Technology
Pharmakeia’s triptych
trippy destiny
true story: in her salad bruising days
her myspace name was like a prayer, Pharmakeia
the profiled face was drawing of a death
cap mushroom; well, consistency
and every day a salad day
and every day un po’ di morte
today, when sniper scopes an urban label
the same shaded and subtle botanical
renderings pop up from top of neon heap
left truffles for her canny little pig
for snorts and tickles, yet
a fact; and do you trust it
//
what marriage
the maskmaker who daily carries her
drew sigil gold and black on brown bag paper
Al-Lateef—his soft likeness sleeping by her pillow
beloved names for her beloved way
what reck does come to find
what wreck that came to ground
as travelers witness landslides and inundations
upheavals that by eagle’s eye the aftermath
counts losses, failure, countlessness; what hand
to brush a tawny cow, her long-lashed eyes
what blinded word to see
what marriage of then and now
//
big girl
she sees, by name, the blue of heaven’s white
behind how obvious a giantess
the light, the light, it hurts to look at it
so brightly shines a lofty signature
built body born from Isis warm
and catching form her dulcet veil
some Aphrodites are, it’s said, too tall
to be from brick wall read, too high to see
by tools of masonry; how broad her arms
great fools embracing sky of marbled earth
her reckoning like reckless love
big girl logician
//
🍄
notes from Kuningan
morning hari raya / upacara / island turning // take the blessing / by notation / if i may // Pak and Bu S— / morning offering / shrine at home // rains a little / as we are greeting / laugh it away // i place the canangs / with lit dupa / ini di bawa, ini di atas nggih // with shredded pandan / shoo the cats away / the kue is not yours // then time for dressing / always late again / ceremonial demand // kebaya sunny yellow / olive peacock batik, gift from Ibuk / mauve selandang // polyester lace is tight / not my usual / glossy korean lipstain (bare fig) // to Penestanan / in the car now / windows down barricade // traffic pecalang / all day this way / Bali holiday // people fill the street / everyone is smiling / they recognize our face // he knows everyone / stops for everyone / a face for everyone // salam for everyone / friend for everyone / how many promises to mampir // banjar clear / on the way again / ceremony in the air // double-park the car / the cock-fight corner / across from pura dalem // at our old place / pandemi family / second home again // pass your body / around the family / salim for elders / salim from little ones // receive the bodies / moms and sisters hold you / feel you and pat your curves // meet Blih’s girlfriend / she seems good for him / marriage when // Ibuk Penestanan / enduring smiling / to see my face // she brings us coffee / kripik and kue / water from warung // and i’m too rare here / somewhat guilty / the intensity // the affection, her skin is so fair / but not too fair, she’s looking healthy / they note some extra weight // under comment / they discuss me / i endure // Bapak L— / talking death again / Mase scolding him // six large koi / in a clean but crowded pond / tadpoles nibbling at their scales // Mbok A— is here / older sister / the secrets she endures // heroic / (…) / by another woman // the delicate child / slender hand held / so as not to disappear // he takes my phone / for an interval / makes us watch a video // sea monsters suddenly / el gran maja versus the bloop / this detour for a while // softest fingers / feathering the touch screen / when he was small he didn’t talk // he couldn’t look at us / he wouldn’t speak to us / he ran away // now he’s outbound / needs to show us / sea monsters a serious event // an old mango tree / outside the home gate / branching over the street // when they ripen / he climbs to take them / no apparent fear // all day people passing / in the street below / teenagers outside the minimart // boys in udengs / girls in kebaya / all wearing sarungs // and then it’s coming / time to prepare / baskets and the flame // at the front steps / there’s a mat there / we kneel on it // kebaya itchy / sarung binding / squeeze onto my knees // off my sun hat / off my sunglasses / pale under the sky // the rain is clearing / by the rainworker / smoking his cigar // the women place the offering / burn the dupa / receive the blessing // remake the street / here come the god seat / make space for it // sound approaching / mangku rushing / the time is near // a flood of boys, boys, boys / marching sleeves rolled / red hibiscus in white udeng // here the mangku splashing water / wet blossom blessing / hands receive it // head receive it / face receive it / heart receive it, if it can // the passing concentration / bending flute line / twirling attention // pray the empty / pray the flowers / learn to pray // then we double it / give it happening / take a moment to form // now it’s coming / moving down the street / presence on the way // percussion heat / heart flame beat / bronze opening // bathe the flowers / in the smoking / fold them behind my ear // great gong agung / deep expanding / down belly through feet // make space for sesuwunan / come the barong / guardian of the street // women carry offering / towers balance on their heads / jeweled baskets overflow with cakes and fruit // see the dewa / vision loves them / eyes following // golden armor / grassy black mane / bulging eyes // then start shimmying / snapping teeth / shuffling the feet // flip-flops in the front / flip-flops in the back / shaggy with a bouncy tail // barong is dancing / attendants touching calves / steady exhausting underneath // forest guardian / body bearing sun-wheel / banjar medicine // then we follow / walk the family / take it through the street // walk with sesuwunan / holding hands again / don’t let him disappear // pray for island / pray for family / pray for banjar // boys are laughing / keep the music / challenging the air // in the made space / music opens it / opening is here // pray for earth / pray for spirit / pray down hard // see it feelingly / cracking open / then deplete // campaka blossoms / in barong beard / my favorite part of him // makes him handsome / red hibiscus / jepun ylang ylang
the fragrance / how it follows me / into the next day
//
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
//
Gold. Beef? //
silver tongue,
golden ear,
Lover absent,
garden near—
The title of this poem is homonymous with my husband’s name.
