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quote unquote

09 Sunday Sep 2018

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At Dirty Dick’s and Sloppy Joe’s
we drank our liquor straight,
some went upstairs with Margery,
and some, alas, with Kate;
and two by two like cat and mouse
the homeless played at keeping house.

There Wealthy Meg, the Sailor’s Friend,
and Marion, cow-eyed,
opened their arms to me but I
refused to step inside;
I was not looking for a cage
in which to mope my old age.

The nightingales are sobbing in
the orchards of our mothers,
and hearts that we broke long ago
have long been breaking others;
tears are round, the sea is deep:
roll them overboard and sleep.

W.H. Auden, “SONG OF THE MASTER AND BOATSWAIN.”

colony

09 Sunday Sep 2018

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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.

murk

08 Saturday Sep 2018

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Fruitcake and sludge love, a love-smudge, dried crust
crusting my nails. Few ghosts come back with pride,

with tales. On our last shift you were tied, trussed,
crotch-rope spreading your pudendal cleft wide

under your scrubs. Release, in all its forms:
from me, from work, that cum-sticky murk smell,

cirque-slush fog. I know how a nurse transforms
with bliss of rope kissing her, “pumpkin shell.”

Bad joke. “Peter, eat her.” Very well: last
kiss, last shift through your cottons. Moist as cake,

as fruit — as the mistake we want and yearn
for, crusts our nails. In the future our past

falls from us — Call this the sort of mistake
that leaves behind only ghost-tales, rope-burn.

niña roja

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

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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.

blood-cream

01 Saturday Sep 2018

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In sight — it must be right. Feeding spectral

menstrual blood to me in a High Sex dream.

 

Gobbets from off dead fingers. Your menstrual

flow, these queer pheromones, love supreme

 

charm, still survived with your breath. This surprised

me. You’d died at nineteen — lust must feral.

 

I’d placed on your grave a lodestone baptized

in my blood and cum, spirit salt, candle

 

wax and prayer: “we will all the pleasures prove.”

You heard, followed. In dream magic the ground

 

is wet with your chamber lye, sky a flow

of need, binding me. Now feed. Your floods move

 

through me. I know. Blood-cream. I dream and drown

all numb. I know. Your dead girl’s cum. I know.

tempered

26 Sunday Aug 2018

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Strop me twice. Make it hurt down my blue-ice

thighs and across my feet. Rope wound around

my wrists held high, wet anklets slick with slice.

On my pixie puck-curves welts unfurl, bound

from where the belt’s strop-strap struck. Turning screw

stone of my skin a bronze hue, tempered pearl

ochre. They say the devil wore a blue

dress, but any dress will do. You’re wet curl

below, wet at sweat and bruises that glow

on my cheeks. Queen Cliodhona’s grace guiding

each strop-strap slap, each swing of your arm. Wear

me rough, a glamour is upon me. Show

me fire-licked skin. Afterglow. Show me sting,

swung, stung. Own me stone down to my shorthair.

][][

Note:

Cliodhona (pronounced like Fiona but with a “cl”) is one of the Tuath Dé Danann (“tribe of gods”) in Irish mythology. A Fairy Queen associated with county Cork, the seashore and waves (the tide at Glandore is still called, “Waves of Cliodhna”). Passionate and violent in nature, tradition says that she abducted and seduced poets and bards of both sexes. The McCarthys and O’Keefes of Cork trace their lineage back to her.

shan’t

24 Friday Aug 2018

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Circe’s mercy — Witch’s itches — Schooled gore

I have not been myself of late. Coarse brute

 

force. Love-smudge. I want your sludge. I want more

of you — I am root’s charm. I am charm’s root.

 

Charm of carnage. Charm of harm. Kissing grim

under the tongue. That heavy green honey,

 

like from Delphi. I am not I. “Yes ch’em

yes.” No amber witness, royal jelly,

 

stone’s groan. Just plump rump. Itch that made Circe

moan, my mother of all craft. Does my sleaze

 

please? I am the other; all that you shan’t

have, but want. Toxic nectar, all dusky.

 

All for you. With luck we will fuck. We’ll squeeze

pleasure dry. Poison’s fun. Sibylline’s rant.

][][

Note:

“Ես չեմ ես” (Yes ch’em yes) is simply, “I am not I.” I am fascinated with the phrase in Spanish, “Yo no soy yo.” However, Armenian is the language spoken by Lot’s daughters in lust so I use that here.

thickset

23 Thursday Aug 2018

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Not that bent field stone, slick with dew, jasmine,

chicory — there are gods of those fields, scant

 

hairy things who watch you squat and piss in

the green flax. I wish to know what the ant

 

and the bee see in such jewel-weed. Not

that plush spot plump between your collar bones.

 

Not bone or field stone, not odd god, fleshpot

or urge (there is always an urge) that groans

 

thickset, clover seed to plant root in you.

Open your mouth. Root seed and suck, inhale.

 

Simple as not gagging. The way you pass

through a pallid field turned bronze. What shall spew

 

from me shall dribble down your chin, a pale

trail, a craving, splash, dew-dropping the grass.