Ilka Scobie
Cockette
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Angels of light and gorgeous ghosts
Illuminate this sacred space
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There is Rumi weaving compassionate fables
Fresh-faced queens cavort on stage
as Agosto embodies white robed wisdom
Hibiscus, forever young, hovers above the Rose window Pleased and amused at the evening’s entertainment
But his friends look so old!
Some even toothless
And all his girlfriends have tragic haircuts
What of the mythical magical wand
---the talisman passed from trickster to diva
from shaman’s hand to rent boy’s toy
A fairytale of glued-on glitter
Recreational drug stupor and
The heady perfume of casual sex
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None of this enchantment could halt a plague
Tonight the virus of love transforms
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RUMI
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Wherever you have landed
wasp waisted and sapphire eyed
I hope you are understood
and treasured
treated with gentle caution.
You travel with false pretense
expecting those who touch your world
to realize the delicacy of your spirit
and the inertia of your flesh.
You are Odalisque
abounding in her charms
you have brothers on the Bowery
who, lacking your nobility
are stripped to street honesty.
Your beauty becomes boring
I would shatter your reality
Take you to Benares
and feed you from a garden
Strip you of cigarettes and coffee
to sing like a nightingale


You as Rumi, I as Lami
repairing a broken god
AND THEN THERE WAS X
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On April 9 Prince Philip and Earl Simmons DMX died
One became a prince by marrying a queen
One rapped himself to King of the scene
“The first gentleman of the land”
Spawned a decaying monarchy
A Ruff Ryder hip hopped, locked up, heart stopped
Phillip’s fame was merely royal consort
Earl’s fame birthed a new name
One lived a long, luxurious decadent reign
One died too soon and blazed too much pain
Poetry Prince
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Gone is the Poetry Prince,
with whom I once shared a bed.
Eulogized in self same chapel
as baby baptism, seventy years ago
How I examined my inebriated prize
Wild pewter curls, discombobulated rap
Stanza spinner who begat free verse flood
Junkie, drunk, pioneer unrepentant punk
In that promiscuous winter of my young womanhood
he remains etched upon an erotic map
that taught me to claim pleasure,
to not confuse it with love
That sometimes, sharing flesh is
easier than emotions. To live with no regrets
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The dead deserve their well-earned rest
Those who soared closely to the sun proudly bear singed feather-wings
Inner space pioneers deserve accolades
Why censor a fully lived soul?
The truth brings freedom
Which, in itself, can be fearsome
Like flames shooting from the apex
of widely opened legs
Arduous repression of reality yields
a sadly sanitized history
that trivializes the beauties,
the artists, the junkies and fools
Get over that long-nurtured pain
Imperfection’s wide matrix,
even more awesome than fantasy
A flower dies beneath fear’s killing frost
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Mother Tongue 2
How to make this post-pandemic world
bow before your fierce young beauty
Herald your untamed possibilities
We meet at the congested intersection
where art bisects education
In my class you write poems and learn to listen
Together a common language is forged
A mother tongue of survival
Because of the students, I believe
Change is propitious, courage possible
And love can heal broken hearts.
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Diss
Smash the ancestral home
Scurry away with your treasures
Bicker over bills paid with unearned money
Does all that self=involvement spark joy?
O the welcoming wet oceanic wall
that separates church and liberty
Only the truly dedicated set sail
Like most who cling to sanctimony
your choice is always the narrowest path
I have learned to love with a cautious heart
Where I come from, your manipulation
is as amateur as your saccharine smile
This entitled abuse is exactly the cliche I expected
And as the greedy heirs fight and moan
A gorgeous child stomps a tomato plant
smashing hard green fruit
Beneath parent and servant’s indulgent gaze
A Model Moment
Dear Dead Girl - because it seems you never
Achieved aware/enlightened womanhood
You’ve become a myth written in guilt and fantasy,
Your glitter sanitized
Your spirit erased,
to be replaced with a dull mirror of denial
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Poor girl, whose frozen beauty
stylized as an unsmiling visage
adorned by dark, enormous,
and sadly unfocused eyes
In name of love, they have clipped your wings
buried you deep in a vault
with strangers who resent your stolen corpse
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Far from the land of your birth
Far from what you loved on earth
A free spirit unseen for her fragile worth
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Native New Yorker Ilka Scobie is a poet who teaches in the public school system. She writes about art for London Artlyst and recently co-curated a group show ART AM 3 in Soncino, Italy. Featured artists included Tano Festa, Mario Schifano, Ugo Rondinone, John Giorno, Rita Barros and Elisabeth Kley along with forty other contemporary Italian and American artists. Her recent poems have appeared in Urban Grafitti, Vanitas and Poetry in Performance. She is also a deputy editor of LiveMag, a New York based literary magazine.