Popular Pugetopolis

Popular Pugetopolis
__________________

rain all the time—
depressing scudding clouds
popular pugetopolis

fukushima blues—
tsunami floods my toilet
radioactive tea

blue moon hangovers—
ratty scarecrow videos
varsity vice romance

capitol hill noir—
volunteer park rendezvous
beneath the rubber tree

seagulls overhead—
elliott bay ferries
pioneer square drunks

indian wood-carvers—
shot dead on the street
deaf, dumb, dead

jet city jive—
popular pugetopolis
bashō barely survives

Yakuza Zen

Yakuza Zen
__________________

while cruising edo—
she forgets about the cold
an aging jap queen

she prefers rough trade—
butchy manga street boyz
yaoi youth will do

fukushima boyz—
manly virile mutant tricks
tourist trade is up
__________________

Commentary: New translations of Bashō’s hidden suppressed Buddhist Zen porno poetry reveal a different side to traditional typical str8t translations of the Master. In the city we sometimes forget about nature while consumed with the hectic complicated cosmopolitan confusions of modern day existence. At the same time we can sometimes be caught up in the abyss of our more basic primitive hustler instincts. This implies the reality of the conflicting Zen moment—when young male beauty Zazen takes place with the chance unZipping of a young hustler’s Zipper. Bashō’s haikai linked verse translation of this earlier Han Shan poem of male beauty versus adversity has been noted by other commentators such as Watsuji and Shūson. The shifting of the Chinese tone also makes the work seem a series of Japanese manga comic book episodes rather than a unified whole.

View from Mt. Fuji

View from Mt. Fuji
__________________

“The mountain rises
Almost to heaven”
—Tu Fu, “Visiting the
Monastery at Lung-men”

Echo of Tu Fu—
The irony of Japan
Mushroom Cloud Kingdom

Sitting by the Pool—
Jaded by Edo TV
Fukushima News

Tsunami flooding—
Hiroshima rumblings
Earthquake eruptions

Nobody believes—
In anything they say
And neither do I
________________________

Sun-faced Buddha dawn—
Moon-faced Buddha evening
Dharma holds its breath

Men are like dead pigs—
They stink and wallow in mud
Then comes barbecue

Buried out of sight—
A lotus from Buddha’s loins
Zazen mushroom cloud

Rulers plot and scheme—
And then suddenly they die
Plotting in their plots
________________________

They have dirty minds—
Then one day they wake up dead
The dirt wants them back

Parrots live with us—
They entertain us with words
Language in our cage

Flourishing talent—
Something I lack completely
What’s the right technique?

My heart’s not in it—
I’d rather take a nice nap
Enlightenment can wait
________________________

But sometimes Ka-plunk!—
A frog jumps into a pond
The pigeons go coo-coo

Silence is broken—
The deep empty Pool ripples
Fukushima nukes!

A lonely gestalt—
Fuji and Fukushima
Nagasaki Inc.

Dark Doppelganger

Marc Chagall

Dark Doppelganger
__________________

“They stand together and apart.
They rule together and apart.
They fall together and apart.
And in some ways they are
Revived together and apart.”
—Ricardo Quinones,
Dualisms: the Agons
of the Modern World

Double-voiced boyfriend—
Tropic of Doppelganger
Dark Mandingo man

Why don’t you love me—
You love your girlfriend instead
You tell me that's it

No more down-low love—
No more going down on you
Now that you’ve gone str8t

But I can’t help it—
I want you even more now
Now that you’re a man

Black Angelology

Black Angelology
__________________

“the crucial transformation
that Cain underwent from
the early Christian period
to the Romantic period,
which redeemed him as a
metaphysical rebel; as a
revolutionary; as the
embodiment of rationality,
individualism, subjectivity,
and science; as a questing,
dissatisfied consciousness.”
—Charles Johnson, Tribute
to Ricardo Quinones

Black Zen a circle—
The journey itself a home
The means is the end

Each step the first step—
And then each step the last one
Gates of Dharma Town

Self as Travelogue—
Spoken along the journey
The trivial things

Literate pilgrims—
Disguised vision quest travelers
Black Zen on the Road?

The Mark of Cain is—
Black Angelology love
I loved my brother

Black Zen

Black Zen
__________________

“The Cain-Abel story
one of the defining
myths of our culture”
—Richard Quinines,
The Changes of Cain

The Stygian night—
The Cain & Able dreamers
East of Eden brothers

Sleeping in our bed—
Miscegenal manchild love
Doing the down-low thing

Does the Midnight Sun—
Know why I’m so black & blue
Spawn of Adam and Eve?

Black Zen: Cain and Able

CAIN AND ABLE
__________________

“What about Cain
as the double?”
—Charles Johnson,
An Interview with
Charles Johnson (2002)

“Out of the vast repertoire
of Western myth, one myth
stands apart for the extraordinary
longevity and variousness of its
appeal. This is the Cain-Abel story,
which has been present to the
Western consciousness since the
biblical era as one of the defining
myths of our culture.”
—Richard J. Quinones,
The Changes of Cain

I.

