Tag Archives: witch

the witch: onibaba [update]

01 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by in Illustration and art, Tarot

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“Chaos that/ takes I from/ I” ~ Note written for the Fool.

I’ve been trying to keep a notebook in English regarding what Syssk’s tarot cards mean. In the Rider-Waite deck the Magician is the conduit between Heaven and Earth. Here, though, there is no Heaven or Earth, only the formless Void, only Chaos personified. This is what fascinates me. The Tao Te Ching states:

There was something formlessly fashioned, that existed before Heaven and Earth; without sound, without substance, dependent on nothing, unchanging, all-pervading, unfailing. One may think of it as the Mother of all Things Under Heaven.

That “ something formlessly fashioned.” That is the conduit that I’m looking for. Neither masculine nor feminine, neither black nor white, neither solid nor liquid: Chaos, the primal substance that holds the universe together. As a result I must discard any philosophy that can only function on planet Earth for being too limiting. Humans tend to be oppressively myopic when it comes to their desires. As the Chinese feminist and revolutionary, Qiu Jin, put it, “Now that things have gotten so dangerous,/ please change your girl’s garments for a Wu sword.”

That is the teacher. Discard your “I” ~ Chaos awaits.

Notes on Notes:

It’s been pointed out to me that my hand-writing is barely readable so here are what the notes say:

Don’t tell me women are not the stuff of heroes, I alone rode over the East Sea’s winds for ten thousand leagues. My poetic thoughts ever expand, like a sail between ocean and heaven. I dreamed of your three islands, all gems, all dazzling with moonlight. I grieve to think of the bronze camels, guardians of China, lost in thorns. Ashamed, I have done nothing; not one victory to my name. I simply make my war horse sweat. Grieving over my native land hurts my heart. So tell me; how can I spend these days here? A guest enjoying your spring winds? [Qiu Jin]

Je est une autre. I is another. [Rimbaud]

I from I

Thus to name it is to raise stones, to wound the bark with stones, to batter it with stones, the stones to cut the bark, to fester in the bark.

In everything natural there is something mysterious. [Aristotle]

Qiu Jin’s carved seal: Read books/ Practice sword.

Earlier design for the Magician, from a science fiction themed tarot based on astronauts and aliens.

scritch

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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Coïtus interruptus. Spanish oak moss
and cicadas. Chronic heat. Unease deep

in singed Sierra hills. True. That chaos
sex I brought wasn’t fun. Gnawing deep creep

of dusk, faces at the window, the, “scritch,”
of nails unseen on your skin. At long last

you kicked me out. I could sleep with, “the witch,”
you said. Your mom, pure, “bruja,” loved all vast

pleasures elder gods brought. I was neither.
A child of dry heat. Mesquite. Chaotic

sex soon lured you back to lurk, still sullen,
as the witch got lip-lapped. “Voy a venir!”

you could hear your mom shout. Your fingers slick.
Even the creeping dread stopped to listen.

Note:
Bruja means witch and “Voy a venir!” translates into “I’m cumming!” in Spanish.

ONE WHO CRACKLES

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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Right at the down stroke, with all your weight thrown

behind the blade, my arms raised to avert

 

the stroke, there’s a quick blur, pale like bone,

from two small fists, and the front of your shirt

 

(awkward) implodes. “Witch!” you gurgle; the way

schoolyard bullies splutter when at last laid

 

low. We love our movies about gun-play

but the thought that a girl could dodge a blade

 

or punch a hole through ribs is called bollocks.

Physics baffles us. My rain-reddened fists

 

unflex. I exhale, luster, turn elsewhere.

I tell you of Doc Martins and mohawks –

 

– of a dim slip-of-a-thing with thin wrists;

one who crackles, like dry-ice in the air.

what sleeps inside

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

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“Know thyself and all will be revealed.”
― Pamela Theresa Loertscher

Find what they would do but cannot. Find what
sleeps there, the other nature, disjointed
but still distinct. Words that we use — hag, slut,
bitch, dyke — all have their sacred counterpoints.
The witch, the lover, the queen, Brynhildr’s
shield maid who’ll stand by her side at World’s End.
There are other dreams, of course, ones that stir
sleeping souls. Rose and amber. The girlfriend
who dreamed of a necklace — white, frothy, thick
— hiding each breast — then along came a tongue
and left them slick. The soft ball coach who aches
for war like a field marshal. Be you sapphic
or straight, pink or brown, rich, poor, old or young,
tell us whats inside, what rises, what wakes.

