"electra" poems
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
6.9k
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.
Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis
your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.
In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a ****** dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.
Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.
The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
6.6k
By those soft tods of wool
With which the air is full;
By all those tinctures there,
That paint the hemisphere;
By dews and drizzling rain
That swell the golden grain;
By all those sweets that be
I’ the flowery nunnery;
By silent nights, and the
Three forms of Hecate;
By all aspects that bless
The sober sorceress,
While juice she strains, and pith
To make her philters with;
By time that hastens on
Things to perfection;
And by yourself, the best
Conjurement of the rest:
O my Electra! be
In love with none but me.
2.8k
Electra-girl gyrates desperately.
Daddy is away on business.
The house practically empty,
Desolate winds rattle windows,
Stomach twists with craving.
Electra-girl squeals,
**** Mommy! Get her out of the picture.”
Little Miss teacup wants everything just right,
When daddy gets home.
Electra-girl vomits hairball,
shaves thighs belly armpits,
Plucks neck chin nostrils,
Applies lipstick moderately,
Puckers (finger pushes hemorrhoid in).
She denies everything.
Imagines he is showering,
She enters **** giggling big grin,
Gaze scampering between his face and genitals,
Her approaching young body edging nearer.
He hesitates standing under waterspout,
Waiting to see what she will do,
Fearing his own desire,
Knowing it is wrong so wrong.
After what seems a long time,
Mom steps in,
Eyes firing rage and sanction.
She asks her daughter, “You think you’ll win?”
Electra-girl answers without hesitation,
“Why wouldn’t I.”
No question.
Your **** stains on carpet,
Your *** stains on everything,
Your breath smells,
Odor of rotting flowers.
Smile for the camera.
Electra-girl raises arms and taunts,
“I win! I win!
Who’s going to be my next daddy?”
A deep heavy silence follows.
She holds herself in mirrors of her past.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 7:32 AM UTC
:::
Daddy's Little Girl
trying to **** mom
you **** her in yourself
all your hope is gone
Daddy's Little Girl
your sanity is going
you are oh so Freudian
and your slip is showing
Daddy's Little Girl
hopeless as can be
when will you stop
the self-destruct
the button
inside
ME
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 4:20 PM UTC
A dream you told me of:
Defusing a time-bomb embedded in the womb of your dead mother.
I don’t know if you were smart enough to flip the failsafe
Or if you indiscriminately yanked wires out, like your dangerous thoughts.
A dream I told you of:
at the midpoint of their parents’ anniversaries, by the ruins of every immortalized
kingdom, she is wearing her mother’s dress and he is too.
“father wanted to castrate or **** me,” he said, conversationally.
they have so much in common. they live the tragedy of armchair **** fantasies,
tend to ****** their own genitals when lost in thoughts of the obstruction of
their desires. (which, really, is pointless
because they don’t desire anything besides fondling their own genitals.)
Blinded Oedipus does not notice
Electra’s concealed ******* dagger. A thousand years between them, yet they’re still children conceived of
Mitigated **** and blood sacrifice for the sake of sailing, and
Defined by deficit from the beginning; her crippled mind sang
to his hollowed eyes. Kinslayers becoming kin,
Entranced by the illusions of the other but really
Loving only the unmistakable reflections of their own sins.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 11:45 AM UTC
V
I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The gray dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head,
O my Beloved, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.
2k
The spirochetes of the ages embellish themselves in a mystical quartet, as our respirations reverberate across sanctimonious plateaus of Oedipus and Electra complexes.
Your celestial convictions are tasteful as they wistfully meander through the fuselage of hydrangea bushes and ***** foxgloves.
I can feel the beat of your apprehensive pulse.
As we applaud the demise of this psychological stage-show, where connected separations unravel their shameful mysteries into a vortex of deluded academia; it is evident when someone communicates deep convictions across pulsating swamps of cosmological hemispheres.
So, as we merge into this cataclysmic vortex of enshrinement, let us embrace the past understanding of future ambivalence where the beginning can only be understood within the context of the end.
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 12:19 AM UTC
i like the communism acknowledged by ants
and terminites,
but that brothel bit where
we plagiarise lions
just to get islam?
**** that, let’s try again,
and again,
and again... until
the rhytms of the labrador and
the tricep conincide with a society
worth living in,
the utopia of my grandfather
i wished i lived in only compensated
by achilles and hercules...
imagine! only by achilles and hercules!
only by achilles and hercules!
hell with you!
hell with you for stealing that from me
and giving me the antionette john paul ii...
that gave me a statue and not a job -
endearing as the entering applause,
hell with you, discarded western of the jeans...
i'd go back to ukraine had
i claimed justice in a society that divided me
to make justice unclaimed and literature
for worth of being unclaimed...
had such society existed... the mongols
would have conquered it by simply yawning /
as opposed to mustard stink /
what? west's the best daddy's girl hello
boy dylan **** jim morrison?
you're ahead of yourself in the electra complication
with the decided cold war no.2 originating with the
kalashnikov & katyusha in pseudo-ottoman hands;
hell with you! stay middle class and un-fuckable!
