Flora
talisman
a cup of chamomile crepuscular,
my gentle wound, flowers steeping in a dream;
her springing forth, her taste exquisite autumn;
my speculative, formidable apple.
the steam is real, the stirring consequential,
the presence of the absence of a pear;
the buds are breaking up to meet the coiling
epiphany already of her ear.
a brewing honey storm, passing and holding
the amber-letting cauldron of the year;
a wash of gold undone, in case forgotten;
a promise to be warmly drunk, and often.
//
the emerald vine
sayangku, this is insane! is how i called
to show him my translation. Wondrous bending
noetic might, this miracle of earth —
she called the way she calls him for a viper.
and it was chrysochlorous green, zithering neon
in day-bright, venom visible, scroll shining
un-minding, rubbing sleep out of her eyes;
quick-silvering to sprawling pumpkin vine to hiding —
the same, the same, the same! but every word
turned different, and all the rest went dim;
the sirens and the hooks, made dull and distant;
slow-honeyed hum, what frenzy, vital air.
the hungry lung was spitting, stitched and thinning-through
to this — brilliance, broad-leafing light, breathing
Egyptian smaragdine, Sri Rejeki, Mak Sun;
but whoever wasn’t blind already knew.
//
autopygmalesis / autopygmalysis
Trimeresurus insularis
previously
//
🌕
beauty breathers //
familiar
if i remember you, i was fifteen
your hair was knotted by dirty difference
flecked-amber gibbous as my need for love
your body pliable and bored for me
(her mother hated your feral smell)
three decades gone, my pace is set by ghosts
and at the door, at least three cats or four
familiar tempo territorial, you puzzled
pigments with my pinkest calico
(you should know we don’t do skim)
we go, we pan the monsoon winds, we blow
gold-dust up noses of tropic mountains
resuscitate, topless in hard-top jeeps
we are burning lucky indigo, lit dupa
(what’s here that’s spendable is yours)
who reads as suffering comes craving rhyme
by planetary slow, the latest virgin
almost born, in need of form, soft hand
and shallow. Moon meadow, nettling in time
//
(she didn’t mean to make you cry)
//
🌖
invitation //
Indigo
I found the true, sun-rendered into grass.
Your crest was bruised, and bled darkly as wine,
Unfolded fan of bronze between the green
Blades: cut down, dissociated flame.
Rooster plucked bald, spur-riven by rage;
Fresh amputee of faith; his brothers, turned;
Beloved hen, a prize for violent men;
Disintegrated end of pointless feathers.
If I were strong, like you, I may not
Have chased him down and put him in a cage;
Rewritten him this unreal sanctuary, made
Of wire and wood, wish-woven with vervain.
A mess of mercies is my apocalyptic kitchen.
By my haphazard and incomplete, sincere
Effacement, I perform, historically,
Dueling, death-won, verb-mangled essences.
The crumbling law of walls, a garden crossed
By interventions; roses uprooted by birds,
Cock-sacrificed, or saved—Indigo is
The privilege of my indefinition . . .
As tempered hearts traverse this tear-trembling
Threshold, until the Iris appetite resolves
In fundamental mud of lotus eaters—
I offer kue, leftover from purnama.
//
Kue, small cakes, are often part of Balinese canang (offerings) left around the home on purnama (the full moon).
This is my entry for the September IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Sophia, on the theme “second person birds”.
The Myna // Sang Jalak
The Myna
So here we are, in this
Third World. Palm trees,
Rice paddies, machetes.
Doves couple on concrete walls.
Seasalt breeze, like surface
Fire . . . Sapphire, emerald.
Sanctuary comes, commands
Silence. Our mothers cut tongues
To police. Masked,
The myna bird speaks
On the mulberry tree. Elsewhere,
Ants against an elephant.
//
Sang Jalak
Jadi disinilah kita,
Di Dunia Ketiga ini. Pohon palem,
Sawah, parang.
Merpati bercinta di dinding beton.
Angin laut asin, seperti permukaan
Api . . . Safir, zamrud.
Suaka datang, menuntut
Keheningan. Ibu-ibu kita memotong
Lidah ke polisi. Bertopeng—
Jalak Bali berbicara,
Di pohon murbei. Di tempat lain,
Semut melawan gajah.
//
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.
//
oyi //
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—
//
🌘
earthquake
it felt like grass, before it felt like stone.
the other side of flame, igneous black
or tattoos grappling for your diamond face.
so i grew roots in water, he in bone.
and what if i abstain from apples for
a year, a tear, a deathtime. would he still be
indifferent? or disappeared into
his silverriver hair, my cloudy mountain.
your wooly light tempted discovery,
pulsating veins of mercury, the ground
mantle unbound. it whispers— not a limb
of you is immune to this hungering human.
//
🌓
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.
//
🌕
zero belongs to no man
i’ve heard of angels snaking down and up
the ladder of your lust, like cats on herbs.
smudged pawprints on faces of hierophant
or lovers or tower or devil or —
free spirit stumbles on the way, or trips
it upside-down, or stops to make a Friend.
a clock never belonged to her, the fool
is led by blooming tendrils of ylang ylang.
each word escapes the putri, playing prince
of winding wildernesses in beeswax.
tracing a comedy of errors, miss —
fit daughter of the whore of Babylon!
//
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
//
fungi in the filesystem
event: it needs
new categories.
local zoology lately
portends mycelial memes:
“camels” vs. “dissertations”.
monkeys on the roadside,
— laughing. un-officially, i
am giddy to be their fool.
follow-up: mushrooms
of animal entertainment,
best medicine?
antidote of day-
glow (glitch)!
//
red stone
here is where
greenway unwound
by time, by time.
here is where
salt, rust, corrosion
the wound word.
here is where
given untimely springs
sprung locket.
here is winding
roses and figures for
give, by vigil, by rest.
//
telescopic texts (avec "?") (12/12)
now all of us have lost a taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam.
a schooling blade, student of buah, will prune
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.
//
on bad days
on bad days, the silence
has more to say to you
than i do. and yet
every day i worry
you’re not a reader
of silence.
if only i could give
my shape to silence, then you
might hear the crickets.
if silence
were nothingness, then
i would be green leaves.
but i saw the silence,
its air of winter,
its shape of clear empyrean.
its emptiness, strewn jewels —
all of it was precious;
none of it was secret.
above the radiance, i heard
earth is a place of rest —
and i believe it.
i press patchouli
to your wrist, your temple.
i draw the covers.
//
telescopic texts (avec "?") (10/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.
//