Verses/Curses
seat
by sunrise silver on the black sand beach
black coffee and the inundation
our face against the singing seat
of the full moon
a pinch of fire from the smoldering star
became the sanded mirror of our rest
as swimming shadows across her long
white glimmering dress
unbroken colors of her throne at dusk
like nascent veils of east and west
if billowing outward surfaces of sight
went inwardly freediving
//
//
then pickled chili shredded potato
leftover from dinner at long
happiness with nasi goreng
for breakfast and a second coffee
santai di pantai
big ocean rolling here, nearby
where me and my too luminous
for my own good maskmaker
are santai, on our anniversary
purnama pulls the swelling tide
like poetry, erasing traces
the waves of endlessness reply
by silver water, silver sky; and we
like sand and salt, by speech unsifted
//
🌕
macros
dear dojo, forgive us; we thought that you were really
in training, and grasped the function of macros
which do as much account by what you don’t eat
as what you do; therefore, there would be more
protein in a couple of uneaten chickens
than in a city of discarded monkey masks
//
oopsie, Black Ajax
learned a word
//
words, okay,
my approximate cock
kept me up all night
angels coming round
and the jinn, they say
it piques
//
the first time for everything
and fear is in the river; a smile of teeth
round rocks take shape to grab your unfelt feet
and shredded heart wedged last into the smooth
surfaces slippery with algae, finger-proof
feet-first, my cool phantasm; hot to touch
my hand held your hand holding the needle
a scratch, the tow will drag me down; head-first
by virgin groove, your over and over
//
laron
pulse, on paper-smoke and shadowing; a word
kept embers leaping, or whittling laced attention
when the swarming cloud was passing out and in
to the conic torchlight, flint-yellow, on a smudged
and charcoal night; the humid heart grew lungs
at the carpal joint, let choirs through the rupture
soft cedar traces wrinkles into the maiden mask
of the moon; the flickering phase transfixes them
//
🌔
thremmata
corpse pose again, is it for real this time, as i
down to the underworld for Hades lower table
descend, the darker cloud of somebodys forever
to a banquet feast of charred fat strewn with ashes
i sit before the offering of my own left shin
my tender bone is bowing its familiar flaw
my meat is dripping ratios from the burning violin
i eat it all, although my name is not Issa
as eat the dead, by whispers, one million and seven
then i look down to find beast-legs with chestnut hair
my knuckled shanks uncrossed, my hooves are lightning-cloven
my kept creature walks on two or four, tall-horned
whose crescent shavings will be ground into the rock
whose name is leaving many by the blade of one
//
and the rod
Black Ajax bitter on my left
Red Ajax blooded on my right
grim speechless my bronze-armored kin
by serpent held Asclepian
//
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
//