Verses/Curses
a-courting, or the word used here
we mampir with Blih at the house of his girlfriend
to meet her mother, by his side, the maskmaker and i
as family representatives or peopled containers
my labels are to smile and nod with genuine interest
to follow the conversation, for extra credit
to support Blih, we drive him there and back
to eat and drink what we are given, to stay as long as it goes
to coach him in the car, to ease his nerves broaching
the sensitive topics, to approve, one step of many
both already divorced, he’s two years older than us
she is a few years younger, expressive, at ease
a tempering of his toughened wants and weathers
just to us he mentions, maybe a baby; pretends
not to be enchanted by a computer-generated mockup
//
🌓
the good shit
for Petals in her present pleasure zone
she’s rolling round inside the one, the good shit
the fine, the best, ye olde Platonic shit
no hydroponic, just sanctified dank
under Sumatran sun; for snub-nosed exodus
in summers mud, her laurel wreath of sticky bud
up drug botanical by trashy magazine
like chocolate pharma-chronic feuilletine
and toke thine truffled nugget whilst ye may
my silk-eared pig for liplined valentine
today her carrot conversation hearts the play
her eats the emptiness of tools as feels divine
//
E=m11!1
//
🌒
consistere
psst — the monsters are all in evidence over here
many with their sights on you, can you not see them?
maybe they don’t wear chaos like your command
or ugliness as your specification; maybe in love
they can’t afford to show the truth; some have been known
to flatter relentlessly the passing beauty; or even
to dress up as their own negation, pretending tools
or fancy chairs or helpless little girls; and many
renouncing love or beauty altogether; but nobody
is sorry; nobody knows that everybody
is swallowed up by someone by the end; and nobody
is more monstrous than mercy, or more self-same
still; if you want it darker, we can totally kill the flame
but the poet will kill it for us in six or seven lines
//
xox
as making do
was worked exquisitely until worked out
a nagging, no-good splinter, studied bit
from the toe-ball mound of some leviathan
mere sliver; then salvaged by a maskmaker
if mountain makers last by root and bud
of artful past from a forgetful dancer
sequestered in their unearned sorrow, sung
too low and dear for an angry wound to hear
too clear for tears or dollar bills to hold
but a mask is living loss returned to wood
impossibility the daily ending felt
itself not made nor lost enough to face
so held and turned; for an ugly splinter
with yet some reservoir of mammoths blood
in love, it was an advantageous marriage
//
special delivery
smooth now, that rough magic
periscopic tragic midnight lookout
pale arms out arctic like an exiled
penguin into the nameless city
coping, cold, gauze in a sand storm
laron flicker in the mighty dust
a turning ember, hot
spark-caught, gold-litter
in the spider web
spanning a rattan lamp shade
my one fish, two fish
her peacock greenish-black or blue
the switch, dangling
sarcophagus
so dead; quothe the neon miracle
off-gassing meatlight; or Lalah
pink, with only enough instinct
to kill and never eat, my baby, yes;
deveining ribbons in the snow, scrubbed
scrubbing, awash in the darkroom; or
backstage, up rusty rungs, like icicles; blanket
of rags, pocket of candy-wrapped pills; she goes
like gamelan trancing crickets at the cross
by tilem, smoke of incense over the sawah
//
sea-blew
what left, Miranda, the wind fortuning you
a Calibaning egg of Cali-bans
or Prosper’s abjuring empire of plans
some dummy’s wife who fell under his spell
the queen of Napoli; world’s best ice cream
the rook, the knight, carved pieces curious
with subtle knife she tries the bardic seam
a memory game or seashell serious
before, before, the backward-dark sings where
for worm your daddy needling mercy for
for forward way, the swallows only way
abysm storm and how came you no mother
you won’t know how to make a baby yet
when all you were is got and get without your will
or will withal begotten grow to fill out
full figure for your fateless face, blew-eyed
//
O
off what now
off-white
make no inquiry
of the angel
at the stop sign
with a streetlight
glazed in the pantone
color of the year
2026
plagued
by the washing
up
of love
//
off-black
what depends
upon
a beautiful
loser
making the green
sour ringlets
moonshine
seedy
at the solemn
curfew
//
🌘
//
dadgum
farm stuff
//
black earth again
black earth again, dear polyvinyl ground
my sticky firm dense heavy cell; as i ally
orthogonally wooden floorboards by
corners, lines matching lines before i begin
one week today since my last vinyasa
marks doubt, unsteady shakes from atrophy
least progress lost, the war postponed, disowned
like how to trust what grows out from under me
sunlight lemon on the grass, and cedar trees
are spirits in the haze of muscles memory
the distant greys, the vagus nerve, drishti
oh cave of susceptivity; go eyes, under skin
at distance they behold a cunning henge
never a sur disdains from calling out to me
the greening herb grows vivid on the verge
the plantar fascia curl to meet some solid life
in place, half-driven, half-reined, half-spark and half-
holding, i part, expose the seam between
the licking flame and tucking in the hem
of wilderness accounted for, enfolding or
away; my mountains weight of carbon presses light
through floss; down wayfinding impression-meshed
sensation of the sedimentary stone
by layers etching bone, wind, ocean, fire
and fury, glass gash obsidian; if you forget
the trembling earth is always giving birth
at core, the organs fluctuating sphere
the planetary pliable and fevers warmer door
no body no container without change
resistance treasures injury, the palm-press grain
desires engined ecstasy, ankle
of metaphor into the metabolic storm
a molecule descends its tap root; bowl, pelvic
electrifies the spinal flange to polarize
and draw the reins until weather turns self-strange
and tether twists, deranged; the synapse snaps
the white orbs of a nightmares rolling eyes
charred thunder muscled under the stringent seat
and faith is endless as pure body knows
who bites and remakes wretch into the mouthful