This poem, from further back, has a pretty obvious W. B. Yeats reference that I forgot to mention. “Sailing to Byzantium” is an old favorite of everybody’s, including mine. I feel like I understand it differently now than when I first read it, ~25 years ago.
I love Yeats and would never write against him on purpose. But “Military Parade” does express a reversal; and then I noticed how “Sailing to Byzantium”, with its explicit goldsmithery, is roughly opposite to “Begging Season”, which is earthy and humble, in material, scale, texture. And then I noticed . . . how consistently not-gold my poetry is, where gold is postponed, doubted, displaced. Even my homonymous husband poem rejects its golden ring. A cascade of questions followed, beginning with: Whence the pattern? It wasn’t quite calculated. Things just seemed true at the time.
Am I weird about gold? Why? How did I get that way?
If I wrote more gold poetry, would I attract more mean green ($)?
A mischievous question like that is based on an esoteric, witchcrafty mode that Yeats and I share, by lineage (his being mine, and he being part of mine). I don’t dismiss the utility of mantra. And I wouldn’t put it past him, to craft gold into presence. So. Could I write a gold poem? Should I? What would mine be?
Finding in myself no poem of gold—Is this (would Yeats say) a sign that I lack imaginative ambition, symbolic understanding, spiritual daring?
Gold does appear, in my crafted imagination, my images and dreams, but rarely is its presence pure or simple. The negation—an optical or organic filtering—of gold feels important to me. It certainly reflects a material condition; I see little gold in my day-to-day. Does it also express a worthy poetic commitment, to limit gold’s presence—to the very limits?
. . . Do I have (vegan) beef with Yeats?
Consider my family, friends, and allies. What is the meaning of gold, in my community? How does gold function in poetry—mine, others'? Commence a catalogue of golden ships. (Fascinating, for sure; forthcoming, maybe—this would be an amazing list. I have a certain intuition that Phaedrus will back me up; and Socrates never would, but the Republic—seminal, in this respect—experiments with pure, psycho-political gold.)
Does the meaning of gold change based on history? Upon witnessing newer distortions—the cruel and tacky deployment of gold, the dictator’s ballroom, the ecocidal tyranny of it all—would Yeats himself admit symbolic defeat? (Doubtful.)
Or is there a—poetic, erotic, alchemical, theological—gold standard? Is gold truer than history?
The narrator frames himself as a refugee, sick with desire and bereft of self-knowledge. He is not unlike the beggar. He calls upon sages—emergent from God’s holy fire!—to teach him how to sing. He remakes his own body out of gold, and Byzantium—like a halfway house of gold birds on golden boughs—becomes his artificial refuge. The lords and ladies of Byzantium are his final, appreciative audience. He entertains them with gold-wrought songs of the very world—natural, historical—that he has fled.
The narrator is rescued from nature by his own luxuriant hypothesis, this golden ear. Wonderfully, he has crafted his savior into presence. And it might be us. But let’s be honest—was a poet ever rescued by gold?
Or does a poet set out to rescue gold?
. . . To rescue gold, from what?
I believe these are deep and important questions, all of which touch on power and the image. I also observe that questions of gold, not unlike worlds of gold, initiate a seduction. Yeats’ poem embodies the transcendent height of a poetic (symbolic, alchemical, technological) fantasy, rescuing as it escapes. While my senses slip ever so comfortably into gold’s embrace.
I see the allure . . . and it feels like a rub.
//
See also: this reply from Angles Morts.
Wet moon
like neon blood,
by graveyard stain,
on finger-nerve, today;
the sickle punch,
by ghosting grain,
on open womb, today;
Medusa’s surgery,
on scissored brain,
electric licks, today;
quick! Nobody touch
the ingraining
mirror—
//
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.