“So it’s the miscegenation,
not the incest, which you
can’t bear, Henry”
—William Faulkner,
Absalom, Absalom

Henry doesn’t answer—
He doesn’t say a thing
Because he’s in love with Bon

Charles Bon the Beautiful—
His half-brother and lover
His roommate at Ole Miss

They’d slept together—
Made love together and
Gone to war together

They’d run away from—
Colonel Sutpen’s plantation
When he forbid the marriage

Bon was already in bed—
With Henry so why shouldn’t
He be in bed with Ellen too?

They’d run off to the—
Civil War and saved each
Other’s lives back then

It wasn’t the incest—
How could it be that when
They’d been doing it already?

Surely by then Henry—
Knew that Bon the Beautiful
Had a nice big black dick?

How many times had Henry—
Gone down on Bon the Beautiful
Honeysuckle sweet Ole Miss dorm?

II.

But with me it was—
Just the opposite sort of
Thing that depressed me

“So you like both?”—
My cute dinge half-brother
Said smirking at me

I didn’t say anything—
I swallowed his cum and
Tasted my kid brother

I shuddered because—
It was so tart and male
Such an exquisite Wad

I wanted it both ways—
The taste of our Family Tree
And his Dinge Angelology

I wanted Miscegenation—
As well as spunky Incest
I wanted to suck his big dick

I had the hots for Tyrone—
And Tyrone knew it too
Playing tres hard to get

His Heart of Darkness—
His exquisite Congolese cum
Knight of Masturbation

No wonder Bon and Tyrone—
Smirked at me and Henry
Both of us queer for hot Stuff

I couldn’t help myself—
It’s all I could think about
The cum of Cain and Able

III.

Ahmos ZuBolton didn’t understand—
My submission to the Delta Journal
It seemed weird and queer to him

But he wanted to know more—
About my so-called perverted life
So tacky, kitschy and risqué

What could I say about it?—
“Incest is a Pest in our little Nest
Of fucking Social Ambiguities?”

These first lines of that rather—
Obsequious Faulkner-esque poem
About the love that had no Shame?

“I want to publish it” Ahmos said—
“Even tho they probably won’t let me
The Delta Journal is pretty Str8t stuff...”

I shrugged, because I didn’t care—
Poetry in 1967 wasn’t Top Priority
For me, not like it is now anyway

But anyway Ahmos wanted to know—
More about the “Incest” angle & why
I wrote my so-called Poem so gay

I think Ahmos had a Sixth Sense that—
We’d both end up in the Poetry Racket
One way or another in the future

“It’s about my kid brother,” I said—
"My mulatto half-brother who I'm
Still so desperately in love with."

It wasn’t that long ago either—
I’d been a senior in high school then
Tyrone was a 16-year-old sophomore

I told Ahmos that I was queer for—
The kid and was really into black guys
Who lived the Harlem Renaissance

I told him how I felt about love—
About doing the down-low in the dorm
With this stunning young janitor

I’d done my own version of—
Bruce Nugent’s “Smoke, Lilies and Jade,”
We got loaded and I read it to him

I told him about Black Genesis—
And how I thought Cain was queer
For his handsome young brother

“Like was Able top or bottom?”—
He asked & we both laughed at
Doing the East of Eden downlow

It was after that long night—
I got an apartment off-campus
In the Tigertown ghetto district

I wanted to be able to entertain—
And have friends over for dinner
And get stoned on West Chimes

Incest with my kid brother—
Moved up a notch to Delta
Decadence and Dinge denouement

Absalom, Absalom became—
My new lifestyle and I no longer
Hated the South like Quentin

So I talked with Professor Wildman—
The faculty advisor who then suggested
Another less risqué poem for publication

A Beatnik version of Miss Kerouac—
And Madame Ginsberg getting it on
A more acceptable whitey offering

But I knew already then in 1967—
That I’d done the Cain & Able thing
I was entering Light in August

Already exhausted dontchaknow—
From the strenuous night before with
The young editor Ahmos ZuBolton

Narrow Road to the Deep South

Black Zen

Narrow Road to the Deep South
__________________

“from the hills and
molehills of Mississippi”
—Martin Luther King

Cotton-patch logic—
All that remains of Deep South
Imperial dreams

YOKNAPATHAWPA—
All of it devastated
The hills and molehills

Delta Bourbons gone—
From Memphis to Biloxi
Dixie Empire dead

Ruined Atlanta—
Miss Scarlet Nostalgia
Gone With the Wind dump
________________________

Bashō struggled with—
Zen disciples and teachers
He blossomed Stonily

His Zen steadied him—
Fewer aspirations stood
In the poet’s way

Young Yoshitada—
Son of local samurai
Became his lover

He coveted high—
Official post as a
Homosexual
________________________

Death of his lover—
A complicated love-life
Off to Kyoto

Became editor—
The Seashell Game (Kai Oi)
With 30 poets

Samurai dropout—
Haiku teacher and poet
Edo (Tokyo)

Stitching together—
His life as a thread of art
Way of Elegance
________________________

He admired Zen mind—
Using Nothingness for his
Haiku wanderings

His students built him—
A shack by the Sumida
His Bashō-an hut

Disillusioned by—
Big City T’ang Dynasty
Decadence, he wrote...

