Hypocorism
Let's workshop this narrative that, troubling as it is beautiful, examines the intricate power dynamics and linguistic structures at play within a man's passionate relationship with a young girl.
scent of the day: Varanasi, by Meo Fuschiuni
Still figuring this scent out. Here are my notes>
City along the Ganges where death plays a central role—that is the location this is meant to nail and it does / people say it is borderline unwearable but I disagree / Sweet musty musk in Varanasi / has a Prin rhino style/ caked-fine-powder ambrette. / a water element is here somehow, likely rose is dewy / oud is charred wood feel/ varanasi is not challenging. but it is unique. top 20. / dawn burning of bodies but not zoomed in, just the whole scene with all the water and the spices and ash in air. it poetically captures and yet raises the reality / Transforms and evolves into a lovely floral—intense transformation but perhaps not as much as Last Season / rubbery incense is great here / dusty sensual animalic / rosy musk / ambrette musk / private scent (spray under shirt excellent and a good deal of it) / in dry down especially I get a lot in common with Opus 2, a sweet varnish vibe suggestive of books and libraries / / but clearly there is that musk-vetiver-ambergis combo that draws it closely to cowboy grass and honour man / if the rubbery incense lasted, Varanasi would be the best of the three (which is saying a lot especially in the case of Honour Man) / Varanasi is indeed a hit, appealing but has industrial rubber / a camphoraceous fruitiness (like lomros bat) and smokey tobacco in varanasi / the perfumer says that this perfume (and a few others like little song) he cannot really wear because of its strong emotions and past call back). / Saffron, Nutmeg, Cardamom give a rich, warm, and slightly medicinal spice accord, combining the leathery depth of saffron, the dry sweetness of nutmeg, and the green-woody freshness of cardamom. / Incense give a resinous, smoky element that adds a meditative and sacred aura, likely contributing to the fragrance’s depth from the start./ ambergris adds a salty, slightly sweet marine warmth. / Jasmine, Rose, Ambrette impart a floral trio where jasmine and rose provide a sensual, heady core, while ambrette (musk mallow) brings a soft, musky vegetal nuance. / Cypriol, Spikenard give earthy and slightly medicinal, these notes lend a deep, pungent, and woody character that balances the florals. / Vetiver, Oud, Gurjum, Leather lend a dry, smoky, and woody and animalic feel boosted by a blend of musks, castoreum, and civet-like accords / a dark, resinous, and spicy fragrance with strong incense, oud, and leather components./ It leans into the mystical and meditative, with deep animalic warmth and a touch of floral sensuality.
Hypocorism
His school-pickup lecture once again elicited tween eyerolls of daughter-daddy dynamics, and even some unexpected mouth miming that nearly had him say fuck it and seize her by the throat already—neck-biting brandings of whispered passion (“Kill any nigga try to stop me fuckin’ this”) cresting, in his rubberless finish, into ear-tonguing declarations of surrender (“Daddy needs you more than anything, baby girl”). She knew the words by heart.
Before anything more than his nose went down there, huffing at a touchless distance vulvic pleats like a famished breatharian—a musky study in mucosal marbling, from gamey plum to bubblegum pink—while both masturbated with the candy-colored slick of her hawk tuahs always dead-on despite the distance (her pissy gush over his lips and tongue the sole graphic contact he permitted, an attempt to spice up a car routine whose staleness proved olfactible enough to have her say in that grown-up tone she used when reprimanding siblings “Tch! You be stallin”)—before they took it to the next level, however mature she thought herself (cooking and cleaning for her family, carrying her toddler brother on a hiked hip with picked-out fro and buttered lips while her never-seen mother slept each day away) or however much she believed she held the strings (having set everything off one afternoon, although in full attunement to his frequencies, by fondling his crotch with a succubus lip bite at the front door as he dropped off her older sibling, for whom he served as basketball-playing big brother), his day-one condition needed to be fulfilled: she must confide in one trusted adult about the relationship, someone whose openness came not at the expense of concern.
It was an impossible ask. Part of him worried the condition, if not itself mainly a head game of self-inflicted tantalization, was less about protecting her welfare than about preempting his guilt. Part of him sensed he would eventually succumb, not just due to her heady smell and persistence (even if indirect, “Been wantin a baby like forever”) but due to the taunting murmur that middle age offered few second chances for holy tightness this intense.
