nostalgia

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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conversations with imaginary sisters, deathblow, flog the fog, Grace, more than spilled ink, nostalgia, poem, Poetry, praise, sonnet

Around the time when earthly pinks and pearl

had been drained from the sky and the crows rose

in their trees to caw gray into the world

I stirred in nightmare, in sodden nightclothes,

in that sick sweat I get when pneumonia

curls cute in my lungs. I type in a fog

while in bed, one fingered, the nostalgia

of lust both heavy and out of reach. “Flog

a dead horse,” you text back. “Lust is all that

you write about.” Perhaps. These new gray days

of crow caws and ice match my libido.

Who do I turn to? Even my tomcat

retreats. Once I called lust prayer and could praise

pleasure. Now it’s less grace and more deathblow.

études

28 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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études, crassest of sex, fiddle, ippy bullsheet, more than spilled ink, Paganini, poem, Poetry, seducing fugues, sonnet, violin

Climax, crescendo and the Devil’s joy

wrung from her violin in the café.

Later she said: “Oui. You’re ah ‘ice fuck toy.

I weehl steahl you.” Soon she turned to risque

tunes coaxed from Paganini’s cursed fiddle;

four strings hinting at uncanny glamour.

“Oui. Zat despair een ‘is eyes, unable

to speak because, you know, lairynx can’cair,

as I slipped eet from ‘is ‘ands.” The dying,

she said, were, “ah ‘oot,” to fuck with. “Love eet

with zair, ‘but mon Dieu loves me’, attitudes.

Pourquoi?” Hers was a fugue seducing

glamour and the rest just,“’ippy bullsheet.”

Hints of crassest sex from refined études.

][][

NOTES:

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was an Italian violin virtuoso and believed by many to have sold his soul to the Devil for a legendary red violin. I go back and forth as to whether regional accents help a poem or hinder other people from understanding it. The truth is that I have a lot of fun figuring out various accents but there’s no point in writing something no one else can read. Here’s the translation if any of my fake Parisian words confuse:

Climax, crescendo and the Devil’s joy wrung from her violin in the cafe. Later she said: “Yes. You’re a nice fuck toy. I will steal you.” Soon she turned to risque tunes coaxed from Paganini’s cursed fiddle; four strings hinting at uncanny glamour. “Yes. That despair in his eyes, unable to speak because, you know, larynx cancer, as I slipped it from his hands.” The dying, she said, were, “a hoot,” to fuck with. “Love it with their, ‘but my God loves me’, attitudes. But why?” Hers was a fugue seducing glamour and the rest just,“hippy bullshit.” Hints of crassest sex from refined études.

constraints

27 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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all mine brine, child of lilith, constraints, conversations with imaginary sisters, more than just spilled ink, poem, Poetry, sonnet, Tsovinar, vavashot

Being Lilith’s child the young priest, pervert,

called you Vava, as in the ancient word,

Vavashot: Lust. Lilith, though, was desert

born and fell in love with the sea’s mothered

magic, naming you Tsovinar: She Strides

Upon Waves. Leave that sucka’ with his psalms

and scant faith, cousin. We’ve both heard the tide’s

long call. We’ve both felt that pull. Nothing calms

me the way She and tempests do. We’ve shed

all our cotton constraints at the shoreline.

Man-made gods have no sway out here. We’ve tread

upon billows and called the brine, “all mine.”

Leave dry land to priests who think that they know

something. They mistake lust for undertow.

][][

Notes:

In the pre-Christian Armenian pantheon, Tsovinar (Ծովինար) is the goddess of water and forces the rain to fall with her rage. Lilith (Լիլիթ) gets associated with whatever fears and phobias men have about sex at the time; thus she is described as being everything from night-haunt succubus to feminist bisexual to free-spirit divorcee. This, of course, says nothing about Lilith herself, who came from the deserts of what is now modern day Syria to the shores of the Black Sea. In one ancient translation it says, “Լիլիթը հայտնաբերեց ծովը/ Lilith discovered the sea.” It says nothing of her sexual appetites, her loathing of Abrahamic religions or even her being the, “Mother of the Unholy Folk … a Mixed Multitude,” that she’s suppose to have given birth to up in the mountains. All that is racist and sexist modern fantasy. The only thing I feel comfortable in repeating is, “Լիլիթը հայտնաբերեց ծովը/ Lilith discovered the sea.”

dispel

20 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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coven's pride, dispel, filthy lucre, hubris, neon fused, poem, Poetry, sea poem, selling my gifts, sonnet, uncanny malform

Dry ground and graveyards pale next to the sea’s

verge when uncanny malforms crawl forth each

night and roam. The same infected city’s

haze of lights that drown the stars cannot reach

into that dark, cannot dispel horrors

that have only ire toward our neon-fused

age and benign witcheries. The breakers

mark me as a false witch, how I’ve abused

my gifts for filthy lucre and coinage.

There is no grimoire for sale that’ll let us

command the tide. Coven’s pride. Ghasts that feed

on brine-caked bones know this. You can’t sage smudge

the sea, they guffaw. They name us hubris

and crawl from the surge at the scent of greed.

requin

18 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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conversations with imaginary sisters, femme de requin, poem, Poetry, requin, sea poem, shark poem, sharkcallers, sonnet

Far-off wave, depraved. Nali leans over

the edge of the dugout, shakes her rattle.