notes:

Brynhildr : Old Norse legend name from the Nibelungenlied, queen of the Valkyries. Her name is composed of brynja, meaning “armor, coat of mail,” and hildr meaning, “battle,” from which we get: armored warrior woman.

from the diary of morgan le fey

16 Monday Sep 2013

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this is magic. an outline of where you
used to be, where you laid your head between
my thighs. once there was a niece and nephew
who played under the willow, all its green
letting them do what they wanted. i want
you back. here is the space in my arms, drawn
from where you once slept. you were starving, gaunt,
lean of flesh. i’m fleshy, full of life, spawn
of the never was, child of the bestial
never is. i bleed. i burn. this flame, whom
you helped create, you fed, will now reclaim
all that hurting which drives me, i struggle
to keep it controlled, it wants to consume
you, take all of you, engulf you in flame.

note:

Such an archetypical force, there have been numerous interpretations as to who and what Morgan le Fey really was: witch, enchantress, healer. The early accounts of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales refer to her living on the Isle of Apples (later called Avalon) to which the fatally wounded Arthur was carried to. To the first she was a seductress, one of nine sisters; to the last she was the queen of an area near the Tor of Glastonbury and a close blood-relation of Arthur himself. In later stories Morgan became an antagonist of the Knights of the Round Table when Guinevere discovered she had seduced one of Arthur’s knights, though the magician and healer eventually reconciled with her brother, being one of the four witches who carried him to Avalon after the Battle of Camlann.

a response to enrique diez-canedo’s “la bruja joven”

04 Monday Feb 2013

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“al que a tu misterio de acercarse trata,
le halagas primero, después le rasguñas.”
— Enrique Diez-Canedo

For a certain type of man it’s easy
for him to transfer all his vast loathing
of girls and women into a story
about witches. Because he is living
in a world that does not value women,
he knows no one will challenge him when he
defames the craft. “You are foul;” “In the glen
you dance the Witches’ Sabbath;” “Devilry
is your love.” Really? I have a mother
and a sister and a witch lover, too.
Let me tell you, Enrique, you’re a liar
and an asshole. A man without a clue.
Get this: the only sin we have is hate;
that which makes us the devil’s advocate.

witch-wife: a response

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

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So you have issues with independent,
hairy girls? What’s this crap about her not
being “made for any man”? what blatant
douchebag talks like that these days? If you thought
all her dark craft was picked up second hand,
lifted from a Grimm’s tale, then you don’t know
jack. I bet you can’t even find Lapland
on a map. She’s a Northern Lights girl; snow
and ice do not vex her soul; polar bear
spirits love her. As a shaman she’s seen
worlds you can not even dream of. The air
is her home. She is lusty and obscene.
I am amazed that she did not castrate
you on the spot. You make a wretched mate.

* * *

I wrote this poem in response to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Witch-Wife,” (1917) where she lists all the reasons why having a witch as a spouse might, as the kids say, “suck dead bunnies through a straw.” The reasons she gives are terrible (what does “her voice is a string of colored beads” even mean?). Besides describing a “man of his times,” (i.e., racist and sexist) it is hard to imagine why anyone would consent to marry an ass so out of touch and hostile to their own mate as the narrator of the poem is.

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

call me a witch’s brat

02 Friday Mar 2012

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Author’s note: Contrary to popular belief, a “witch’s brat,” is simply a male, of any age, who studies the dark arts under the tutelage of a licensed necromancer. Niccolo Paganini, the 17th century violin genius, was called “The Devil’s Stepson,” and the “Witch’s Brat,” for his demonic and amazing musical virtuosity.

* * *

Call me a witch’s brat; with sex magic
all this is more fun. Your cum-stained panties
on the clothes line; used condoms, slick with sick
pleasures, lost in the tall grass. Fuck buddies
with a bit of black arts. Lovers of skin,
fleshy terrors. I’ll ride you like a horse.
Jockey for your night mare. My cock will pin
you to the floor. Your voice, scratchy and horse;
crying out “Ishtar,” over and over;
and I just switch from your cunt to your ass,
over and over. I’ll ride you with fire
and spurs, hexes and saddles. I’m a crass
brat, crude, feral. But you, slave to passion,
thirst for all that is taboo and pagan.