refute

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“Through the wall stole a weird form who unbent

herself and stood tall.” I’ve had nbodewbi

ghosts, drunk and horny, slither like portents

to my bed before. Sex, grim and ghastly,

is all that the dead offer. Whatever

you think about lust now, that memory

will haunt you. Ghostly sex is still better

than no sex, they say. Perhaps most don’t see

it like that. Hot to leave their flesh and blood

behind they’ll grasp at any fairy tale

that says eternity is chaste. I know

how our souls refute that. These castrated

ghosts can only moan; when you’re cold and pale

come find me. You know I won’t say no.

][][

Notes:

The first line is a reworking of the beginning of George Houghton’s poem, The Witch of York, “Up o’er the hill and broken wall/ There stole a weird form, bent but tall.” In Bode’wadmi (the Potawatomi language), nbodewbi is a verb meaning drunk and horny. I think Joe Orton summed it up nicely when he said, “Enjoy sex. When you’re dead, you’ll regret not having fun with your genital organs.”

nachtmusik

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Heat haze at dusk. Ho hum clouds melt and meet

in gray and green flames until they become shrouds

for leaves of ribald trees. Across the street,

three floors up, Pauline’s cello turns darkclouds

to dew –– the most vulgar of all juices.

Each night she repeats her scales, saws out tunes,

twists old lays new. When I speak of crotches

I speak of my own; my cum, like the moon’s,

splatters in the dark while the music’s glee

sets fire to all it touches. I grind my teeth

and cum under the night’s skirts with Bach’s “Air

for G string;” while ‘neath the cellist’s airy

g-string Bach’s night heat yawns wide. Underneath

this string’s calico crotch: thick dew-slicked hair.

bacchanal

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“You did not know me,” Dionysus said,

“when you should have,” and proceeded to fuck

things up. I get that. Gods of rage and dread

aren’t that welcome at the office potluck,

either. But, just once, perhaps, a mellow

bacchanal would be pleasing; a laid-back

debauch with odd friends. Sadly, those I know

do not know me that well. I’m a shy Zack.

I lisp, stutter. People make me nervous;

I like quietude and sloth … except when

eldritch horrors possess me, when I rain

fire and salt the earth after. That luscious

violence when I’m not me; so I must, then,

be you, raving, both bullet and bloodstain.

unfit

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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.

shuffle shlick

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There were no strange colors in the streetlight.

No wet streets. No musk. No absinthe twilit

in jazz. No moon above roofs like a blight

in the sky. Just you, dead thing; while misfit

living things went flitting around inside

their hells. They make hell home under their skin

for their frail godheads; call themselves, “Brides

of,” and claim that shuffle-shlick is a sin.

Now it’s too late, dead thing, to place my hands

around their cunts and squeeze until their lips

form a heart. How the living waste living

astounds … even in this city’s wastelands.

Shuffle-shlick while the cum on your hand drips

since there’s nothing but you, dead thing, cumming.

gambol

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North winds: the old weathercock on the barn

spins, your window rattles. Rain soon. I read

to you until you grow drowsy. The warm

night lulls you to sleep. Tales of lust and greed

are your favorite. Even from here I smell

your wet spot spreading while your breath deepens.

Dreams of night queens and nymphs while the slow swell

between your thighs spreads, tracing your fountain’s

source. “Je suis l’amour qui tue,” the French say.

I’m the love that kills; chastity’s venom.

Let your mom sleep next door; the rain muffles

your old bed springs as your gambol and play

in your fountain while I, lewd ghost, watch dumb

small death bubble up from your genitals.

