Tag Archives: mythology

bride of the yellow river

27 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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bride of the yellow river 1

This is a way of telling a story.
Wash it down your throat.
— Wong Amy, Narration

* * *

I knew a girl once, a farmer’s daughter
from Wu, who was married to the Great King
Yangtze. Yeah, that’s what they said to her,

as their sole explanation for drowning
her, one more sacrifice to the Yellow
River. One more River King’s Bride. Soggy,

I could taste in her kisses marsh gas, woe
and weeds. “There was no king,” she once told me.
“So I’m no bride.” On her face a smile brimmed,
swollen and in flood until I too drowned

as I went down between her thighs, her trimmed
black curls, her mons pubis, her venus mound

that made her rain cloud burst. I thank Eros
we met for death made these passions endless.

* * *

Notes:

Wu is a region of China near the mouth of the Yangtze river.

Historical records tell of the custom of sacrificing a young girl each year to the spirit of the Yangtze, a “bride” to the god of the Yellow river.

nox diva

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

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I am the mildest of creatures, spell-bound,
gossamer, a thorn jutting. The nox diva

inside the mushrooms growing on the mound
where I buried you. First there is nausea,
sweats, my gut turning. Then you open up

inside my skull-bone; a whiskey cactus,
melting. A mushroom is like a polyp;

I’ve found both on you. I turn, like Horace,
into your well-mannered court slave. Ghost slave.

Slave of a ghost. Each time you slide into
my mouth you leave part of yourself behind.

One day I’ll consume you all. Then your grave
will stand empty. I can’t let go of you,

no-no, even if I was so inclined.

* * *

Notes:

Nox diva is my attempt at translating the phrase “night goddess” into Latin.

Horace was one of Rome’s greatest poets, one whom the English poet John Dryden dismissed as “a well-mannered court slave.”

like cherry blossoms swift we fall

19 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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like cherry blossoms swift we fall

If she dies? She has her hand on the hilt,
aware of herself; aware of what she
must not do, not yet. Nothing has been split
out of her, yet. She knows of the red sea
and the purple stars. Her father told her
about the witch-queens; how that long ago
one of them helped save the world. Her mother
taught her the “Way of the Sword,” Bushido
and how death in war is the greatest gift
any samurai could hope for. What’s death
next to letting down your mother? Afraid
does not work here. “Like cherry-blossoms, swift
we fall,” the poem goes. With a deep breath,
she took a step forward and drew her blade.

* * *

Note:

Bushido, “the way of the warrior,” is a feudal Japanese word for the samurai’s code of ethics. It has been compared to the Western concept of chivalry. As a philosophy, it stresses loyalty, martial arts and that death in battle is the greatest gift a warrior might receive.

nothing worries the dead

16 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Tell me. You have gone to where I cannot

follow, not yet. Tell me, are there grackles?
I love their iridescent black, their squat
bodies, their ill natures. Their song rankles
and cracks but they do not fear me when I
am near. Are there meadows where the streams glide?
where the moon shines on the hill, the firefly

and the ladybug? Did you have a guide
to get you there? Dante did. Yes, I know

I ask so much. Worried, I guess. We said
it would be all different, like a mellow
groove-in; that nothing can worry the dead.

Tell me, are you still waking up nervous?

Are there still wretched nights and loneliness?

unfit

16 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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They say that the cruel one must now depart
at dawn. Come back to bed, love. I’ve been cruel
but not like that. I am shallow. My heart
knows that it will be judged by the jackal
headed god Anubis one day. “Unfit;”
I am sure that will be what I am told.
“Unfit” gets you consumed by vile Ammit,
the soul-eater. Tomorrow I’ll be cold
as a crypt. Tonight, though, I burn. Stay here.
They say you can’t get to heaven depraved.
What’s a bruise? a bite? I’ll mark your flesh mine.
And then what comes between us I will smear
across your face. I don’t care to be saved.
Damnation is also an act divine.

* * *

Note:

Anibus is the jackal-headed god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion.

Ammit is a funerary deity, a female demon in ancient Egypt; part lion, part hippopotamus and part crocodile. Her titles included, “Devourer of the Dead,” “Eater of Hearts” and “Great of Death.” Her job was eating souls judged by Anibus as corrupt.

myth and porn

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Just like a Disney princess, Pasiphae,
cuckold King Mino’s wife, kept a wild beast
as a lover. A white bull from the sea. One day
the queen had built a great wooden cow, greased
herself, lay waiting in its oak darkness,
primed. The world is full of lore of women
who train beasts “to perform the services
of men;” real stud fees; again and again.
Ovid’s tale of the Minotaur was not
just a warning, he aimed to titillate
with the details; how a mother begot
her son with a bull’s cock, fiend at the gate.
Once done Ovid leaves her, pregnant, forlorn;
proving there’s scant difference in myth and porn.

a river woman’s heart

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

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It is not that river women are all
things to all people; just that your menfolk
feel far too free with them. Even a small,
slow brook is described in terms to evoke
a kept mistress. Let me tell you: you know
nothing about a river woman’s heart.
Her sands, her deltas, even the willow
who loves her; only a cad and blackheart
would try and describe the secrets shown him.
Naiads of bubbling, rolling rivers
might let their mortal lovers try and swim
their depths, but don’t talk about their waters.
Do not betray her trust, her love supreme;
or brag when your lover is a wild stream.

the first exile

20 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Lilith, Poetry, sonnet

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“I’m not a good lay/ I’m a straight razor,”
Judy Grahn, “Edward the Dyke”

There was no grief. The summer radio
played “you can have my husband/ but don’t mess
with my woman” all day long. Your afro
gleamed as we cruised in your Austin Princess
downtown. Playtime approached. After playtime
came dawn. Dusk and dawn. But you, drunk on spunk,
the first exile, loved love during wartime,
with your kerosene myth, junk in your trunk
and duck’s arse cut. Girls called you Liliti;
I called you my “mama-jan;” my surreal
strap-on sister. My roots and the orgy
where I was conceived. One hand on the wheel
while your other played with my head between
your thighs, licking your clit stiff and obscene.

aumakua

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

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Aumakua: a succubus
from the Sandwich Islands,
South Pacific.

Her hair was long, at least by our dreamland
standards. She had wrapped the tail ends around
her toes, so that when she walked she left the sand
patterned, like the wind in the dunes. The sound
of her song could be heard up and down
the beach. In the graves of Chief Roi Mata
and his 20 wives the old man would frown
at all the smutty figures she would draw
in the sand with a stick. Missionaries
called her a devil as she drank the rain
gushing out from her own lap. Her menses,
it was said, could wake the dead, heal that pain.
In our dreamland she waits, a succubus
under a lotus tree, pleasure’s goddess.

smut by the sea

25 Monday Jun 2012

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Take me down in a tidal pool; swimsuit
around my knees. “Skerries beg/ the seal’s
bride,” we once sang. I am Neptune’s child: mute,
dark-eyed, insatiable. I sing the eel’s
want, the urchin’s need. I know of the sin
that can only be found under the moon,
down at ebb time’s tide. Take me; make my chin
slick from your spray. Even sex-starved Neptune
found joy sitting on the sand and dreaming
of what lay below. We are all sex-starved.
Let the great, gray seal colony — crying,
“lick me, lick me” — cry. I love a myth carved
into shifting sand; obscure and far-flung.
I love the selkie’s cock, the siren’s tongue.