With an hour and a half to spare, my March poem for Antinous!

March

Or: A mup Cosmogony

Or: The Stars Look Like Flowers

Or: Spring Always Makes Me Think Of The Big Bang

Muse: of mauve Beauty (lemniscate's gluing laws),
                         its Illogical Science, sing:
                         "by Effects are their Causes Caused" says wet Nile.

during/after/before both Ananke's jaws
               played pipes (Azathoth, blind ol' thing,
               Beauty's lemniscate-gluing laws did make sleep),

mirror-dark water (empty and full of Bas)
                    rich Black silt it refused to bring:
                    by Effects are their Causes Caused.  here, hot Young

boy.  with Young eyes, Antinous, drunk, withdraws
                           from lov'd Hadrian, doffing bling.
                           Beauty (lemniscate's gluing laws) will dye mauve

toga dark.  seeing concave in river, paused,
                  body bent, and his gaze did fling --
                  by Effects are their Causes Caused -- the wan Nile

(not with sleep's tawdry hollywood lights and flaws)
                        hurled face from reflection's sling.
                        Beauty (lemniscate's gluing laws) from back aft

over aft rail pulled (almost) him down, because
            chiseled face did in ripples swing --
            by Effects are their Causes Caused, so Greek Young

mind to sleep plunged -- quick lust had made him pause,
                     love can paralyze heart with sting
                     Beauty (lemniscate's gluing laws) creates mauve

waters -- Nile (not black anymore) used its claws,
                      dragged boys hands to it, lacking rings:
                      by Effects are their Causes Caused in night's dark

(destined dark), boy in quiet and rapt applause
                         copied hottie from river did wring --
                         Beauty (lemniscate's gluing laws) did act: aft

waters Nile first role-played that ol' Santa Claus:
                  twin blue snakes from its depths did spring --
                  by Effects are their Causes Caused they made Young

World from mauve.  Apsu's named this amidst guffaws
                                Tiamat her own name did string
                                (Beauty, lemniscate's gluing laws) from dreams' sleep

(fossil sleep).  like two candles can share a gauzed
                      flame, in singular peacock's wing
                      are Effects by their Causes Caused -- each twin dark,

joined are mauve.  Queer on Queer are the coups d'etats:
                             Melek Taus is now queen and king --
                             Beauty's lemniscate-gluing laws are gods' aft

waters -- Young World this lineage's efforts Caused --
                           they did shards so pearlescent bring
                           (by Effects are their Causes Caused) to drained Nile,

broken -- Nile, when Blue God said with raucous caws
                        ceased sweet Ananke's shells to fling.
                        Beauty (lemniscate's gluing laws) to death's sleep

Called the Young Os'rantinous, god by clause
                           now -- Harpokrates, quiet, sings:
                           "by Effects are their Causes Caused, so soildark

words hear: aftward, you (while living) have made this Oz
                      by that power of truth which clings:
                      Beauty. lemniscate's gluing laws do flow mauve"

listen, you who attends to Nile's tale, so nutrient-rich dark:

the Bithynian Boy who sleeps now is sure not alone aft:

Beauty's lemniscate-gluing laws: we make everything Young --

by Effects are their Causes Caused -- we shape world from the Night's mauve.

I'm only 2½ weeks late!

Remember how I stepped up to participate in PSVL's Antinoan poem-a-month challenge?  Well, here (finally!) is my poem for February.  It's written in a form of my own which I call a trickling epic, an epic of dripdrops.  I'm still not certain about my mastery of meter, so I would absolutely love it if any readers of mine would be willing to go through it and scan it and show me their work!  Trickling epics, epics of dripdrops, owe much to Roman heroic/epic verse, Sancta Emily Dickinson, Japanese senryu, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

May this trickling epic, this epic of dripdrops, bring pleasure to you and to the great god Antinous to whom it is dedicated!  VSLM

February

Or: It Only Took Me Eight Years to Learn This

Abraham explained, “Allah has said,

“Your calling my name is My reply.

