her foal obscene

31 Saturday Aug 2013

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And know there is more that you can’t see, can’t
hear, can’t know — except in movements. Inside
you it wants to get out. Like song. Like chant.
Shaman knows. Steadily it grows. Denied
as birth it will rip you apart. This thing.
This word. This language. Wretched wind that swept
space clean. Breathe in. We die in blood. Bleeding
inside. I wept because you were. I wept
riding the nightmare and her foal, obscene,
there is always more. Sister, I know why
I stayed. That movement. Fear. Can you forgive
me? I cannot. I scream. I scream. I scream
because we are all born in blood, and die
in blood, but for you, sister, please just live.

wither bone

31 Saturday Aug 2013

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Dumb glutton after reading Lolita
she looked once at her daughter and then fled.
Inamatus, bangtail, poor mute, daughters
of Lot pregnant with their leering father’s
observe this erotic Lent—and I thought
she had liked this gamahuching better

than she did. Than I do. Is there no more
exquisite a conjugation in our crude
anatomy than this where poetry
dovetails with the inevitable mandrake,
the Nebuchadnezzar, the three-penny

upright? To me, to me, to me the most
endearing is its unsuitableness
of such in books, magazines and Best Of
anthologies; and, conversely, the chief
wonder in hell (wither bone, I’m sometimes
transported) are these three sticky fingers
that I bring with me everywhere. Bite hard.

catch fire girl

30 Friday Aug 2013

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Blind, we follow her slant flaming sparks, spray
metal to the hammer, pound out sculptured
what, we do not know. A girl that can weigh
potency, that fell in love with the word
anvil. One who speaks to the heart of coals.
Make my hands large and sinewy, a prayer.
Let me dream in blade and sculpture. The soul’s
work is rare. How many can find rapture
over mallet sizes? Turn steel to doubt,
fizzle it, turn it soft again? Her swing
of sledge. Her smithy grindstone. The crack-smack
of each blow, blurring, sending us far out
as she beats and beats and beats, then, sweating,
the catch fire girl at the forge tows us back.

passing of heaney

30 Friday Aug 2013

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seamusheaney

The BBC has just announced that the Irish poet Seamus Heaney has passed away at the age 74. Besides winning 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, I adored his translation of Beowulf (1998). Below is one of my favorite sonnets of his.

Clink a pint and Oíche Mhaith.

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…

No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…

We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people hardly marching… on the hike…

We found new tactics happening each day:

We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

And stampede cattle into infantry,

Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.

a drop on the tongue, just one

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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Do not trust still water. It has no salt.
The first time I drank another’s life blood,
one lone dribble from behind the ear, fault
of fuck bites, that brackish taste, that queer flood,
filled me, alien and perverse, I knew
that no rush of river, no stagnate pond,
nothing that was simple like day-blind dew,
rain or fresh water could take me beyond.
Not the way orgasms lead us to ride
the gods or how a blood drop holds life’s curse.
It’s all about making the sweat begin.
I wish to know the wild thing that you hide,
the thing that makes you alien and perverse,
the thing hidden in the salt on your skin.

faith the scar

29 Thursday Aug 2013

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Sexless – godless — raptus — itself a drift
without dim mortal faith the scar-marred home
of sand wind look into the sea the rift
between walking naked into froth-foam
of tide naked before a vast junkyard
of words that do not please. To worship sea
is to worship alien a graveyard
for the others to worship mystery
all that words cannot name a god shark finned
I will not die. On land dry I will swim
out drown drown drown into bliss into bliss
into bliss into that which drives the wind
because it has come to this it has come
to this O faith it has come to this.

cut here

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

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Tonight I’ll drink and think. Tonight I’ll pluck
from the air one last clamorous kiss. Ghost
lovers shall come and cum. As in: we’ll fuck.
As in: I’ll boast of my dumb brute brawn. Boast
of my blade, but not this blood. Rouge’s belly.
Twin-twined guts. Cut here. Though each layer flails
the skin nothing to breathe in what body,
what shape, what pains to give you my entrails
I got guts beating days off through the blur
of stone and dark bud. All that I still trust
I still love. I’m weary of ugliness,
but not drinking, not thinking. And after?
Will we still fuck when I’m dead? When our lust
is the only thing standing between us?