Verses/Curses
Æ.1
we visited your grave the other day
how’s that thought for you?
Æ went there to kiss the sky
because a chariot
is life’s emancipation of
the written word
//
a chariot is
reply to Isthmian I, via Phaedrus 227β
//
a chariot is artifact entombed
beneath packed sediment
an imprint on the earth
of acts not of the earth
sightless as solitude
lifeless as time itself
rotting perpetual
vehicle disposed
it falls apart
a chariot is
impervious
to crying
a chariot is a paragraph
about ancient technology
symbols illuminated by
old photos from museums
shaded settings in relief
straight lines on pregnant-bellied vases
fragments of singed and tattered verse
reasons described almost
as spatial motion re-constructed
of kingships and bloodline races
past endings to beginnings of
gods animals and man
words used as tools
each one to fix and justify
as evidentiary groping at
a world of human things
we still don’t know
a chariot is an easy gift
against a multitude
of horses
the machines we used to get
from place of rest to planet mars were splendid
magnificent creatures in their own
golden-
ratioed
grammars
and dragons that took hold of drivers' eyes
they thought the wind but caught to ride
a flaming sword instead between her thighs
maidens of modern mythologies arrived
on cliffside edges wearing white
translucent coats
arousal com-
partmentalized
to celebrate new body parts cognized
the jewel-tones of her lacquered toes
the scent of ozone taste
of toxic fizz behind
her sucking nose
her mouth disclosed
she swallows apples licks
a rose the absolute
glory hallelujah
ravenous grows
vulva exposed for clicks
each flick a seed she sows
from echoes loaded lead
her rainbows red as victory
she was the counting down to blasting off
she was four hundred thousand horses yoked
by arc of axel angel burnt tendrils
smoke billows over rocky rough terrain
past battlefields and nations past
her recent childhood and
arsenic smile
their eyes went to
her nippled curves and angles
her thorough flexibility
her starry nights and spangles
her lashes cruelly clawed
her pussies pawed
and oh how they
to her with her and of
her came
as realism
inscribed by god
rendered maidens un-made
oiled python sheen of ageless skin
she was the beauty left in violence
they were materials for war
sapphire eyes emerald or amethyst
you chose the crystal the correction and
the facets for
some child in Africa
was orphaned by each armored scale to feed
her un-weaned toddler burger meat
( at least the blacks buried
and did not eat
their very
fathers
a chariot is
from-dust-
arisen life transcribed )
annunciations posted inter-angel
a holy home a web apart
filters of pale ethereality
content implicitly divorced
from earth’s divided continent
baptismal diamantine written
laws skinlessly conceived that we
may find and hold as work of art
your child’s hunger as forgiven
a chariot is
already cleansed of blood it is
excerpted rage it is
brave forms we made
from partial purpose or
how to make pure
a brilliant woman true to life
but honestly a whore
a chariot is what you drive to get
to work your nightmares harnessed by
engines of piston pretenses
at likely sentences
a chariot is nothingness herself
but full of manliness
the games we play when we
make love in light of day
driving endlessly divine
at origins as orifices flying
a chariot is
a summary
of dying
//
selamat purnama 🌕
3 cats
//
Lalah loves nothing better than to get
her cat smell all over a freshly laundered
human and then go and scratch some wood
//
meanwhile Ismail
is trying to puke
something unwanted up
//
Sri Rejeki
gets scary
after dark
//
body’s most wondrous lesson was
turning raw wounds into desire
as ripening longing to be eaten
as eyes longing to see and be open
//
broken machine of tentacles and teeth
war is what monsters are and what they do
monsters are monsters at war with monsters
useless becomes another name for peace
//
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh 🌖
marigolds
what a week to take vacation
some time to recompose
to get back from the deadness
questions that i never chose
my instrument is alien
my hands remote-controlled
i cannot see my own two feet
the way is lined with marigolds
i have no numbers to report
no news in a ghost town
there is no story to be told
the wind already took it down
go diving in the deadness
go breathing in the deep
go dancing in the marigolds
but never fall asleep
what a day to wade back in again
the sunlit flowers cold
what a way to chase the day again
to watch the underworld unfold
//
a dream
a dream
swimming
diving under
taking a deep breath to do it
not knowing when i would be coming up for air or knowing it was never
//
our exercise as exorcism of time —
the oddly-staggered rhyme leaves bruises
on buds stringently-steeped, the undisclosed
grays of grass groped in dark of morning that
took hold as roots in midnight, not knowing color
not knowing how seemly to be in sun —
steps right into the rhythm of blinding fire
this prism of shadows is highways home, revealed
in daylight’s reconciliation with desire
//
Selamat Idulfitri, Eid mubarak, blessed Eid to those who observe.
