Characters frequently appearing in this drama:

• I - your humble narrator, sometime writer, poet, and translator, also journaling as lnhammer and prettygoodword (online pronouns: he/him/his)
• Janni - spouse and writer (online pronouns: she/her/her)
• Eaglet - nom de internet of our child, formerly known as TBD, not yet a writer (online pronouns: they/them/their)

I subscribe to interesting-looking journals to put them on my reading list, with no expectation of reciprocation. Feel free to, but no pressure.

For Poetry Monday:

Starblossom’s Song, John Masefield

Queens long ago
Knew sorrowful days,
Seeing their husbands killed,
Their sons destroyed.
Death makes the full heart void,
The cold heart filled,
Those women knew Death’s ways,
I also knew.

Father and mother gone,
He whom I loved, and now
My sons, my lovely sons,
My three bright boys
Killed, while the sunlight shone,
And blossom filled the bough;
I was so happy once
But Death destroys.

Yet, although Death is great,
Earth’s many million tears
Move on the heart of things
Quickening a change to be;
And drop by drop the sea
Moans from its springs,
Its cry will reach God’s ears;
Man has not long to wait.
Death is but a tool of Fate.


This is from Masefield’s 1915 play The Faithful, an adaptation of the Chūshingura story aka legends that developed around the incident of the forty-seven rōnin. By all accounts (I’m certainly not reading the whole thing) it’s reasonably faithful to the plot beats but fails badly at the Japanese culture that drives the characters and story (I mean, “queens”? srsly?). Taken as a Edwardian* lyric divorced from its Japonesme origin, though, I like it.


* Okay, technically Georgian, but I often think of the arts of George V's first years, till the Great War finally started, as Still Edwardian.

---L.

Subject quote from The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot.

Eaglet is 13.

An easily frustrated 13.

---L.

Subject quote from Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

For Poetry Monday:

A Sapphic Dream, George Moore

I love the luminous poison of the moon,
The silence of illimitable seas,
Vast night, and all her myriad mysteries,
Perfumes that make the burdened senses swoon

And weaken will, large snakes who oscillate
Like lovely girls, immense exotic flowers,
And cats who purr through silk-enfestooned bowers
Where white-limbed women sleep in sumptuous state.

My soul e’er dreams, in such a dream as this is,
Visions of perfume, moonlight and the blisses
Of sexless love, and strange unreached kisses.


Moore (1852-1933) is best known for adapting French naturalism into English fiction, but before he turned novelist he was a poet under the influence of French symbolists. (He was also a childhood friend of Oscar Wilde.) This is from his first collection, Flowers of Passion (1878). After all the preceding orientalist imagery, that “sexless love” gets some heavy sideeye. Commit to the bit!

---L.

Subject quote from Hotel California, Eagles, and yes colitas are cannabis buds.

For Poetry Monday:

Sir Gawain Fucks the Green Knight, Kim Deyn

Here’s a tale ripe for telling. Can’t say where I heard it first—in pretty French or Dutch. Perhaps as a young lady walking longside the Rijn. I’ll spin it for you in an English tongue, fine as frost on lace, sweet as malmsey wine. So it goes that young Gawain, strength kissed into his limbs, fresh as the bright dawn, comes trembling down to the Green Chapel. You’ve heard this tale, I know. His breath makes peach fuzz in the air, fear into him like worm to apple. Christmas Morn is too soon, time is short. You have your own life to save, he says, picking through thorn and bough to an ivy-clad cave.

The creature is the Jack O’ the Glen / forest prince / the wood’s own laughter. Beard of lichen and eyes like dark elder. I need not repeat their exchange—my boy’s flinching heart—a songbird in a rattled cage. It is after the blows are dealt, he asks, what god is worshipped in these green trees? Boy, the Knight replies, boy, were you not just down on your knees?

The Knight is the tang of sap / bark rough and petal soft / everywhere leaves scatter / easily crushed / Gawain clings / hardly knows what he clings to / he is the forest and the flower / a turmoil of roots / where god and tree meet and melt / the birch the oak the fern the deer / mushroom maggot crow / here Gawain is branch and bud / blow returned for blow


Originally published in Queerlings Issue 7 (Apr 2023). I have to wonder whether the initial inspiration was the last line.

---L.

Subject quote from Don’t Leave Me This Way, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes feat. Teddy Pendergrass (Thelma Houston’s disco cover is admittedly better).

