Category Archives: self-portrait

should’ve

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

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Three times, before I was one, something tried
to pull me back. When the San Gabriel

fault-line shook. When the firestorm and landslide
consumed the Malibu hills. When I fell

in the deep end at the Lil’ Angels Fun
Pool. Yes. There were other attempts, later,

but those were my failures. For eleven
short months in L.A. earth, fire and water

strove to claim me. Some curses get to hide
from us. Call it misfortune, my mom did.

Before I was her mistake she called me
her bad luck baby; one who should’ve died.

I’ve no memories of being that kid —
just what came after, what taught me to flee.

coup d’etat

03 Sunday Mar 2019

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

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That’s the knife called: She Slits Open.
Once I sang that I’d slice open my gut,

reach in and drag out loops of intestine
if it ever got that bad. Before smut

and my sonnets I lived in Las Vegas,
crossroad of ghosts. I carried her with me

all the time: at the Shrine of the Goddess,
in class, at the gym. I was one sissy

hellbent on going out like Mishima.
Honor is queer, though: once it got that bad

only survival could prove them all wrong —
prove my fey soul is strong — Cosmic Vulva

strong — strong as the ghosts calling me comrade.
Stronger than this old belly-slitting song.

NOTE:
Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author and literary luminary, obsessed with beauty, homoeroticism and death. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his secret militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took the commandant hostage and tried to persuade the soldiers there to join in overthrowing the new pacifist government in a coup d’etat. When this was unsuccessful, Mishima committed seppuku, ritual suicide by cutting open his belly.

She Slits Open

cravings

07 Thursday Feb 2019

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Some say it was Soyok Wuhti and some
say it wasn’t, but for a year the carved

doll of Ogre Woman, with knife and drum,
lived in my pocket. I was six, love starved,

though our bruja neighbor warned of curses:
children, even strange ones, shouldn’t be left

as toys for spirits deep in the mesas.
What did I know? I was six and bereft

for what I didn’t know. But after school
I’d take her out, play with her violent hair,

her black serpentine tongue, her jaw that clacked
at my kiss. Of course her cravings were cruel.

She taught me that lechery is like prayer.
I was six, love sick, wild for any pact.

NOTE:
Bruja is the Spanish term for witch, while in the Hopi pantheon of gods, Soyok Wuhti, is both female ogre and teacher who enforces good behavior among children. As with all gods and monsters she appears in three forms: as a spiritual being unseen by mortals, as a dancer in costume performing sacred rituals and as a kachina, a wooden doll carved from cottonwood root.

fester

27 Sunday Jan 2019

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

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All these displays of drunkenness come on
me at odd moments. At twelve they were droll,

even charming. Now? I know that neurons
misfire in my head, though huffing xylol

didn’t help, up along neural pathways
in my brain so that I seem a sucker,

easy mark, artless fuck. All these displays,
from dazed to frenzy, with fears that fester

here, of damage that won’t heal. They all seethe
here. I rave and reel just like cast-off junk.

Manic. A shaman without her people
is just one more loon who hears the gods breathe.

I’ve no people. I don’t drink but I’m drunk
roaming holes in my brain, worlds in my skull.

mercy

27 Thursday Dec 2018

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

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Christmas Eve’s “No First Drink” Recovery
Meeting. The reek of Pall Mall in the air.

Don’t talk now. Don’t stand out. Not of Gyumri.
Not of dead orphans. Not of the nightmare

that haunts you from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Everyone here carries their own horrors.

Right now just listen, just be present. Black
humor, Lilith’s mercy, depraved lovers

kept you, if not lucid, at least sober …
but not tonight. You woke. You sit and grieve,

nod and listen. You love these survivors.
You love everyone but yourself. No prayer

will heal what you conceal under your sleeve,
under your burn scar, your broken knuckle.

colony

09 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Your path is in the sea, your path is in the great waters and your footsteps are not known. — from, Psalm 77

Rusty iron ore tramp steamer painted pink
with a great garden of vegetables up

on deck. A tribe of wayfarers, with ink
and love, to sail the steamer, to worship

the waves and all of us in it. Gorgeous
sea-rose, wide mid-ocean. A colony

of cats, of cast-off children, of purpose
other than all this land-locked misery.

Fresh food, fresh water, fresh love; the rhythm
of the voyage slumbers in us. Sea trance

and dream. I want part of this tribal blood
of friends and lovers — in a rust-bottom

pink ship. I want a myth and a romance.
I want a voyage both wild and sacred.

niña roja

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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NIÑA ROJA, Red Girl. SANTA MUERTE,
Lady of Death. I pray to you: bring me

the ghost of she who told me to obey
my dream: “Love, come to the cemetery,

find my grave.” NIÑA, you know I’m sinful
in bed. MUERTE, you know that I’m honest

in my perversions. She came to me, full
of ghost blood and ghostly lust. Now my lust

keeps me awake at night. If she’ll return
once more I’ll bless my next nine orgasms

in your name, bring you cinnamon and burn
your red candles. NIÑA, shaker of limbs.

MUERTE, Saint Death, I beg of you, again,
bring this lovesick ghost back to me. Amen.

cupid’s malcontents

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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My trash-talk needs work. I want more than gloom’s

muzak, more than these chrome mall mannequins,

 

half-clothed, standing guard near the changing rooms.

Stripped, I abhor what I see. It frightens

 

me how I’ve changed. Once I reveled in loss,

desperate for your tongue. Transfixed with romance

 

halfway down my throat. I loved all chaos;

all of Cupid’s malcontents in hot pants.

 

I was all that I’d take a bullet for

because there will always be some foul dude

 

afraid of the fab, of soft boys, who’d bust

a cap in anything rad and cocksure.

 

Picture this: a queen standing hard and nude

in a changing room — hard and still in lust.

fucktard

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

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

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We are swine, wild boars among the bluegrass

and salt-stained rocks. We are bitches, each teat

 

engorged, each rump distended. We are sass

and rage. Each foul word you use to mistreat

 

others — fucktard, ignoramus, nitwit —

that is us, too. Why does liberation

 

for you crave vile behavior? I’m unfit

to judge, clearly. Still, I love my cousin

 

even if my cousin doesn’t love me.

Today’s rebel is tomorrow’s tyrant

 

without this connection, without these ties

to each other that make us family.

 

We own the words that you use: faggot, cunt,

‘tard. So we defy you. We love. We rise.