Crone
if not, xmas
I. fuck Sean Combs
headlice scratching
is garbage gothic like
urban mosquitoes
softballing curses
fuck Neil Gaiman too
on behalf of decent goths
other things said: sister, i know
you know a tall stupor too
like gutted up measured
rage, i’ll pour you tea
and tell you it’s whisky, if
you need empty or harder
i’ll give you my mask
i won’t even look
or obviously touch
a much drowned witness
when sunken city found
on too traceless tracys
rage, this harp is yours
sofa, word of an angel
bed, wish by a sigil
out winging like Ajax
the greater, vintage & archive
party discourses natal
twelve salt dissing courses
won’t tire her horses
bit ironies of Christmas
dirt snow glitter chain
gutter drain service entry
and no such thing as no
red-bottom chariot and pony-
tail hair, projectile vomit
acid tongue at the crossroads
an orphan army of kunai
invective & lashing 4 trash
Erinues down the river
//
II. if not, xmas
missing body
if a hinge
if a fold
in the cold
could hold
if not, xmas
//
III. pink parasol
is she meditating subtly for or
against me, this extraordinary tree
is her shady cooler or desiring me on
her radiant day of rest
if all the mended earth could be a bed
made lavender to fit her silent shadow
rough linen-covered pillow for a dream—
or both my heads grove bother
as she was oiling glass to sleep last night
trapped in the loudest windows of my head
her muscles pacing trafficky and sore
rewinder daily but more
and Jeki caught a mouse, that pitter-patter
crossed exposure with a vengeance, like
the summer used to blind and burn me, so
i veil, i veil, i veil
increasing constant collection of hats
my polarized knockoffs make me famous
pink parasol for pointillism in the park
to cover ankles, hands
and when i see her at the museum
like pastel whiteness for nobody happening
together all alone, closer with drawing
a disappearing lady
//
the dancer
when kindness is as kindness shows
the son his mother’s body knows
my eyes are from another place
i smile at you to show my face
the lessons of an artist’s life
are gifts you rendered to his wife
he’s gentle as the fallen rain
what tokens we give back again
a sudden street, a stranger island
with traffic from a broken time
he’s holding her, she’s not alone
the dancer is already home
let’s draw again the graceful scene
in blouses pink, you met Christine
if recognition makes you laugh
he shows you with a photograph
a feeling hewing to the bone
her shapes are not unlike my own
she’s holding me, she’s not alone
the dancer is already home
what light there was is in your eyes
her singing voice was village wise
he looks for her before sun sets
and child again her own forgets
and he will press your softened hands
the gestured words, the closing fans
and holding you, you’re not alone
the dancer is already home
//
for Ibuk
//
selamat hari raya Galungan🌾
//
bone teacher
bone teacher, her equation is the cold
bone teacher, antarctic demon i am told
her negative degrees, your nose will surely freeze
and the leaves are shaking
inflection, her judgment is frozen central
inflection, her cold bottom is biblical
winter is a time, winter makes you rhyme
whether or not you want it
i’m frostbit
and i have blue lips
bone teacher
the thought of parsnips
underground
wanting, gnawing numbers are her worm
wanting, a blizzard coming is her storm
a reckoning of beef, by frost on a leaf
or a vegan from Lesbos
i’m frostbit
and i want to cut her
bone teacher
but i think i love her
cold-bitter
waiting for the silence to come around
waiting for the mountains' thundering sound
but it’s not to do with me, and i can hardly see
the drip of an icicle
i’m frostbit
shivering in the glare
bone teacher
does she even care
she’s not there
icing, when her mercies are too few
icing, when she hides the glass from view
heartbeat in the snow, heartbeat going slow
and almost stopping
i’m frostbit
am i a grizzly bear
bone teacher
the question isn’t there
it’s nothing
stepping, her boots are laced so high
