I wrote this horror poem back in 2010 when I was doing open mike events and experimenting with my voice. Also known as “La Xtabay,” I had fun putting my own spin upon the legend of the notorious demonic Yucatan temptress. Connected to the Mayan goddess of suicide by hanging, Ixtab, and best recounted in Jesus Azcorra Alejos’ Diez Leyendas Mayas, the myth tells of a raven-haired succubus of the forest luring lovestruck men to their gruesome demise.

Not by best work, but you just know a horror freak like me had a field day playing with such gory lore.

Xtabai

Ray Van Horn, Jr.

she has the electric touch

I can sense the Mestizo conduit

dancing between her fingertips

before they ever stroke my chest

            it’s the nails which stun my skin like cacti pricks     

her hazels are glowing fragments of jasper

overpowering my bland muddies

while the moon illuminates her olive cleavage

asserting her governance

making me feel worthless and disobedient

her breath tastes like anisette

and she whisper-sings the night rhythm

into my craven ears

            I want her as much as I don’t

she spreads her fog of velvety corruption

summoned from Belize afar

I dare to forsake my genteel upbringing

and I ask her to hand me the rose

before I willingly pass La Ceiba towards Hell

the succubus smiles her approval

the chalcedony in her pupils ignite

her fragrance is beyond aura

hair of onyx, pale, loosened robes raping my will to the ether

my throat constricts like a flash of orgasm

her lips never move but I still hear

“about damn time”

as she places the stem in my grasp without thorns

            those come much later

Images courtesy of the public domain

The Manly Art of Taking a Whiz

his rigid stance, a gunslinger’s bearing

fists jammed to his hips

glistened by silver cuff couture

shoulders squared direct

if not mightily

slicked and salty hair

slashing creases down the back of his dry-cleaned slacks

both the posture and ensemble

marking time and prerogative

the subjugated porcelain yowls at his waist,

remiss of the artistic munificence bestowed by Marcel Duchamp

more like the victim from a terrorized Otto Dix battlefront

forced to gulp his seepage

and many bladder-bloated stormtroopers prior to

crass folks might call it a water sport

he admires his self-serving tributary 

without ever lending himself a helping hand

instead, dropping a sniff,

the whistling of something barely reminiscent of The Troggs

followed by a private chuckle

the spooling calypso rhythm

of water meeting water

rushing

cavalcading

subsiding

drip

    drip

        drip

a mundane exercise turned epic by an invincible pelvic jerk

a reminder of who’s boss

if he had on a cape,

you’d swear George Reeves

had crawled out of his grave

just to take a Superpiss

–Words by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

–Photos courtesy of the public domain

@rvanhornjr

♬ original sound – rvanhornjr

Batting in the Clutch

yell to me, don’t wallow in silence

pretend it’s the bottom of the ninth inning

you thrive upon the razor’s edge at live sports

and when I hear your banshee’s scream

it makes me forget the in-and-out whirs upon your pillow

come on, darling, rise up,

it’s bases loaded, one out, the home team’s down a run

I’m on third and coach is telling me to get a good lead

tear it down the baseline, fair side

and walk one off, baby

high five me at home plate

and pogo to victory like we just made the playoffs

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I wrote this one during my open mike days nearly 20 years ago already. Not my greatest work, but somewhere between Norman Rockwell and John Mellencamp, not the varied shades of wing did this piece come to me. I got a couple of standing ovations when I read it back then, so, in the Spirit of ’76, the birthday of my country, which has its problems yet still has the capacity to shine brightly, here’s “Americana.”

Americana

Oh, take me there

somewhere on backroad Indiana

cape cods in Massachusetts

or upstate New York

where cornfields sway

to the consoling breeze of democracy

the land where homeboy politicians

dig up their grass roots

where contemplation and imagination

are nurtured in libraries

still made of brick

I’m in search of

Mellencamp’s pink houses for you and me

and Springsteen’s glory days so they don’t pass me by

where pickup trucks

are like pickup games of sandlot ball

all part of the norm

where women adorn themselves

not in ostentatious composition

but the in the veracity of continued existence

where life is thankfully naïve

and blind to the swinging corporate noose

where the day skies are bluer

and there’s no doubt

which Dipper is which

where people think nothing about wearing

foam cheese wedges on their heads

where Frisbees are more entertaining

than Playstations and iPhones

where the young grow up as they should

ultimately lost

to gridirons, baseball diamonds

and ice cream parlors

yes

take me there right now

where I can wave to the tractor brigade

then salute Old Glory

painted down their silos

and flapping high above their stalks of sustenance

where tomorrow’s Sunday

and nobody will be working, God bless

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

@rvanhorn70

♬ original sound – rvanhorn70

Another one of my heavy hitter audience favorites from my open mike days, one I actually got a few requests for…

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I shot my first spoken word video for a piece I wrote titled “Hubris.” I felt a piece of myself yearning to come out and I treated the entire session like I would’ve at open mike events I performed at years ago. Here is the transcript of the poetry piece, “Hubris.”

Hubris

By Ray Van Horn, Jr.

In my vanity, with or without imbibing,

I often think kicking open black doors

held sentry by interwoven golden scimitars, unguarded

leads to a bounty of greener pastures

a treasure laid and left by the divine

if one simply has the wherewithal to risk the unavoidable gashes

and the potential for beguiling catastrophe

sometimes the pursuit of happiness

is nothing more than a fool’s errand

no matter an accompanying pocketful of citrine

for luck and love

or a fistful of amethyst for reciprocal defense

a national lottery ticket often has better odds at a payoff

in the quest for mortal satisfaction

I can’t help but wonder sometimes

if ancestors laugh or shake their heads dismissively

when they catch you pleasuring yourself from the other side

or if they cheer you on when it comes with a partner

and it makes me laugh only to myself

thinking they invisibly face palm their invisible former selves

watching their descendants stumble, fall and choke as must do

evolution oblivion catcalled by celestial perverts

a dangling tiger’s eye between the breast

trumps a washout kind of day

whether you dwell in a shanty or amongst porcelain walls

even when you’re soft-spoken and complacent beneath the sun

yet you morph into a voluminous warrior of words

in literary combat against the espresso machine at an open mike

fueled, not by caffeine

but by ego and desperation

and you give louder voice, even still,

against defiance, counterpoint, and ennui

projected at you by people you love

or once loved

or think you once loved

rebellion equates rejection

equates burden equates self-defeat

you can’t help the obdurate

you can’t hold onto obsidian for longer than bare minimum

not everyone values the lapis lazuli

much less sees the excavating path to the latter’s

reviving ultramarine

the final folly of those who care too much

is believing they make a tangible difference

realness is both soft and hard to the touch

yet true comfort lies inside

a steeping cup of introspection and a burning incense of empathy

the lover of life held in check

by too much crippling static inside air

which rages against the suffocation

as it would at pollution and apathy

the madness comes from banging missed advice against the surrounding plaster

from those who would devalue effort and persistence

and those who would cheat themselves short

and you even shorter

sometimes there’s just no helping others

who don’t want the help

nor the sycophantic inspiration shared between old and young

a passing of life data often mistaken for narcissism

it’s like a rotary phone ringing to dead air

or an unclaimed pass to the fast track

tears of joy can still cloud

climaxes can still hurt as much as they release

desire means we never stop living

mining our paths towards our own blue heaven

in completely the wrong direction…