Dogs
the goodliest
all unrestraint, all treats this island takes
by forest, mountain, mangrove or the beach
an altar lit with incense, sticky cakes
and coins, by slobbery foam, licks of brimstones
and muddy sticks and well-chewed-over bones
what rainbows churning in her tempest heart
what spilling cordials, bloody clots of earth, and all
may find rest in her furry green account
at restless earth-born sings a twilit face—
my valley for a storms! all to the tree!
and all to thee, the goodliest pan, O Pan—
of setting rings, pure nuncial—of place!
//
genius loci
ribbitere
//
🌓
the seams of Saint Veronica
i was digging in the garden
i was rooting up a rose
dreaming of a buried bone
listening to my nose
i sewed your face into it
and you told me no
my unclean mystery
i’m tearing up tatami
do you need the dog in me
should i paw at your door
i was sniffing in a corner
now i’m passed out on the floor
i smell like cat piss
i’ve been running in the rain
what is your mercy for
a reckoning of typhons
i’m in a foreign country
and i never knew a law
i weep at every stranger
my long tongue and stupid jaw
you don’t even want it
until you’re dying
and you don’t look at me
i miss you only
wandering the streets at night
‘cause good girls love to roam
and if i lost my reason
would i find you at home
all your mixed signals
i chew them into air
your body is so visible
bones buried everywhere
the wooden cross you carry
the weight on trembling knees
how do you carry crosses
if you don’t believe in trees
why do i bury them
why am i depressed
why am i in your garden
my garden is a mess
six angry shades of rosary
and every count has thorns
and if i turn the light on
what takes a shadow’s form
and could i fight it
or am i just a bluff
my smoke at midnight
my nothing is enough
three verticals upon the hill
at dawn there’s five or more
their arms the work of windmills
guardians of metaphor
vermilion edges
my painterly lines
flashing iridescence
my greener stigmata
the seams of Saint Veronica
the tilt of her golden leaf
and if the suffering savior
had denied her that relief
beloved breaking
my faltered knowledge
she’s in the dirty street
the hounds of resurrection
//
(a song /
a howls)
//
my dog sings
and my gremlin
speaks in iambs
or
currently reading:
The Tempest
//
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
//
triptych of the dog
//
a cicak dropped a souvenir on me
yesterday, savasana; it was
all happening, pure rejeki, a speck
for playing dead; the simmering night, the sawah
was fizzing and burping boggy chemistry
the gamelan deliberated depth
of banjar space, a soup of bronze and spittle
//
up i, cocks crowing death to rest, dark mind
the cat was sick again, shit cleaned, cats fed
the breath of rain, half-there, in vomit stepped
scrubbed vinegar again, who made the bed
i squinted past the dawn to wash a dish
the load of towels, it was not a test
the shape of chasing weather for a bone
//
and would the three of them have made a city—
Lysias, Lysias, Lysias; he wasn’t there
he wasn’t here, until bumbu for our sambal
did rain down from the sky, and i said Lord
i still deny that you’re an onion seller
how practice held like density, as though
svanasana could house the dog itself
//
🌒
//
see also Rabia Basri
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
//
the looper
by grief of the dog in a blinded place
he wanted her heart so he shadowed her face
under cover of dawn when she wasn’t awake
the silver misted or altering
her eyelids open but the crescent stays closed
pale beside her is a body or a suited pose
her own lap empty as an uncut rose
she brews coffee to keep him on his feet
her towering heels after pups on a leash
imposing the law with restless releases
a child was limping with a wounded shin
and the cry was loop loop looo
so she stations herself against the daily race
with a heart beat distant at a raggedy pace
the private fingering of her pencilling hand
gray ribbons or bloodlines away
checking the door, securing a window
turning a latch or locking a symbol
the lupine circling would never know
and his cry was loop loop looo
smooth is the pack, the witless texture of skin
painting the walls to skirt the outside in
and the red is to run and the fast is the worst
and sundown always coming closer
blurred in the grease at the end of the day
the charcoal prophet reflecting her phase
the stillness or the animal dilation
and her cry was loop loop looo
loop loop loooooo
ah-oooooo
loop loop loooooo
ah-oooooo
//
sfh 2
//
song for her
my friend is brilliant, she lives inside a box
her light is so strong, it made cracks into my house
her cracks in everything, she’s uncontainable
her container is a place of blinding peace
she is so brilliant, that i’m afraid of her
she is so quick, she catches me before i stumble
she is so mighty, one piece of her becomes my whole
by day her memory, by night her secret plan
she is so brilliant, she broke into my dream
i found her there, busy kitchening a shadow
what she was making, i couldn’t wait to see
was it a love potion, or did she want to poison me