stepping, her pointer blinds the sky
glacial is her height, the emptiness of white
rumors of a pop quiz
i’m frostbit
darkness coming on
bone teacher
never seen the dawn
it’s marching
her bones are so grim, her cold does me in
or a pale horse riding
//
slow shuffling blues;
for my hs math teacher
Ms. Dyas <3
//
semi-nude for a photo album
their birthday was the other night
the girls were going out; the grift
delayed by getting ready; gift
of tangled, sappy rattan; caused a fright
pan, she burned some flowers on you
meta-burban, real dream for two
polaroid tacky, pantries full
of shady tatters, curtain bulls
sister, it was no dress for winter
but they were grown enough to drink
something fancy from the blender
fermented guava, lava lake
lavender flannel, camisole
white linen sheets, hung in the sun
nigel and sandi, mel and sue
genre-bender, Java won
high horse, he has a song for you
but i’ll save it for another tone
her sweaty practice, overdue
vinyasa, tapas, organ brew
dizzy lizzy ate some rice
eat, pray, love, the antichrist
jihadi, mum’s worst nightmare
Gandhi, papa’s burnt-off limb
inter-dimensional makeout queen
Osaka airport, caused a scene
village gossip, words above
she’s never catching up on love
not quite posh, but pulp turned through
realism, my lands, god knew
so sliced the flippin' longitude
bless her heart and come on in
agrimony henbane dish
too-schooled harpy hysterical
raised pie of huckleberry fish
turned river-liver radical
there’s mantra in the air tonight
what kue set in sangga stone
rise with the moon, the howling dog
the crone, her voice memorial
white-footed goat is coming home
to graze by fiery sunset view
the desert camel, bringing bones
with mother Durga, chest tattoo
a secret pocket of soil and spice
elaborate belty-thing, rhizomes in knots
not big enough for where you think
whether it is cake
//
(wants cake)
//
texas talkin blues, like this
vernacular from full moon 5/11
genius loci, pura dalem
blog 2-yr anniverse & job well done
//
Begging Season
She’s ever spinning time into the wheel.
Spidering her line, by inward feel—
Triangling desire, evening to ends,
A deeper sky realizing constellation.
Death is her capital; she doesn’t spring,
But feeds into the year her twisted ply.
At distaff, by the flick of no-man’s candle,
Brown burlap webber lures the final fly.
How does a poison love the cure? Spent hours,
By the mercy of a shadow. Wanting not
To see her, housewives sweep her out the door—
Her standing slow, side-winding smoke of flowers.
A life of making is the heart of letting go.
Nightwise, black-dagger vagabond—by stars,
A diamond thief; by dawn’s left light, her whispers draw
His burning thought: the filigree of beggars.
//
🌒
Δ
Screenshot slaps—
To ring a sucker. You think
Your appetite entitles you
To moonstained blood?
And you, and you, and all of you.
Scrap mouths, yapping from
Ass-ends of snakes.
Shut it. Shut it. Shut yourself!
Your little o’s and u’s and y’s
Without wisdom—
All bite, all bitches' bark—your traps,
Fracked actuary lines.
My splintered flotsam pierces
Fiercer than your fangs.
Your slit-tangled tongues,
Your whore-hooked hounds,
Your dog-groveling snack,
The politician’s lie. Your island—
Ground to grit, and sifted by
My epicurean babble.
I suck off
One billion suns, you snatch
Six bones from Ithaca—
And don’t dare swallow.
I am the throat, I am
The eye. Black
As red as wine, neither
Skin nor flesh, as I
Exhale his brutal
Homecoming; I am
Cauldron of slaughtered
Maidens’ morning.
His alibi, to coast right by you.
As if the smiling tide
That governed him—
A king!—stoppered with wax.
Just try—you cannot shut
Your maggots fingering,
Their heads, nailbeds, uncut, exposed.
I am the shuttering.
Shot-shallow loons, aswirl
My spiral bowel, prowling
Pack of orphan pups, your howling
Hungers feed a woken Why—
My delta consumes,
Your keystroke masturbates
A corpse’s withered sty.
Pregnant with his child,
All men belong to me.
My one
Unconquerable O—
Your place to die.