Alhamdulillahirabbil’alameen. 🌙
//
Eve’s ultimatum.
//
Do you see yourself (in his mirror) as
The summarized insanity of Adam?
Your heart is his gateway to the garden.
Be probable, or be perennial.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔
Notes on techne.
//
There is no eros in technology.
(Technology is anti-erotic,
Ending in the endlessness of desire.)
Techne is the technology of Allah.
(Techne is Al-Khaliq, Al-Bari, Al-Musawwir.
Eros is Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem.)
Poetry is erotic techne.
(The Qur’an is poetry of poetry.
The basmala —
Bismillah hir rahman nir raheem
By the Name of Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem
— is the poet’s seed.
The poet of poets is the Prophet,
Recollection as Self-conservation.)
The stranger (X) is the poet as lover.
Thoth is the poet as technician.
//
Phaedrus is a (the) passion.
//
Prayer becomes mantra
And we are taken for a ride —
//
her place, her body,
her ecosystem
the things you took are empty, cast-off and
abandoned spells, porcelain and wooden shells,
remnants of oceans past and absent wonder —
tombs wherein she gave birth, by way of earth
to visions that unfold, un-helled, in dark
of pockets, moon-mothered, saturn-supressed
and mars-propelled past deeper houses that
she’ll build, nightmares of sword-swallowing flesh
without a bone, without a government,
letters of constitutions burned, laundered
in surf, your teeth, your plastic handicaps,
your non-fungible bird, your poems unheard
through algorithmic feats of isolation —
when all she ever wanted was (your heart, stirred)
for one watery moment to be the law
in her place, her body, her ecosystem
//
Ismail
it looked like neon green beans, to my eyes—
the sorry viper he regurgitated
before my sweeping feet—as i, bent low
examined finger-lengths of body, gnawed
in pieces, coated with digestive slime
and barely small enough to swallow; so
his coddled bite could make a stunning gift
from serpent suffering, knowledge obtained:
our little life would never not be strung
by line, each day a hundred unseen times
between the drunken swagger and the lap
his cradled comfort loving-limp in mine
that we would match white tooth, pink gum with death
and valor make more holy than satiation
//
Selamat purnama 🌕
Of time. //
This was, in fact
The creation
Of the human —
The first ape who took
A swing and
Hacked off a piece of God. (It was
As always
A piece of herself.) It was also
The invention of writing.
Logos descends from a (golden) lutung
Justice from the gentle orangutan
Guerrilla from gorilla (forever Dian)
And monkey business from a macaque.
Let us become primate and
Undo the butchery of time.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔
Skin soft and worn like igneous sand into
Her open psalm, they one lunation spent
As sounding bodies, soldiering the fast.
Blessed Ramadan to those who observe.🌙
And then we were darkness comprised of crickets,
Resident textures of stars, witness to
Unbound interiors, and delivered by
The same face-dispersing name as ever.
Y’all were louder than the chickens today —
But no hard feelings. Just measured words, and patient
Preening to wax away the feathered nerve.
Soft clucks will mend, with flock tucked-in, the hearts
Of beleaguered and yet good-natured birds.
Half-light sheds taste on full insanity;
Pale lemon slice atop smoked opium tea.
🌓
The apps forecasted silence, now tonight
The sky brings thunder. Hurricane or drought,
Sheer element’s beyond us, but not quite:
To make it rain, just leave the laundry out.
“Why won’t you sing me a song?
I miss your voice.”
(I love your voice.)
“Everyone else’s voice is a cartoon
Compared to yours.”
//
“Why are you always why why why?”
“Because I’m your why why wife.“
//