Tag Archives: conversations with imaginary sisters

onibaba [i,i]

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

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SCENE I.

A semi-dark room scantily furnished. A sliding door opens and the distant chaos of a battle can be heard as two ghosts enter. The first, the soul of the legendary Hangaku Gozen, is dressed in her full samurai armor. The second, Lady Seishin, wears a kimono that might have been stylish 100 years ago and a kabuki fox mask that she never takes off. At the back of the stage is a small fire pit and a small window. Seishin stirs the embers and then stands by the window, peering anxiously out.

SEISHIN.

It is a wild night outside.

HANGAKU.

Help me off with this helmet. Is the rain still coming down?

SEISHIN.

In torrents. I cannot see the other side of the road.

HANGAKU.

That’s good.

SEISHIN.

If not being able to see someone ten feet away is good, then hai. Luck is with us. Should I put the oil wick in the window?

HANGAKU.

[Sitting down next to fire with her helmet in her hands.] Why? No. Only when we hear her order a retreat. That’s what she said.

SEISHIN.

But on a night like this she may have pulled the troop all the way back to Kyoto and we’ll never know.

HANGAKU.

Do not be so querulous, you cranky fox.

SEISHIN.

This isn’t me being cranky. Something is about to happen. Listen to the wind sobbing around the house … a lost soul that we’re refusing to let enter.

HANGAKU.

Why would we do that? The wind loves us.

SEISHIN.

The wind puts up with us. Ever since— What was that?

HANGAKU.

[Listens.] It is our message, I think. [Listens harder.] Something is coming. Douse the fire.

[The room is reduced once more to semi-darkness.]

SEISHIN.

Shouldn’t we—?

[This time the sound is heard by both women. Someone or something in groaning in the dark. They stand as the door slides open and Jiutian Xuannu enters.]

XUANNU.

Cousins, why are we wasting time here? I was going to call retreat but those stupid Takahashi samurai are milling about right over there and look so smite-able.

HANGAKU.

But who is going to do the smiting? You?

XUANNU.

You look sad, cousin. We’re shadows, azure-

eyed, made from lust and stardust and despise

blood and afterbirth. Fools fear our power

to peel off our pelts. Fools fear change, disguise,

the way floods deform and do not deform

dry earth. But, cousin, what use are nightmares

if you can wake up? Why try to transform

when we can slaughter? We don’t need more snares

fools keep slipping free from. Call Onibaba.

She’s a friend. She has farseeing vision

and short cruel knives. Fools call her, “Hag with Tusks

and Fangs Chitter-Chatting in her Vulva.”

Fools fear her carnage; her love of carrion;

how she sucks both down to their very husks.

HANGAKU.

Fetch her.

[Jiutian Xuannu exits.]

HANGAKU [cont.]

But first, let’s test her skills. Seishin, you pretend to be me.

SEISHIN.

I’m not a ghost. I think she’ll notice.

[Jiutian Xuannu, Onibaba and Kijo all enter.]

SEISHIN.

Ah, Lady Onibaba. Chrysanthemum in the Legion of Flowers. Mire in the Order of Tenacity. Chalice of Malice. Fury of the Divine Crest. It is I, your Lady Hangaku!

ONIBABA.

Xuannu, I find it odd that the, “Terror of Genpei,” would be both Jiuzhou and alive.

XUANNU.

[Aside.] That was the worst Hangaku impersonation I’ve ever seen.

HANGAKU.

Lady Onibaba, please forgive me for being cautious. Who is this?

ONIBABA.

[Indicating Kijo.] My daughter, Lady Kijo.

HANGAKU.

[Incredulous.] You had sex?

ONIBABA.

Hai.

HANGAKU.

[Skeptical.] With a mortal?

ONIBABA.

Hai.

HANGAKU.

[Scandalized.] O my, you nanty narking chuckabog.

ONIBABA.

I don’t think you brought me all this way to make snide comments about my lovers.

[A loud moaning begins from outside and the wind rattles against the hut’s walls.]

ONIBABA [cont.]

The dusk wails and you pray for Onibaba

to smite souls. It’s fitting that twilight

moans for us, glimpsing our hitodama,

our blue-green flames, as we pass in the night,

searching for the spot where we died; where our

blood touched the earth and our hubris melted

when we found out all our sweet truths were sour,

our faiths false. Who claims to know what’s sacred?

How I don’t know. But they’ll kill for it.

You want me to go out and lay the Eight

Ring Curse on those men? Men who love carnage

and their samurai bushido bullshit?

I’ll do it. Saints say hate cannot kill hate.

I say all we are is gristle and rage.

SEISHIN.

[Aside.] These mountain demons can be very tempting with their tongues.

ONIBABA.

Don’t frown, Lady Hangaku. That was you once, too: a butcher. Now you’re just dead and vague.

[The door opens and a little battlefield spirit acting as a messenger enters.]

SENJO BOZU.

[Bowing.] My sovereign. Ladies of the court. I come from the walls of Osaka. Takahashi’s soldiers have stormed our outer defenses. We are now fighting in the streets.