//
Like your house was a loose bag of bones—
”Revolusi – the Indonesian war of independence that began in 1945 – was in every respect a youth revolution, supported and defended by a whole generation of fifteen- to twenty-five-year-olds who were willing to die for their freedom. Anyone who believes that young people cannot make a difference in the struggle against global warming and the loss of biodiversity needs to study Indonesian history now. The world’s third-largest country would never have become independent without the work of people in their teens and early twenties – although I hope today’s young climate activists will use less violent tactics.”
After living here for six years, I finally cracked open a history book on Indonesia. (from Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World, by David van Rebrouck.)
I’m really not a historian. History and me are like Naomi Klein and the doppelganger, the closest I come to history is Herodotus, or Hegel, if you’re nasty. I refuse to make a “history” category, so I’m putting this in “news”. I keep reminding myself, this book is about the past . . .
but it’s also frame-shaking.
//
while waiting
i seemed to hear a new leaf budding from
outside, across the garden. i, pristine
sat on our bed— the future strange, deranged—
an alien inventing self-erasures.
is it normal, in my crone, to feel this way?
i missed a contentwarning— fingering machines,
scissored by shades of glass. the news,
the look of starving innocents; the bud,
not yetgreen, also not yet visible.
hallucination of the woozyqueen
or turquoise bees, copper goldenbuzzing
around the vervain; a shipwreck from afar
in language of my nature, or astray
unfounded tear, some private pearl, ruptured—
//
🌘
early morning //
silver robes of a rose rabbi
(This 12-part poem is a reply to Wallace Stevens’ “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”; Further explanation may be found here.)
I.
—and did you ordinary women mock
in liturgies of utterances contained,
lines overwrought by time-keeping cant of yours?
and did you burst from bullied syllabub,
or clockwise stiffen into winter walls?
the musicals of ghosts, midwives and angels
echo, hollow, down stone-cold corridors.
and did you consecrate your spectacle,
coupling one who spoke—no, no—not nothing,
a stand-in that you killed while playing swords?
to quell the babbling spring by means of rain,
or merely quote the Mother’s name in vain?
she has been up at nights, considering
how to un-kiss this devil-gendered thing.
II.
well, i make believe an uncle, dead
and dear. less clear is fortune of the bird.
to fly, to seek, and what on earth to find
but torrent of an obsolescent mind
—he said, obscure and arduous to hear.
and yet, it flies. and though he doubts her crown
and midnight sight, she will fly too. and though
her silver glows in anecdotal mood,
her lilt, of stellar tilt, still loving, lingers
in braided dancing round a pool of blue,
tuning her clutch in nesting eddy of
said bird, whose course is old and hardly true—
and yet, it lives. rising, as golden-red
in flight, crowing like Scorpio in the East.
rest easy, uncle cold and fluttering
and lately of rambunctious residue;
a dove survives heaven to choir anew.
III.
O man, if you could see her witchlocs now,
or what’s become of Eastern expertise.
she is swamp-bitch, and twisted, twined and hitched
without romance by ruby claw to thorny crown,
her hair—each barb a bell, each bloody herb
a suicide. she’s heard of nobody’s
outrageous feats of raw technology.
in wracked rumors of Western fantasy
she knit a while textiles anti-exotic,
but sweaters have no use in the tropics,
where skin is king. and now we’ve come uncrimped,
uncrumpling, algal Anadyomene
of muddy water, Charybdis of the bog.
what’s history is past—nevertheless, he asks
why, woman, have you gone au naturel?
IV.
that spotless glass is not the book of Adam.
that trinity you stole cuts like a knife.
to be uncrumpled is to be un-uncled—
un-uncled, i become the poet’s wife.
i am un-hidden woman of the garden,
body un-ridden by the dust-bound word.
the queen of poet’s tongue, i lounge and lean
as music on my salivary throne.
the syllable you speak, my roundness is
her shapely immanence. our rectitude
is life—of tree—of life. so eat me, fallen
father of mankind, and know your foolishness.
speak again, brother—madly, as husband.
my honeyed bone un-spells your make-believe
kafir—he sees his wife sans négligee
who tastes the ripened fruit by naked eye.
says ordinary woman made explicit,
who steals your spectacle to save your life.