Your longing for Me is My message to you.

All your attempts to reach Me

Are in reality My attempts to reach you.

Your fear and love are a noose to catch Me.

In the silence surrounding every call of “Allah”

Waits a thousand replies of “Here I am.”

~ Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Muse: does this wet month make clean?

dreams take fevers with sweat-flow?

godboy quotes words whirling Jalāl ad-Dīn

Rūmī once wrote -- no!

tumbling from

Rome-kissed mouth were the bless'd words

quick scribes scribbled like catching

blossoms which burst Spring flood from my back (herds

genital) -- names sing

we of those

meeting here -- life-price love-balms --

three come (Rumi, Allah, Shams) --

friends of Antinous join with few qualms --

palms to belov'd palms --

lips drum --

steps into Crossroads of Gods sound: branch thin

breaking on glad skin --

thorn'd rose

teaching me Pride -- new smiles, shared --

two feet fall when I take step:

rite made Lover, Belovéd, and curl-haired

god out of me -- yep,

hate's crumb:

eaten by mouth's teeth's tongue's werq

throat's gut's stomach's digestion,

broken down, built into nightsoil (rich murk).

out of the question:

keep on as

I had before.  learn now, qween,

prayer's rule: loving myself means

same skill: loving Antinous, Nile's teen.

sweat is how you'll clean --

labor is

skin's saltnectar and, fragrant, its blooms smell --

students all, each cell

copied has

words from my mouth switchstruck sung

painpraise give all my names -- write

whirl-fast -- Scribe of the Secret's own red lung

(faster than hands might

copy it)

speaks: loud Rumi am I now

I (Shams), head unremoved, broad

voic'd tell: I have become, too, Allah.  Thou

beautiful boy god,

darling his

(Caesar's) in death-dim inn room

work'd spell, stepp'd up to make tomb

kind -- I, worshipper, bride of myself, groom

now, for it's time: bloom!

Rome-lit

god taught: you I do love, if my

Self can I love.  I

must dare

dream: learned Lib'ration's coy trait --

now what homework will come next?

learn (keen, sweet me) to Navigate

mysteries' new text --

once bit,

now twice eager to clasp boy

(god) back home to my breast -- joy

bursts forth -- glee's gleam comes to Initiates

who, like ol' doomed Troy,

ask "where?"

GUEST POSTS: Two posts from other writers that inspire my work with mup

This was originally posted by Sea Lowder.  It really seems to capture some of the queer cosmological spirit that also provided the original seed of mup (my undertaking perpetually, momentary unifying principle, etc.), so I asked xem if I could post it here to share with y'all.  Please enjoy!

Drawing of Phanes by Francesco de’ Rossi

Consciousness. Chaos experiencing Itself. In the beginning, middle, end, Transtemporal is the Queer. Life so magnificent It lacks a clear beginning or end, Queerly arising from within Itself at all times, Pregnant Moon Father, Lord God Mother, Divine Intersex Androgyne, Fusion, Animal, Be-ing, Psychedelia, Cacophony.

Life unnumbered, unaccounted for, unrestrained except by personal choice, unrepeated in Nature unless arriving by God. Infinite in potential, self-design, and execution. The Surprise of a Cock beneath Aphrodite’s dress, the Ram-headed Vulva of God, Bearded Hapi’s Full Breasts, the Sacred Clowns dancing a mockery of all we hold objective and true. STAR crowned Eunuchs. Intersex Angels. Genderqueer Prophets shout new forms, spell new words. Divine Perfection.

A Laugh in the Dark. The Intercourse of Atoms. Union & Repulsion. The Drag of Heaven on Earth.

Nothing holds, nothing sticks, nothing contains. Magick. An Eclipse. The Passing of Sabbats. Sun Becomes Moon Becomes Sun Each Day. Carnivorous Flora, Great Devourer, Regurgitates Life Renewed.