He studied Taoist—
Chuang Tzu masterpieces
The Chinese poets
________________________

The rainy season—
Monsoon scudding clouds shorten
The dark moody days

The lyricism—
Of both To Fu and Li Po
The Zen of Han Shan

I took mother’s hand—
It melted in my hot tears
Heavy autumn frost

Then I began my—
First Travelogue of Weather
Beaten Old Bones
________________________

Black Zen was my goal—
Instant awareness of the
Vast Black Emptiness

Each line a Struggle—
Achieving fleeting moments
Night on Cold Mountain

To clothe language—
In a more simple syntax
But keeping the depth

Trance diaries—
Need to be improved for our
Black Zen Travelogues
________________________

I needed a Style—
For Reinvigorating
The travelogue mind

My next journal was—
Sashimi Travelogue
A moon viewing trip

After flirting with—
Dense Chinese diction I turned
To Black Aesthetics

Ways of Elegance—
Elegant simplicity
Eidetic darkness
________________________

Ordinariness—
Elegant simplicity
Thru simple wordplay

Abide by the Rules—
And then throw them all out
Achieving Freedom

Freedom expresses—
Itself by redefining
The form of haiku

The Black Zen Journey—
Is a seamless union
Spirit and Matter

Dreamer

Dreamer
—for Charles Johnson
____________________

Dreamer
Martin Luther King
Chicago
Illusion
Black Zen
____________________

Dreamer

The Upsouth cities—
Violence waiting for him
A biblical curse

Neither Teresa—
Of Avilia or Guido
The Angelic knows

The Northern Crusade—
Battlefield of the $evil
Mayor Dailey’s town

Tired, acclaimed, hated—
Ordained minister eighteen
Nobel Prize Winner

Martin Luther King

The tightrope walker—
Ontological fighter
The self and other

Straddling the two worlds—
Inscribed in the heart of things
Matter and spirit

Martyrdom could wait—
Each Jesus with a Judas
Each Gandhi a gun

The Atlanta youth—
Ebenezer Baptist boy
Negro Zen master

Chicago

Dumping self’s baggage—
Those balkanized ethnic enclaves
Spawned by Al Capone

Cobras and Vice Lords—
Hardened Chicago street gangs
Mean Blackstone Rangers

Was he outdated—
Was his truth force outmoded
Was he overcome?

How to shed his skin—
Pry open the long-sealed doors
Race as illusion?

Illusion

Black and white portals—
Rich and poor, male and female
Both Jew and Gentile

These were entrances—
Camels couldn’t pass thru them
Eyes of the needle

But was not all thought—
Like walking across water
Could Zen stop the world?

Zen Poetry

Autographed copy—
Signed for me to read it
By Charles Johnson

Reading the prologue—
Then switching over to my
Zen consciousness

The satyagraha—
Took over my writing and
I let myself go

I didn’t think that—
I had a chance opening
The Pandora line

Sunset Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Sunset Fuji
__________________

Funny how the sun—
Sets in the fall evening
The ancient cliffs.

The creeping shadows—
Deepening the purple haze
Thru cedars & firs.

How it makes me ache—
Knowing I’m just a shadow
In a vast temple.

Summer Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Summer Fuji
__________________

Lunch at the High Inn—
The view west of Paradise
During the summer.

Hikers not skiers—
At the Visitor’s Center
Boyz with smelly boots.

The parking lot full—
Old campers, Winnebagos
Full moon at its peak.

Stormy Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 View of Mount Fuji

Stormy Fuji
__________________

From a Bayliner—
Pictures of a floating world
Floating on Lake Washington.

Looking south—
Over Renton & Boeing
Stormy clouds gather.

Carbon River dayz—
Lightening strikes the dark slopes
Cliffs loom overhead.

River Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

River Fuji
__________________

The Ipsut Campground—
Full of cars, tents & campers
Crowded together.

Rushing by them roars—
The Carbon River joined by
Cataract Spukwush Creeks.

Glacier boulders—
Meandering gravel pits
Milky wetdream gush.

Red Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 View of Mount Fuji

Red Fuji
__________________

And now new decade—
A new Mt. Fuji series
How many new views?

Rearing up in sky—
The steep slopes tell a story
A woodblock snapshot.

Mt. Fuji morning—
The south wind dispels the clouds
What’s in store for me?

Open Sea Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Open Sea Fuji
__________________

Living only in—
The moment, savoring moon
Snow, waves, sea, mountain.

Buoyant & carefree—
Mt. Fuji far, far away
And me lost at sea.

Thru Maple Valley—
Driving up thru Black Diamond
Into Mt. Rainier again.

Young Fuji Samurai VI

Young Fuji Samurai VI
__________________

—for Kenneth Rexroth

The pillow knows all—
But already it’s too late
They all know by now.

Young samurai knows—
All the young fishermen know
The farmer’s son knows.

How the pillow talks—
Doris Day & Rock Hudson
They know it all too.

Young Fuji Samurai V

The Chiyo Promentory at Meguro in the Eastern
Capital Sagami Province Katsushika
Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Young Fuji Samurai V
__________________

Mt. Fuji these dayz—
Like the View from Pompey’s Head
So many POV’s.

When Mt. St. Helens—
Blows up like Hiroshima
And Nagasaki…

It’s like another—
Floating World disappears and
A new one begins.

