Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Illustration and art
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anyanwu
10 Wednesday Sep 2014
sulfur and breath
07 Sunday Sep 2014
Rising up from my bath snorted the ghost
of a bull, all ruined from some bastard
picadore’s lance. From where I sat, almost
all of his soft, looping intestines swirled
in the water, and the sulfur and breath
from his nostrils hissed. He had gored the man
who had slain him during the “third of death,”
“tercio de muerte,” fight. What began
as a haunting ended with me sewing
the bull’s head upon the matador’s vast
corpse. But being a vain ghost, I also
sewed his cojones, leaving them hanging
below his knees. The rest of the day passed
with us snogging mad in the back meadow.
][
note:
I’m using terms here taken from the lexicon of the Spanish blood sport called bull-fighting. A picador is one of the horsemen that jabs the bull with a lance. Tercio de muerte is the third part of a bull-fight where the matador finally plunges his sword into the weakened bull. Cojones are, of course, testicles.
not waving
06 Saturday Sep 2014
I try to say good things; bad things tumble
out. And so my brain works that way. Crazy.
Ask me about home, I point to my skull.
Ask me about god, I point to the sea.
Home is chaos, uncontrolled waves. My brain
like the coast closes in fog. Dark creeps in.
Will you please forgive me for all the pain
that I leave you? Somewhere, a dorsal fin
breaks the water’s surface. That is love. Drown
or do not drown; love circles us, waiting.
It will consume and I will gladly give
up all of this for love, for you. Go down
to the beach, look out and see me waving.
The fin circles. Consume me, please, forgive.
mei-zhen and the black tip
04 Thursday Sep 2014
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Posted by babylon crashing | Filed under Illustration and art
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TAKEN FROM THE BOOK OF TIDES: a sonnet sequence
04 Thursday Sep 2014
THE CALL
Sing me up a good storm. Teach me to raise
a wild zephyr from a sun-bleached cottage
lost in fog on the red coast. I can gaze
in a pool to tell your fortune. A bridge
over flowing water is good shelter
from those who would do you harm. But sea-salt
and dried kelp are mysteries. Seafarer
I am not. I’m a child of bones, asphalt
and books, not brine and pink conch. There are flies
on my breasts and my dreams do me no good.
Shells, types of water, the winds; I go down
in my dreams to the bone-crushing depths, rise
into … what? But it calls. The tide, driftwood,
the sea. If I cannot learn I will drown.
][
NINE WAVES MAGIC
“Utilize the power of the Nine … this spell works best if you cast it on the 9th hour of the 9th day of the 9th month of the year — September 9th at 9 am.” – taken from The Book of Tides.
][
This gray magic of yours from the ocean,
it is neither white nor black; like petrel
bones and shark teeth, it just is. A foreign
concept for those who think only evil
and good make up this world. Sea witchery
must be older than all that; since all life
came from powers that we blithely call sea.
I’ve read tales of the sea-gypsy, fish-wife
and storm-hag, mostly they’re patronizing
since they deal with women of the wild waves;
but they’re the teachers that I need to find.
Somewhere beyond the horizon’s fading
safety let me drift in a boat called Grave’s
End; taught by those that the land has maligned.
][
“The sand dollar with its perfect 5-pointed star, Nature’s pentagram.” – taken from The Book of Tides.
][
THE RESPONSE
Left at the water’s edge, all that’s been blessed;
gray tools to use if only I knew how.
Winter’s North Wind, Summer’s South. Autumn’s West,
Spring’s East. Shark’s rib. The tooth of a sea-cow.
Flow and ebb, High and Low tide. Fog. Lightning.
Abalone. Clam. Welk. Nautilus. Cockle.
Cowry. Fish hook. Ti leaf. Sea glass. Kelp ring.
Sailor’s knot. Bladderwrack. Ash twig. Coral.
Offerings made into a Book of Tides.
This is as far as I can go. Beyond
this I don’t belong, yet. The sea’s deep gate,
all your tremendous dark, requires guides.
