Category Archives: self-portrait

chums & the eight of cups

16 Friday Sep 2022

Posted by in Armenia, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Q: What is the meaning of the Eight of Cups?

For me, the Eight of Cups is all about how we deal with problematic situations … and by “deal” I mean running away from it. It is a card full of disappointment and regret. This isn’t about being judgmental; the world is full of horrible, no-win situations that only get worse the longer we stay with them. It’s why we have the term, “Survivor’s Guilt,” which often accompanies PTSD. Free will can only take us so far. Or, as Goldsmith reminds us: “He who fights and runs away/ May live to fight another day;/ But he who is battle slain/ Can never rise to fight again.”

That might be true, but often it does not heal a spirit broken by shame and guilt. They say you never know how you’ll react during war until you’ve actually fought in one. I haven’t. I’ve been nearby but that’s not the same. A memory of my time in Peace Corps came back to me yesterday so I wrote this:

All through red suns at dusk. All through dark suns

at dawn. Those low rumbles. I’ve heard thunder.

I’ve heard earthquakes. Neither sound deafens

nor numbs me utterly like gun powder.

Once, while drunk (I was always drunk) some chums

and I drove to the outskirts of Artsakh,

“to watch the fireworks.” Back when my eardrums

were still naïve over certain noise. Raw

and green. The border guards turned us away.

Being dumb we parked on a hill to eyeball

the «pff-boom» flashes down in the valley.

That’s called privilege: turning someone’s doomsday

into drinking games. Fireworks fell. Nightfall

fell. We drank … numbing their rage and fury.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting for decades over an area of land called Artsakh (formerly known as Nagorno-Karabakh). While geographically it has been claimed by Azerbaijan its inhabitants are Armenian and since the fall of the USSR Artsakh has been a democratic republic, mainly unrecognized by the rest of the world. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted from 1992–1994. I was living in Yerevan in 1997 while shelling and guerrilla warfare were still going on. It wasn’t the only military conflict happening in the area, though. That same summer I watch plumes of smoke billowing from the foothills around Mt. Ararat as Turkish troops battled Kurdish resistance fighters.

this

03 Tuesday May 2022

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Now words are rare. Whatever synapses

let in the Divine are misfiring. ––

Neurons fail. Neural pathways do not please.

Now words are a struggle. I’m struggling

just to write this. Once I said I’d go turn

a tramp steamer into a library. ––

Sail from port to port, sharing that stubborn

love of books with all who live by the sea.

Now I’m struggling just to write this. Now

I sit in my chair and –– stare. There are no

books here. Words, like the water, turn brackish

each time I go down. Let me drown, somehow,

instead of this decline. Instead I know:

first I floundered, now flail and soon perish.

thunderhead

09 Wednesday Mar 2022

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Half a mile high. Book open. Pen drooping

in one hands; the hand that writes secret words.

Just as the in-flight drinks are served something

enters. “Sounds like dementia. It’s absurd;

ghosts and gods and stuff.” I’ve done deep damage

with my drinking; taken blows to my head.

Who knows? Half a mile high and a mirage

enters me. Shadows? The dark thunderhead

out my window? “Sounds like that Twilight Zone

Gremlin.” On Thursday I’ll be fifty-two.

“Vo’chinch,” my pen writes. Nothing? Good enough.

Good? I’m a half-assed conduit. I’ve grown;

not wiser, just … vaguer. Just … the one who,

miles high, mumbles of ghosts and gods and stuff.

][][

Note:

Armenian, an ancient language I am forever butchering when I try to talk, has the most useful word in the world, “Vo’chinch,” (Ոչինչ) an expression that literally means, “Nothing,” but is used in the same way that the French use, “Comme ci Comme ca” — neither good nor bad, it just is.

bogan

24 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by in Erotic, self-portrait, sonnet

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Hard bop. Red hot Baba Yaga. Fun-sized

pain and sanguine cannibal. Her bloomin’

sick love crept through us. All who’re despised,

who are flame, who are fuses, who roll sin

on a twelve-sided die, are comin’ home.

Lucille Baba Bogan Yaga. We’re all

goin’ to get laid. Sloppy with Blues. Chrome

shaft. Gilt grotto. We strap it on; the, “mal,”

in our malcontent. “Peggin’,” they call it.

Shit. I love the monsters that the bourgeois

fear: dark skin, women, the Blues. When Bogan

sang the vamps jumped. Singin’ of cocks and clits.

Gorgon’s jargon, sister. Out like outlaws.

Cocked, suckers; as if to say, “bring it on.”

][][

Notes:

In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga, the wild witch of the woods, helps those who seek her out, unless they piss her off and then she simply eats them. Pegging is a term Dan Savage (of Savage Love fame) made popular back in 2001: an act in which a woman has anal sex with a man by penetrating him with a strap-on dildo. Lucille Bogan was one of the Three Queens of the Blues (Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith being the other two). Her sexually explicit lyrics helped popularize the “Dirty Blues” genre. Perhaps her most famous song, Shave ’em Dry, starts off with the lyrics: “I got nipples on my titties big as my thumb/ and something between my legs that’ll make a dead man cum.” Indeed.

unfit

26 Sunday Sep 2021

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Ask me. I will. Where I used to dwell I’d smell

the ghost of the red desert stirring, sensed

it wake at dawn. Creosote, sage, the swell

of black palm fronds flinging themselves against

a sky neon green, warm as bath water.

