Tag Archives: sonnet

come collector of stories

08 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on come collector of stories

Tags

, , ,

tell me your story

tell me your story

* * *

Far, far away in big cities poets
write and write about the horrors of war.

Let me tell you: in a valley of huts
lies a body. Monsoons and grass made tar
out of him, sticks and bones. After the crows

I come, collector of stories. Green vines
covered him, lilies in his mouth. Who knows
how long he lay there; alien skylines
tell us so little. I whispered his name.

He rose, all weed. I took him by the hand
to my tent. I won’t tell what he said. Shame
should be no one’s legacy. He cried sand,
moaned dirt. War, like love, is all in the head.

Perhaps you will get it, just like the dead.

before i was even born

08 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Between brasa whispers and nuzzlings
your rough hands hold my hips close and coax me
against the wall, against you. This youngling’s
cock tip — nudges — your up-turned cheeks. Easy.

In thrall. You were once Elaine Brown’s lover,
working on the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast
for the Children program. I call you “sir;”
you say I’m your “boy bitch.” Often aghast
I squirm under such words. Language ruins
it all. The night is full of blood and chrome

and ghosts. Sweaty and writhing, my pale horn
touches your cervix. I have a virgin’s
greed for you. You, who are my honeycomb
fire, at war before I was even born.

Notes:

Brasa is Spanish for “live coal.”

Elaine Brown is a prison activist and former head of the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party; ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008.

after “it” happened

07 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

It was hard in the beginning, of course.

Getting her up, the feedings, the wipings.
“Let me die,” she’d beg me, full of remorse.
I don’t blame her. I bought her silk stockings
for her four stumps. She hated them, at first.

Three years after “it” happened she started
to smile. She stopped saying that she was cursed
on her sixteenth birthday. I french braided
her hair and we went everywhere. We’re fine
down in the stream near the village. She rests
in my embrace. Peace is being buoyant.

She still won’t talk about “it;” the landmine.

At night my tongue finds her, teasing her breasts,
her lips, her clit, with love, raw and urgent.

* * *

Note: after three decades of war Cambodia has well over 40,000 landmine amputees, 75% of which are children. In 2012, the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) estimated that there might be as many as four to six million mines and other pieces of unexploded ordnance still unaccounted for in rural Cambodia.

lay your head here

07 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on lay your head here

Tags

, , , , , , ,

It is snowing. The serpent that lives up
in the air must be cold. I feel sorry
for that serpent, for all snakes; snake worship
being out of style now. But the sleepy
serpent that lives in the air is my friend.
I’ll go and invite her in. In her maw
she holds all the hatred humans pretend
is high, mighty and righteous. The outlaw
knows a little of this. It is snowing.
Serpent, come down. Coil yourself in my bed.
Sleep the winter away. I am fluent
in old parsel tongue. Girls night in, laughing
the long winter nights away. Lay your head
here. Relax, Manasa, my dear serpent.

ghost dreams

07 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on ghost dreams

Tags

, , ,

ghost dream 1

ghost dream 1

ghost dream 2

ghost dream 2

ghost dream 3

ghost dream 3

ghost dream 4

ghost dream 4

A ghost is born naked, squinting and glum.

There is no mother to catch it, nothing
to cling to with a tooth, a toe or thumb.
There are no older siblings for learning
the ways of the night. If you can hear bats
sing you can hear ghosts sigh. Few ask, what’s wrong?
ask how the day went? What paramour chats
with a ghost — tea and laughter — all nightlong?

I don’t resent this coming to an end.
Now when I sleep I hide in a wall crack
and my face is modest. I don’t resent

rebirth; finding out that ghost dreams depend
on how forgotten we’ll become; flashback
to when we thought we knew what alone meant.

ghost dream 6

ghost dream 5

on the other side of that glass

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on on the other side of that glass

Tags

, , , , ,

 

Some say our lives are what gets reflected
in our mirrors. How unsatisfying.
What small dreams. I can’t taste another’s blood
in dreams. I wake up without the scarring
I earned on the other side of that glass.

There is something sick about that, children
playing as gods. I can decode teargas,
know the best use of fennel and cumin.
Have held a meteorite in one hand.

If you must look in a mirror for hell
you have never seen hell. Nightmares must live

to be understood properly. Dreamland
erupts at your feet. You ride the groundswell
out of the dark, into light, into love.

moonstruck

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on moonstruck

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

“You calmly hushed me,
taking away my barbarous ways.”
— Bunny Keiko (2005)

Bunny Keiko and her “mystical fuck”
reminds me of “The Woman Who Married
A Ghost Boy.” A widow became moonstruck
with a fey boy’s ghost. All ghosts need to feed
but what good is mother’s milk to the dead?
He hoped to please her, as any lover
would try; but he died a virgin, unfed
and lost and wasn’t much good with pleasure,
giving or taking. They didn’t despair,
though, with his wet hand prints in her panties,
her big ass, her small toes; she loved going
down on him, hard. Which is why their affair
makes me smile and reminds me of Bunny’s
poem on love and mystical fucking.

among alien gods

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on among alien gods

Tags

, , , , , ,

Anaba and the Quetzal

Anaba and the Quetzal

“sinaháse nagée nagée alíli kat
bïtása/ a’yeyeyeyahai`” Navajo
protection song.

At the other border crossing I shall
be stopped and so shall we all. “Now, slayer
of the alien gods am I.” Quetzal
sits in my left hand. The jaguar’s furor
stretches far flung over us. “Now among
alien gods with weapons of magic
am I.” Now all the jaguar’s furor, flung
far out, am I. Now the quetzal, homesick
and blue, am I. At the other border I
shall be stopped by alien gods, foolish
in all that they do and try to condemn.
We all cross, one way or anther, why
make this hard? I pray: go in peace: the wish
I give your gods before I destroy them.

myth and porn

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Just like a Disney princess, Pasiphae,
cuckold King Mino’s wife, kept a wild beast
as a lover. A white bull from the sea. One day
the queen had built a great wooden cow, greased
herself, lay waiting in its oak darkness,
primed. The world is full of lore of women
who train beasts “to perform the services
of men;” real stud fees; again and again.
Ovid’s tale of the Minotaur was not
just a warning, he aimed to titillate
with the details; how a mother begot
her son with a bull’s cock, fiend at the gate.
Once done Ovid leaves her, pregnant, forlorn;
proving there’s scant difference in myth and porn.

ghostly needs

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on ghostly needs

Tags

, , , ,

If you can please a cat then you can please
a ghost, I believe. They’re so similar.
Cats. Ghosts. Sharks. Killers that love their bellies
scratched. I’ve touched shark snout, ghost skin and cat fur.
I could lie, tell you that I understood
what was under my hand. I could, perhaps.
Cats and ghosts both seek out love: that odd, good
human talent, but once they have it lapse
into indifference. Sharks are simply
curious and like to play. But knowing
that, I know nothing. I love mystery
but I can’t explain it. I can just sing.
Of cats’ ghostly needs, the kitten-like ghost
prowling, the shark’s soul that I love the most.