Who will help me fashion my driftwood wand?
I wait. Like all strangers and gods, I wait.
][
note:
The Book of Tides is an online resource that I highly recommend. Someday I hope to learn what the nine waves in Nine Waves Magic actually are.
maw
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
Posted in Illustration and art, photograph, Poetry, sonnet
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I drag your jaws, all those crowns, all those teeth,
ordinary, divine and forever.
Hard with age, frozen honey, like beneath
the tongue all those funny bumps. My lover
sends me rude photos of gods and strangers.
I dig down to find the bomb at the core.
That which leaves behind a mark, a stain, blurs
what we shall be. I thought that shock and gore
would rouse you up. “The shark is a maw
with teeth,” they claim, since it’s only the jaw
that lasts. Consume me whole, little goddess.
Like all divine powers I am in awe
of what you do. Promise that you will gnaw
until there’s nothing more and nothing less.
][][
note:
The shark in question is the extinct Megalodon, one of the ancient gods that swam our seas 1.5 million years ago, during the Cenozoic Era. Still, my first thought in elementary school when I discovered that such beasts of the southern wilds once roamed our planet was, “cool!”
lovesick ghosts might
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
“That mysterious force that everyone feels yet no philosopher has explained.”
– Federico Garcia Lorca’s definition of Duende.
Childhood is overflowing, burning rough
into dim adulthood. Lovesick ghosts might
poke a hole, shelter your heart, kiss the scruff
of your neck. The dead often do despite
voices stating that they’re not there. Hidden,
like flame, like paper lanterns in the breeze.
Paper birds. Paper burns, leaving ruin
behind. Call that deep magic, what gypsies
still call, “Duende.” A child’s first heartbreak
knows it when it hears it. Nothing can heal
that flame. There is no exit, no logic,
no voice. Even now, adult, you feel ache,
that’s your birthright. All of life is surreal.
What you call pain and children deep magic.
scrumptious
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
Value beauty beyond danger. The three
flames made flesh, unmerciful fire. Nocturne
on a sweaty night. Dream of queen’s jelly,
your first cradle-song. It’s true that iron
and your touch will render me dead useless.
Ropes and ceiling wax, ripples on nipples,
fields of broken bones. What a horrid mess,
those three words: “time of death.” I have the skull’s
vacant stare. The voodoo doll’s turquoise breasts.
I dreamed you alive and you were scrumptious.
I’ve tasted the tender meat of your hocks,
run you ragged, then made you bleat. Incest’s
shadow. Call me Death’s Dowager; graveless,
dancing, a stranger in ash and dreadlocks.
bad blood
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
Inside of my mouth, tongue. I’m unwilling
to bite. In the distance the hour evolved.
I wake on my knees again, believing
that I loved you, again. I’ve been absolved,
just like flame. I was the one who plucked you,
spectral weed. The hour keeps changing. Banish
doubt. I burn out each night but I outgrew
your false-hearted lullabies, your fiendish
good-looks. To be free meant that I then broke
you like corn-stalks and concrete. Your mischief;
I’ve raised better demons than you. Haunted
is just a word. And now you’re all – poof – smoke.
I bathe in flames; the one thing strong enough
to wash away all your lies and bad blood.
warm body
03 Wednesday Sep 2014
Tags
bastard ghost lover, poem, Poetry, seven dust motes, sonnet, warm body, your dead pores gasp for breath
When you finally take your last corporeal
form, I’ll bake you sticky buns, your favorite.
Until then, snuggle close; let sunlight, dull
and warm, filter through you. I love ghost smut;
where the dead fall in love. Slowly seven
dust motes move as your fingertip explores
my breasts, smoothing fabric taut; your ashen
touch. My skin is so alive your dead pores
gasp for breath. Will you be this mesmerized
with me once you have a shell of your own?
Or will I be just one more warm body?
Will you, who died for love and once despised
false hearts, leave me? Is it just flesh and bone
that makes you whisper lover’s vows to me?
memories of my ghost sista 