It was a good seder—smaller than some years, but good.

However, comma, one guest brought a bottle of Manischewitz wine as a joke gift. When we opened it for the curious, we let Eaglet sample it—something we allow during rituals, mainly seders and shabbat, that include alcohol. Wine has always been yuck for them, but this? This they liked. A lot.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

(For those who haven’t met it, Manischewitz is a sweet, strong, low-grade American wine barely better than rotgut. Because for a long time it was the only readily available wine that’s kosher for Passover, many families traditionally serve it at seders—or rather served, to our great fortune.)

---L.

Subject quote from For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield.

For Poetry Monday, dipping back a few millenia:

A love song of Shu-Sin, Unknown

Man of my heart, my beloved man, your allure is a sweet thing, as sweet as honey. Lad of my heart, my beloved man, your allure is a sweet thing, as sweet as honey.

You have captivated me (?), of my own free will I will come to you. Man, let me flee with you — into the bedroom. You have captivated me (?); of my own free will I shall come to you. Lad, let me flee with you — into the bedroom.

Man, let me do the sweetest things to you. My precious sweet, let me bring you honey. In the bedchamber dripping with honey let us enjoy over and over your allure, the sweet thing. Lad, let me do the sweetest things to you. My precious sweet, let me bring you honey.

Man, you have become attracted to me. Speak to my mother and I will give myself to you; speak to my father and he will make a gift of me. I know where to give physical pleasure to your body — sleep, man, in our house till morning. I know how to bring heart’s delight to your heart — sleep, lad, in our house till morning.

Since you have fallen in love with me, lad, if only you would do your sweet thing to me.

My lord and god, my lord and guardian angel, my Cu-Suen who cheers Enlil’s heart, if only you would handle your sweet place, if only you would grasp your place that is sweet as honey.

Put your hand there for me like the cover (?) on a measuring cup. Spread (?) your hand there for me like the cover (?) on a cup of wood shavings.

Original text:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

Hat tip. One of the world’s oldest surviving lyric poems, written presumably during the reign of Shu-Sin / Šu-Suen, king of Sumer and Akkad from circa* 2037-2028 BCE. The tablet identifies the speaker as Inana, and it’s generally read as relating to the sacred marriage of the fertility goddess** and the land’s king. That said, it reads to me as a straight-up (i.e. non-ritual) erotic poem — a smoking hot one.*** The translation from Sumerian is a composite created by Graham Cunningham from ones by Krecher & Jagersma and Sefati (source, credits).


* While relative times in Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia are relatively solid, absolute timestamps have error bars of ±60 years. For context, he ruled two and a half centuries after the death of Sargon of Akkad, the father of Enheduanna.

** Possibly, though this is highly debated, embodied as her high priestess. Not debated: she almost certainly didn’t wear little red panties.

*** I hope those wood shavings (?) don’t catch on fire.

---L.

Subject quote from Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind.

Holy crap, how did I only notice this AFTER posting yesterday’s links?!? The people who brought us Krill Waves Radio posted at the start of last April a 1-hour mix of skeleton shrimp to headbanging to instrumental metal, under the Kriller Waves Radio label.

People. They just invented Brinecore. As an April Fools joke.

And it RULES.

---L.

Subject quote from Let’s Go Crazy, Prince and the Revolution.

This famous post is doing the rounds again:

my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and the guy was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”

This story is so Chinese.

It’s a real incident, btw: the guy was Su Shi, a Song dynasty poet/artist/essayist/statesman sometimes better known by his art name Su Dongpo, the "friend" was his Chan (Zen) master Foyin, the abbot of a temple across the lake where he was staying, and 屁 means both “fart” and (idiomatically) “nonsense.” Very Zen.

Edit to clarify: Foyin was not just a friend but Su Shi's master, who taught him meditation. Which means my man was crossing the lake to chew out his Zen master, and somehow thought this was going to go well for him. Smh.

---L.

Subject quote from Cruel Summer, Bananarama.

A few musical links, from various traditions:

A 1-hour mix of Chinese lofi tracks from Lofi Girl. Excellent. (via)

A 1-hour mix of jazz arrangements of traditional Iranian music. There’s lots more on the channel. Dig it. (via YT sidebar)

A 2-hour mix of the Pokémon Red/Blue soundtrack covered as Japanese jazz fusion. Ooo-kay then. (via YT sidebar)

---L.

Subject quote from Me and Bobby McGee, Janis Joplin.