XUANNU.

What sort of necromancers do they have that can breach our spells?

HANGAKU.

I heard that Emagami The Blight was selling herself again, but her skills are pitiful.

XUANNU.

[To Onibaba.] My lady, do you think that we should give up on Osaka, or not?

ONIBABA.

Of course not. Only cowards and monks run away.

HANGAKU.

Yattaaaa! I agree with what she says: we’ll fight it out.

ONIBABA.

Glory is like the ripples on the water. You have given me the task of whipping the Takahashi then I will beat those waters until they froth.

HANGAKU.

Lady Onibaba, drive the living daylights out of Osaka. They says the root of suffering is attachment. I say we beat that koan home on the skulls of Takahashi and his men.

[All exit.]

][][

Notes:

Onibaba is, as her name states, is a red-skinned, white-haired Japanese ogre. She carries a kanabo (Iron war stick) slung over her shoulder.

Hangaku Gozen  was an actual warrior and fought in the Genpei War (1180-1185 AD).

Jiutian Xuannu (Dark Lady of the Nine Heavens) is a Chinese goddess of war, lust and longevity. With long Mandarin robes and her Dadao (“Big sword”) she justifies showing up in this play by saying that she is on holiday.

Seishin kitsune is one of the names used for a fox spirit.

Senjo bozu. A spirit from the battlefield.

Jiuzhou is an ancient name for China.

Hitodama are a pair of blue flames (similar to will o’ the wisps) that accompany a ghost when it manifests.

tell-tale

22 Monday Feb 2021

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Mischief-mad, hidden among the cushions,

you guide three fingers under your burqa,

 

biting back a tell-tale groan. Your oven’s

wet heat, stoked each night from ash to lava

 

while your husband snores near by, still tortures

you the way faith haunts your thoughts all day long.

 

When the first wet spot bleeds through your knickers;

when myrrh drips from, like honey in the Song

 

of Songs, your fingers –– then even mischief

isn’t enough. Mother-in-laws yammer

 

and whine, but you smolder: wet oven heat,

holy cum shrine. Your longing is as tough

 

as your soul’s flesh. Faith is only torture

in a world that wants you chaste and discreet.

lolls

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

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Slick from a randy varmint, your nipples

swell in your strappy tee as I watch you

 

take the pills that we found on the motel’s

bathroom floor. You taste just like witch’s brew,

 

rancor, a chloroform soaked handkerchief.

Ill pills freeze time then turn our lust heinous.

 

You are the color of storm and I grief.

On your back, your head lolls off the mattress

 

as I grind in. Your throat bulges, jaws twinge

as my balls smother your nose. You gag-retch,

 

spitting cum, bile and ache down your forehead.

Fuck fiend, you called me, words that made you cringe,

 

once … like love, or every time that I stretch

you wide; an act that you both long for and dread.

xenolibido

22 Friday Jan 2021

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Panspermia: Life hidden in drifting

space dust; scatterings of queer DNA

 

awash in the high heavens. Begetting

the ones zealots fear on Earth. Castaway,

 

satyr, witchling; this would explain but not

excuse my lecherous bursts. The drama

 

of throat fucking in public. Your distraught

“¡Oi!” as you wear my cum like mascara.

 

There is no ill will in our tribe. We hunt

all who love their carnal but odd essence.

 

Xenolibido. “Whores of Babylon,”

the saved sneer. No, try Betelgeuse. Try cunt.

 

Try cock. Try us all. But they won’t. Not once;

their junk genes come from dullest of god-spawn.

][][

Notes:

Besides being a great name for a drag queen, panspermia is a theory that life on Earth originated from alien DNA drifting on galactic winds, searching for a suitable environment to call home. The plot of the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers explains that the pod people came to Earth in the form of gelatinous creatures able to survive in the vacuum of outer space. I tend to fall on the side of astrobiology and ask for some actual proof before announcing that something is possible, but I do like playing with the idea in poetry. People who are very very keen on the idea of extraterrestrials tend to point to Fermi’s Paradox (which more or less states, “Empirical evidence is for Sucka MCs/ P-Funk’s Mothership Connection puts/ the xy chromosome in sexy”) and speculative fiction as to why they got a D- in high school science but an B+ in creative writing (naming no names, of course).

barco (iii)

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in A Girl and Her Submarine, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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Dama de aguas oscuras, last night

I dreamed of phosphor under a starlit

 

dome. Far above such unending ghost-light

the gales harangued (as gales do). Your half-wit

 

brat sat in low, loathy dark; wheezing down

the last air in his rust iron coffin.

 

Lady of dark waters, they say to drown

is abysmal, but if I can return

 

to you through your blessed sea or ill ocean,

then I’ll slip my box’d boat through opal waves

 

to rest my grave under high tide and slow

sea-swill. Lay me, if it’s your will, all shrunken,

 

alone, calling this dream fate. Glow of graves,

Santa Muerte, lost in the tidal flow.

