the sword & the pen

We Could Sell Them On the Water.

“With a world so small, it’s a wonder you won’t swallow them all. How can anybody not look you in the eye? They either fear you, or they soak you up. Don’t let them use you. Look at her. She lives in your lap, waiting for the sugar to fall from your lips. The crust from your mustache is Sunday dinner, and your knee is a supper club. Don’t let them use you; they’ll eat you up, if you don’t swallow them first.

“I only say this because I was picked apart once. My bones were sucked, cleaned, and my house was flattened. They don’t need a dinner table to feel welcome. They will throw you out with the plastic forks and paper napkins once they’ve had their fill. you and your olives, me and my rhyme

“And if you knew the number of men I’ve scraped from under my fingernails, your stare wouldn’t be so bold. I could crush your…that stare—I could make you into a mountain. Do you…know me yet? Already, I am outdone with you.

“But the world is such a wonderful place. We could get our portraits done. We could sell them on the water.”

As If Men Had A Monopoly On Murder

Do not give your strength to women
Lest they drink and forget what has been decreed.
Who can restrain her lust?
Be appalled, O Heavens, at this;
They have made his land a waste.

Your own sword devoured your prophets.
Can a virgin forget her ornaments?
Though you wash yourself with lye
She is not afraid of snow.
Her lamp does not go out at night.

Circumambulate her charm;
She is like the ships of the merchant.
Give her of the fruit of her hands.
Before I formed you in the womb,
All who ate it incurred guilt:

a boiling pot, facing away

The lifeblood of the guiltless,
Tightening its lust and luxuries,
Made my heritage an abomination.
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
But the fear of me is not in you.

In her month they will find her
Where no man dwells.
And to a stone, “You gave me birth.”
As our lot crawls between dry ribs.

seed texts: “Whispers of Immortality” by T. S. Eliot; The Holy Bible (ESV)

Kentiya doesn’t date.

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lucidelephant:

Grizzly Bear - All We Ask

How To

snort lines from the desks of
more bountiful poets
to your knees for Eliot’s
waterfall and moaning
lick his diction clean
use your teeth
and bite off best words
find better lies to leave your lips
than this

(Source: dear-caio, via schizo-fractured)

the first man

father give me to the first man
who calls me woman, fiend,
friend or foe he bounds over
offers me loving, father hear him
his shoes point to god and his
chariot is filled with long rice
for his woman fiend, his woman
kinged by black plastic pieces
there his woman come

she will hold nothing
in shades of purple sun
she rides the river
overdrawn by the ton
would that I could be the one
holds the gun

(Source: last-good-kiss)

little boxes

convinced of my unbeliefs,
I scrolled past your image
and drew you once
to my mouth.
you would feel me easy
as I open;
ghosts rise from my skin &
I am become death
while you ascend—
God’s right hand.

[untitled]

the great white who
with the clarity of passion
beached upon Normandy
and emptied his bowels
for god, empty empty
came in dreams
what may empty me
in waves of grains of truth
and her likeness ruthless
as the great white, she
won’t hold me and
spit out by her mouth
I envision the belly
of her beast, there
dearest Cecilia
plays me colors
till I am sightless
and unseen

somequickthing:

Under her dress of flowers she was naked,
aroma marked by the color red.
Her eyes were the dark side of an eclipse
and a labyrinth of braids circled her head
     like scavengers circle the dead.

Her brows were inquiring,
the daylight on her skin inspiring.
Her excitement was tiring
and I was full of dread.

Her voice was a lone hound calling
and a labyrinth of braids circled her head
     like scavengers circle the dead.

I was younger than her most days.
She was the lithe one but never the blithe one
and I’d grow weary of her ways.
I admired, she aspired,
and I’d stick close enough to meet her gaze
and wait for stray hands to graze.

Her curves were like a Bouguereau portrait
and a labyrinth of braids circled her head
     like scavengers circle the dead.

And her heart wasn’t fair,
and I needed her like air,
but will settle for someone kind
in her stead.

Nichole continues to pretend she doesn’t write songs.
But I see you, Knabe.

ever-Harvest in Bandiagara

Stilted too.
Grandfather’s house-built-by-hand
settled in the red clay after five years
of reaching upwards. We knew he
would drown too on stilts set against
the back porch. Ain’t long till Grandfather
wakes to four screams, boys as tall
as weeds, girls as strong as corn stalks,
without the maize-colored hair of his
great-great grandmother on his mother’s
side. (Wait for me; I bleach my way
into her graces and sweet bread recipes
set against the stilted twilight. My father will
disown me too. I will love just as naively.)
Grandfather will chase light ‘round this planet.
His learning etched into his palms
by lonely Sikhs in Kerala. His recompense
a sharecropper’s daughter from Boley, Oklahoma;
by way of Sudan and Calgary. By way of Allah and
stilts-over-Evolution. She will teach him
Blackfoot and tango and Scrabble and love again
till Grandfather’s favorite time becomes
Dawn at Strokkur in January.
And he wakes for ever-harvest in Bandiagara.

thetargetbird:

And so does time, which is why
my grandma tells me she grew up
in an era where indoor toilets weren’t
a given and that she remembers how
“glorious” her first shower at age 15
was and how she fears the world
our kids are growing up in: Make It New
and you can shit yourself when you wake
to the price of milk or a drone
asking to lend a cup of sugar and to put
your hands up. Just like the world and time,
the heart lacks so much, but I can
misspeak about that just as much
as I can flat out lie about it, and so
the dead seem everywhere I look.

I’ve been getting sad reading Bruce 
Boone’s Wordpress, about how much
he doesn’t lie about the heart’s
irreversibility and how heartless it makes me
feel — maybe I’ll call a nebulous you
you’ll never decipher or deserve
and whisper “darlin” like a knife
soaked in blood, like a desert searing
off its horns, like a legacy that cannot come
from the softer world my grandma talks about.
I believe I’m being punished for something
more severe than the wall paper
not matching up, my nails peeling
as if I’m pulling spears from your Bronx-
filled mouth, and it could be my fault
you’ve unscrewed the world’s sensibility,
but it could be my fault for looking back, too.

David, I Think I Love You, And Your Wife Is Cool.

David, I think I love you, and your wife is cool.
I watched your wife on that tv show, and
she wasn’t terrible and that was okay.
David, I wonder if you would love me too?
I know you love your wife, but everyone
says I’m witty and sardonic and a bit “old school”
just like you. I heard you on the radio,
and you said something about oranges,
and I laughed because it was funny, and
my last name is “Orange” and we obviously
have a connection. Call me if you’re ever in The States.

4.30.2013|8:08:58

“A 50% in something is devastating if that something avidly holds my interest. Yet, I abhor being seized by emotion, so I tourniquet it; let it die off. That bit of my brain, my memory, is no longer needed if I can’t make it see reason. Once you’ve given in to devastation, there’s no coming back.”
“What about the French jazz musician? He left much destruction behind.”
“Inadvertently.”
“In a technical sense, I suppose so. However, heartbreak is. You won’t argue against that.”
“I wouldn’t argue against the proliferation of handguns in a far-away suburban community, but my silence is not irrefutable evidence of the veracity of that town’s insistence that it’s safest under this—”
“Do you think he thinks about you?”
“…”
“I thought I might have been in love once. I don’t quite know what it means to be ‘in love.’ I love you. I think—I fear that may be as close as I get.”
“…”
“It is presented as such a cataclysmic phenomenon, a wonderful deluge. I’d hate to miss any bit of it. You were very happy then.”
“…”
“But, of course, there is the devastation. You mentioned—”
“Yes.”