Young Fuji Samurai IV

The Chiyo Promentory at Meguro in the Eastern
Capital Sagami Province Katsushika
Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Young Fuji Samurai IV
__________________

Winter snow is here—
Young Donshū crawls into bed
Helping me to endure.

Around & around—
I can’t help but keep thinking
Is he a willow?

He wraps his smooth arms—
And his long lanky strong legs
Around me tightly.

Squeezing & squeezing—
Strangling me slowly to death
That’s how I keep warm.

Young Fuji Samurai III

The Chiyo Promentory at Meguro in the Eastern
Capital Sagami Province Katsushika
Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Young Fuji Samurai III
__________________

A chickadee hops—
On my verandah railing
Shits in sake cup.

A cuckoo flies by—
Sees me taking a nice nap
Shits on my bare head.

A cormorant dives—
Deep into the calm cool lake
Shits underwater.

My sweet tender plums—
They always give me the runs
I take a nice shit.

Young Fuji Samurai II

The Chiyo Promentory at Meguro in the Eastern
Capital Sagami Province Katsushika
Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Young Fuji Samurai II
__________________

Early in the morning—
The farmer’s son wades his way
Across the river.

Swollen with the rain—
The horned moon high overhead
To tend my garden.

The pears are all ripe—
Thru the ruined lattice-door
He comes to visit.

Spreading his long legs—
Overgrown with dark ivy
The ripe pears can wait.

Young Fuji Samurai

The Chiyo Promentory at Meguro in the Eastern
Capital Sagami Province Katsushika
Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Young Fuji Samurai
__________________

On the bamboo mat—
You spread your kimono back
I fall to pieces.

Looking at you now—
The slender curve of your sword
Half-drawn, pealing back.

Fuji Surrealismo

Rough Sea at Shichiri Beach in Sagami Province
Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Fuji Surrealismo
__________________

A rough water-bed—
Churns tonight with white-cap seas
Eels squirm ill at ease.

The young squid-seller—
Knowing I’m interested
Looks the other way.

The octopus boy—
He’s got 8 arms & suckers
Oh how he puckers.

Flooded Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Flooded Fuji
__________________

The 2006 Floods—
Washed out all the roads beyond
The ranger station.

We park & hike in—
Thru the vast rain forest gloom
Along the old road.

It’s like an empty—
Tanabata Festival
In the Edo woods.

Driving to Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Driving to Fuji
__________________

Up thru Scummy Claw—
Past small town Carbonado
And over the bridge.

Then lunch at Orting—
With a cute young hitchhiker
We give a lift to.

Born there at the base—
Mt. Rainier looming above
What’s it like that way

Camping by Fuji

Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Camping by Fuji
__________________

Camping overnight—
Chenuis Falls above us
Granite cliffs cleaving

Fallen giant trees—
Jack & the Beanstalk wreckage
Deafening silence.

Sleeping bags zipped-up—
Snuggled in each other’s arms
Me & the nude kid.

Chenuis Falls

Chenuis Falls
__________________

A Gold’s Gym young stud—
Flexing his muscular pecs
Delts bulging for me.

“Take it slow”—
He's so fine by the tent
His bulging biceps.

Lifting his gym weights—
Proud & vain of his body
Suggesting worship.

Waves up thru the roots—
Hawks fly back & forth above
Douglas firs so thick.

Standing barefoot there—
Toes wiggling in fir-needles
Chenuis Falls stud.

Lakeside Bungalow

Lakeside Bungalow
__________________

Thru picture window—
South Lake Washington abides
With or without me.

Giving me the books—
Many anthologies too
These past thirty years.

Bashō the poet—
Heard the plunk of the bullfrog
Diving deep inside him.

Fuji Seashell Games

The Sagami River Katsushika Hokusai 36 Views of Mount Fuji

Fuji Seashell Games
__________________

Fuji Seashell Game #1

Across the blue lake—
It’s fall on Mercer Island
The leaves have fallen.

The tall lean poplars—
Stick up with roots for branches
Brown delicate veins.

I play seashell games—
With myself this afternoon
Two buried trees deep.

“Copy of page from Fujiwara Teka’s diary Meigetsuki, dated Kennin 1.7.26 9 (1201) with diagram of the Wakadokoro (Poetry Office in the Imperial Palace). The locaton of a bundai (poetry desk) of the kind made for Retired emperor Gotoba from a fragment of the Nagara Bridge is indicated in the upper right corner of the diagram. Courtesy Kyoto Furitsu Sogo Shiryokan.”—Edward Kamens, “Fetishes and Curios,” Utamakura, Allusion, and Intertextuality in traditional Japanese Poetry, Yale University Press, 1997, 137.

“…never served a master must have had around him…he had been brought up…Basho from joining their circle…had sensed some vague animalism. Whatever the truth may have…that Basho’s future as a samurai…upon sudden death of his master…Basho’s decision to leave home…Several early biographies claim…elder brother’s wife, with one of Yoshi Yoshitada’s wife herself. These are biographers who felt the need for the famous poet’s youth. But there is some truth. It maintains that Basho loved a nun called Jutei. She had several children by Basho. At any rate point toward one fact: Basho, still experienced his share of the joys and griefs through at one time or another. A few years very obscure. It was traditional. He went to Kyoto, then the capitol of philosophy, poetry and calligraphy. It’s not likely, however, that he was there for long… He must often have returned to…”—Makoto Ueda, The Master Haiku Poet, Matsuo Basho, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 22.