][][

Notes:

The Bony Lady, Santa Muerte, has many names; “Dama de las aguas oscuras,” Lady of the dark waters, is one of them. The idea of this poem actually came to me several years ago when I was reading about the early attempts of the Imperial Japanese navy to build their own submarine. In 1910 one of their first prototypes sank during a training dive in Hiroshima Bay. Although the water was only 18 metres deep it proved impossible for the crew to escape while submerged. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Tsutomu Sakuma, patiently wrote descriptions of his sailor’s efforts to bring the boat back to the surface as their oxygen supply ran out. All of the sailors were later found dead at their stations when the submarine was finally raised the following day.

bait

10 Sunday Jan 2021

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You got us, trolls. We’re the unhappy few

with sub-par brains. We got no savvy. Our

 

tribes of scribes? Dim-witted. Our no flow crew?

Sucka MCs. Our erotic lives? Sour

 

grapes. All that you accuse us of is true.

This is the safe way out. “Poet is Priest,”

 

Ginsberg cried. But trolls got no god. They spew

hate. They laugh when we take the bait. “Artiste,”

 

they sneer. “Poseur.” All that grief, misery

and fear that drives us means nothing to them.

 

Ire we’re seen, dead we’re raised, gods who return

for our love: all proof of our lunacy.

 

We’re fools, drunkards, dullards who think mayhem

is art, who think it means something to burn.

tight

04 Monday Jan 2021

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“Thrust deep in me,” you said, while the hostel’s

bed groaned. You groaned Greek, then tight Moabite,

your Bronze Age birth tongue. Tight as your muscles

around my cock. You answered my invite,

called me, Dha’i-fah. “One who’s dispossessed

to be possessed by ancient sex demons.”

Such as you. Such is your skill. To be blessed

in a world still perturbed by lewd passions

is still a gift. I’ve searched the Thar, Gobi,

Deir ez-Zor but found you in a simple

hostel in Fez. You said: “Not in my cunt,”

and pulled me free. “Cum here,” guiding me

into your ass. “You don’t know what vulval

nightmares I unleash each time I’m pregnant.”

][][

Notes:

The Moabite language was spoken in Moab, an ancient kingdom located in what is now Jordan. Fez is a city in northern Morocco. Thar, Gobi and Deir ez-Zor are deserts located in India, Mongolia and Syria respectively. Dha’i-fah is a term used in Morocco concerning certain demonic spirits inability to possess a person whenever they feel like it; rather the victim must be willing and eager for such a possession to take place. Unable to read Hebrew, Persian or Arabic what little information I can find seems to indicate that Dha’i-fah is mainly used as an accusation against women who enjoy pleasure for its own sake.

shadowlands

31 Thursday Dec 2020

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You will drip with pain. Seduction will itch

in you; an itch that leads to shadowlands.

 

The dark is the lure. I know what will bewitch

you and why your inner sinner demands

 

control. I don’t know, though, why you’d submit.

Married. Pious. At peace, you say. Those old

 

dreams, back when you were a slave to your clit,

must be gone. They’re not for me. You’ve controlled

 

what still runs riot in me; which is why

I don’t share each gasp, each cum-soaked finger,

 

each of my wet dreams about you. Divine

lust is dark, like faith. Once I would defy

 

the world to make you drip. You’re no longer

itch. You no longer call me, “rude boy, mine.”

faux

30 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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“I too Analyze,” the spambot confessed,

“with Safe and Sexy cam models!” “Big Dick

 

Trickle.” “Dajuana Cox.” “Mother Knows Breast.”

So much for my Shakespeare essay. Type, “Schlick,”

 

in by mistake and whole new worlds open

up. It makes research a tad hard, bastards.

 

Still, I’m sure friend Spambot had lots of fun

crafting wretched sex puns from all my words.

 

Kinda respect such asinine zeal

to the Absurd. Genet would’ve been proud.

 

Flarf. Faux Joejobs. Spoems. Ass-‘n-9. None

of it sparks joy … like Dick Trickle. Surreal

 

but not clever. Cold but not kinky. Loud

but not sublime. Zealot but not shaman.

][][

Notes:

Jean Genet is one of my favorite petty criminals and playwrights. Champion of Theatre of the Absurd he wrote The Thief’s Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers (where Divine, of Pink Flamingos fame, got her name). The idea of this poem came from Steven Frank’s Spamusement! which took subject lines from spam emails and turned them into single-panel gags. Flarf, Joejobs and Spoems do the same thing but, as I’ve often found, without the humor and self-awareness that makes Frank’s work a joy to read.

nostalgia

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

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Around the time when earthly pinks and pearl

had been drained from the sky and the crows rose

 

in their trees to caw gray into the world

I stirred in nightmare, in sodden nightclothes,

 

in that sick sweat I get when pneumonia

curls cute in my lungs. I type in a fog

 

while in bed, one fingered, the nostalgia

of lust both heavy and out of reach. “Flog

 

a dead horse,” you text back. “Lust is all that

you write about.” Perhaps. These new gray days

 

of crow caws and ice match my libido.

Who do I turn to? Even my tomcat

 

retreats. Once I called lust prayer and could praise

pleasure. Now it’s less grace and more deathblow.