Tag Archives: Poetry

translating lorca

14 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in Poetry, Potawatomi, Spanish, Translation

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“VERDE, QUE TE QUIERO, VERDE.”
“Skebgezo, gmenwénmen, skebgezo.”
“Green, I want you, green.”
Potawatomi is an oral language meaning that it has only been until (relatively) recently that a dictionary using English has been made available to people like me who just want to learn the language because it sounds beautiful. To complicate things there are both Southern and Northern dialects that have their own vocabulary. I live in the north but my on-line language classes are from a southern band (Citizen Nation) who, logically, use southern terms. Today I am struggling over how to say green in Potawatomi in the context of the first line of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem, Romance Sonambulo. “Verde, que te quiero, verde.” In Potawatomi the world is broken up into things that are animate (all that which is living, all which is spiritual, etc.) and inanimate (man-made things, etc.) The green that Lorca addresses (verde) embodies both hopeful and thwarted desire. I’ve always seen it as something otherworldly and alive. Animate green. One Potawatomi word-list I found on-line from Wisconsin says that green is, “eshkebok.” I liked that, since I could rhyme it with sleepwalk which plays nicely with the title of Lorca’s poem (Ballad of the Sleepwalker). However a different word list (this one from Oklahoma) says that green is, “skebgezo.” Perhaps it’s that regional difference I don’t really understand yet? Perhaps one is animate and the other not? I don’t know. The frustration of learning by oneself is that there is no one to correct my errors as I go along. Que te quiero (how I want you) is easier since I could find the actual phrase in Potawatomi in several sources. It is: “gmenwénmen.” I’m not at a place in my studies where I can keep translating the poem but one day I will. One day I will translate all of Lorca’s work and a brand new world will open up, just like that. I am endlessly excited to see a new world.

enough

14 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, Potawatomi, sonnet, Translation

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Soft or hard, purple or brown, my mouth takes
it deep your tongue tongues it, crests it. Our lips

purse as we start to suck, as her cunt quakes
and salt droplets her skin. With acid trips,

frigatrix fingers and chronic, we shared
a bed and your sister’s ruined body —

cancer had left her rickety and scared.
Deep love requires desire. The three

of us odd things. You say orgasms must
be the cure. I say with enough pleasure

we will hold on. But love, debanawen,
even death, nbowen, is neither just

nor fair. It just is. Like how we kiss her.
We pass the bong. We do it again.

NOTE:
Today marks Week 2 in my studies of the Potawatomi language. I want to learn it because it is beautiful to my ear. My goal is to one day translate English and Spanish poetry into Potawatomi, to help expand its edges, to make this world a little more interesting to be in. That said I am going to be working on this project for a long time to come. I’m constantly getting my verb tenses mixed up, which is why this poem is using only simple nouns. Love, in Potawatomi, is, “Debanawen,” while Death is, “Nbowen.” I hope soon to be able to form more complex sentences in my sonnets but today I’m being kind to myself. I’m a slow learner.

ndekwem

04 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by in Poetry, Potawatomi, sonnet, Translation

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Dreams are coming fast these days. It started

with two — “wasabzo o seksi” — deer eyes

 

shining in the dark. Antlers caked with blood.

In the dark, underneath, curved hips and thighs

 

announce something else. I can’t even say,

“Ndekwem,” my Sister, but I need to.

 

You—whose daughters are lost, who men betray,

who I don’t understand—I’ll wait for you

 

by the tree that bears your name. Dreams of two

eyes, moon-mad bright, means that you’re drawing near—

 

In the dark, underneath all the abuse

and fear, I wish that I could talk. To do

 

something useful. Deer that is not a deer

at long last let me be of some damn use.

 

NOTE:

Violence against Indigenous women is at an epidemic level. According to armingsisters, “It is estimated that 1 in 3 Indigenous women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. However, a study done by Amnesty International found that 90% of all Indigenous women have experienced sexual assault.”

Organizations such as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women USA have made it their mission to find the staggering numbers who go missing across the United States and Canada each year. I say this because I want you to understand why I am (slowly) learning Neshnabé (Potawatomi language). I live near two sovereign Potawatomi tribes in West Michigan, Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band (near Gun Lake) and ‎Pokagon Band (near Dowagiac). To understand a problem you first have to be able to understand the language that it is spoken in and I do not think English will be the tool to help fight against domestic violence.

The words that I use in the poem are Potawatomi.  “Ndekwem,” means, “my sister,” and, “wasabzo o seksi,” talks about deer eyes (seksi) shining in the dark. I might be a slow student but I am confident that once I understand then I too can, “be of some damn use.”

wet with spots

21 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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On the playground kids sang, “girls with glasses
love it in their asses,” while sugar cubes

melted on our tongues. We’d skipped our classes
to hide under the jungle-gym. Your pubes

poked out from either side of your panties
wet with spots blossoming in the cotton.

