Tag Archives: poem

without consent

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

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“I hope the exit is joyful — and I hope never to return.”
– Frida Kahlo

Translator of omens, chloroformer
of slurs, abductor of wickedness rare

and new; at Shaman’s Drum, in Ann Arbor,
not one poet posed naked, nightmare

of flesh, on their book covers. Perversion
was just a word. Strange eyebrows, broken shoe,

Blue House; you’re still naked, your alien
body, without consent, remains on view,

exposed, gets sold. Others make us monsters.
Others sell us. Others bring us back. You

ribbon around bomb. You jaguar. You grief
in sheets too thin to scab. Blasphemies, slurs,

omens; art keeps us in hell. Who knew
that ink damns painter just like knife damns thief?

schmutzy golem girl

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

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Legend concerns the animation of uniformed matter (which is what the Hebrew word golem means) … [and] the most famous golem is Rabbi Loew’s giant servant made from mud of the [river] Vitava, who was brought to life when the rabbi placed a shem [magical scroll] inside the clay …”
— from, The Rough Guide to Prague, page 101.

In the end, being
nothing more than
river clay, she left
dirty teeth marks
each night across
my neck and
fingers. Clothes
shopping was
a nightmare.
Food bored her.
Often I found
her laying on
her bed, moodily
playing with
her shem.

Her eyes,
the same sludge gray
that they drudged her
up from, held all
the cosmos, twigs,
a drowned squirrel.

Once she said that she
wished to see a heart
break, “Or a bone!”
looking eagerly at my
hand. “Don’t worry, it
can be a small one.”
But it was the warmth
that ran wild in me that
she couldn’t believe.
Tracing a fingernail
across each injury
she’d left fascinated
her. “Purple means
love,” she marveled,
watching all my bruises
change colors the way
the earth changes
with the sky, seasons
and clouds; reflecting
back everything; fading
back into what it once
was; the earth once
again reclaiming all
it had ever created.

goatish, dim soul

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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[first a sacrifice]

Now cup your hands. Hold them out like begging
or prayer. In that space where your palms do not

touch think of something decaying, something
alive. Breathe in this goatish swamp air, what

others call “swamp pussy.” Now cup your hands.
Hold them out to implore, pray. All the rot

of your swamplands are burning. Your swamplands
on fire in your poor, cupped hands. You cannot

let go. I’ll pray for you and your goatish,
dim soul; a beast led to slaughter. Don’t hope

that the goat knows the end of the rope. Prayer
stops when the goat is pulled forward. I wish

I had never seen that. The knife, the rope
and the terrible motion in the air.

dry rub

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

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I have swallowed down ghost eggs; my lips dunes
gagging you down. I’m defiling. Defiled

in so many ways, so many shapes, tunes,
concord and chaos. Sink to your knees, child,

the space that you occupy (raw, sublime)
is just wrong; like glow-bugs spattered across

your windscreen. Dunes are moving all the time,
but you can’t tell; even within the chaos

of the orgasm you find no wisdom.
Pity. The things that anchor me down mean

nothing to you. Dust-mote sperm, twig of clit,
dry rub. The living are humorless, glum,

tasty. Watch me roll broken shell between
my lips and swallow. Watch me swallow it.

girl blood essence

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

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Unlike Percy Bysshe it won’t be my heart
that gets washed ashore when the Niger claims

me as her bride. Flesh is complex, flowchart
of routes, tasty tasty mouthfuls. What shames

me is not how undignified drowning
leaves one, Hart Crane playing dice with Melville’s

bones, will Oya see to that, what’s shaming
is how little the soul cares of what spills

between my lips; girl-blood, essence, wave’s curl.
Spills in my lungs; panic, bone-dust, water.

What shames me is that I can’t save the last
gasp of a girly-boy, a boyish-girl.

Yet I walk on. The seas claimed you, lover,
to their depths where all souls lie, still and vast.

sister of 9

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

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Chaos at the three cemetery gates,
movement all along the Niger River

in the underworld the shadow that waits
shadow in the marketplace the Sister

of 9 her whirling skirts Black Madonna
jabbing the spur of arousal into

the side of the cock’s offense grave lingua
that drew me near the grave I’m with Wilde’s crew

boys of black and blue their DJ’s love lost
for my Oya, goddess and tribe, my Miss

Candelaria; Miss Thang at three gates. Let rocks
sleep, they make you star-crossed; all you lost

in the blue Sister-Brother, please dismiss
this child, this sad post-colonial fox.

grave miscreant

11 Saturday Oct 2014

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Shiny grass. Smell the
noun’s shadow. Write

down: “I’m the grave
miscreant,” “Water that

cleans/, flowers that clean
as I go.” Hell’s pronoun.

Mother, each waiting,
for the other queen’s

brilliance, and I love
such queenly

brilliance. Drag, “St.
Michael slay that

old demon,” yet all
my brothers walk through

you, monstrous and
gay. Let us speak,

guest front and fast,
sweat out words,

untruthful land like day
like dew. There is no

beginning. Just this: cloth
burns, oil burns, kisses

burn. Dream of me. Canto
and love. We twist spliffs.

My lover, Zulu and
ghost. Braided and …

her coffin: irons
coppers and

“flowers that
clean as I go.”

][][

Shiny grass. Smell the noun’s shadow. Write down:
“I’m the grave miscreant,” “Water that cleans/,

flowers that clean as I go.” Hell’s pronoun.
Mother, each waiting, for the other queen’s

brilliance, and I love such queenly brilliance.
Drag, “St. Michael slay that old demon,” yet

all my brothers walk through you, monstrous
and gay. Let us speak, guest front and fast, sweat

out words, untruthful land like day like dew.
There is no beginning. Just this: cloth burns,

oil burns, kisses burn. Dream of me. Canto
and love. We twist spliffs. My lover, Zulu

and ghost. Braided and … her coffin: irons
coppers and “flowers that clean as I go.”