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 8:37 PM UTC
I dreamt of Freud yesterday
With his imposing air of superiority
Suffocating my need
To have a little autonomy
Libido and Thanatos
Runs past my mind in fast succession
Oedipus and Electra
Pauses the screen in motion
I dreamt of Jung today
Diving into the collective unconscious
Floating on the symbols
That is universally serendipitous
Archetypes and motifs
Flatter the culture of humanity
Anima and the persona
Sheds self unto the lights in harmony
I’ll dream of the future tomorrow
When everything’s all said and gone
The old will always be with the new
As written of past in stone
Though conflicts harbour trouble
And dreams reproduce it’s latency
Anxiousness is part of life’s bundle
So conquer it we must, positively
Nov 15, 2010
Nov 15, 2010 at 5:39 PM UTC
i.
we bundled in the car
wet wool and *** roast
the car that my father
brought home as a surprise
a big 1970 Buick Electra 225, four door sedan
in pale yellow
ii.
winter, the sky an eternal black
the stars all about us
the woods, my parents silent
as if they, too, know
not to break the spell,
iii.
only the whine of the tires
all the way home from
my grandparents, down the
long rolling road, cozy
my sisters and i on the
back seat bench, the heater
blasting the car to an
overwamth
iv.
feeling safe and loved and
knowing we could ride
like this
forever, chasing the full
moon all the way to its
home
but we all knew that spring
was coming
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 6:38 AM UTC
It's big boys and their toys
Highway cruising poise
But oh dear,
Cover your ears
What a blinkin noise!
He wheeled it out with pride
Took it for a ride
Cornered too quick,
Felt it slip
And pranged his Electra Glide
Jun 8, 2013
Jun 8, 2013 at 5:51 AM UTC
opening up an eclectic ruddy random selection of books to the sound of classical concerto dimmed to 'whelming' (neither under nor overwhelming), is like entering point after point to perspective to new brain after old brain after subject to object to alluvit, the few, the many-- 'on July 21st, 1936, Lockheed test pilot Elmer C. McLeod, with Amelia as copilot, took the new Electra up for its first official flight..' 'This is the picture of the Djinn making the beginnings of the Magic that brought the Humph to the Camel..' 'A block away from the museum doors, the guards still follow us, until a new group of guards from the next building has us under surveillance..' 'More and more, I suspect that Buddhists and shamans are correct..' 'I liked Bloodworth and in the spring we were going to play outfield together on that Lowell team, he whose name for years had mystified me when I saw it in Lowell High and Lowell Twi League boxscores-' 'if the world at large found it impossible to believe the truth of the Holocaust, even when provided with incontrovertible proof, Berliners presented with piecemeal evidence, rumour and hearsay were bound to dismiss such talk as enemy propaganda, or perverted fantasy. As Ursula Von Kardoff recalled after the war: 'we were realistic and pessimistic. But Auschwitz?'- '"Twenty-five centavos."
"Twenty-five centavos," repeated the Syrian in a firm voice with almost no accent.'--
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 7:28 PM UTC
VIII
Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease,
If ever deed of honour did thee please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms,
He can requite thee, for he knows the charms
That call Fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spred thy Name o’re Lands and Seas,
What ever clime the Suns bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muses Bowre,
The great Emathian Conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when Temple and Towre
Went to the ground: And the repeated air
Of sad Electra’s Poet had the power
To save th’ Athenian Walls from ruine bare.
1.3k
She slipped out of her clothes
The little black dress
I always envision her
dropping
to the floor
Before we hit the bed
running on euphoric overload
She got off on the way I destroyed her ego
to enlighten her
submitting
to
the
sado
maso
Christ
within
I was the second coming
of her consciousness
slurred
slurping
ships
of
my ambrosia
loaded
god-complex
from her lips
dripping wet
sweetness
down the curves
of honey-softness
O
What it does to her hips
quivering
tingling
writhing
wet
When I crucify her.
Pin her to the mattress
What she meant to say
was she wanted
Stigmata
To really feel the pain/pleasure switch
To strike and choke her
Because of daddy-issue reasons
This is that atonement
Bad Bad
Baby girl
battered
beat red
stripped down
back to her
Electra Complex
The light again
From plateaus
bound by
peaks
until ******
Alpha
Omega
A little death.
Reborn where it begins
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 11:51 PM UTC
1.
My mother hates me!
My father hates me!
Oedipus screams to the
stealthily silent Sphinx.
He scatters riddles like laurel leaves
waiting to be braided into
a playwright's crown. It is too
grandiose to fit his cracked. cramped cranium.
His unconscious mind flies open
like the Sphinx rocketing to the sky.
Sacred haunches soar. Wings beat
steadily to reach titanic heights.
Blind to his murderous fate, Oedipus
cannot know himself. Before the
Delphic Oracle, his life shrivels,
unexamined by his bleeding eyes.
2.
Freud exults in triumph.
Maternal love births eternal love:
endless comfort and affection
for the newly bloomed beloved.
Soon, comfort metamorphoses
into feral eros, unspeakable, unthinkable,
beyond the bounds of catastrophic evil.
