Category: Writing

Poseidon

I watch the hooves of dust
Pounding their rhythm on thunder-earth
Eyes that shine limpidly
With the ease of a gentle eternity
It is something that only beast-feeling can grasp
Saner thoughts incinerate and leave only the
Crumble of ash
Longing to shake my mortal coil
I forswear the blood of Adam and Eve
And become a sinless zephyr
Mane tossing in the wind

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Cloister

I hew my heart of heartache
Like pulp from the rind
The juicy amalgamation bittersweet
Running waters across my fingers
And through them
In its place is a silver chalice
Polished to frigid shine
Until the noonday warms it
Or sunshine pierce it
It is untouched and holy
Ringing true only to itself

Arachnid

You speak in stereo, dual-layered with two mouths
The sheepish one turns to me
The fanged one sings out of your ear
Shaping form to those thoughts you lock secreted
In sinful gloom, spiders’ cobwebs spinning

Tracking the gossamer winkings in the light
My mind dimly feels their whispered and hissed jealousies pricking
Gleefully with angry blade honed and drawn in
Darkness, nursing towards maturity
Cradled by the grotesque bosom of your True Self

My eyes avert,
My soul gives you its back;
It says, “You are no friend of mine.”

Fountain of Youth

Strange things whisper on thread-bare limbs
Gnarled tree and withered leaves sighing
In the breeze
The growing season is gone and harvested
The moon a silver scythe dangling
On cumulus dream and dread
Lo — the chill shakes my bones and rattles
The wish caged in my head
Half-buried, half-alive, and barely remembered
Until summer red shakes its phoenix crown
And turns gray sadness to green delight
Ah, she laughs, that pitiless child who wanders to and fro
Why make my heart young again, although I, already old?

Ugly

Ringed in silver gorget, dull eyes misting
In turpentine devoid of warmth
Catching frigid pallor, that sleek whimsy mimesis
Of painter’s careless hand and boredom, dangling
Like a kouros strangled, twisting a
Key iron-housed in broken lock
Barren of secrets and starved of salvation
Is a rhyton emptied long ago
Void of even the grit of rotting parchment sands,
the etching worn, smoothly sad, by the cacophony of time:
He is mute and worth no second look

Vocabulary from the Met

mimesis – mimic, copy
fete – celebration (i.e. feted or celebrated beauty)
fleur-di-lis (French lilies) – stylized lily used as a decoration or symbol (i.e. on a coat of arms)
verisimilitude – lacking likelyhood/truth, only has the appearance of truth
physiognomy – face or countenance; appearance
primus inter pares – first among equals
doge – magistrate from ancient Italy
kouros – sculpture of a young man
caryatid – sculpture of a woman serving as a column
aquamanilia – from “aqua” (water) and “manus” (hand). Medieval ewer shaped as an animal or human. Usually used to wash hands in religious rites.
gorget – piece of armor worn around the neck.
rhyton – container (i.e. horn) used for libations (offering of food/drink to the gods)