Fuji Seashell Game #2

Sitting at my desk—
Writing with my Fujitsu
Tablet these haiku.

Composing myself—
Ersatz poet that I am
Playing Seashell Games.

Like Basho back then—
In his banana leaf hut
Down by the lakside.

Yoshitora, “Ko Musashi-noKami Minamoto no Moronao” (Stories of Loyal Retainers) 1864

See “Scene from Oshu meisho zue: Minamoto Toru, seated on the veranda of his Kawara no in villa, looking out on the ersatz Shiogama scene constructed in his garden with inscription of Kokin Wakashu #1088. Courtesy Miyagi-ken Toshokan.”—Edward Kamens, “Fetishes and Curios,” Utamakura, Allusion, and Intertextuality in traditional Japanese Poetry, Yale University Press, 1997, 143.

“Afterward he even wrote, “there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love.” One indisputable fact is that Basho had not lost his interest in verse writing. A haiku anthology published 1667 contained as many as thirty-one of his verses, and his work was included in three other anthologies compiled between 1669 and 1671. His name was gradually becoming known to a limited number of poets in the capital. That must have earned him considerable respect from the poets in his home town, too. Thus when Basho made his first attempt to compile a book of haiku about thirty poets were willing to contribute verses to it. The book, called The Seashell Game (Koi Oi), was dedicated to a shrine in Ueno early in 1672.”

“The Seashell Game represents a haiku contest in pairs of haikus, each one composed by a different poet and judged by Basho. The main value of the book is its contents and the way he refereed the matches. The book reveals him to be a man of brilliant imagination, who had a good knowledge of popular expressions, and the new ways of the work appears that he had compiled the book in a lighthearted poetic talent was evident.”—Makoto Ueda, The Master Haiku Poet, Matsuo Basho, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 22

WPA Poetics

WPA Poetics
__________________

“DO SOMETHING”
—Amiri Baraka,
“Cultural Revolution
and the Literary Canon,”
Disembodied Poetics

I was in love—
With Ahmos ZuBolton
But he was in love
With Somebody else

I’d never met—
Anybody like him
A poetry dude who
Lived and wrote it

He was in love—
With poetry and
Poetry was is love
With him real bad
____________________

Allen Hall at LSU—
Was Dis the Capitol
Chattel slave Empire
On campus back then

New Criticism ruled—
The Southern Agrarian
Movement solipsistic
And racially elitist

Robert Penn Warren—
Taught at LSU and
Preached a chauvinistic
Southern Sermonette
____________________

The Delta Muse—
For Miss Tate, Ransom,
Miss Brooks & Warren =
Dixie Drag Greek Attic

This so-called Diva—
Madame New Lit Crit
Was just the same old
Plantation jive for me

Painstakingly whitey—
Highly closeted, mannered
And cold as a Witch’s Tit
With cotton field poetics
____________________

ZuBolton was one of—
The first black young men
Permitted to walk on the
Newly desegregated campus

Tempers flared when he—
Pressed for new poetry to be
Taught rather than the same
Old butchy Hemingway jive

The shocked professor—
In our creative writing class
Was aghast at such a new
African-American revolt!
____________________

But the Black & Gay Arts—
Movement kept growing
From the Harlem Renaissance
Forward to Black Mountain

The old literary canon—
Accreted and selfishly
Self-aggrandized by the
Southern Aristocrats failed

Even though MLK—
JFK, RFK, Malcolm X and
The Kingfish of Louisiana
Were assassinated
____________________

Goebbelsmania—
Global protofascism
Gas chamber logic
Goosestepping world

Southern plantation—
Sutpen supremacists
Slick supercilious racism
Still thrives, survives

Banana Republic jive—
Pinochet Planet agitprop
So much for gay rights
And then came the plague
____________________

But even so—
The muse was in-motion
Everything moving fast in
Mother-fucking English

And amidst all that—
I fell in love with this
Young grandson of a slave
Who freed me back then

Butchy Bashō

Butchy Bashō
__________________

"Many of the black writers who
are Buddhists and write about
Buddhism seem to be women.
Where are the black men?”
—E. Ethelbert Miller

The sumo stable—
Stinks & writhes with nude wrestlers
Thud of flesh on flesh.

Ryogoku bouts—
Nothing to laugh about there
Just hug your cushion.

Training regimen—
Scowling stable master barks
Stark admonitions.

Dark sodden wet towels—
Bandaged knees, bruised elbows &
Stubbed ankles, fingers.

When it’s all over—
The youngest demure wrestler
Sweeps bashed Bashō’s ring.

Mississippi Haiku

36 Views of Mount Fuji Below Ryogoku Bridge in the
Eastern Capital Katsushika Hokusai

Mississippi Haiku
__________________

Magnolia blooms—
First sign of Southern springtime
Mississippi night

Ka-plunk on the beach—
My nude young Southern friend
The whole night is still

Biloxi boyfriend—
His Pascagoula girlfriends
He picks me instead
________________________________

Basho's own preferences at this time are vague; he recalled that "at one time I coveted an official post with a tenure of land," and that "there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love." Was he referring to real obsessions or just fictional ones?