she is so brilliant, i tried to let her know
i made a mirror, it was not the way to go
i think i burned her, by what she wouldn’t say
she is so brilliant, maybe i should have let her be
she is so brilliant, but her mom sounds like a bitch
i want to tell her, but i’m not sure about it
she watches tv, and i think it makes her sad
i’d let her see me, but her brilliance drives me mad
she is so brilliant, but our interspecies owl
if she’s leucistic, and i might be a wolf-man
if i’m too mystic, my tooth and claw and howl
to hold her close, i’m gonna fry them in a pan
she is so brilliant, i take time to process her
or i’m a house-cat, high-rolling in her sunshine
i soak it in, through my fur into my bones
chasing lit inches, and i don’t even mind
lacking her brilliance, i wrote a song for her
it’s cos i’m foolish, my words are pawns for her
i just can’t help it, i need to let her know
how brilliant she is, that i could never let her go
she is so brilliant, that i could never let her go
etc
//
not sarcastic
//
music by her
//
Socrates: O Phaedrus—if I fail to know my Phaedrus, I have forgotten my own self. And yet, I have done neither of these. Well do I know that when he heard Lysias' speech, he didn’t hear it only once. But often and repeatedly, Phaedrus urged him to speak. And Lysias eagerly (prothumos) obliged. But even that wasn’t enough. And he, managing to take possession of the book, examined what his heart most desired (epithumos). And doing this, sitting since early morning, he gave it up and went for a walk—knowing the speech thoroughly, I would guess, by the dog; unless it is very long indeed. And he crossed outside the wall, that he might practice (meleta-o). And meeting one mad for hearing words, and seeing him, seeing, it would pleasure him to possess a fellow Corybantic reveler, and he commanded him to lead. And as the lover (erastes) of words was begging him to speak, he broke away, as if it was not his desire (epithume-o) to speak. But in the end, he was always going to speak, and if someone wouldn’t listen willingly, then by force! O Phaedrus, anyway—beg yourself to create (poie-o) right now, and quick, the very pleasures (ede / edos) that you will nonetheless create!
Needleworker
Pierce me once—the crying; pierce me twice—
The dying; pierce me thrice—my laughing tomb:
This quivering feline skin, some kind of lark,
Sharp noise, felt aerial, fled human wound.
O Queequeg, Lucy’s love, my Nobody!
Unmake ambergris soufflé to scrap and salt;
Pets, lapping shattered tiramisu, whet
Our mongrel tongues; embroidering the asp.
Bull-revelry, before we dance the waltz?
Your sutra swans around my ichthyan lisp,
To charm the vipers out—that feather in
Your bonnet inks my tapestry with bone.
I move to tiger with you on the cusp
Of animality, that golden-threaded throne.
//
🌘
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.
//
Socrates: (cont.) And doing this, sitting since early morning, he gave it up and went for a walk—knowing the speech thoroughly, I would guess, by the dog; unless it is very long indeed.
// 228β
καὶ τοῦτο δρῶν ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ καθήμενος ἀπειπὼν εἰς περίπατον ᾔει, ὡς μὲν ἐγὼ οἶμαι, νὴ τὸν κύνα, ἐξεπιστάμενος τὸν λόγον, εἰ μὴ πάνυ τι ἦν μακρός
//
military parade (no country for children)
a block of human souls, murder
of mirrors: organism heaves
a moving multitude of cells,
populous lung, as if to breathe.
populous gun, snap-locks to form:
fifty by fifty by fifty, we
as one, on riven necks, heads turn.
the mass of bodies march past Xi.
in uniform, blind discipline:
black boots, white arms, clean unison
defines the face; grey, seamless film,
a weapon’s youthful complexion.
meanwhile, across Pacific waves,
the people’s whore, instead of school,
deploys machines to make selves, slaves;
the suicidal human rule.
chip factories to feed the stocks:
by battery classroom, killing ground
to grind the greening down, by glass
addiction, into tyrant’s hound.
the glaze that, dying, skins the eyes,
steals vision from the animal;
filters from birth its grave sunrise
and petrifies the living soul.
the glaze that, seeing, sells and tells;
in masks, they empty out the homes.
nobody ever goes inside;
nobody ever is alone.
meanwhile, across Atlantic storms,
in cradle of brave humankind,
the eye its fatal flaw confirms:
the fracture of the human mind.
dust-craven, shame of patriarchs
forsook a sacred covenant;
belched blood on gift of holy land;
made blasphemy of government.
what child is this? his ribs exposed;
the second coming, came, disposed;
the final coming, coming’s close;
bodies of babes, unmade by drones.
around the blue planet repeats
this multiplicative device;
our genocide is not abroad;
the ovens crowd these hollow spaces.
proving, mobilization awed
gold-burnished by Byzantium;
the heart speaks broken memory;
this is no country for children.
so genius passed: neither in form,
nor in the scripted paedophage;
bereaved, God’s mercy, nature-borne;
a mother’s keening song, through rage.
