Tag Archives: Poetry

pot, porn and boo

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on pot, porn and boo

Tags

, , , , , ,

Three girls shooting hoop with unbound laughter
the time boys weren’t around. One joked about

missed shots. One twirled the ball on her finger.
One talked about art and love and burn-out.

When I consider how my art was spent
it would never be like you and your boo,

your quick-trice slam-dunks, never a moment
all mine though I was the one you went to

when boys return, games end, your friends depart.
Even with the windows shut, pot and porn

cranked to 10, we could still hear your boyfriend
bragging down on the court. That was my art.

Not a lover, but in a world of scorn
the one who loved you, almost to the end.

pauper

09 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on pauper

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

First comes the anger, then disappointment
unbridled. Adults with their needs. “Promise

me I’ll never be that,” I begged. Tyrant
in bed, all spit and grit. One more callous

lover in a world of blood, indifference —
You said, “this time no lube,” and pressed in hard.

You said, “don’t tighten up.” What’s the science
deep at work here? No one wants to be scarred

but your dark art always wins. I break quick
since pain is straightforward, behooved to none.

It just is. I’m, though, messy. What I craved
paupered me down. Greed leaves me in a sick

panic so that I’ll return — in ruin,
in fear, in need, like that, once more depraved.

disembowel

04 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on disembowel

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Shocking how a shock to muscles, to brawn,
sinew and thew, can ruin me. Hellfire

in the limbs. Rust in the nerves. Pinched neuron
and all at once my head has gone haywire.

Skull pain. Dull brain. All over what? A sprain.
Something inside. A railroad spike jutting

from my chest would be easier. Cocaine
and dime-store morphine won’t dull this throbbing.

My world of muck fuck (sludge boys and goo girls)
is gone, though honorable disembowelment

still holds its appeal. Anything to blur
what I must endure, what rises and swirls

inside me. Pain is a low-down varmint,
a touch divine, a great equalizer.

tension

06 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on tension

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Tension all day. Not drug addled shakes. Not
that coy, mad disquiet soothed, by and by,

from an end of an orgasm. I’m caught
between jitter and soul’s strain. A horsefly

on an ass’s fat haunch. I feel friction
tug at the red thread of my fate. Lewdest

of love: sin. It’s how Sade’s lust has eaten
me brunt. Me grin. Then, am I a sadist?

¡Ai! to myself. — Someone has ridden me
hard. Not who, but what. Something. Some damn thing

from the graveyard where I pray has ridden
me last night. Now I’m vexed. Now I worry

how to cleanse the tension that the dead bring
when you’ve finally got their attention.

rattlebone

22 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on rattlebone

Tags

, , , , , , ,

You brood, walk through the graveyard night after
futile night — calling on ghosts to love you

but you forget yourself. You’re no lover,
no tramp, no paramour. You misconstrue

signs. You make a cheapjack witch. Your love craft
is not love at all; it’s pure want. It’s need

gone all rough and unfulfilled. You have laughed
at your loveless life. If ghosts feed on greed

then you could screw a crew with the longing
inside you. But now you don’t laugh. The dead

have no use for you, just like the living —
Graveyard empty. You hunger. Love unfed.

Deprived. Depraved. Wolfish. Delirious
rattle-boned. Ravenous without purpose.

gristle

15 Saturday Sep 2018

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

≈ Comments Off on gristle

Tags

, , , , , , ,

We are still of use though the gash smells sour,
amethyst rot. We’re twitching devices —

sanded bones and stitches. The worms devour
all that the obsidian knife slices:

meaty scads and sheaves of skin. This butcher’s
love of gristle, of grotesqueness, of boils

that one picks at when they wish the blisters
to burst. The mirror knows how darkness spoils

when cast from its surface. We are of use
because we dream. The stone scalpel cannot.

The hand behind it won’t. Dreams of clabber.
Dreams of grubs in the lesion. We seduce

all that the suture holds dear: curdle, clot,
congeal. Dreams of May rot. Dreams of canker.

colony

09 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on colony

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Your path is in the sea, your path is in the great waters and your footsteps are not known. — from, Psalm 77

Rusty iron ore tramp steamer painted pink
with a great garden of vegetables up

on deck. A tribe of wayfarers, with ink
and love, to sail the steamer, to worship

the waves and all of us in it. Gorgeous
sea-rose, wide mid-ocean. A colony

of cats, of cast-off children, of purpose
other than all this land-locked misery.

Fresh food, fresh water, fresh love; the rhythm
of the voyage slumbers in us. Sea trance

and dream. I want part of this tribal blood
of friends and lovers — in a rust-bottom

pink ship. I want a myth and a romance.
I want a voyage both wild and sacred.

niña roja

05 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Poetry, self-portrait, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on niña roja

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

NIÑA ROJA, Red Girl. SANTA MUERTE,
Lady of Death. I pray to you: bring me

the ghost of she who told me to obey
my dream: “Love, come to the cemetery,

find my grave.” NIÑA, you know I’m sinful
in bed. MUERTE, you know that I’m honest

in my perversions. She came to me, full
of ghost blood and ghostly lust. Now my lust

keeps me awake at night. If she’ll return
once more I’ll bless my next nine orgasms

in your name, bring you cinnamon and burn
your red candles. NIÑA, shaker of limbs.

MUERTE, Saint Death, I beg of you, again,
bring this lovesick ghost back to me. Amen.