“He was still young and ambitious, confident of his poetential. He must have wished above all, to get a good education that would secure him some of the wide world outside his native town and to mix with a wide variety of people. With the curiousity of youth he may have tried to do all sorts of things fashionable among the young libertines of the day. Afterward he even wrote, “There was a time when I was fascianated with the ways of homosexual love.”—Makoto Ueda, The Master Haiku Poet, Matsuo Basho, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 22.

Rereading Bashō

Rereading Bashō
__________________

“In the yard
dead leaves
from last night’s winds”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Morning Buddhism,”
Beyond the Frontier

rereading bashō—
narrow road interior
the journey deep south
____________________

“I sweep small twigs
and branches into a pile”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Morning Buddhism,”
Beyond the Frontier

those hiroshige—
views of mt. fuji some were
imaginary
__________________

“on a table a cup filled
with tea and honey”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Morning Buddhism,”
Beyond the Frontier

i doubt if he braved—
the summit of mt. fuji
those waves out to sea
______________________

“the newspaper sections
scattered across the
floor”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Morning Buddhism,”
Beyond the Frontier

using the google
satellite map overhead
mt. fuji down there

Translation

E. Ethelbert Miller

Translation
__________________

“in the house
everyone is sleeping”
—E. Ethelbert Miller
“Morning Buddhism,”
Beyond the Frontier

Here in my bedroom—
Dead books in the bookcases
All the lost knowledge?

How to translate it—
The content of my zeitgeist
Str8t dystopias?

Simply by writing—
To myself like Miss Proust
Propped up in my bed?

Pretending I’m back—
The Copasetic Bookstore
With young ZuBolton?

Translating myself—
Back to the Big Easy with
Bashō’s Journey South?

Slowly retrieving—
The way I was way back then
Back to the future?

Mapplethorpe

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THE BIG EASY

THE BIG EASY
__________________

Big Easy
Vieux Carré
Not a Pot to Piss In
Lounge Lizard
Vieux Carré HooDoo Voodoo
Seven Inches
Bad Boyz from Gretna
Zeppo the Spaz
Rough Trade
Man Child
________________

Big Easy

“human freedom,
its rare and its
elusiveness...”
—Toni Morrison,
Playing in the Dark:
Whiteness and the
Literary Imagination

Sometimes it’s easy—
To give up being so
Copasetic & blue for the
Deep South thing

Black nights and—
Gay rights for me
And my Dinge Whitey
Literary imagination

Meanwhile Katrina—
Still haunts me with
Its flooded ruins and
Levee lowland exiles

With forty percent of—
Poor black Southerners
Still stuck in diaspora
Stinking trailers

You can still smell it—
The Big Easy rotting
Decaying Deep South
My Decadent Other

Vieux Carré

“Beckon to big
Black bucks—
Life guards
On de sho!!!”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Harlem Tom Toms,”
Mumbo Jumbo

O Vieux Carré great Negro sea—
Black writers swim like me
In your sad-eyed deep waters
Engulf me, watery Vieux Carré!!!

Summon the levee floods—
Send them back to whitey hell
Torpedo Katrina the Bitch
Sink her cruel Titanic tits!!!

Dreadful Hurricane Whore—
Mississippi Mistress of Ruin
Drowning Old Folks in Attics
Capsized Big Easy Gone Dayz!!!

Catfish whiskers awake!!!—
Pelicans fly back from the gulf
Demon-headed Zoot-suited
Carpet baggers go home…

Not a Pot to Piss In

“When I was young
and didn’t have a
pot to piss in”
—Andrei Codrescu,
“Not a Pot to Piss In,”
The Muse Is Always Half-
Dressed in New Orleans

It’s a lot more fun—
Being an Exquisite Corpse
Smoking pot rather than
Just pissing in one

Older & wiser—
Now that I’ve blown it
So much for Delphi and
The Nude Delta Muse

My decadent Southern—
Imagination a cornucopia
Copasetic with Rimbaud
Sitting in his Crapper

Lounge Lizard

“He isn’t one of those
Drugstore cowboys
Or creepers”
—Ishmael Reed,
Mumbo Jumbo

I wear a black hat—
With a snakeskin headband
With black scarabs and a
Trench-coat to my ankles

I wear shiny black boots—
Blunt-toed Civil War style
And a chartreuse vest with
Dead black orchid designs

I have a way with women—
And the boyz at Lafitte’s
I’m a Lizard Lounge man
A black Jesus cocksucker

I gets the hots for—
Young naïve whitey sailor boyz
They always end up AWOL when
They get mixed up with me

View Carré HooDoo VooDoo

“bay rum, verbena essence
and jack honeysuckle”
—Ishmael Reed,
Mumbo Jumbo

I was having these rather—
Annoying nightly visitations
Jes Grew kept cumming
Mumbo Jumbo jizzwads!!!

Kathedral of Wetdreams—
New Orleans nocturnal emissions
All the way from Port-au-Prince
Obtuse snouts, sausage lips!!!

