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Poems

Nicholas N Jan 2018
(Hypnos- God of Sleep
Eros- God of Love
Nyx- Goddess of Night)

ME:
I closed my eyes
And met 3 strangers
Whose names I knew but,
Could not express.
They stood with grace and prowess,
Each one grander than the next.
They petitioned me to ask them,
Anything at all,
So I asked them about dreams,
Given to us by gods.

HYPNOS:
A weak internal monologue,
Lapsing into night.
They sleep and breathe
So slowly,
They sleep; and breathe so deep.

EROS:
Their dreams I clouded,
Tinged, with crimson haze.
They long for one another,
They long;
To find each other.

NYX:
The dream ends now!
As my darkness overwhelms.
They no longer need to think,
They drink;
As to forget.

ME:
Pretence keeps up my dreaming,
Innerspeaker of my thoughts,
Past tense reveals it all:
Groundskeeper
To my soul.

An arrow from your quivers
Surely would do the job,
Of a thousand
Quarts of liqour
Or novocaine, or god.

NYX:
When you see light
You will see clearly,
The truth of misery.
Though I know nothing of such light,
The darkness lives in me.

EROS:
Soon your day will come,
To feel as all the rest.
The burning fire of passion,
Bellowing wild,
A fire without smoke.

HYPNOS:
And now as you awake,
Arise! Dear sir, go forth,
Knowing of what you learned,
In this episode,
This dream.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2019
.this is not spectacular writing, this is mediocre, but given i've had to contra- the κατάκτηση (conquest), πόλεμος (war), πείνα (famine) & θάνατος (death)... it's like the ancient greek readers of mythology: the four titans have been conquered... but what emerges are the new gods... λόγος (reason), ύπνος (sleep), έρως ("love") & πάθη (suffering)... and i'm not using shapes or colours to depict the change... as once the mighty Chronos... to subsequently mind a Zeus... point being... homosexual literature: when the act of homosexuality was still taboo, and was even punished by law... a ****-****** poem from the 1950s? well... sure as hell competes with 1970s Italian pornographic cinema to... forget whatever is happening in the current whatever-whenever is, and is: "happening"... remember... the sister of πάθη... απάθεια... i never inclined myself to state: suffering... i.e. medicine without the anaesthetic... πάθη is only understood via his sister: απάθεια.

just across from my windowsill:
two years if not more
i've watched the lights
be turned on, and off,
    rooms illuminated:
being switched...

                nothing spectacular,
not the grief of a lingering
shadow ruminating
            post-mortem drowning
in the night at the sight
of an afternoon's worth
         of a coffin being lowered...

two books reviews:

   (1) biography, reviewer
victoria segal,
      withdrawn traces:
searching for the truth
about richey manic,
author sara hawys roberts
& leon noakes...

      (2) memoir,
reviewer leaf arbuthnot,
when i had a little sister,
author catherine simpson...

    molly russell...
a smile that could make any
man wish he were
a father...
        and...
     make one think of
undertaking a reading
of the genre of literature
that's philosophy:

  well... only at the open air
market
back in the city where
i was born...
   if only approached
with the proper candour:

philosophy is
the matriarch of bachelors,
it suffices to say:
  how it is approached,
how it isn't:
     a heaved hive
of contradictory inhibitions...
or some:
   other wording to
suit the circumstance...

"home"...
             "home"...
i too can begin a history
with a 4000 B.C. worth
of history...

    before i was an Anglo-Slav,
i was a Pollack,
   before i was that i was a
Slav,
   and before that?
   i was a Lengyel...
     now:
  the every new to be
affiliated with:
   instance and revision...

well... for what a pyramid's
worth, or the hebrew text...
seems i too can bite
into and chew a past
that's...
                     well...
   with what is a "gripping"
past:

and to think in having
the sun as a clock,
and the moon
              as the godhead
of dreams...
    and not of this:
              sped-up
variety of 1000.0001

         0: multiplier and
divisor...

               0 = x & ÷...
   and negation...

            Lengyel...
a history:
            but no etymology...
no loan words...
no Latin prefixes
or Greek suffixes...
   no modern word:
für leben...

well... it's back to:
listening to a vinyl album...
i was this close to wanting
to repeat the song
see the light
from the album prequelle...

yet upon 2nd listening...
i was still drinking
a glass of cider...
and i was still mesmerized
by the vinyl
spinning at 33rpm...

       whoever is Logos,
whoever is Pathos...
i welcome the chores
of Hypnos...

  no alternatively
arriving at the four
donkey-riding riddles
of the apocalypse...

the four brothers:
   logos, hypnos,
                      eros & pathos...

      mind you...
frank o'hara...
the poem returning...
it's as if:
   i find myself in better
company
   of ****-****** poetry
than upon the altar
and in the shelter
of the opposite
         aspect of my: function...
somehow i'd much
prefer to peruse the ****-******
poetics
   than claim subject
of a woman's body...
it's as if:
         claiming
    a ****-via-the-****
allows a man
to grow a second,
higher, metaphysical
tongue...
in place of what could,
at best: be a case of
"schizophrenia",
           i.e.: bilingualism...          

i'm done with the Greek
imagery...
            i leave the four horsemen
at the gate,
   i had to,
i replace them with:
the universal plagues
of the universal man:

logos,
   hypnos,
    eros... & pathos...

since? well... we already known
of the claim of a man
being an embodiment of logos...

honestly?
  logos, hypnos, eros & pathos...
(mort est mort! so no!
no thanatos: no man
prior to, or even upon death
allows his mind to: die)...

   the embodiment of logos...
time to de-abstract what evidently
requires a personification
on the stage of a precursor
demi- succeeded by
                       a            deity...

what else, if not rhetorical
blunders?
   clearly spoken...
as... footballers?
em, but, em, but...
you know...
oh sure... clearly spoken!

what was once a woman's
body, a perfume,
a sight in the dimmed
lights of a brothel...
what was 120 quid for
an hour's worth of
kissing a *******'s lips:
as an excuse for not
having trimmed my
***** hair...

             i had to succumb to
****-****** poetry...
   a phallus is not a phallus
is a broom is not a broom
is...
           well: unless
female genitalia were ever
to be a floral pattern...
    but no ******* oyster...
well...
my ****-envy...
   that's a skyscraper...
but, honey bear...
every **** is a floral pattern
but not a gooey salty-sick-yuck
of an oyster?

who's the *****-envious
and who's
at Alice's picnic of things
being all: roses
and not... eating-itself
slobberings of a smack
             of the ol' mollusk?
leeaaun  Jan 2023
Hypnos.
leeaaun Jan 2023
call hypnos
the Greek God of sleep
to cast me under his spell
as all i wanted was
to cherish a
goodnight
sleep.