Submerged desire sullies the chastest kiss.
Jacosta embraces her son
as her new living king, her husband's
royal blood bubbling brazenly
on the bitter road to Thebes.
His hands stained, Oedipus strives
to transmute his trauma as our own.
We become him when Freud deigns
to interpret our darkest, direst dreams.
Blindly, we mimic him: carnal union
with the mother, lethal rage against
the father. Mourning Becomes Electra
beckons to the wary second ***
3.
The Sphinx belies its own riddle:
How can prophecy spring from
the sculpted, smooth stone
of these perfect *******
Only blind Teiresias plumbs the depths
of Oedipus' fate: Judgement lies blinded,
action lies blinded by the ventricles of
violence, the twisted telos of the mind.
Humans sin against the world, against
nature, siphoned of joy. They sin without
a sacred perch to rise from. Blood and *****
mud and blindness fashion their Oedipal souls.
Feb 21, 2020
Feb 21, 2020 at 3:21 PM UTC
When we had first crash landed,
The island was a Godsend.
a refuge from the maelstrom
with fish and fruits to eat..
When a rogue wave swamped Electra
our lives were forfeit., I’d have swore
We latched onto a piece of driftwood
We paddled towards the shore
Past endurance and exhausted
We wound up in an inlet.
We blest the waves that pushed us
Up upon that foreign shore
We learned to live like primitives
with water sweet not brackish,
the island helped sustain us
while we sought help from the sea.
Some months now I’ve been stranded
With my hope of rescue fading
I’ve had no need of language
since I prayed before your grave.
I am lonely past enduring
With no hope of rescue coming
With Noonan’s knife I slit my wrists
I will not see the morning.
Feb 28, 2012
Feb 28, 2012 at 9:50 PM UTC
I dare not ask a kiss,
I dare not beg a smile,
Lest having that, or this,
I might grow proud the while.
No, no, the utmost share
Of my desire shall be
Only to kiss that air
That lately kissèd thee.
881
My cat WOKE:
Petra Electra Perpetua.
I’m telling y’all, she massive woke;
lit, like wicked wick holy smoke.
She outsmart Christopher ******* dreamin’
teach a dog where a BONE at,
discern every demon,
(not to mention advanced forensics.)
She rise, she yawn, she stretch, she flex
then start cashin’ every other pet paychecks.
She charge per minute just to LOOK at her fur
while she sharpen her nails. My Petra purr . . .
Dogs be all: WOOF
She don’t even answer.
Scribe rhymed Arabic lyrics
while she beat a belly dancer
with her TAIL, pfffffft. . .
My girl don’t tag, she SPRAY.
Mark every wall, y’all . . .
Seen all over the hood, gnome sain?
Offer her Sheba, she like:
Won’t touch it. Give me that Meow Mix.
My girl teach Afrikan lioness about *****
*** on a paean, droppin’ lyrics like mice
other feline get fussy
my kitty get NICE.
TikTok your Instagram feed
right into her bowl.
My girl so woke,
save her own fanged soul.
Slip out the house—she gone.
Workin’ secret route to EGYPT.
Roast every priestess in Bastet city;
My kitty taught CLEOPATRA (u feel me?)
about *****
She scratch Catwoman, pounce on Robin
Batman wet his weak-ass mask, sobbin’.
My girl woke;
so woke she don’t nap, she sleep—
profoundly. Soundly. DEEP.
Apr 30, 2020
Apr 30, 2020 at 8:15 AM UTC
Does
anyone
else's
father
remind
them
of
Bill
Murray?
Weird.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 11:01 AM UTC
Love me as I love you.
For I am stuck within a draught.
A diagram a scheming plan.
A draft filled with champagne like fizz.
I bubble, you bubble.
I spit, you spit, vehement messages tumbling from your messy toxic tongue.
A poisoned potent pen.
You behave like Carmen Electra starring as a centrefold.
A centre fold in Centre- Point as now you’re living in the cold.
© LIVVI
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 5:45 PM UTC
My mouth stands strong.
Ribbon of drool match those in reflection.
My accolade full circle, royal undertow.
Vellicating in dishonourable mysticism.
Moving here & there.
Moving water, wine & a wisdom separating love from the ore.
Learning where musical savants & initiates dim the lights.
Inspectors test restraints, narrowing memory. Now forgotten.
Wake up, remove hairs sprinkled in hidden testimonial.
Misgivings in this shellacked house of homes.
Intellection. Ascending, bending bones. Fissured left-behinds.
To purify all your thoughts.
Resisting universal locomote.
Heels in foreign grease. Bare soles departed.
Movings of brilliantly painted soil.
Telephones relate & relay the balmy decisions you are making.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 6:44 PM UTC
When I am bright and shine
she has caught a glimpse of me
kept it safe in glassy cells of her heart
transformed my mild heat
to that buzzing beam of electrons
towards the hope
bringing the light and let it all work
in the time my shine has frail and gone
If you know, darling with ivy glass
this is sun taking to his Electra
Nov 6, 2017
Nov 6, 2017 at 2:24 AM UTC