Tag Archives: poem

cupid’s malcontents

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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My trash-talk needs work. I want more than gloom’s

muzak, more than these chrome mall mannequins,

 

half-clothed, standing guard near the changing rooms.

Stripped, I abhor what I see. It frightens

 

me how I’ve changed. Once I reveled in loss,

desperate for your tongue. Transfixed with romance

 

halfway down my throat. I loved all chaos;

all of Cupid’s malcontents in hot pants.

 

I was all that I’d take a bullet for

because there will always be some foul dude

 

afraid of the fab, of soft boys, who’d bust

a cap in anything rad and cocksure.

 

Picture this: a queen standing hard and nude

in a changing room — hard and still in lust.

telegraph boy

30 Monday Jul 2018

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I want to smell the memory of you

passing on the street. Bells of Idlewild,

 

orange groves, nine paper roses, bayou

salt flats, the way you sang, You Wicked Child.

 

Wicked musk. First the cleft where your backbone

merged with your ass and then the sweat. The whine

 

as my hips grind. “Telegraph boy,” you groaned

out the words. “C’est bon!” Yes, it was good. Spine

 

bent, eyes wide, thighs akimbo. I walk bent

in boots but your scent is not here. Red dirt,

 

Haitian balm, incense. None of them were yours.

Or ours. A hint of desert mint, cement,

 

quisling’s room. It was the last scent that hurt.

Hospice’s razors, flu, IVs, bedsores.

slash season

27 Friday Jul 2018

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I want a darling not afraid of knives,

in love with the oil and the stone. Who knows

 

how to hone against bone. My flesh thrives

with pain, with slash seasons, with primrose

 

-hued welts. What do I need with a summer,

bastard dogwood galore? or an autumn

 

with lake storms pitching across the sour

waves? What we have is a fist, the wisdom

 

a fist brings holding a knife. I am yours

for the cleaving, for the euphoric heat

 

carved in. My skin is ornament enough,

and my will shall be done. Darling, let gore’s

 

soul guide you through all this gristle and meat

to my trifle of flesh, slash season’s stuff.

fucktard

11 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by in Feminism, Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

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We are swine, wild boars among the bluegrass

and salt-stained rocks. We are bitches, each teat

 

engorged, each rump distended. We are sass

and rage. Each foul word you use to mistreat

 

others — fucktard, ignoramus, nitwit —

that is us, too. Why does liberation

 

for you crave vile behavior? I’m unfit

to judge, clearly. Still, I love my cousin

 

even if my cousin doesn’t love me.

Today’s rebel is tomorrow’s tyrant

 

without this connection, without these ties

to each other that make us family.

 

We own the words that you use: faggot, cunt,

‘tard. So we defy you. We love. We rise.

dishabille

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Kindness is a strange aphrodisiac —

You show me shocking blue bruises, stitches

 

and a thick tattoo on your lower back

that reads: Baby Mac Sappho. Your nieces

 

come to visit. Your sister frowns at me.

I look like trouble. The hospital room

 

is small. I wait in the hall as you three

chat but as soon as they’re gone we resume

 

where we left off: your gown pulled to your breasts,

thighs wrapped around my neck. Your dishabille

 

lips, the moon-stud in your clitoral hood,

the way you spurt. All week you had no guests.

 

That hurt. But this kindness, you say, this feels

good. Just good? I ask. Heh, cuntablunt good.

prove

28 Thursday Jun 2018

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It’s not breaking off the tooth, it’s the living

with the exposed root. You are gone. You are

 

gone. I know that the rain is still falling,

that the earth is still sublime, that the star

 

I named you for is still out there, somewhere.

It’s this morbid time, time on my hands, time

 

to think that I can drink away despair,

fuck away all this pain. Time for sublime

 

errors in judgment. Pain will be the death

of me but what does pain prove? They still move:

 

the rain, the earth, the stars, all that must part

must part. I held you. You took your last breath.

 

You are gone. Let this long sober pain prove

that I love you, little blessing, dear heart —

little bliss

24 Sunday Jun 2018

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Death then? Love now. Love what teaches. Despair

combined with sex and poor impulse control

 

teaches. During a game of Truth or Dare

I learned that the emotional black-hole

 

called my psyche isn’t good at keeping

friends. The Dare: show me base pleasures. Others

 

tsk’d-tsk’d. Look where it got them. Still, snogging

takes groin-stirring skill and I know what stirs

 

your groin, or so I thought. I got confused

and then frightened when you began to cry.

 

That was neither long death or little bliss,

only shame. When friends say that they felt used

 

that’s on you. Learn from this, fool. Don’t reply

with a sigh that a kiss is just a kiss —

bereft

22 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Poetry, sonnet

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But just then temperance whispers: you are dull

sober. You’re still a shit and self-possessed —

 

the way devils possess the infidel,

the way cancer still lurks in your left breast

 

— possessed and achingly lonely. Restraint

didn’t change that. All mild calm has brought you

 

is new panic, all your old fears, that quaint

dread of future fuck-ups to come. You knew

 

that there’d be hell to pay but why is hell

so worn? forlorn? The last horned god has left

 

the woods, the last great shark fished from the sea.

This is your inheritance. You shall tell

 

of your riches — flat, gray, cut off, bereft

— and all that happens after ecstasy.

sloshed

12 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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How do the sober mate? The ones not drunk

on quick kisses. Who don’t drop to their knees

 

on the first date. Who tuck their luscious junk

away and never learn how to say, “please,

 

cum-plum, I need more.” More libertine sex

magic and all the proteins found in cum.

 

More rough gods and nipple clamps. More objects

designed for pleasure. Imagine Sodom

 

as a lazy date night. The world is ours.

Imagine a kiss that leaves you stoned, sloshed,

 

flushed. Imagine me knocking on your door.

Debauched acts: what soils the soul in others

 

is our prayer. Pray savage, come drunk, unwashed.

Tell me that you want this … that you need more.

itchy ghost

21 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Praise to the needle and praise to the thread;
how they suture a pucker together.

Picture a moonface, my face, my forehead
slit in two. Beastly flap flopping, glimmer

of bone mixed with blood. A doctor at work:
that jab thrust pull, jab thrust pull on my lip

diced, seams leaving me with a grotesque smirk,
jackal grin. My chin sliced. My finger tip.

My odd hip. Itchy ghost of zipper scars
and flick knives. Small lewd ghost of aortal

blood and wire. You both know the infamy
that is sewn under these clothes; mark of Mars,

mar of bloodshed, held in place with needle
and thread. Y’all put the “scar” into scary.