#matador
If matador is both macho and adorer, mask and mother,
Where are we in this chapter?
If peace is both picador and saviour...
Stepping stone and tablet...
Why can’t we capture?...
I know we were meant to meet us
These fragmented foals, sweet strangers...
So why can’t we seal us?
When we know the things that make us
open, closed and patient – omni-dimensional...
You’re calm yet persistent, I’m a bloom that has its own blood
And we’ve learnt to take it here, on the edge of premise...
Chasing and charging us...
Until one day we’ll free us. Like hail weather – pressure conscious.
Aug 20, 2025
Aug 20, 2025 at 6:52 PM UTC
I was young and naughty,
Like all other kids I was.
Of the school Matador,
The minibus,
I was a commuter.
Nirmal Public School,
Was all but a
Normal Public School.
For it was a strung off
From the highway
And was my first school.
In the Matador,
The last window was
Ajar.
It was already dangling,
My friend joked,
"You can't break it."
His comment,
Me it motivated,
I sought to prove I can.
I pushed it intentionally,
And the last nuts,
They became undone.
The window went thrashing down,
And the driver-conductor duo,
Me they punished.
It was overcast that afternoon,
And they made me crouch akin to a ****
It started raining down.
Then the math teacher came,
And she vouched for my innocence,
"It was already dangling."
The bus crew,
They argued,
"But it was still there."
I was young,
Just 7 years,
And cute too.
The bus crew,
They softened up,
And let me go.
Ma'am, do you now remember me?
You travelled by the same bus,
For you lived in the same campus.
The National Dairy Research Institute,
Its residential campus we both called home,
I miss those days when I was young.
Sep 22, 2024
Sep 22, 2024 at 8:54 PM UTC
~
*Poor deluded brute
he waves his sword
in orchestration
to a ruthless symphony
played for miserable centuries:
the running of the bulls
"sketches of pain"
some monsters come
decked out in hat and cape
inside the arena of his pride
where he hears the chant
within the arts of
cowardice and cruelty
where he envisions
the feathered crown
Gala! Gala!
"how to see the toreador"
lost as San Fermín
pricked by hairpin
pierced by ragged horn
suerte de la muerte (luck of death)
foreshadowing Hemingway
turns into the troubled sun
and underneath his muleta
a deep red
blood alchemy
his fame spilling out
in drips and drabs
as the crowd sings
'Pobre de Mí (Poor Me)'
to the mystic stab of church bells*
~
Jan 12, 2022
Jan 12, 2022 at 11:46 AM UTC
You are a series of red flashing fabrics and I am a Matador thrusting myself into you over and over and over again
I know it is nothing but pain and embarrassment and yet it’s so natural to me to proceed with these actions
You are a red flag I can spot from a mile away glistening your sequins in my face and I cannot stop but ram my face into yours
I know you bring me no satisfaction and I know I will never win against you in these battles and yet it’s so natural for me to hurt myself for you
Apr 23, 2020
Apr 23, 2020 at 2:42 AM UTC
A well-groomed matador José
Liked to moisturize with Oil of Olay
His hands lost their grip
The cape it did slip
He was gored as he cried out "¡Olé!"
Oct 25, 2019
Oct 25, 2019 at 1:06 PM UTC
Ma maîtresse, mon esclave, ma sans-rivale
Mon bienheureuse et peureuse idole
Mon biscuit, mon aphrodisiaque
Je chante aujourd'hui pour toi l'hybride
Le tout-monde, le divers
Je sais que tu trembles
A ce seul nom évoqué
Hybride
Mais en même temps il t'attire et te bouleverse
Il t'attise, il te brûle, il te prend, il te chavire
Il est multiple céramique polychrome
Il est faïence, il est glaise
Il est ombre, il t'assombre
Il est tout et toute et son contraire:
Il est pudique
De porcelaine et majolique impudique
Sublimé par l'émail, l'or et le zinc de tes fantasmes.
L'hybride idole te gouverne
Comme les astres et les lignes de ta main
Il t'oblige !
Hybride oblige !
Tu es chat et Ganesha
Eléphante et hippocampe,
Opaque et translucide
Exempte de toute déchirure,
Gerçure et boursouflure
Parfaite et vicieusement fatale
Blanche et noire et bleue
Musicale et cacophonique
Genghis Khan et Décébale
Tu es relecture antique et moderne
Mystique réincarnation des idoles
Mythiques
Et le masque de sourires malicieux que tu t'es approprié
Est un tableau vivant des hybridoles
Mi dragon mi ange
Mi vamp mi vampire
Qui tournoient en ton sang
Qui nagent dans tes eaux
Et te pourlèchent les lèvres de leur semence érotique.
