the burlesque poetess(s)

i just took more advantage of the wonderful macbook/internetz age than i ever have before and made a quick recording of myself reading my latest-writ poem-a-day. since i don’t know how to host/embed mp3’s on LJ, you fair tumblr readers get to read/hear it first before the weekly archive. lucky you! please pardon my lisp (no really, and how i run out of breath at the word ‘getaway’) and of course the fine somerville sirens that come in kind of appropriately at the end. i’d read it out loud a few times to hear what needed revising, and since it helped me out so much i decided…it’s time to share in a new way. xojojo

74. July 15, 2010 (thurs.)

We link snakeskin arms, shimmy frillies
lower, reveal more sequins on our ungirdled
silhouettes. Left-strut, right-hip, titty-hop— i trip!

A ballerina makes a modern dance jeté—
the buzzer goes off and off, sound equiv’
to the vaudevillian devil’s crook

shepherding you offstage, a rain of tomato
curtains crowing at your stocking runs. Run!
i bolt awake from the black light night

-mare of doing a group burlesque routine
for feather’d flesh, for realzies! It’s not until we pack
the car to return to Boston, guessing at what’s

sitting on the trunk, small turnips? Sugar cane?
Live garlic, you say? —we learn the appalling audience
sound was just Papa putting his father’s WW I

dock alarm? Atrocious noise-maker under our bed
-room window. (i’m grateful it wasn’t the 20 year old
firecracker hazards like the day before.)

They were trying to shake us from humid sheets,
but we thought it was the fan, a frantic unplugging’d
made the sound go away, surely the old folks know

you want to spend the after hours of family getaway
being romantico, mixing drinks while everyone sheep sleeps,
dancing in the night light’s buttery halo, kissing and wishing
each other sweet green room roses, falling asleep holding
hands, a cork and matches under our pillow.

“General Debauch(ery)” a poem by jojo (commissioned for the steam crunk raunchy radio drama)- Walter Sickert’s “28 Seeds” RPM2010 Challenge Al-bum.
LISTEN/PURCHASE now ~ http://armyoftoys.bandcamp.com

General Debauch(ery)

Have you heard the one about the Prince
crushed to death in the masquerade mosh pit?
The secretary of state found asphyxiated in a pile
of soiled petticoats?

Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Pause
from your stroll ‘round the grounds with fishmongers
in fishnets. That foul yeasty smell you smell
is from the gaze of so many upon you.

Vaporous breath polishes your knob— medals
of hhhonour ‘pon your breast. We think you can
save your breath—and give us a song,
(or a show of sailor knots, though the ropes
and restraints room is to your right).
Oh steamshipwrecked Captain my Captain…

Press your lips to this disco stick’s ON switch
we know how you like your toys Hot.

The emcee’s left you a margarita salt rimjob,
an arsenic and outer space kiss of dark matter.

Allow us to wake you from your picnic nap,
You need to hear your own shrill cock shriek,
greet Rosy Fingered Dawn. An alarum within
pumping out of our viktagraphs,
cyborg transistorradios / (slash) dildos.

My excellent good friends!
The play on penis size’s the thing, this ballsack mousetrap,
wherein we’ll catch your reigns, thou Strumpet, Fortune!

*

In the time when the Ripper of seams and ravager of words
roamed the streets, no late night sequin’d soliloquoy was safe.
The monster claimed a love of military antiquaries,
poetic relics, silver candlebra-sonnets and corset strings
knotted with beatnik promises. The writer’s place to pawn
clotted hearts for inkpots of blood-thinner.

A rapist of Liberty, taking advantage of Libertines
lost in a haze of pleasure, absinthe, hashish and hot breath.

We tell the tale of those slashed curtains, the heavily
brocaded eyelids of those sweet dreamers
too easily fooled by the shining (-star shaped buttons),
and tall boots—they didn’t know flashing blade
from phallus (so familiar) so easily did it rise
to meet their hand, as surely as a lover,
as surely as their own fat oil-painting brush.

Eventually the rotary-circling renegade, the vulture
of the voluptuous lost artists,
The streetwalker hunting streetwalkers
found his way to the den of debauchery,
forsook the boulevard hunt for the bordello
of delicatesse, we are your weary
decadenceers—

Hang up your bridge troll
cloak (exhausting, being a ghoul).

Sing for us.
Our ears are moist, pink
and waiting.