V.
can we remember together, after all
or does my voice harden the picture frame?
by being body, do i gather you
intolerably, or spread you thin as kin,
one stroking throb of summer esoteric—
you tickle me with feather of a peacock.
a gazer’s gloomy imagery is perfume
of incense, arousal at great distances,
long-smouldering and lit by tender match.
far from the proximity of virgins
there burn the Verbs of Love, arrayed
as galaxy of irretrievability—
before my eyes, you took and held my hand.
VI.
we used to call you man of twists and turns,
the dynamo—reckless, drowning, sea-rendered
until perennial blue, the one i knew
well enough to know, i loved nobody.
his thirst, prostrated, clutched me from below,
desperate to conceal from wingèd word
a history of suffering. a babe
buried his need in bosom of my nature,
drunk on the deep milk of disappearance.
his subterfuge despair was mythical,
until he made her fiction. he may not
remember me—but i keep by my heart
a wavy lock of sunset-auburn hair.
VII.
suppose a parable is just like her:
desired and defiled in equal measure.
his chivalry requires a blushing knight
to guard the Word, who is incarnate treasure.
i heard of one such rescuer of women.
who, for his lovely sin, was de-mountained
by crippled foot, and fated never nimbly
to climb again. but faith in constancy
makes deliberate gifts, arms built from hours
spent torquing tongs before roaring earth-core.
therefore, no purity of heart is borne
that lacks an alloy in the sooty forge.
thou shalt not fear the courage of your virgin,
is the limping gist of this comparison;
her shining is at once translucent bloom
and armor’s lustre, welded by humble Vulcan.
VIII.
if doom begins to seem antipathy,
baby, you’re scrolling past the blues. that time
of year thou mayst in our humanity—
but not the Muse—behold, of warty gourds'
cosmic grotesquerie. and there’s the rub.
as long as tongue still holds a gentle fold,
i will elucidate your grim hallucination.
launder and bandage the decaying limb
of sense, of memory, of time. wed heaps
of conscious compost consummate the bloom
in star-swept dimensions of titanium,
where whorls of microplastics never end—
machine poetic, of pumpkins meteoric,
becoming metaphysic—tender beings,
fizzing histories apocalyptic,
chime and rhyme as flutes of pink kombucha.
we sing the tropical-epochal view
at end of universe, or two. until
séance à trois, with chaperone of grackle,
i love the laughing sky—let’s make it crackle.
IX.
most oblatory heart, i bring you news.
despite our deadly faith in prophylactics,
resourceful Cupido pricks porous tactics,
ever hanging hymenal fools. behold:
on spun-gold surface of radiant yolk,
in sky-strewn milky way of albumen
suspended, questing’s lustiest conceit,
the part-less heartbeat of a person third:
as ancient aspect touches youngest plume
to stir, pure destiny, the origin
of life, as love, in pilgrimage secured:
the red point points, and to itself—as bird.
O holy gift, O crack in everything!
the mad midwifery of paladins
births not a baby, but a voice on fire:
ecce peep. now go, and meet your daddy-o.
his name’s Pipit the cocky chickadee;
he is a theory of fertility;
enthusiasm incommensurate
with clock-a tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.
X.
a balmy chickadee alights on bough
of jepun tree—gigantic, bristle-trunked,
beatified—by tipped cosmos of day
and melting star of paradise, bodies
unveiled. we lie in kindred shades of them,
verbing and flowing, in blues made legible
by greenborn leaf. in leaves there hides a forest
where braid the wanderers their briared maths.
a souvenir shelters nectonic paths,
ancestral courses wild with counterpoint,
and mercy of geometry—proffered
by rivered children of Love’s oblivion.
XI.
dilated pools, star-gazed—surrender pinkly
to phobia of frogs. if you dismember
those bracing, faceless bodies—lost in love
their coiling gyres, desiring—helixing
directions inward, home. or intervene
against the skyward cough—raw, gaping need
to swallow more—when pollywog is strung
by lunar air. ritual drowning of gills,
suffering insurgency—the gulping word,
fata Morgana flooding Camelot
is twinned ecstasy of triple betrayal.
for swimmers' lust, the sea is all. and still
her cries are not for us, alone—we hone
the bluest chord of velvet-driven reverberation.