][][

Notes:

The quote, “Je suis l’amour qui tue,” comes from a fragment I found based on the life of Olympia Mancini, the Countess of Soissons; in theory used as evidence against her in the 1679 witchcraft scandal that implicated many members of Louis XIV’s court, the infamous the Affaire des Poisons. As far as I can tell there is no evidence that this was anything more than part of a salacious broadsheet sold to the public to titillate:

“Ma petite abomination, j’appartenais au démon de la chair; je suis l’amour qui tue.” Chaque nuit a ce criun démon de fille sort d’une cache, s’élance sur la comtesse et se met en train de lécher ardemment son clitoris dont la pointe sortait rouge et enflammée. Infernale lubricité! Par moment, la voix de la comtesse, qui râlait la volupté, dominait cette harmonie étrange, ce concert d’orgie, cette saturnale de sang.

sick

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I’ve been chasing the septic, the abscessed,

the wild and purulent. Disease is a grand

stand-in for lustfulness these days. A quest

for what others give away free. Not bland

pornography –– Promises of what might

happen. Let them exhale. Even the most

chaste and vestal can still hack & cough. Light

me up, dead man, with fever. Some still boast

of their prowess; as if the age of swing

might go back as before. Not with these lungs.

Not with this immune system. When I pull

on your hair and say, “you’re sick,” I’m being

literal. When I start to speak in tongues

that just taint I’m spewing, by the soulful.

just

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The day done gray. “Of the gods,” Aeschylus

said, “Death alone does not crave gifts.” The rest

love their altars and praise; become jealous

and ill-tempered if crossed. For Death the blessed

and the sinner are the same and worms feed

on them all. “Death shall be Death forever,”

Sappho said; unlike us, love, with our need

to see ourselves in what we praise. Lover,

love me now before I become just dust

of ten thousand years. My gift is coaxing

of my tongue – stroking foam – sucking obscene

– tasting what you crave. Let the righteous rust

since Death won’t care if we do everything,

nothing or just hardcore bling in-between.

][][

Notes:

Aeschylus was an ancient Greek playwright, known as the, “Father of Tragedy.” Sappho, “The 10th Muse,” was master of the lyric poem. I like what Kenneth Rexroth said about her art, “There has been no other poet like this. Wherever enough words remain to form a coherent context, they give one another a unique luster, an effulgence found nowhere else. Presentational immediacy of the image, overwhelming urgency of personal involvement — in no other poet are these two prime factors of lyric poetry raised to so great a power.”

taint

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How hot? The scabs under these bandages
came loose. Ointments melted. Stench sang sultry,

turning all this loving flesh to itches
and taint. Scratched them so much I pulled out three

stitches; they dangled from the scabs like roots.
Vegas heat made me long for other lips.

This heat is ooze and sulphur that pollutes
and crusts. No bath. No A/C. Just crushed hips

and cracked ribs; just on my back trying not
to move. Even typing this stinks. I dream

of ice, clean bed sheets. A month being prone
unnerves nerves; like sutures pulling on taut

flesh gone green, gassy. So hot my bloodstream
turned sick, lugging taint through each splintered bone.

verve

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How the fuck does someone fuck in something/ as bent and broken shaft, as dried as pools

no ink flows from, as a poem? Fucking,/ even the Platonic Ideal, has rules

that we must follow. Instead follow this/ as I rise, aroused. It’s been one hundred

twenty-three days (nombre magique!) amiss,/ blissless, frantic, sick. Some cocksucka said

there’s no world soul, no anima spirit,/ no blessed words. By clits, cocks and balls, these scrawls

rise with me. This is the ideal: shortest/ distance between us——words. We, who submit

to lust’s divine plan. Recall what befalls/ cocksuckas who scorn the verve of Logos.

][][

Notes:

Logos is a Greek philosophical term that says a divine word (reason) governs the universe. Likewise, World Souland Anima (Spirit) Mundi are other concepts of Logos. Plato’s Platonic Ideal states that the idea of an act or object is, “more real,” than the object itself. In this case the concept of fucking is more real than the act itself. Finally, I love numbers that arrange themselves in patterns (12:34, etc.) Nombre magique is French for, “Magic number.” It’s good to be back 🙂