theur elwis cum

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You sit, dripping on the gunwale, nostrils
flaring, your hemmed dress covering your knee

while I cut guff-rope from off your ankles.
“Ah’m chilled,” you chatter, “teur t’ bone, duppy.

Gi’ uz yaw rawny ‘eat.” What dead returns
when called? The boat bobbed on gray-green Haitian

waves. They had tried to snuff you; but salt burns
with ropes, entwined; fat moon with sickly sun,

enlaced; living with dead, conjoined. This, too,
is faith. I hug you. You cough up a lung,

laugh, stare: “duppy, ah knuw you’d cum.” You wince,
shifting back organs: “theur elwis cum.” True,

I do, for you. Your lips are cracked, your tongue
black, so I row us back to Port-au-Prince.

][][
Notes:
For the record I am not using any sort of Haitian accent in the poem, it is actually Yorkshire. A duppy is, traditionally, a malevolent spirit from the Caribbean (see: Bob Marley’s Duppy Conqueror, for popular use), though as with everything that people insist on making black and white I delight in the grays.

fat palm

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Night wind in the trees; though I never heard
that din back then. Just your mewling quim qualm

cries with each flushed thrust while your lips puckered
and dripped. To pull back. To mark with fat palm,

the smack, the sting. Onto days; felt your burn
on my fingertips, melted deep in my hair —

I walked for days glazed in a world of stern
scorn, ghast hush, torn crush. You’re all of despair.

I of need. How do you say? High maintenance?
High greed? Come back, love. Return like clockwork.

Or, soul, don’t. Gods do not love indulgence,
just the noise that you give when your hips jerk.

We are nights with wind and trees and ozone.
We are the low crackle that breaks the stone.

cockspur

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With my left hand automatic writing.
Three taps and the spirit begins, hungry

for my attention. We’re all hungering
with need. Bring me my water pipe, my tea,

chaos. What is a ghost but compulsion
personified? I am as compulsive

as it comes. You quote Shelley, I Byron.
Cockspur; we still quote men who don’t forgive,

forget or learn from their mistakes. Spirit,
mayhem, bring your mouth low. I have dead aunts,

mothers, sisters that only you recall.
Tap out my love to them. Be the poet

that I’ll never be; mumbling in trance,
just more wet clay with a lisp and a drawl.

Quote

WORLD OF DEW: poems by issa

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In this world

we walk on the roof of hell,

gazing at flowers.

The moon and the flowers,

forty-nine years,

walking around, wasting time.

Full moon:

my ramshackle hut

is what it is.

I’m going out,

flies, so relax,

make love.

Don’t worry, spiders,

I keep house

casually.

We humans–

squirming around

among the blossoming flowers.

The world of dew

is the world of dew,

And yet, and yet–

Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1827 / Japan)

bastard’s freak

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Arse’s trickster; Lather maker; Rude root.
You say cocks are symbols of devotion,

godhood, rebirth; like you’re the first to put
the “erection” back in resurrection.

Knacker bone; Billy-me-nag; Love’s horsewhip.
First strip away myths, all the begetting,

its use as a weapon, male ego; strip
it bare and what’s there? 8-inches … pulsing.

Leather stretcher; Jockey’s pride; Bastard’s freak.
Some days I can say, “Brother, your beauty

haunts me.” Give me those days without bullshit
crafted to glory in this queer physique —

days where I can leave your face soaked, splotchy,
cum-streaked, where you hold out your palm and spit.

hood

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Perhaps it was the flavor — the essence —
the smell. Perhaps it was the study hall

after school — meant for our math and science
homework. With doors locked the sunlight would crawl

out from the windows. It strayed, meandered,
returned back to the spot where you straddled

my face, grinding, while you sang out the slurred
glories of my tongue. You convulsed, bejeweled

my cheeks, chin, lip until I swallowed you,
hodge-podge, all the while your clitoral hood

rubbed me raw. Perhaps it was in that zone
before we went home, cum-dazed, stuck like glue,

peeling yourself back that I understood,
dear friend, I could live on your cum alone.

Quote

from, “dictionnaire érotique moderne,” by alfred delvau (1882)

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CLITORISER (Se). La faire jouir en jouant de la langue
dans son con (voir Gamahucher)

Il te faut, à tout prix,


Sucer des clitoris,


Et si l’antiquité


Ne l’eût pas fait,


tu l’aurais inventé.


—J. Duflot.

CLITORISER. One who make her cum while playing with her
cunt (see Gamahucher)

You need, at all costs,

to suck the clitoris,

And if antiquity hadn’t invented

this then you would have.

—J. Duflot.

][][

NOTE: I often lament that English has not invented better terms for oral sex. We borrow some; “cunnilingus” and “fellatio” are universal but at this point a little bland. “Suck clit” and “Blow job” have always felt like school yard retorts; what we say when we are shit-faced drunk and all our poetry has left us. The French, though, have devoted a lot of time and energy into creating their erotic language. The fact that they have an entire verb, “gamahuche,” expands their poetic worlds drastically. English needs something better than just applying, “licking,” and “sucking,” onto cunt and cock.