Tag Archives: Poetry

only

21 Sunday Jun 2020

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“I said, I’m scared of moving on. I said,
I don’t wanna. I said, I don’t want you

to leave me. I said, I don’t want the dread
of you being happy with someone new,

or how you look at another person
the way that I look at you. I said, I

want it be you forever. No one
else but you. I said, I think I’d die

if you were happy. I wanna. I want
to be your one and only. I wanna–”

I stop the voice mail, a frown on my face.
I hit delete. Some mistakes live to haunt

us, some to drag us to hell. I’m your karma,
I see, a hell made without hope or grace.

cleft

11 Thursday Jun 2020

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There should be a word for when a cleavage
is laid bare, unbosomed. Moments ago

you bent forward to unbind the bandage
that kept your flesh in place. I’ve rubbed aloe

oil into those ridges those bindings left:
ridged bruise that ooze. What good is this magic

if it can’t salve you each time you pin, cleft
and strap down? Voluptuous magic. Thick

magic. Curvaceous. In the bath, after
work, you tell me about your day. One day

you’ll be a queen crone and then we can heal
from the need to conceal. We learn other

words when we do. We’ll be boss. We’ll slay
when we unwrap, unmask, unconceal.

roughhouse

07 Sunday Jun 2020

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When I lurched from the old-timey, baroque-
ass stove, when flame claimed my lashes and brows,

when a third of my scalp went up in smoke.
Odd how our flesh reacts. You say roughhouse

is fun. Hot wax feels scrumdiddlyumptious,
you say, lighting the candle. Suddenly

my scalp’s scars come alive with pink, wet puss
as the skin peels back, as I sit for three

days with open wounds until the Peace Corps
doctor can drive to my post. I forgot

that pain. My flesh, though, still loves to remind
me, in odd ways, at odd times, that I’m more

scab than baroque, that I’m slow at being taught,
that these scars are of the runnyrot kind.

][][

Note:
Scrumdiddlyumptious (wonderful) and runnyrot (horrible and painful) are gobblefunk words made up by Roald Dahl for his book, The BFG (1982)

sub play

20 Wednesday May 2020

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You said you don’t like kink, but when you do
you like bondage, group play, the stench of fear.

You’ve read about sex clubs and Masters who
love pain. I’d try that, you blush. With you, dear.

I’ve got off on fear, too, but my nasty
are in war films with submarines; that scene

where the crew despairs while the enemy
drops depth charges on them. All those obscene

faces in the dark, aghast, sublime stink
of dread. That’s an endorphin rush that no

sex club can match. Sub play, indeed. That’s not
kink, you say. That’s just hellish. Which is kink.

I think all perversions that lets us know
life is blessed are both dangerous and hot.

Notes:
For those unfamiliar with the term, a depth charge is a bomb designed to be dropped from a ship or aircraft to explode under water at a preset depth, used for attacking submarines.

for grace

06 Wednesday May 2020

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“Just don’t bring home a white boy,” your father
bid. So you did. He was flippin’ flippant

when he said, “the devil is in my daughter,”
but I was, too, daily. We’d had blatant

need for veils: your hijab, my sonnet. Place
for grace. Safe space. Each poem was a road

home for us: “Fuck ass, let no wrath erase
our path.” In my bedroom more than faith flowed

where my tongue teased. Each kiss a phat freckle,
salvation. My palms on your breasts. Until …

fissures from your father’s need to control
us: his, “modest virgin,” her, “infidel

b-boy” – men who sew their woe; men who kill
joy all because of their own broken soul.

coddle

27 Monday Apr 2020

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In the end it’s barely there. Touch of heat.
Spark of grief. Why won’t such a tiny prick

set me gangling? Not the first to treat
me like this, but … it’s a bit bombastic

to say the last. I mean, a night not fraught
with pain is kinda weak sauce; and, my dude,

you don’t show me much. Is that all you got?
Stubbing your cigar out on my chest? Rude.