PaPa La Bas male-order pigs—
Big Easy Root business and
A big sac of retarded hustlers
Depravedly possessing me!!!

I wasn’t Xenophobic—
I always remembered to
Feed the Loas and like
Sway coquettish nightly…

Seven Inches

“Thinking about
him today”
—Robert Earl Penn
“Seven,” Milking
Black Bull

Even now all these years—
Since South Stadium LSU
If you hadn’t asked me
For a much-needed BJ…

Now fiftyish, divorced—
You send me a letter
Wanting to get together
Again like old times

What a heartbreak tho—
Knowing we’ve both changed
I was so queer for you
All the stars fell to earth

If those dormitory dayz—
And long hot humid nights
Could only be that way
Again but why even try?

Bad Boyz from Gretna

“I used to have sex
with my sister’s boyfriends”
—Winston James, “The Lost
Boy,” Milking Black Bull

I got them off—
Or rather they got me
To suck them off when my
Sister played hard to get

She didn’t put out—
But they got hot & bothered
And took it out on me
Down on my knees

A kid brother was okay—
With them because they
Were hard-up for sex
My mouth a tight pussy

All I knew was that—
The way they grabbed
My hair & pulled it hard
Was pure male magic

Spilling moons & stars—
Their urgent hearts like
The levee flooding and
The river running free

They even called me—
“Oh, Dizziona Oh JaQuizza!”
Giving it all away to me
Dinge jizzy manhood!!!

Zeppo the Spaz Trick

“He was half-Negro,
half Italian, and palsied”
—Walter Mosely,
Devil in a Blue Dress

Zeppo this young kid—
Skinny, knotted-up like
A minister when the
Lord gets into them…

Shaking & writhing—
All kinds of looks on
His face doing drag
During Mardi Gras

“R-r-real n-n-nice!”—
He’d stutter in bed
“S-s-s-so f-f-fu-fucking
N-n-n-ni-nice, man!!!”

Sometimes words—
Came easy to him
Other times he couldn’t
Finish a sentence…

But I didn’t have—
Any problems swallowing
His spastic 10” wad
“N-n-ni-nice m-m-man!!!”

Rough Trade

“Loving me is
your worst fear”
—Alden Reimonenq
“The Trade Turns,”
Milking the Black Bull

His dirty fingernails—
Layers of dingy clothes
Albino skin & rankness
Smoky liquored breath

Cheap and easy—
Vieux Carré cute hustler
How sensuous, glamorous
My Big Easy hustler

I kept looking into—
His vacant teenage eyes
Just Trash they said
Cheap Thrills Discount

It cost me lots more—
Than just money though
A whole year of stained
Unmade beds & rubbers

Street trade knows—
He knew too much about me
My dinge queen weaknesses
Unnamed, unconfessed…

Man Child

“for the embattled
there is no place
that cannot be
home nor is”
—Audre Lorde,
“School Note,”
The Black Unicorn

His lesbian parents—
His mother black which
Set him up for getting
Bullied at school

“Your mom’s Lesbos—
Plus she’s Black” would
Send him home crying
Not wanting to fight

I took him in my lap—
And told him I used to
Be afraid when I was
A kid once long ago

Back like when I was—
Young like him and
Going to school with
All the bad bullies

He looked at me—
Surprised I understood
And that I wasn’t
Disappointed in him

The thing is to—
Not destroy the fearful
Man-child by blaming
Him for weakness

But to show him—
The corruption of
Power that’s always
Been an age-old thing

And how to—
Handle it being both
Wise and afraid but
Not mean & butchy

Thucydus

Thucydus
__________________

—for Ahmos ZuBolton

“Soon they would
enter the Delta.”
—William Faulkner,
“Delta Autumn,”
Go Down Moses
_________________

Thucydus
Ike McCaslin
Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin
Tommy Turl
___________________

Thucydus

Why did I want to—
Go to bed with this
Cute Mississippi guy?

This young guy & me—
Tonight together
Nowadays just friends?

What if I fall—
In love with this black
Fastidious poet?

The space between—
Us & the Deep South
All that Delta history?
______________________

Will my kiss—
Suffocate him with
My whitey love?

Will the campus—
Be ready to survive
Our forbidden love?

To me ZuBolton—
Was Bon the Beautiful
Slipping his shirt off

And him looking at me—
I was Henry Sutpen
Slumming at Ole Miss

Could we survive—
Our brotherly love
Tonight in bed?