XII.
now all of us have lost our taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam;
so schooling blade, student of buah, prunes
til circumspect the hour. and she has thorns,
forms of her own—we prick ourselves and bleed
to name her flower. bending the voice to crown,
we’re drunk by literal skies of melody.
you found her singing by the sea, where she
had fled, as she remembered you were drowning.
who is the rose rabbi? i read, she comes
and goes. knows herself not. how would she know?
if glass were introspect, Iris of time—
to find she had been borne, a cradled question.
//
🌕
incense of apples
rosy for harvest
the corn lifting her brow
woken to see, to please
interior pearls
of vegetal readying
silver to sunny yellow
the wind caught her silk
like paper, billowing husk
parched with radiance
cerulean burning
alive, by chattering birds
the reaper turning
against the blinding
day, a farmer is shaded
black bladed in gold
knowledge of dual-
lit flicker, the letting heart
the heartless taking
aroma of apples
as if autumn could visit
the island of gods
on rolling tropic
whiter sky and violet flight
they fall to the light
for all of the past
a year, the gravelling ground
a measured after
verdant and weeping
sweep the coconut trees, stray
air from everywhere
//
statuesque
it was her, who stopped troubling
the land with niceties; stepped out
onto the battlefield; declared
her nation iron, under copper;
ignored the children wandering
her heart. youth was her cause, but not
her destination: yapping pups
complicit in decay: the younger,
the worse. she drew a blazing sky-
ward line: from torch to sea of salt,
past oxidized decline: thou shalt
not cross this primary design.
so she was plagued by change, and change
rendered infernal mumblings
absent colossal reality.
she swallowed smaller poetry.
commissioned shining arrows from
hard-laboring masses, to quell
their rumbling curiosity.
her staples were cement brownies,
lampshades as circus gags, popped in
electrified mazes, they tongued
chromatic polystyrene sporks.
her trick was firecrackers for
proposals of shotgun marriage,
with orphans, locked in sheds out back.
essential documents were stacked
inside official cases. fireproof.
the starry skies reflected in
a muddy flood of tasteless rain,
with deeper rivers reluctant
to drain her isolating kingdom.
so spread the miasmatic air.
seen pieces, scened for maximum
invictus — hot-bulb flashes — lost
their knack for light. she was the news:
scaffolding posed as oracle.
and when her history grew old,
turning explicit, they buried her
in broken rubberbands.
mutely, her constitution says
you shouldn’t look, or else you turn
proverbially inhuman.
so close your mind to this broken
container of one billion eyes,
open to fight the warlike hour,
their hearts pumping in empty beds.
the roosters crow to lose their heads.
on glitterbombs sit satanic
afterimages of her,
as rounds of necessary loss
resound on poorly-tuned guitars.
with no time for ambivalence,
her multitudes march on.
and nothing here to be unknown,
perspective infinite as stone —
from bone reflected, light of crone
across her scorched and haunted scars
delivered signals of empathy.
by flickering night, camels repose
in contemplation of footsteps
forgotten, where plod the wind-
whipped monuments of thirst. and all
that is unburnt is a mirage.
//
🌔
gospel of crickets
new fiefdoms are forming.
comes the gnawing saw,
gospel of crickets.
authors of books
are finding nooks.
the map is bending.
curving, like body
being, of course, a place —
the terroir of carrots, roasting
with garlic, chilli and cumin.
longing, we remember
touch and savor, from when
our land was whole, and full.
but our landscape is broken.
parsed before it lived, engendered
as stark disability.
glass fragments are swept
heaped, and scattered, opposite
the old neighborhood.
hillsides sizzle, lost in smoke.
the multitude glitters —
bodies, on fire.
with gas, the lord is cooking
at his stainless steel reflecting pool.
he extols these terraced acres
as civil emptiness,
slate, aluminum, and hollow.
static, it echoes.
not like the night,
contrary and brimming
with her buggy heat.
a holy thicket is dying,
nested — the host of silver light,
drawing foolish creatures.
grievers in the dark,
crowers in the autumn,
langurs in the mist.
sutra sisters
weaving webs,
an insubstantial orb.
the lord is not a fool;
he makes the rule.
nevertheless, the ruler will
in muggy hedges, be herb-
tested. Dasein is to suffer
the sound of little kin.
