Avert your eyes
from looking directly
at the monster.

Look only through
that reflective shield,
that glowing rectangle

that parades a
distorted vision of
the objective self,

that which in
dark moments may
suddenly shut off,

revealing one’s face:
inverted, expressionless, petrified—
like when the

mirror of Perseus
at last revealed
Medusa’s horrifying visage.

You are a wicked woman.
You have the gorgons stare.

You turn my soul to stone,
with every hateful glare.

Every hybrid moment.
In every waking day.

You always try to prevent.
Reasons
for me to stay.

For me, the naked and the ****
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The **** are bold, the **** are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.

The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the **** may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometime ****!

Do gorgons have bad teeth?
I feel inclined to ask
Since there can't be a dentist
Brave enough to do that task...

vague games enable and our liturgies co-mingle in an inkling of the I.
your mind succumbs to the soul. the rabid rain is ironic and the font you spell ' god ' with
is all scrawl and scrumptious. you lump this dream into your dolphin of Delphi
and squeak cute symphonies of deep brood.
you choose your Oblivion.
and that's how Angels kiss. they force the Word through your Animus
and greet your weakness with squinty eyes and Lion's breath.
you're the next best thing since that one thing that had no soul for god to play with.
it never complained. you might look and you might not see
what you're not supposed too. but i know you'll be happy with lemon-drops
and long dark naps.

that's how we do,

like a crispy pillow is a cloud with a lobotomy
and all my barbed wire is wine.
Like i'm the king of unbearable sublime. you anoint the fallen. i spike the punch, judy. you sunshine.

eulogies wet the pavement. darth mauls
the halls of our peril
and the dry
sparrows

you had no love but you had a thing that went thump
when you met her. and some other cocka-mamy thing.
and your narrow view
of the wide ha ha and the mute " **** this "
and why not?

we're all caught in the same frame and the gorgons are massive. you have to elect a hero to laugh at Death with and might get a girl.
you're nothing at all and that infuriates the reality you were dreamt with. you have no kin, but your family hasn't been.... you were unhinged
from the stark grim and the tide pool. why do you think i say things that ain't been language but has always been lingua nova ?
why would i lie ? this is the scepter of the vengeful design and the glee demons of first love sipping from a chalice of lost love
with closed eyes. this is the pier and the ocean. the dime store Picasso hanging the velvet Elvis with the perfect circles
with the little
cube inside...

aching for flamingos.

or not.

‘What a piece of work is a man!’
………           ………
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust’

From Shakespeare, through Hamlet
It rings down to generations
And falls heavily on my ears too
In vain, I attempt to probe into the mystery
Nay, the enigma called man
Both in the silence of my solitude
And in the learned circle of pundits

(Fool…..
Unable to find who you are
Can you venture to say who the other man is?)

Man is a jumble of contradictions,
I know….A hard nut to crack!
So unfathomable, so mysterious
At once a Satan and an angel

To the outer world I am someone
But in the well guarded cellars of my privacy
Aren’t I different?
Hiding my innards to light
As every other man

At times, I feel so proud
Excessively in love with my own image
Like Narcissus, the poor hunter boy
Fated by gods to languish
On the bank of a pond,
Over his own floating image!

However with all my strength within
Do I not feel as helpless as Prometheus bound?
Waiting for a Hercules to come
And save me from my plight
If Prometheus’ ******* was God willed
Mine is self willed…! Is the difference so very crucial?

Sometimes I feel I am Janus
Looking backward and forward
Into my past and my future
Never living in the present
Or am I more a Sisyphus
Eternally rolling a rock over to the hill
From where it keeps falling down

Sometimes I wonder
Amid the splendor, do I not starve?
Like Tantalus of Greece in the pool
Beneath the tree, with the low lying branches of fruits
Constantly eluding his grasp
And the water, ever receding before
He could take a drink!

As a poet how I wish I could
Equate myself with Calliope
Carving my mind on the wax tablet
With stylus, my pen and coloring it with my fancy
Or Orpheus, so skilled in music
That with my sad musings
I can make even Hades weep
And the rocks fall in line

I shudder to be a Medusa
Turning everyone to a stone
With my sinister glance!
Instead, I want to be one of the Graces
And never one among the Gorgons

Pitched in this gallery
Of queer mythological entities
I wonder how I appear to others
And whom I resemble more!

Fire breathing gorgons
Consume radical liquids
Fall into poetry repetition
Also sprach Zanabanana
Centered and pressurized
Back-up pushes against
Sphincter.

Antibiotic shortage
Carefully planned
Lower intestinal numbness
Head in the clouds
*** on the ground
I'm right
It hurts.

medusa and i are pushing the
limits on stone and snakes.

you are the contents
of your context and

emotions are back,
exasperation backed.
dead stones draped,
messes to clean,
fueled by fire,
sure of rain.