Verses/Curses
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)
//
🌖
Naysayer (Kuntilanak nest in a bamboo forest)
This nascent key would never be a song;
Of roaring cells, erasing histories
Of sound, before the cradle’s founding hush.
Where ink blot habitats, mossy and lush,
Mothered, she organized her room: a game
Of pyramids, a smear of runs and zeroes.
In attics to indifferent infinities,
Neptune left mysteries troubled remains.
A child bride was famished for the truth—
I have no nasi. My broken bone sembako
For pakis, spiral shoots of wooly fern,
Blue-rumored eyes, intransigent bamboo.
Go back again, return to your first time.
This bed presents impossible as sin:
Crossed limb, grown gravity’s unsupple twin,
And sun impenetrant, absent the rhyme.
Be quiet as the grove, posthumous ration.
What lyre was greener than an arrow, slow
As pain, and dense as destiny—known knot,
No cut chords through your circumnavigation.
//
. . .
//
(santai; good leavening could make a year)
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.
//
🌘
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—
//
Begging Season
She’s ever spinning time into the wheel.
Spidering her line, by inward feel—
Triangling desire, evening to ends,
A deeper sky realizing constellation.
Death is her capital; she doesn’t spring,
But feeds into the year her twisted ply.
At distaff, by the flick of no-man’s candle,
Brown burlap webber lures the final fly.
How does a poison love the cure? Spent hours,
By the mercy of a shadow. Wanting not
To see her, housewives sweep her out the door—
Her standing slow, side-winding smoke of flowers.
A life of making is the heart of letting go.
Nightwise, black-dagger vagabond—by stars,
A diamond thief; by dawn’s left light, her whispers draw
His burning thought: the filigree of beggars.
//
🌒
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.
//
Echo
Echo is opposite the word. He is
Mornings and evenly draws rainstorms down
From higher altitudes. Palm nectar slips the weather
From misty lakes, my ashes, unspooling ghosts.
But can you memorize the blues? Cintaku—
A promise to be golden rings untrue.
My skin is apple nude, my flesh a snowy hue.
This guava is Antarctica for your bottomless thirst.
//
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.
//
🌕
History
The end is opposite where you were looking. How—
Evolving sexuality, between libraries
Of progress, and Trojan wars of recollection. Trenches:
My universal texture. How does the tiger
Recline, her velvet freshly laundered in the Milky Way?
By Sibyl thong, peach-fuzz chemtrails, or does Iris flex
To tempt desire? A belly dance, like Buddha, in
My skull-shaped shell—does a snail extract
Compliance?
//
🌗
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.
//
coy loon, calico
coy loon, calico
cat snatched cake from the canang
cinder coils cunning
//
Assalamualaikum + selamat purnama 🌕
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.
//
cocks and doves
is the sun enough for me?
uppity child— little Henri,
a cockadee, chases dovelettes
from the weeds. palest grey
sweetmallow breasts, ruffled
romancing on the pagar. desire
trembles in the precarity of daylight—
wooers, laughing, are tumbled upside-down.
Rainbow tidbits for Henri,
though neither of them is a hen. verily,
unto the sun is born a luminous,
bewilderingly beloved.
//
🌗
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
//
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—
//
🌘
qoop (O the genius)
a slick tongue slides around his marble curve.
force never felt so powerless before,
swept off your glacial nerve, flooding coastal
cities; by pull, arousal virginal
to witness one sun-surrendering bud
of violet, untouched America. he hides
in plainest word who dresses in flowers,
lying in a meadow— the modest egg thief.
mineralocean turns the ten tropics
ragged, wed to the staggering moon— but if
no yolk, she’s alabaster. jade at noon,
obsidian midnight, gravity’s appetite
dilates, lapis un-stone— a vowelbirths
the polished shadow of ingenious nature.
//
🌒
his very subtlety
i brought my heart to work today—
a careful accident. i wrote
a note for you, pretending not
to show you who i am: bearded
angel, or boy turned upside-down;
chain-yanker or lonely-for-fruit;
the groaning king, his blessèd wreath;
a golden mule, the kiss of death;
soft bosom of the empress, red
from solar radiation; or
caress of thigh, giver of bread;
this image— you, unlimited.
//
🌒
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.
//
🌓