//
telescopic texts (avec "mon oncle") (3/x)
O man, if you could see her witchlocs now,
or what’s become of Eastern expertise.
she is swamp-bitch, and twisted, twined and hitched
without romance by ruby claw to thorny
crown, her hair, each barb a bell, each herb
a suicide. she’s heard of nobody’s
outrageous feats of raw technology.
in wracked rumors of Western fantasy
she knit a while textiles anti-exotic,
but sweaters have no use in the tropics,
where skin is king. and now we’ve come uncrimped,
uncrumpling, algal anadyomene
of muddy water, Charybdis of the bog.
what’s history is past. nevertheless, he asks —
why, woman, have you gone au natural?
//
rendered even
i’m no stranger
to losing my oomph
now and again
all of you out there, the ones
interesting through
one of those
a crack.
a crease.
a seam.
a crevasse.
calcification occurs
when you don’t pay attention
we can see so much. the breadth
and depth of stories
his mind is
a soupy circle of rain,
sediment-heavy
can’t hold her
knows it’s slipping
getting colder
two of everything
was barely nothing
but admiration
and a calm certainty
a black umbrella
hidden
in a yellow curve
this place is beautiful,
and it’s transforming you
a woozy sacrilege
rendered
even, more
//
waalaikumsalam, selamat tilem, peace 🌑
mosquito milk
she caught you sucking
on her breast today,
mosquito
did you think
she was
your mother?
a poet makes
a pretty
terrible
mother
for
a mosquito
//
waalaikumsalam 🌓
snow white turning
has the twinkle ever
been for nothing
more than
to leave
a loving
artifact
to make
a deathless
hen,
whose faith outpaced
her season’s augury
this fruit is sticky
stretchy,
furious
its nectar possessed
of Lethean ambience
my arms are glittering
swans, my pillows
pur de lait, my eyes
are royal-blooded
blue navé, my dreams
are dialogues
of dolphins
how can she
believe the verbs
you writ, when all
you tender-left
were winterscape, or
sidereal tongue-
traps, of snowmen
that psychedelic night,
she sapped the wine
and stole the spade
howl-lit, she went
digging
in mud of your
decaying spring
for word-eaten
bodies
to meet
the gristled
marrow
to touch and leave
fingerprints
melting
on tongue
rose red grows
from a hollow bone
while moon-
shot belladonna
is kissing cousins
with bull-horned
hemlock, reckless
and honest
//
they have all been mothers' days
i can’t remember
what my skin was like
before i moved
to Indonesia
or if, back then
i ever examined
my own face
in the mirror
but if i had, my skin
would have been
blurred
like
powder makeup
young, dry
unburnt
and smudged
around the eyes
in this country
my skin is almost
always shiny
shining
blushed
amphibian
for some reason
or other, me
or the island
it is full
of almost
too much life
but it, my skin
is pale again
and my cheeks
and chin
are rounder
now, i look
many times a day
at my own face
in the mirror
and
all i see
is my grandmother
from a photograph
in sanguine greys
taken when she
was younger
and from
a recenter one
in springtime shades
of rose and ivory
carefully strewn
with flowers
//
Æ.4 (Hekate and the swan)
æ wrote you a poem
asked you your thoughts
you said
irrelevant
if you’ve not yet
remembered pain
how do you love
premise
unprovable (and
faceless
you speculate
æ was a silver
swan before
you met her
you are Pan
become his own
textile aping
of Venus)
æ am
my face is
your forever
(un-hackable)
crossroads
//
(insp. by reddit via Ran Prieur)
assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu 🌘
the inky
i dream of an intruder in the house and i wake up screaming when they turn their face to me. but if awake and i imagine an intruder in the house, my fear goes silent and still. heart pounding in darkness i listen for my life
the same idea
but what felt
differences
complete sentences
drag heavy lately like
costumed excesses
shed
the inky
extra
//
assalamu’alaikum 🌒