//
🌔
endives and mallows
this morning, handsome as a child, touches
with warming fingers the amethyst mallow.
delivers, gladly, each from darkening time:
the businessman, lucid as professor;
the tyrant, same as refugee, receives
his quickening caress, the goldenlight of youth.
but not each child. nor any child— the sun
has blinded all with his apparition.
a forest of light is teething in the seed,
dog star, a diamond cleverly effaced.
her baby will be different from the rest:
impeccable smile, a garden’s wondering, walking train—
daily untangling from the priest’s embrace;
to carry off, intact, her very name.
//
as if i were a whitefoot
nameless, the gentle landscape chose
pointlost, ungiven, brutishly
endbringer to deadset hunger,
rudeness riverrun to mercy.
grim gravelshatterer, sparking flint
to be action or scenery—
object of disbelief, the ground
to goat a hesitating hoof—
or clamp too-trustingshank, object
of appetite. salivaspills
from ruthless gum of animal,
rankcivil tooth of shackledmilk;
but snarlingword, infant of dust
absent a motherverse, is howl
heartletting keen of lucid sacrifice.
come drink from me, Al-Shanfarā—
she desertlimns greydreaded; trim
your distance, wolves. the veil of thirst
is inhuman as ocean, burns
your hornsgolden by bending sun.
//
(reply to Shanfara’s Lamiyyat al-Arab, trans. by Michael A. Sells in Desert Tracings.)
for the hidden wives
dog barks at the silence
dog barks at the noise
dog with gun or gavel
dog diploma, speculum
shadows feeding shadows
source of silent hum
(hum hum hum hum)
sending out a prayer
for the hidden wives
(of them them them)
//
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.
//
🌔
the way of buah potong
discreetly,
the membrane
he seeks
where earlier skin
defines still-
vibrant
pupal pulp
some flesh
surrenders simply
to cutting
releases seeds
like fish eggs
to a spoon
some arms itself
with stinks and spines
( the risqué
are forbidden
in public places
but true buah
is nowhere
vulgar )
or squeezes
open, slurpy
pearls of furry
mollusk
some section
selectively, not
as you like it
whining pith or
dogged rind
crumbling shards
of jewels,
broken
but
felt gently,
their presence
is luminous
crescents
sliced
stars
skinless egg
of snake
tumbled boulders
of Mars
he speaks
with knife
submits
in pieces, re-
composed
honeyed
and binding
as Yusuf
suffering
many
( and blade- )
kissed
fingertips
//
the carrion
by Charles Baudelaire (original translation. cw: necrophilia.)
remember the object we saw, my soul
that summer morning, soft and sweet
at a twist in the path, a foul carrion
in its bed, seminated with pebbles
its legs in the air, as a woman aroused
hot and dripping with poisons
splayed in a cynical, nonchalant way
womb swollen with expirations
the sun shone fully on the decay
as to roast it, until just right
to return as millions to Nature’s noblesse
the cosmos she had contained
and heaven saw the magnificent carcass
as a blossoming flower
the stench was so potent, there on the grass
you thought you might collapse
the flies buzzing around the putrid belly
were issuing black batallions
of worms, pouring forth, pustulent
along the living tatters
the whole descended and rose like a wave
or sprayed in a sparkling spume
one could say the body, swole by murky breath
flourished in its inflation
and the world was rendered a stranger song
of watery flux and the wind
or grain that a winnower’s rhythmic geste
turns and churns in a basket
the shapes dissolved, no more than a dream
a sketching slow to arrive
on canvas forgot, where the artist derives
from memory alone
behind the rocks, an anxious bitch
watched us with angry eye
le squellette awaiting a chance to reclaim
the morsel that she had left
— and though you will be the same as this filth
as this horrible infection
stars of my eyes, sun of my nature
you, my angel, my passion!
yes! such will you be, O queen of graces
after the last sacraments
when you go, beneath fatted flowers and grasses
to moulder amongst the bones
then, O my beauty! say to the worm
who is eating you with his sex
i have kept the shape and essence divine
of my loves' decomposition!
//
waalaikumsalam 🌒
friendly stranger //