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memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

memories of my ghost sista

Category Archives: self-portrait

chars

07 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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ars poetica, birthday, chars, grizzle, infected flame, Marquis de Sade, poem, Poetry, sonnet, stitches that ooze

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 babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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a girl and her submarine, conversations with imaginary sisters, dama de aguas oscuras, grave glow, loathy dark, santa muerte, sea poem, sonnet

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

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

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a girl and her submarine, before the storm, Dama del Mar, gale's dirge, narco barco, santa muerte, sea poem, sonnet, squall's lament

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 babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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mamá roja, narco barco, Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, poem, Poetry, pretty lady, santa muerte, sonnet, submarino del poeta

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 babylon crashing in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Dante, grief, heart murmur, losing my cat, losing my old boy, poem, Poetry, sonnet

“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.

should’ve

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Tags

ars poetica, bad luck baby, poem, Poetry, sonnet

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 babylon crashing in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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ars poetica, Cosmic Vulva, coup d'état, Las Vegas, poem, Poetry, seppuku, She Slits Open, sissy soul, sonnet, Yukio Mishima

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

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Tags

bruja, cravings, Hopi, kachina, New Mexico, ogre woman, poem, Poetry, sonnet, Soyok Wuhti

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 babylon crashing in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, irony, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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alcoholic, fester, holes in my brain, poem, Poetry, shaman, sonnet, the gods breathe, worlds in my skull

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 babylon crashing in Armenia, Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

alcoholic, Armenia, Gyumri, lilith now and forever, Nagorno-Karabakh, poem, Poetry, ptsd, recovery, sonnet

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.

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