She calls: “Big Sister let my Small Sister

come to me.” She does: out from the coral

shadows a shadow rising, a shadow

vast, vast as the tide’s rip, twisting current,

rising into song. I was there. I know

you don’t think women can do this. Pregnant

ghosts will scorn you for that. They love Nali,

though. I rowed. She sang and Femme de requin

came to have her snout rubbed, to feast on prayer.

Sisters swam here until men trawled this sea

down to its ghosts. The price of a shark fin

is when you call and only ghosts answer.

][][

Notes:

Femme de requin is French for shark woman. The inspiration of this poem came from watching Dennis O’Rourke’s 1982 documentary, The Sharkcallers of Kontu.

fettered

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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anal sex, erotic poem, fettered, night frost, Poetry, queens and concubines, sauna sex, sonnet, threesome, wet heat

Night frosts. Fettered gales. Sauna sun rise. Steam

fit for queens and concubines. After school

you came, brought her with talk of romps, extreme

and droll. “Not in her rump,” was your one rule

as I slipped out of you. “Only in mine.”

All day the sauna’s pine walls soaked up heat.

When you two arrived, frigid as frost’s shine,

we puffed and passed, shucking off our clothes. Cheat

ice-sleet like this. Mellow lay, they say. Stoned,

you laughed when she impaled herself. I laughed

when you kissed the spot where the two of us

joined. She laughed and came. Others have condoned

this. Meh. You asked to learn my queer witchcraft;

craft built from libertines and the Goddess.

dwindling

11 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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conversations with imaginary sisters, dwindling, ghost shark, gulf of mexico, Lake Michigan, poem, Poetry, sonnet, spirit guide, winter blues

There’s my Bayou shark, requiem, nimble

through swamp and misty fen. I’ve seen her twist,

turn and sashay away. A wolfish girdle

flitting through cypress bogs. When frost and mist

cake this lake, though, I can find no old souls;

just ice flows and shadows. I got conjure

and shine but as this wintertide gale rolls

through mud and bone I find my warm water

guide is blind. She cannot find me. Iced lakes.

Sightless seers. Gods fade in this pallid

polar light. Dwindling surf’s boom. What can

a shark haunting the Gulf know of frost’s ache?

Nothing good throbs under my closed eyelids

since words make a poet, gods a shaman.

nor’eastern

07 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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dim tumult, frosted rain, Lake Michigan, nor'eastern, poem, Poetry, sonnet, storm warning, winter drizzle

It’s gray outside. Gray inside me. A thought

full of dripping clouds. Dingy to boot. Dim

sway. Dim tumult. Trifling waves that trot

along the lake shore. Shades too cold to swim

in. All my life I’ve fled winter drizzle’s

bliss. Now, even in my sick bed, I spurn

those vast rains from Canada. These crackles

in my lungs are just like a “Nor’eastern” ––

all foam, blood and drift, sundering pain.

In my sick bed I hear the ‘plash spume hiss

each time I breathe in. In my sick bed you

ask how it goes? Listen. That’s frosted rain

in my breath. Once I could’ve weathered this.

This time there’s no safe harbor to flee to.

][][

Note:

I live near the shores of Lake Michigan. Cyclones out on the north Atlantic are called Nor’easterns. It’s a fitting term to use here too, though there is a difference. Because the lake is so shallow (compared to the ocean) any winter storm coming down from Canada almost always turn extreme, generating riptides, huge waves and freezing temperatures. Often the danger for sailors is not drowning out on the lake but freezing to death.

newfoundland

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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batty fang, conversations with imaginary sisters, mafficking, nanty narking, newfoundland, poem, Poetry, sonnet, the morbs

Don’t mind snow, you know. If it’s for a good

cause. If it’s falling on our snug cottage

perched on a ridge; if there’s auks and driftwood

strewn on the beach below. My sea village

slang needs work, but when “the morbs” come, all bleak

and glum, then I’ll “batty fang” through crusting

tide pool slush. I was made for fleecy chic

sweaters, flip caps, “tempest nanty narking.”

I, too, shall sing up a “mafficking” storm.

Squall songs that my sea hag sisters shall hurl

back. There’s more here than just hoarfrost and snow,

you know. I’ll sing them to you over warm

mugs of tea, cats on our laps, the whole world

ahoo outside our welcoming window.

][][

NOTES:

In Victorian British slang, “the morbs,” means being depressed or sad. “Batty fang,” “natty narking,” and “mafficking,” are all 1880 terms for causing a rowdy (and usually drunken) disturbance while out in public. In nautical slang, when something has gone, “all ahoo,” it means things are disordered or chaotic.

consort

27 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, sonnet

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boom box, conversations with imaginary sisters, cum in rage, left hand path, poem, Poetry, red jackal, sonnet, x ray spex

Blood caked. Split knuckled after brass knuckles

left a wallop scar, after mama cat’s

back claws dug scallop-sized grooves, red jackal’s

love, read across each palm. Your democrat’s

lost cause is worth fighting for. Whitman’s, “Great

Commonwealth.” The rage I find in Suffrage.

Left hand path’s wrath at all who live to hate

sisters while the boom box sings, “O bondage

up yours.” Under split skin bone shines. I’ve sewn

my flesh up before. I can manage pain

but not their hate; there are some nerves even

smack can’t dull. My love calls herself a crone,

a witch. I’m her consort; son with bloodstain

knuckles. Come. Cum in rage. Rage an omen.

][][

note:

“Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” is the title of a song by X-Ray Spex.

memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

Tag Archives: Poetry

nostalgia

études

constraints

dispel

requin

fettered

dwindling

nor’eastern

newfoundland

consort