Ike McCaslin

“The girls said I
sure was black for
a white guy”
—Philip Roth,
The Human Stain

It wasn’t just—
A black & white
Miscegenal romance
Kind of thing

There already was—
A genealogy narrative
Running thru me like
The sluggish Yazoo

Already the stain—
Of my mother’s dinge
Legacy saxophonist
Chicago young lover

Down deep in me—
Blind annealing roots
Dark Mississippi dinge
Silt and rich refuse
___________________

The constant stain—
Unslumbering and
Anonymous down
Low the Delta night

Dark Trojan horse—
My shadow family
Seeping, creeping into
Dinge Delta Autumn

There was this sullen—
Unacknowledged gift
Nameless and yet
Both womb & tomb

Without much grace—
Forsaken, accidental
A young jazz nightclub
Saxophonist cumming
______________________

An antebellum orphan—
Apocryphal birth of
Myself into the world
Thru Mommy Dearest

Not exactly honey—
Sunlight, pealed grapes
Chicago convulsions
Pink annealing pussy

And so it was
With this understudy
That Ahmos gave me
As his dinge brother

Invisible shades—
And nameless Nubian
Men oozing thru me
His Congolese cock

And so it wasn’t—
Mere miscegenation
But rather something
Philoprogenitive

Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin

“himself composed,
himself selfprogenitive”
—William Faulkner,
“The Bear,” Go Down Moses

I had this—
“Doubleness” kind
Of emotional and
Physical entanglement

I deliberately—
Cultivated my feelings
For Ahmos ZuBolton
As my brother then

I found him more—
Compelling because
I knew he was str8t
And unattainable

No depravity—
Just inchoate vibes
Of gentleness, care
And dinge devotion

I tried to penetrate—
The Negro stereotype
That embodied both
My body & poetry

My Bon blackness—
My Absalom Other
My gender & sexuality
Stayed a mystery

Most black guyz—
Didn’t want anything
To do with me, not
Love me or be friends

The problem of incest—
Was another poem I
Submitted to Delta
Ahmos as editor

Wrinkling his nose—
I thought at first
He was going to call me
A sick whitey faggot

Instead he wanted—
To know more about
The poem, my affair
With my kid-brother

“The secret of my—
Paternity lies in the
Grave of my divorced
Mulatto mother”

“I’ve got both the—
white McCaslin blood
and the Mandingo black
Beauchamp genes”

“My kid brother”
I told Ahmos ZuBolton
“Had more of the dark
Beauchamp than me”

I attempted to—
Explain myself to
Myself as well as
To Ahmos ZuBolton

I had my own Ledger—
My own Pandora’s Box
Incest and miscegenation
In my boyhood past

Breeders kept breeding—
Spawning and spawning
I was in the middle of it
Disillusioned & horny

I didn’t have any—
Male partner to help me
Accept the dinge part
Of my postbellum angst

I’d been born a slave—
Portrayed, enslaved
Myself up there on the
Slave block of my lust

My dinge identity—
My Charles Bon cock
My mixed blood penis
A planter’s son’s prick

I’d read Faulkner—
Sexual blaxploitation
Was nothing new to me
My dingehood ambiguous

But Going Down on Moses—
That was totally different
Yet I was just the same as
Old Carothers McCaslin

My handsome kid-brother—
My very own young brother!
I got him off every night
He was my dinge heartache!

Tommy Turl

“old Carothers’ doomed
and fatal blood seemed
to destroy all it touched”
—William Faulkner,
“The Bear,” Go Down Moses

Plantation-bred incest—
Lucius Quintus Carothers
McCaslin buying a wife
For his brother Thucydus

Kicked outta Carolina—
For getting it on with
Each other, the young
Exiles off to Mississippi

His very own brother!—
Thucydus the dinge stud
Half-brother thru their
Own Charleston family

Thucydus’ young wife—
Bears him a daughter
And a son engendered
Cumly dinge dynasty

Going down on Moses—
Turl young son of Thucydus
And Eunice ending up
There in LQCM’s bed…

Tommy Turl’s prick—
Well-endowed son of
Thucydus that’s what
Old Carothers wants

Born-again dinge lover—
Actual and apocryphal
Corrupted legacy of youth
His own Negro son!

“So that’s why, Ahmos—
I’m a dinge queen too
I’ve got Delta Autumn
Blues really bad, man.”

Yoknapatawpha Boyfriend

Yoknapatawpha Boyfriend
__________________

“I didn’t want to
end up like Ellison.”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
The 5th Inning

This poem—
Is dedicated to
Thucydus—
Half-brother of
Lucius Quintus
Carothers McCaslin

What spendthrift—
Olympic ejaculation
Created the day—
Graceless seraphim
Rapaciously trampling
Satyr’s goat-hoofs
_____________________

Ahmos ZuBolton—
And I were both
In Baton Rouge—
We were going
To Louisiana
State University

He was from—
Mississippi one
Of the first—
Young blacks
Admitted after
Desegregation

ZuBolton was—
An English major
And already one—
One of the Editors
Of the Delta Journal
There at LSU

He was a leader—
Of the Black Arts
Movement soon—
With many books,
Readings, poems &
Black fellow poets

A prolific DC poet—
Then down to the
Big Easy where he—
Taught, published,
Owned and ran the
Copasetic Bookstore
__________

ZuBolton published—
My first poem in the
Delta and then he—
He was drafted to
Fight in Viet Nam
Like many others

I checked the Box—
The beginning of
My commitment to—
The nascent gay arts
Movement running
Parallel to ZuBolton

Black lib and poetry—
Both got me to publish
“Chicken” (Gay Sunshine
Press, 1979) moldering
Decadently down there
In the LSU Library
____________________

Parallel poets and—
Parallel lives running
Prowling cattily like—
Shadowy synchronistic
Lucius and Thucydus
In Delta Bourbon time

Devil Boy in a Blue Dress II

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