Star-Crowned, Flower-Faced, With Oceans Dripping Songs of Years in Hair, You Who Puddle a Smirk Beneath Certainty & Dichotomous Illusion–Stretch, Breathe Deep, Know Thyself, (Re)Invent Thyself: You Who Are Sacred (W)Hole.

*************************************************************

And then there's a bit of an oldy but a seriously delicious goody from four years ago which is an ongoing source of inspiration, especially in my work with the Tetrad++.  It was posted by Foxfetch after the transgender inclusion scenario at PantheaCon back then.




I demand transcentric imagery, gods and goddess with the wide variety of trans bodies, trans genitals, trans selves. I demand a Horned God with hairy breasts and the new Year sleeping in his swelling womb. I demand Artemis, wild and free, with a penis. And some pagans think that’s blasphemy.

Fuck. That. Noise.

Our bodies are sacred too. We, too, are God, are Goddess. I want a god who sings of his crescent-shaped Barge of Heaven, a Goddess at whose mighty rising the desert fills with green, like a pleasant garden. I want metaoidioplastic gods, and gods with soft, divided, fat-filled scrota, the shaft of whose penis is split into crescents like moons or bows. I want images of a goddess with her testicles pressed gently inside her body and radiant female power spilling from her dual cunts[1]; of a goddess with a long soft dangling clitoris, with fused labia gently cradling her ovaries outside her body.

I want us to take our gods back.

Gods with crescent-scarred chests, flat-breasted goddesses.

I want us to take our gods back.

I want white-haired winter gods whose vagina is the gate to the underworld. I want earth goddesses whose erection is the rising of the spring. Crones with shrivelled balls, fertility gods with juicy cunts. I want gods whose fierce bright male power is spilling milk, whose solar blaze is a bleeding hole between his legs.

Is this too much for you? We. Don’t. Care. Our power is ancient, and it will not be denied.

I am tired of having to look for myself in your symbols. You throw us scraps that reflect little of our selves: bearded goddesses, castrated gods. “Transgender deities”, unwanted by you or used to teach yourself such helpful, informative lessons about yourselves.

The Earth Goddess lies stretched beneath the summer sun, drifting pollen Her shining semen. The Earth God opens like the rose, phallic vines and labial petals. (He takes it up the arse as well, from a solar god with a cock of burning gold, forged in the heart of stars.)

I want a goddess who inseminates, a god who conceives; I want a god whose hard and swollen cock, leaking precome, is nothing to do with procreation but only with ecstasy, penetrable, half within and half without, giving and receiving the fierce bliss that transforms. A vaginoplastic goddess whose clit burns like a white diamond, pure sexual light. I want the god with the rams-head in his belly, curling-horned uterus that spills fierce masculine power: horned within and without.[2]

We have mysteries you have not dreamed of. And we are taking our magic back. We are finding gods in our own image, building our own Craft. You can run scared or you can join us, but we are not going away.

—
[[ADDENDUM, 3.3.11
I want to be clear: I’m not talking about third gender deities here. I’m talking about gods and goddesses who happen to be trans. About The God, and The Goddess, revealing themselves in trans forms. We need third gender, multigender, beyond-gender deities, yes, but that is not the focus of my personal work. Non-binary people are already doing that work, and have their stories and visions to share. I hope that you will seek them out.]]
—

[1] muffing – the sexual act of penetrating one or both of the inguinal canals – is described by Miranda Bellweather in Fucking Trans Women #0 as a sex act enjoyed by some trans women.

[2] (Do I want also the goddess who grieves because she cannot conceive, the god whose phallus is hidden, who mourns his body’s lack of life-giving seed? I don’t know. Our griefs may also be sacred, but claiming them is hard, and hard to speak to as someone who has never desired to reproduce.)

—

POSTSCRIPT
This post speaks mainly of binary-IDed trans people, because I’m binary-IDed myself and don’t feel I have any authority to speak for non-binary people. I’m not trying to exclude or erase, and I really hope non-binary people will chip into the conversation.