Tag Archives: poem

quiver

01 Sunday Dec 2013

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a river of stars flooded
out of me even what’s

beautiful can be pain can
be violent joy where

the first arrow ended
marked the path you must

take to cross to me
the scene has been

set the bow tense
quiver in anticipation

][][

note:

Forever young and looking good tied naked to a tree, a saint popular with solders and athletes, Sebastian was a curly-haired Roman youth shot with arrows on the orders of emperor Diocletian, martyred by the establishment. In 1976, the British director Derek Jarman made a film, Sebastiane, which caused controversy in its treatment of Sebastian as a homosexual icon; though, as many critics have noted, this has been a subtext of his martyr story even before the Renaissance. In his novella Death in Venice, Thomas Mann writes about the Sebastian-Beauty as the “supreme emblem of Apollonian beauty, that is, the artistry of differentiated forms; beauty as measured by discipline, proportion, and luminous distinctions.” From these roots as well as the work of Susan Sontag and other pre-Stonewall theorists arose the aesthetic known as Camp; an acceptance of masculine effeminacy and a “heroism born of weakness.”

cheat the fates

01 Sunday Dec 2013

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I.
boom shocka — true love
is not for everyone but
if we are to meet then
we shall like that — boom

II.
Sleepless, I toss and turn
in my bed and listen to

the rain. I cannot see
a way out of this. Of all

the shepherds I am the one
who guides the bull to

heaven. All of the nurses, roots
witches and loving spinsters

I am the one who
will guide you to

the other side. But the green
rain came, washing

away all my paths, the heavy
temple bell reminding

me of all I must
leave behind

just to cheat the fates
and get you back.

III.
if we are to meet
again then let it
be if we are to
meet again then
let it be if we are
to meet again
then let it —

i sat up

01 Sunday Dec 2013

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I sat up all night
last night knowing

just where you were
who you were with

knowing that everyone
wanted to be your

first because you still
don’t know what you want

yesterday I would
have said do not let

me be your first let
me be the one who

stays but today
I am not so sure

the twitchy

29 Friday Nov 2013

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Praise this frustration. Praise a life without
an ounce of erotic hope. Praise the minus,
the loss, the single bed. Praise all the doubts

that make us sleep alone. Praise the daftness
that says the next world has to be better.
Anything than this, please. Praise the ones

who believe it; that our life-long quirks, our
foul habits, will somehow get us lovers.
At the end of each open mic. I’d ask

the audience, “how many of you are
in good, stable relationships?” and you’d
get a smattering hands. “Yeah, well, we

hate you. This last poem isn’t for you.”
But when I asked who had just gotten dumped,
broken up, slept alone, separated,

divorced, torn asunder by howling wolves,
lost in splitsville, terminated, fucker,
almost always half of the crowd would cheer.

“Yeah, cheers, this is for you, it’s a haiku:
‘Tonight we’re lucky/ you’re coming back to
my place/ we’re all getting laid.’” And like that

the show would be over, the crowd would up
and leave and you could see, even seconds
after the offer, that everybody

was justifying in their heads why it
must be a jape, a joke, performance art
anything other than what it really

was — offering you something new tonight.
Just one night, out you’re entire life,
where all you had to do was show interest,

some spark, that dull Prometheus damage,
and you’d lift the hex, the curse, whatever
it was that kept you from being happy,

from making that fairy tale you keep up
in your skull-bone come true; if misery
is the only shared language that we know

then praise the odd, the twitchy, the outcasts,
fools who ruin their own love, misfits all.
Praise everything that keeps us from this joy.

][][

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.” — Agent Smith, The Matrix (1999)

night’s orphans

28 Thursday Nov 2013

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— I am not naked under summer sky.
There’s so much forbidden to me; so much

you and I can’t do. Here’s our lullaby:
we’d sit on a grassy hill at night, touch

of heat in the air, and with night’s orphans,
crickets, we would sing to you. But twilight

is when you must go home and the heavens
always seem empty without you. Tonight

I’ll sit on our hill and star-gaze. Our future
feels far away, a void full of star-beams

and dark. You can’t join me. I can’t join you.
But if we could — we could — we would whisper

secrets under stars. My heart pounding, dreams
within dreams within all that we can’t do.

