three people. Very little
causes Las Vegas to shut down. The fears
of the Rust Belt have no home here. Virgil
sat on my left hand, Dante at my right.
We watched the streets flood and the arroyos
overflow. Mesquite released a smell, fright
mixed with fate, in the air. The saguaro’s
green sides rumbled in the rain like doomsday
drums. I have met some fearful and anxious
ghosts since, but none were afraid as Dante
on the day I moved into Las Vegas.
Still, we survived, came out the other side
with no hoopla, or even spirit guide.

strain

03 Sunday Feb 2013

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You have offered yourself a dozen times,
but it’s only self-control that I prize.
Mine, not yours. I understand you. Sometimes
I can understand mine too. I despise
what I’ve become. I long for green sunshine
in the oaks. Shadows of leaves that crisscross
across the wondrous curve of your spine
as you lay spread out on your bed of moss.
All that is gone. Out from the blackness pins
point to light, become shafts we’ll devour
together. I miss finding brand new sins
that we would deny ourselves. I miss our
summer days in the grass when we would play
at love-sick Beatrice and sly Dante.

a horror show on her head

03 Sunday Feb 2013

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“I go public bath some nights,
it is near my house …”
— Shonen Knife,
“(I like) public bath”

It has to be the hair. In films the good
girl’s hair is combed and straight while the bad ghost
has a horror show on her head, wormwood
and nails. The bathroom is steam-fogged, almost
as milk-white as you are, darling. Strip out
of those nasty rags you died in. Sit down
over here. I want to see that cute pout
you get as I rinse out your hair. That frown
when soap suds get into your eyes. Children
are all the same. You all hate getting clean
but once clean you feel divinely content.
Thank the gods for finishing gel, muslin
nightgowns and fluffy towels. Your hair’s sheen,
little ghost of my heart, is radiant.