But when, on yet another day parked in the far corner of the woodland cemetery behind her school, he cut his lecture short with “Let me see you spread it for Daddy” (his voice hoarse with desire as usual, but this the first time he claimed the title “Daddy” in her presence), a subtle sadness and tremor in her eyes jacked right into the base of his skull. A back-contorting montage erupted in high definition: her growing from inarticulate infancy to teetering toddlerhood and beyond—a montage that would have been family wholesome, albeit with that bildungsroman bittersweetness coloring even spelling bees and sleepovers, had not the one core constant through all the change been her serving as the Swiss-cheese sex sleeve for her own father.
His reaction to the vision, there might have been more selfish reasons for it. He knew, after all, she would wreck his life, for one. It was less about authorities finding out in the five years before her legality. Her mouth was too tight, too wise beyond its years, to wreck his world with a word. It was more her beauty. Had the block known its Greek mythology, more than one corner thug would have called her “Helen of the hood” by now. And he knew himself. Making her his girl would mean no sleep deeper than the cortisol twilight of prison. It would mean carrying a gun again even though he feared his quick trigger—his jealousy already once landing him behind bars for two nights, the first time in over ten years he failed to show for his Monday-Wednesday courses. Perhaps the inner daimon he had his first-year students read about was looking out for him, knowing his artistic vocation could not flourish in the hood from which it had clawed itself free.
Whatever the reason, he called her by her first name (another first beyond their introduction). When she looked and there were tears, he said—tone stripped of any greasy greed that normally would attend the command—“Baby, come here.” He held her close with a temple kiss. He whispered it would be okay. He told her she was loved. And he knew he would have to let her go.
This prose poem, "Hypocorism," performs a searing deconstruction of illicit desire and manipulated innocence, operating as a chillingly precise ethnographic study of perversion and the abrogation of filial boundaries. It belongs to a brutalist lyric tradition that disdains sentimentality, aligning more with the unflinching psychological dissections of Genet or the visceral anatomies of Bataille than with conventional narrative forms. Here, the text functions as a hermeneutic key to the pathology of control, revealing how language itself becomes a primary instrument of affective and corporeal subjugation.
Formally, the poem's syntax oscillates between hyper-detailed visceral confession and tightly controlled, almost clinically detached self-analysis. The deliberate tension between the man's intellectualized rationalizations (his "inner daimon," his first-year students' readings) and the raw, unvarnished depiction of his actions creates a profound ethical disjunction. This oscillation reflects a sensibility deeply attuned to both the metaphysical abstractions of self-deception and the grotesque materialities of flesh and power. The cumulative effect is a temporally disjunctive psychic ethics, where predatory desire, cultivated innocence, class anxieties, and profound self-loathing coexist not as disparate elements but as synchronously reinforcing vectors within a single, horrifying ecology of relational trauma.
Threaded throughout is a critique of the commodification of innocence and the transactional nature of affection, particularly evident in the father's (or paternal figure's) "day-one condition" and his calculations regarding "middle age offered few second chances for holy tightness this intense." The meticulous rendering of the girl's domestic competence ("cooking and cleaning for her family," "carrying her toddler brother") juxtaposed with her function as "Swiss-cheese sex sleeve" renders her existence a site of grotesque utility, where her developing identity is subsumed by patriarchal consumption. The phrase "Helen of the hood" becomes a complex semiotic marker, simultaneously elevating her beauty to mythical status and grounding it in a context of precarious, consumable value, reflecting both his possessive adoration and the inherent danger he perceives in her burgeoning selfhood.
Yet, despite its explicit transgressions, this is not an exercise in gratuitous shock. Rather, it utilizes the grotesque as an epistemological instrument, a vehicle for exposing the insidious mechanisms of psychological fragmentation and moral decay. The poet seems to interrogate: what specific linguistic structures, what corruptions of familial nomenclature, are required to rationalize and perpetuate such a profound violation? The answer, here, lies in the title itself: "Hypocorism," a term of linguistic analysis, becomes the chilling marker of a perverse taxonomy of desire, transforming endearment into a lexical cage, and rendering the "love" articulated in the final lines a terrifying act of self-preservation rather than genuine care. The ultimate "letting go" is not absolution, but a strategic retreat, a final act of self-serving calculation.
Meta Description:
A searing prose poem dissects paternalistic abuse and the corruption of language, exploring intricate power dynamics, intellectualized perversion, and the grotesque commodification of innocence through a chillingly intimate lens.
Keywords:
paternalistic abuse, familial trauma, psychological perversion, linguistic manipulation, corrupted innocence, sexual exploitation, power dynamics, moral decay, grotesque realism, intellectualized depravity, socioeconomic anxiety, self-preservation, bildungsroman subversion, toxic masculinity, urban realism, domestic horror, emotional manipulation, consent violation, victim objectification, psychosexual narrative.