Tu es Napoléon et Francesca de Rimini
Revus et corrigés par le lit de Jocuste,
Centaure aux vulve et verge mêlées
Livrant au Divin Matador
Queue et oreilles.
Forêt vierge jamais pénétrée
Dans son Saint des Saints
Par la verve de l'oeil du cyclone de Pharaon.
Aug 21, 2019
Aug 21, 2019 at 4:17 AM UTC
An uncompassionate crowd of 20,000
are tensely sitting in a stadium
bloodthirstily waiting for a cruel spectacle
they call a ‘bulllfight’
which is actually a ‘bull-harass-and-kill’.
This brutal bloodsport
is celebrated as a national artform
in Spain
so the matadors (bullfighters) strut around proudly
in their suits of golden thread
to loud cheers and excited applause.
The bull, frightened suffering,
is harassed and killed in three stages:
The first stage is called ‘tercio de varas’
‘the lancing third’
when armoured-horse mounted lancers
use a long sharp lance
to spear the bull behind his shoulder muscles
to weaken the bull’s neck muscles
and begin the bull’s loss of blood;
The second stage is called ‘tercio de banderillas’
‘the third of banderillas’
when the matador attacks the bleeding-weakening bull
with banderillas (sharp barbed sticks)
stabbing the banderillas above the shoulder blades of the bull
to anger and agitate
the frightened bull fighting for his life.
The third stage is called ‘tercio de muerte’
‘the third of death’
when the matador baits the bull
with a red cape
then stabs the bull with a steel sword
aiming for his heart
but often missing
leaving the bull suffering multiple stab-wounds
bleeding, slowly miserably dying.
I wonder
when will this barbaric bull-harass-and-kill
be banned in all nations?
Jul 24, 2019
Jul 24, 2019 at 5:49 AM UTC
#
A muleta drapes over my chest
the ripples pass through with the wind
while we dance around this dusty plaza de toros
eyes fixated
thinking you can gore mon coeur
ptui
I only give you the illusion of control
but in the end
it will be my estoc tongue that
pierces your flesh
between the shoulders
with crimson words
I am no novillero
cornada's in the past only strengthen the future
a porta gayola posed and ready
awaiting that ferocious charge
#
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 8:10 AM UTC
The devil sits at its zenith
Hell’s warmth embracing
a bead of sweat escapes
both the man and the beast
locked and circling
waiting
waiting
waiting
until one leaves alive
both man and beast
want to show their bravado
one charges
one waves and dodges
both smell death’s breath
a crimson river starts to flow
and the dance is repeated
until one sits on Charon's boat
or is pulled by death’s horses
but in this dance
both have tripped and fallen
death is overjoyed in the afternoon
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 6:45 PM UTC
Illiterate alliterations
Of Farcical fascinations.
I fancy myself a wordplayer
if not a word-sayer
Though the paper gets far more love than the air
***** what's nearest the toaster oven.
Vile Bile, Jim, by at least 3 miles.
I took the tapeworm from yesterday's sandwich
Gave it to the secretary, who continues to *****
She's a labrador
I'm a matador
You'd be surprised how much bulls ****
Apr 5, 2016
Apr 5, 2016 at 8:41 PM UTC
I understand they find dinosaur bones there in your backyard. Big ones. I've never been to your house or even close to that neighborhood, but ever since you've written me, I am completely intrigued. What you said about me, I think about you in an execrable Hemingway way, maybe as in his "Death In The Afternoon." All the goring. Faintheartedness is nothing to be carried by bullfighters or by bone hunters, I suppose. If there were a way of going back to days of nobler more romanticized slaughtering in bullrings, without the controversy, I'd have to say it is more evident in our modern day Jurassic Park flicks where nerdish paleontologists are transformed into fiendishly handsome toreadors.
I know I'm not making much sense. Bullfights and dinosaur rustling, what's to compare? One being non-civilized though colorful and bathetic, the other fantastical but forgivable because the beasts bite back. Oh, if only I could explain these machismo machinations. What a ruse. How song and dance does intrigue. Please write me again from South Dakota. I'd like to book one of those dusty dinosaur tours before I go extinct. Bone hunts, bullfights, same difference.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 9:47 PM UTC