I will. I had the loneliness that sang,

too. It gave me songs but not one lover.

Songs of dust and rust, that horrible pang

of loss that left me sick. I still smell it.

In my sweat and sperm, my gristle. I’ll share

it, if you ask. Songs of blank bricks, Vegas

heat and heartache. I’ll sing of dawns unfit

for these dull days; when even rage is prayer

and we burn together, full of malice.

chars

07 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Next time you’ll count the scars. There will be more.

Grizzled, you’ll think. Frost burn. It takes time

 

for me to undress. Stitches hold my gore

in place for now. This pain isn’t sublime,

 

the sort that shamans use. It’s not De Sade’s

doomsday, either. First time I saw someone

 

tear at their clothes as they transformed gnawed

at me for weeks. I will be fifty-one

 

in less than a week. If I come back all

grizzle gray and limping will you confuse

 

me for the Moon? I can read all the scars

on her face. Can you read mine? This queer scrawl

 

that spells my fate each time these stitches ooze

fevered flames. Heat that grizzles. Heat that chars.

barco (iii)

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Dama de aguas oscuras, last night

I dreamed of phosphor under a starlit

 

dome. Far above such unending ghost-light

the gales harangued (as gales do). Your half-wit

 

brat sat in low, loathy dark; wheezing down

the last air in his rust iron coffin.

 

Lady of dark waters, they say to drown

is abysmal, but if I can return

 

to you through your blessed sea or ill ocean,

then I’ll slip my box’d boat through opal waves

 

to rest my grave under high tide and slow

sea-swill. Lay me, if it’s your will, all shrunken,

 

alone, calling this dream fate. Glow of graves,

Santa Muerte, lost in the tidal flow.

][][

Notes:

The Bony Lady, Santa Muerte, has many names; “Dama de las aguas oscuras,” Lady of the dark waters, is one of them. The idea of this poem actually came to me several years ago when I was reading about the early attempts of the Imperial Japanese navy to build their own submarine. In 1910 one of their first prototypes sank during a training dive in Hiroshima Bay. Although the water was only 18 metres deep it proved impossible for the crew to escape while submerged. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Tsutomu Sakuma, patiently wrote descriptions of his sailor’s efforts to bring the boat back to the surface as their oxygen supply ran out. All of the sailors were later found dead at their stations when the submarine was finally raised the following day.

barco (ii)

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

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Santa Muerte, I cannot pluck banjo

strings like Sal, nor compose on a guitar

 

like my brother. I do have magic, though,

of a different sort. I scrawl in the air

 

and the words jell and congeal. Even now,

Dama del Mar, with husky, haughty lips,

 

I reel across the deck each time we plough

through ten foot swells; each time salt water drips

 

in my eyes while sliding down swales to surge

up each peak. Below, in the engine room,

 

womb warm and sacred, one of your altars,

heart and cunt of this boat, keeps beat: gale’s dirge,

 

squall’s lament. Make this submarine my tomb

and I will gladly play shaman to sailors.

barco

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Santa Muerte, escúchame. Pretty

Lady, hear me. It’s not alms that I crave

 

but a submarine for my poetry.

Submarino del poeta. With wave

 

and tide, with cat and book, I’ll learn liquid

-rolling verbs, new words for endless motion.

 

Is a boat too much? I’m not craving blood.

Mother mine, mi madre, if your children

 

in FARC have one, might I too? They call theirs,

“Narco barco.” But mine will be your shrine

 

in the brine; a place to write, sail and pray

under a seafaring sky. Hear my prayers,

 

Pretty Lady. Mamá Roja Divine.

Grant me: Templo de la Santa Muerte.

][][

Notes:

We call her Our Lady of the Holy Death (Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte). She is a folk saint, unrecognized by the Catholic church but worshiped by both members of law enforcement and Narco cartels. Outcasts and outlaws are drawn to her for it is said that she answers prayers immediately and protects against violent death. I use several Spanish words and phrases in the poem. “Escúchame,” translates into, “listen to me.” “Narco barco.” is slang for any sort of boat used in drug smuggling. According to the BBC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) once utilized homemade submarines for that purpose, each costing around £1.3 million to build and could hold a crew of five.

midway

24 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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“Midway through this maddening life,” you know
how this goes, “I found myself unredeemed

in a dark wood.” The “right road” was wrong. No.
The road was gone, as in, damned. What I dreamed.

What I blasphemed. Lovers of words must name
horror. I have swallowed demons before,

felt their workings in me. “Clock: tock-tock.” Same
shame. Same grief. Damn me with a touch of gore

on the cogwheel. Things slow down. In your heart
there is a murmur. You know how this goes.

X-rays show blood clots. Demons I can’t squeeze
out of you. That is my horror, sweetheart,

I’ll lose you midway … despite all of those
prayers and tears and pathetic “don’t leave me”s.