full dark full rain full speed full poetry
eleven if, and, in charges difference of the same
an arrow born mid-air is garden, regained
the static swallowed appetite of living hell
the globe interns red-ratioed rectangle
by burning every name is regrown mane
true mother, riding form as i hair-string the bow
whose shrieking womb my practice bends to tame
to time; the shadow letting tide, what, die-cut
by horizontal held; my cradle hard
harped infant of vacationing; and tempest swept
as sea refills the valley with somnambulent sanity
//
held
i grasp, i grasp, i fumble empty air
my fever head green tea cat litter ache
my cannot place the growing failure make
my pillow eats the grass until i wake
//
pause for illness
sound
returning traces undergrounding borne
as open airing round, roots longing light
commemorating leaves inhuman voice
midsummers dream, a choir, the covered face
//
on pleasure: infrastructure & invective
by pan, by puck or by Tokyo toilet, by Pan’s
eye polyamorous, polyvoracious maw
what briarpatch you calliper, sister sufficiency
or savage desire, oh my, this bidet enak
//
but i say more, if words be granted girls
or fish freeze-dried and rendered fatty string
O let me be your hollow chocolate, gold tinfoil
your lie swum-in for truth, your magic trick
O let me be soggy sashimi, porn under plastic
and when did pleasure stop witnessing the true
when angled by the tower’s unfunny retinue
ripe plums made massacre, her metaphor for you
and what does every girl hold in her heart
or breathing torn from her before she’s two
her body, pleasure, joy — inalienable
if pearl, self-mediation from the start
since when is iron more your shape than living flesh
and how long since eternal became momentary, dense
in you, who shimmers through your translucent skin
and whose name do you call when taken by the wind
and does your lover slice and plate your fruit
as offering, for light, cat, goddess spread out in bed
the ocean take what verb you use, cliché or clamshell hid
but give Aphrodite her fucking due
//
cramp
again the girl, again her edge of pain
holy immovable inside the nervous frame
and offering that traces her own name
the hieroglyphic river catching flame
//
cool
the river touching one is touching two
as ribbons come undone, the red, the blood
we didn’t need a priest to make it true
the cool is spilling multitudes of blue
//
scent
no sweeter nothing making than a flower
sustaining tension, fluttering on the wing
Papilio memnon round lemon-balmy vervain
by ghost of anther’s end, the probing hour
//
the mallow sea
sleeping moons in a plastic spoon
slip them into the watcher’s tea
undertow and the lunar noon
float away on a mallow sea
loo, loo-loo, the empty sea
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
a fooly tumbles on her head
a froggy for the willow tree
fall down into the green grass bed
sail away on a bumble bee
loo, loo-loo, the bumble bee
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
a fairy’s wing in every room
a pocket for the marble sky
fluff the pillow and sweet the broom
softer than a glow worm
loo, loo-loo, the marble sky
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
sleeping moons in a plastic spoon
slip them into the watcher’s tea
undertow and the lunar noon
float away on a mallow sea
loo, loo-loo, the empty sea
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
//
🌕
//
mallowtonin
&
pour notre
voyeur
//
hag-seed
4 all
//
new years 2026
i witness your erosion through the glass
my history disappearing by the hour
and snow consumes to whiteout; i am cold
turned witless by distance and disbelief
and there are no more familiar houses, faces
are spreading, thinning, greying, pale, the young
mere vanishing into the adult flood, like
we didn’t want any of it
the cruiseliner is sinking into sand
nobody made the call, nevertheless
it’s all you ever say; whoever has a camel
hard fast to roll the tents and carry it
how do you chase your longing through the dunes
and did her caravan leave any trace
or do you doubt if she was ever there
or do you see her in the doe, the goat, the raven
do you become her in the cursive carved
by thirst, the desert bridegroom winding through
until you haunt the edges of their encampment
inhuman as the hajj, kin to al-Shanfara
locals popping-off begin at dusk
explosions quickening unevenly
as child-sized rockets into midnight, when at once
fireworks engulf the island, terrifying animals
i turn a light on for the chickens
Black Ajax has fallen out of his black tree
he gibbers darkly as he hobbles toward me
the light, a blacker perch; gibbering, i walk him through it
//
selamat tahun baru🥂
//
our chickens are
most junglefowl
we don’t fight them
as, with cocks, is done
but they are fighters
//
hark
to hear the tonic of their nightly play
as love is changing eyes in light of day
and who the lover, who beloved, held
as shade made young again, the poet shade
sweet length possessed translucency of leaves
and valley shelters longing’s grave delight
how sheer the veil betwixt the true is made
and barefoot is their tender-stepping sight
inscript resounding hollow as a tomb
body beholding spring again and bright
green heart grows whole again, the tree un-felled
for midnight girls around a golden wound
//
🌔
//
stable horses
night rising
wave
//
my hollow
your darkness and your might invisible
to me, my pale eyes sun shy, your body
at noon, under pitched roof these lines
of wood i measure, cut, re-stood you up
to feed an appetite for shade, i am
a miracle for trees; and what i build i must
maintain, stretching, pressing, inhaling
every season warping edges, exhale down
shelter; my daily coir, your angle slant
corporeality; my hollow here
and where to see you, if, once i’d grown
my fill of this inside, the outside known
by doorways, windows, the tunnels ants dig
out foundation for the sponge, this marrow
empty nest of the mud wasp, left dust
unsettled; your crevice, my cusp, bright-daggered
lapses; your love letters, my red rose
replies; a jepun tree grows over my grave
shaggy roots to the unscripted bone, home
to fallen flowers light on my unmet nature
//
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
//