When the acid hit us our high school sleaze
cranked to eleven. Some say that children

should be obscene and not heard. “¡Dámelo
por culo!” Your glasses slipped to your nose

as I buried myself balls-deep. My, O!
your, ¡Ai! Back before we learned of sorrow

and our beastly bent acid-fueled shadows
fused. Back when your afro glowed all halo.

name

15 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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So much ego wrapped up in minimal
space, those vain names. I’m strapped in strapless flame,

split to the hip, one of those criminal
little black dresses whose name you can’t name

but crave all the same. “Unsung,/ well-hung: come
hither, as/ in, slither and cum.” I know

why you feed on praise, need praise, any crumb
tossed your way. Your plain name, your low-down woe

at not being a god, the way you dress
your pride. One day, when you crave more than bliss,

come slink with me. We’ll prowl wearing glamour-
cut cloth. Instead of arrogance we’ll bless

our souls. Nameless. Simple. If you knew this
you would. But you don’t. Not now. Not ever.

NOTE:
According to Buddhism the Second of the Four Noble Truths is that suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire.

coup d’etat

03 Sunday Mar 2019

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

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That’s the knife called: She Slits Open.
Once I sang that I’d slice open my gut,

reach in and drag out loops of intestine
if it ever got that bad. Before smut

and my sonnets I lived in Las Vegas,
crossroad of ghosts. I carried her with me

all the time: at the Shrine of the Goddess,
in class, at the gym. I was one sissy

hellbent on going out like Mishima.
Honor is queer, though: once it got that bad

only survival could prove them all wrong —
prove my fey soul is strong — Cosmic Vulva

strong — strong as the ghosts calling me comrade.
Stronger than this old belly-slitting song.

NOTE:
Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author and literary luminary, obsessed with beauty, homoeroticism and death. On November 25, 1970, Mishima and four members of his secret militia entered a military base in central Tokyo, took the commandant hostage and tried to persuade the soldiers there to join in overthrowing the new pacifist government in a coup d’etat. When this was unsuccessful, Mishima committed seppuku, ritual suicide by cutting open his belly.

She Slits Open

crushing dark

24 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Always a pregnant shark. I stripped naked,
lurched — and fell into swiftness of her dream

down the dark column until brine chanted
night eyes transformed from iridescent gleam

to the dull brown set in my skull’s ruins.
I come back from the night sea no wiser.

Why the gods single out us twitchy ones
to be their voice I don’t know. With tincture,

with balm, with sauce, the pregnant one, ghost shark,
finds me. But her words don’t translate this side

of tide-water. I flow through crushing dark
without dogma. It’s just womb, moon and tide

without the need for priest, pride or shaman,
without the need for anything human.

she bang

15 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Itchy dreams are my realms. My healing song
doesn’t heal — but it’ll lure you back alive.

Outside of Pahrump, clad in bra and thong,
you crouched in the scorching dark. There were five

of you at this women’s curing sweat lodge.
A friend’s aunt sang for you. Far off, I sang,

too. We forget. The soul is a hodgepodge
of scars. The soul grows in pain: first she bang,

then she change. Only hate and sloth blaspheme.
They sang. I sang, too: in black heat come back.

You’re loved by your sisters, the gods, this earth.
Come back home heavy with your itchy dream

filled with heat. Off in the scrub and sumac
dead things stirred as all your old lusts gave birth.

laid bare

11 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Cyclones and bones blown all pell-mell. Sky-bound,
umber dust lifts your heavy skirts — debauched

with rage, rushed with umbrage, with the crude sound
of storm of sex of my tongue in your notched

plash first gush and then whirl. The earth’s domain,
red gold, laid bare. Mixed with ache aren’t we all

peeled down. On the side of a side road. Rain
on the car’s hood. In the backseat I sprawl

inside you, slouching in your cunt-soaked heat.
Curved thighs crisscross my neck. Conjured hormones

from ghost meat and bones blown high from their graves.
The wind brings us red rock, ozone, heartbeat,

rage. Your clit trembles. It’s what the storm moans,
the gods hunger for, what the cyclone craves.

old school

09 Saturday Feb 2019

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

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Lift your skirts and face the wall. Such good pain,
De Sade’s pain, takes a cane to make your pawg

wobble. With three strokes I’ll break you, again.
There’s an art to the trounce, the wax, the flog.

It’s how I flayed «Z» into your tush. Blush
with what smolders under your petticoat.

First the gush of endorphins, then the rush.
We drop loony toons, microdot, blue goat

so that old-school worlds open. Once I kissed
you. That was wrong. It’s hard being discrete

when it comes to craft but splattering cum
like paint is absurd. A flick of my wrist

brings forth new terror. New wisdom. New heat
freeing you from flesh. Bondage is freedom.