Verses/Curses
Sweetie and Frankie
she’s His new girl,
when Grace is busy
intensely mothering.
Sweetie is the chaos maker—
always (oopsie) closer than
she needs to be, to cocks
who are not Frankie.
it’s always
me, me, me
with Sweetie.
she needs to eat
out of your hand, until
she makes a war
of you, of Frankie.
she runs
to you. Frankie
sees only
immortal flames of rage.
yes! yes—
yes.
i see you,
Sweetie.
//
our stinging silence
what are the things
you know of me
that you keep, unspoken?
the secret me you keep
and by extension,
my undiscovered twin.
is it family or alien?
or do i have no right
to such distinction.
i have been, for some
two thousand years
or more, dissolving
in waspish creation.
i am, who has been long-
forgotten. already, i am
not of conversation.
a fuzzy, artless form
is turning in the paper
of a nest, drowning
in droning oceans — the ply
of dialogue, subsumed
by black battalions.
can you hear them?
they are humming
the densest metaphors.
//
lapsed momentarian
seed fluff billows
across the black mat
(inhale
jump back
chaturanga)
so much
for so little
for so much
immaterial
globe, a memory
of lost focus
dream
of a body, as wind
seeking structure
the velvet blue
of a butterfly wing
i don’t know why
things are shaped
the way they are
sent
published, and yet
anecdotal
birds who can’t fly
insects without words
studying
to be a container
for the already
understanding
it is needful
to be broken
//
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?
//
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
//
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 🌑
idea for the public-facing garden
three fates
with gigantic anime
boobies
Clotho
Lachesis
Atropos
dewi
of some
stranger land,
bodies carved
painstakingly
in wood
are set
to rule a while
from garden,
rambling
flowers bracelet
round their
skinny limbs
bending over
facing up
as if to see
the water aspect
of they and their
bosoms reflected
pornographic
sanded and grainy
thread-makers,
rippling
serene cut
in glassy pond
of koi
//
telescopic texts (avec “mon oncle”) (2/x)
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
red bird, whose course is old and hardly true,
and yet, he 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.
//
telescopic texts (avec “mon oncle”) (1/x)
and did you ordinary women mock
in liturgies of utterances contained,
their lines wrought 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 the spectacle,
coupling one who spoke, no, no, not nothing,
a stand-in that you killed at playing ‘swords?
to quell the bubbling 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
//
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 🌒
small town lullaby
the corpse
is a house, nobody
needs to enter
its gift
is apology
for anyone
not to be there
yet it nurses
its nibbling
worm
//
💀
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
//
animal entertainment
they were watching us
as we ate our dinner
the grazers and
the gazing, directly
we felt
disconcerted,
on display
after some symposium
the resolution was
to recompose our stars
and watch them back
//
la poule noire sans doute
raven-wise, reposed
with shoulders drawn
her plumage welded closed
to element, like armor
buffeted by claps
and blows, beset
by quaggy flows, she was
more resolute than rain
roosters inamorato pecked
and disapprobed
her cocky, warlike ‘no’s
still Grace was stone, unmoved
fortress of mother earth
her body wholly was
the boulder fastly rolled
to staunch a secret planet
O chickening unheard
verb terminal
undead-end metaphor
catastrophe obscura
that hid, against her bald-
plucked breast, the titt-
tittering bavardage
des enfants geomantiques
//
labor
the rain is heavy
sopping slapping shattering
goldfish dimension
water bristling
the cats in barbed corners
are hiding, hissing
nobody
shares shelter
in the emergency
i am under roof
imagining
a lazy woman
//
still
on the sawah
reeds resonate
as harmonies
inchoate
discord ebbs
and flows like
isothermal shadows
or disagreements
overheard from
a neighbor’s
tv show
the invectives
of detectives
sound like seagulls
hungry, jostling
for scraps
at the surface
of ocean
and
counter-
ocean
as hemispheric
currents under-
go reversals
as whale song
catalyzes
schools of squid
singing,
it does
not end
the answer
is still
( blowing
in the
wind )
//
selamat purnama 🌕
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
//
dreamcatching
is your weaving procrastination or
bare art to chart the tempest of my heart
make me be making you become our all
is it wisdom when you step away from wood
the holding firm of it, its firmament
but temperamentally gossips with birds
is it deception that you tangle, home
of spider-silk as wordy work, anchored
by glittering images that come to know me
no pristine landscape catches stellar wings
earth shakes the boughs of quaking sun
scattering us as gibbering bats from ashes
airborne we’re hunting fireflies between
a melting Luna’s effulgent ice cream
dodging light-threaded night and Venus rising
i am assemblage channeled to be none
you are motion, savior of fitful sleep
the rhythmic tide unravelling its mooring
draw deeply down where one is one is one
fly home again wherefrom wind-woven sea
embroiders iridescent migrations
//
Wasalamu’alaikum 🌖✨
how to watch the Eta Aquariids meteor shower
behold
pendulous drape
of cosmic cat
uncoil
the breath
where bodhisattva
sat
orangutan
persuaded
chimpanzee
let’s be
moving targets
together
baby
//
thanks for the heads up @Miraz💫