Tied down? Duct-taped while Dylan & The Dead
blare? That’s not torture, twitchy. That’s just tripe.

Count the scars. I don’t coddle amateurs.
It’s why these fingers have no nails. I’ve bled

better and you promised me a huge fright;
so damn proud of that tiny prick of yours.

schemes

26 Sunday Apr 2020

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You get sloppy. Your thoughts muddled, jumping
from hint to hint. How many evil schemes

have you half-hatched? One more undertaking
undone. Friends try to joke but something seems

infernally wrong. You’d bet your scrumptious
cloven hooves that lockdown out in Hades

is like this: promise of having promise
squandered. Even this poem does not please;

started weeks ago it sits on the page –
sneering – go on, make one more droll blow job

joke. You think you’re a horny devil but
you’re more Sucka MC. Your old-school rage

doesn’t age all that well. You’re quaint. Both slob
and snob. Say it. Sacred smut. Arse biscuit.

rascality

23 Thursday Apr 2020

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Look back. No thirteen sisters. No coven.
No high priest. Just you with your spring follies

at the farm house. Perhaps you did summon
him: one more demon, kid stuff, keen to please.

Perhaps you two found purchase propped against
the wall. Brick patterns on your backside, skirt

rucked up, hair all undone – until you sensed
strain, like your husband’s porn: watch mommy squirt.

You still love men who ooze delinquency.
Men and monsters. You called. Lust breeds mischief

when we’re alone; rutting near walls, mazy
hedgerows, fallow fields. It’s still not enough.

Called and summoned. You’re starved for rough magic,
for all that’s uncanny, fell and phallic.

fractures

19 Sunday Apr 2020

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Mornings I wake; hidden pain in long healed
bones. Cracks in my jaw. Cracks in my skull. Pills

numb things for a bit, but things left unsealed
rarely close again. Pain’s old joke: its thrills

provoke raunchily … is true … at times. Pain
pushes me far beyond comfort. “Touch this,”

I could say. The metal that grazed my brain
left an odd groove in my scalp. One more kiss

that warns how bones can be altered, structures
reshaped. I could show you, but I won’t. Raw

nerves make me horny and cranky. I’m both
Pandora and her Box; teasing fractures

that will not heal. Broken skull. Broken jaw.
My own dear devil in the undergrowth.

prins hendrik

18 Saturday Apr 2020

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They called you his woman friend. Jazz mauled
Amsterdam. His cock was never hard. Cocaine.

You loved his horn, his shtick, what critics called
white boy blues. No one went broke selling pain

to white boys. Boomers’ truth. I’ve been to Prins
Hendrik; stood where he fell. Nothing. But you,

woman friend, I know why you loved his sins,
how your pear brought him pleasure; your tattoo

above your bum and the spot where his thumb
sank in. –– For you it wasn’t a hustle.

“Pain is pain. I was his balm.” Indeed. Few
can play that pain away. The rest go numb

until something wakes us. That’s love. Each time
he played. Fuck the haters. Each time he blew.

NOTE:
“It ain’t cool to slag off the dead,” was a line I didn’t use but I say it in all sincerity to the late Chet Baker. As a kid I never liked Baker’s music or, for that matter, what I thought was West Coast jazz. It all sounded so safe, what 1950s suburban dads listened to when they couldn’t sleep at night. In comparison, the Detroit sound was full of rage, cement and grit. As a white boy I didn’t want to listen to other white boys sing, “My Funny Valentine,” I wanted to burn. Then someone played California Hard-style and I realized that, yes, once again, I am a rube and clodhopper when it comes to music. Still, in Peace Corps I had a 6-hour lay over in Amsterdam while waiting for the connecting flight, so after sampling hashish in the Bulldog Cafe I made my way over to where Chet Baker died back in 1988, the Prins Hendrik Hotel. I was hoping for some cosmic spark upon reaching there but I felt nothing … literally, I was so stoned I couldn’t even feel my teeth. I’m still amazed that I even found my way back to the airport.