//
Sideview
(for Sylvia)
Nylon-strapped into the backseat, the infant
Of reckless parentage, jaw-broken logic
Like antifreeze for mastery, injected
Muscularity, a pink mouse curled inside a clenched
Fist—We lost a sideview. It ricocheted, sent sparks
Scattering plastic, wires fraying the blurry way.
Ecstatic and encaged, I prayed to conjure
From atrocity, your feral, foresty freedom.
At screaming speed, twigs slashing my impossible—
If I could drive a car, if that were conceivable—
I would flood this weapon with atmospheres of Earth.
I would beatify the shattered sea of glass.
Acid fog dissolves the orange caul, cap-cradled
By undulating power lines—of deathless exhaust.
//
🌕
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.
//
🌔
splinterwha
the resource re-
considering
skipping stones
whistling
in crevasses
stellar, hollow (
reckon starving
metric Io
reaches out ( g -
lossy limb
bittermallow
idiot(es) wind
whips ( w h i n i n g
past mumbling
nettles offset
private alphabets
boolean ( b r e a s t
nipple, teething
shooter —
wounding ) strings,
splintervolta
tablet dissolves
like ambien
sound-guarded Kali
graphic stems
roots’ f r a c t a l
externality
inscribed iamb ( so
so many
times ) my ear
sheltered, Delphi-like
in serif lobe
omega ( brooding,
loaded ) blood suss-
staining ends
threaded, mute
( litters
leaf
ground ) grammar
thick bundles,
shorn bodies from
brushes, hair-
lines
t um b l e w ee d
to thrift
the thistle, this
still tick-ling
or if sewn spider-
silk knew, s o w i n g
( m i l k s o f t
the habit of
( public
beauty )
a mustard seed
//
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.
//
🌕
corpus
so this is memory accounted full.
the one, the final word they wrote, to lay
a crying babe to sleep. a lullaby
to keep, against the fragmenting mirage —
a pile of rocks for angry men to stack,
to sit on. bone-built towers, against
the synthesizing might of desert hours
break first before the mother of the fast.
and these divisive scratches were daughters
of dust, heart-scriven on the dune. to say
my thirst was never for parted or past —
her caravan, sand-winding, ever-last.
//
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)
//
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.
//
dissertation on the dot
i am
with i
uneasy two.
unripened squeamish.
purple mumble-humble.
pretentious piXelated.
shallow faux-passé.
i know, but
there is a knowing
something in i,
that only ( you )
could be Other-
wise. i sigh.
i stroke your hair.
i watch you, sleeping.
i reach for you, i
follow your turn
by turn. i
admit
i am —
Obsessed!
//
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.
//
🌔
domestic instability
her furry flank rises
and falls softly, as breath.
the wheeze and drift
of pink nose, neatly
muffled by curling paw.
where she is, here — where i
have placed her. her face
today is altered, injured,
i note; from stepping out
of wood-and-bone dimensions.
to meet another sister — dark
of velvet, sinister of scent, who knows
the grass as blades;
the searing fear of blood;
the growl of God at stake.
while she is light — as spots
on creamy white, strawberry
twizzler tongue — and popular.
her prey is floating feathers.
and yet, her heart is mean
as poverty, as maniacal envy.
black sister, with heart of pink;
pink sister — black-hearted:
the dueling dialect of shadow rose.
tender beings, engendered
by pain; unviable, beyond
their quantitative shells.
//
telescopic text (avec "?") (8/x)
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.
//
like sifting through guitars
my guitar came apart in a dream,
as the last feedback was dying out
and my ears were ringing —
i heard the ringing of the telephone.
red lights must be exercising their power.
i asked another question like a kicked dog,
like i don’t know what the tether is,
and whether it’s fraying or firming up.
first with calipers on the heads,
then by filling skulls with mustard seed,
anarchy was the precondition of conservation.
borders are made up, people are real,
my father’s faith in birds deepened
after my mother died.
i knew then that we were finally past
the power of miracles.
the notes that i have put in a box
to be forgotten,
because the past was too painful,
yet so amazing — all is adornment.
and someone walked away from me,
it doesn’t matter who.
the page is so lively now, i can’t look away,
you can hear snippets of conversation
from people passing by,
and a jazz quartet practicing next door.
the next day the sun rose at the river,
and the feeling began to drift away.
turning the page again
but devoid of real poetry, today.
like sifting through trash
and telling a story about it.
//
Waalaikumsalam, selamat tilem, peace 🌑
telescopic texts (avec “?”) (7/x)
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.
//
p.s., and yes — to service chthonic Muse,
Hephaestus becomes god of cunnilingus.