][][

“go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families” — Walt Whitman

dark honeyed air

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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… then we were nearing the end of the song.
The sea calmed; each note turned hushed and sublime

and then faded away … I am not strong,
but my strings are tight; full of tears each time

you play me. You have no soul, nothing lies
inside. I’ve seen it drip from your mouth, run

down your chin, melt out of your hollow eyes.
Each time you squeeze me tight these songs summon

mermaids who live in my dark honeyed air.
Each time I sing tales of the sea-gypsies

I find new words for the ocean’s outrage.
My waves are chaos. Sometimes they enter

all your harmonies … they make me vicious,
one day I’ll drown in lascivious rage.

][][

notes:

“Well she’d held a bass guitar and/ she was playing in a band.
And she stood just like Bill Wyman,/ now I am her biggest fan …”
—The Smithereens, Behind the Wall of Sleep.

something organic

22 Friday Nov 2013

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I want to keep you. I want to swallow
you. I want to do your laundry. I want

to feed you all your meals. I want to know
the taste of your sleeping eyes. Do not haunt

me like this. What am I to you? A dumb
toy? You do not do. You once let me kiss

each crumb from your mouth. You fed me on crumbs.
I feel my heart—it beats—hurts. What is this

need for something organic? something warm
to sleep on—the breasts of a trespasser

returning from alien dreams—let dawn
creep in. Even I can be a newborn,

screaming about this ghostly encounter
of ours, screaming until my voice is gone.

][][

“you do not do/ any more … ”—Sylvia Plath

cold tongue on warm flesh

21 Thursday Nov 2013

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Of course I believe in hell—What’s worse
than this? Wanting one you know you shouldn’t?

No, that’s what we all do. It’s that old curse;
finding out just what a vile and blatant

bastard you’re stuck with. That’s lamentable.
That’s a joke. That’s the one thing we all say,

“this must end.” I was inconsolable
when you left. I was wretched on the day

you came back home. It’s hard not to despise
someone who takes my love for granted. Death

changed nothing; you’re still a pig when you touch
me. Cold tongue on warm flesh, between your thighs,

your cock filling me. I can feel your breath
coming in quick gasps. I hate you so much.

][][

you disturb my natural emotions/ you make me feel I’m dirt/ and I’m hurt
and if I start a commotion/ I’ll only end up losing you/ and that’s worse

—buzzcocks, “ever fall in love with someone you shouldn’t’ve?

dawn obscured crept in

21 Thursday Nov 2013

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Nov 21, 2013 (2)

White teeth, rosebud mouth, lipstick; nothing hints
that you’ll find my skull this pretty, pulling

me from the shark’s maw. She left red clay prints
on the floor where she threw her soiled clothing,

sashayed about naked. Her elbows propped
under her chin, two bare stick-like legs

displayed wide beneath the table. Her cropped
hair looked fresh. Gunshot wounds, witch burnings, plagues;

all my loves have tales to tell. Dawn obscured
crept in to pool nearby, her ribcage cast

odd blue shadows. Without thinking she poured
a shot of gin, slugged it down, sat aghast

as it dripped down, a dribble and a spurt,
between bones, mixing with the red grave dirt.

][][

notes

I was once told in a dream the manner in which I would die—-drowning at sea and ending up in a shark’s belly. Over the years I’ve found people laugh when I tell them this, which is odd since most people in America die from heart disease, cancer and strokes … all rather terrible and unglamorous ways to go. At least with accidental drowning I’ll be in good company with the likes of Natalie Wood (actress), Percy Bysshe Shelley (slushy, in-bred poet), Dennis Wilson (drug-addled Beach Boy), Virginia Woolf (superstar), Brian Jones (not as super as Woolf but still a star) and Joe Delaney (American football player and saint). Plus, the Great White Shark is my spirit guide and if I have to end up being anyone’s Sunday brunch I’d much rather go to someone I love and respect.