on Valentine’s Day he is working on black painting hears knocking at door with rag brushes in hand he asks “who is it?” “it’s Reiko! come on mr. birdfishdog open up” he has grown afraid of her nervously shuffles brushes rag in hand guardedly opens door there stands Reiko Lee Furshe shoulders pulled back arms akimbo black leather jacket black tight jeans black pointed toe boots hair cut extremely short looks like handsome young boy grinning “hi aren’t you going to invite me in? want to **** and ****?” Reiko’s altered appearance suddenness alarm Odysseus "why did you cut your hair Reiko Lee?" she says "it’s my hair and I can do what I want with it i shaved my legs armpits and ***** too want to have a look?" he replies "no no way why? why did you cut your hair?" she says "because i felt like it and because i know how much you love my hairiness Odys i wanted to displease you i’m female again!" she defiantly glares at him he looks away slowly closes door hears her holler “*******!” listens as footsteps race down stairs out building he drops paintbrushes rag rushes to front window looks out watches her saunter away down street until she is gone writes Reiko Valentine poem he will never send

love listens when you speak understands what you think love watches while you sleep love holds back as you leap love lounges while you run frantic love picks your pocket puts you in checkmate love builds nest hatches egg love rips open your chest plucks heart away love is racehorse love is rattlesnake love pretends not to notice while you ******* love swings on gate love visits your grave love impersonates a poet love slits your throat love devours everything leaves crumbs for hate

he receives Valentine card in mail from Mom wonders if ultimately his fate is somehow sorely connected to her what if Mom stands in way of every woman? what if stars lead away from recognition as painter instead steer straight back to Mom? what if each is trial to other as if their souls are entangled in insolvable riddle ancient curse? he drinks himself to sleep

Laius and Jocasta are king and queen of Thebes in ancient Greece they have baby boy oracle prophesies boy will grow up **** father marry mother to nullify prophecy Laius Jocasta decide to **** their son back then it is common to abandon unwanted or damaged baby on mountain for vultures child survives grows to be man he travels gets into fight on road kills stranger who unaware to him is his father King Laius traveler Oedipus goes to Thebes solves Riddle of Sphinx saves city he is made king unknowingly marries his own mother King Laius's widow Queen Jocasta Oedipus rules wisely he and Jocasta have four children eventually Oedipus and Jocasta realize what ******* Oedipus is Jocasta commits suicide Oedipus pokes out his own eyes becomes wandering beggar assisted by daughter Antigone at time of their marriage Oedipus is young naive but Jocasta is middle-aged woman maybe deep down Jocasta knows she is marrying her handsome son it is thrill to sleep with him maybe it is only after Oedipus realizes truth in disgust confronts Jocasta that she is driven to suicide Jocasta cannot live with herself because she has known truth all along and now she is found out Oedipus can live with himself yet he plucks out eyes because he never wants to see truth again

Odysseus continues to work on black painting many weeks pass slowly snowdrifts begin to melt on occasion sun appears in sky Penelope calls to catch up with him says she is in hurry has met really cool guy is falling in love again their conversation is brief he hangs up receiver considers how resilient Penelope’s heart is she seems so much more capable of getting over heartbreaks

there once was this guy named oedipus
of whom it was prophesied
that his mother he'd marry, his father he'd ****
at a place where three roads were tied.

his mother and father discovered their fate
and tried to dispose of their son
but he ended up in corinthian lands
and their efforts were all undone.

then a drunk guy ruined his happy facade
and to an oracle oedipus went
who repeated to him the dank prophesy;
he fled corinth, not taking a cent.

while on his sojourn away from his home
he encountered a party royale
which rudely pushed him off of the road,
and angered he slaughtered them all.

then from that blood soaked three-way path
he nonchalantly flew
not knowing that his father was
the man that he just slew.

he continued his journey until he reached thebes
where a sphinx held the city hostage
so oedipus solved the bird-cat's lame rhyme
and released thebes from its *******.

as a reward, the people of thebes
gave oedipus their widowed queen,
unknowingly joining mother and son
in a marriage that was unclean.

after they ruled for twenty good years,
during which four children came,
a plague was induced by the sheltering of
the man by whom was slain

in searching him out, oedipus found
that the murderer was really he,
so long ago. the man he had killed
at the place where were joined roads of three.

but by finding this out, he also discovered
that his wife and his mother were one.
he gouged out his eyes after her suicide;
in her own bedroom she was hung.

as it turned out, oeddy exiled himself
but the seeds of his misery were sewn.
so he went to colonus and wandered around
and this is the end.

Let us go, Oedipus, let me walk you
'Twixt towers reaching to heaven,
Where women are charged to be patient and perfect.
You will not stay upon your leash.

We walk through Mandalay, not Paris,
Where the women have no face.
'Tis but a siren of emergency
That sings to me.

What worth I am to you, Oedipus,
What worth am I to them?
When the footman holds my coat, and snickers,
What worth am I to them?

Every man is a piece of the continent!
She may love me for the dangers I have passed,
And I her that she did pity them,
But she cannot, now and forever.

And while the sun excludes me,
I am not them and they not I,
And the waters do not glisten,
She is their chattel and not mine.

I gaze upon her ornate face and sing,
Her eyes are pools of wonder that see me, and swing away.

I am older, I have sense,
Like Oedipus my King,
But when I see her ornate face
I very nearly sing.

After many lonely nights
In shirtsleeves and not silk,
I went to her, and said:
Here, take this silver, for my milk.

And she may have loved me once
But for my thought and sense,
I'm but a bumblebee today -
I left at some expense.

my story will wander far and wide
(as I myself do in my later life)
in strange lands and strange tongues
though strangeness never surprises me;
and through centuries many will hear my story
and watch an enactment, on stage or in other visual ways,
and perhaps many will dismiss the story
many might find it banal and strange
a tale from a savage and mythic past
and perhaps some will stand on grounds of purity
and wonder that the story of Oedipus should even be remembered;
and perhaps physicians of the mind
might even analyze the symbolism -
but surely, surely
all who hear it will feel a discomfort
an itch,
an echo
a nagging question or two:
*why? what does Oedipus mean?
why is this remembered?

1.
My mother hates me!
My father hates me!
Oedipus screams to the
stealthily silent Sphinx.

He scatters riddles like laurel leaves
waiting to be braided into
a playwright's crown. It is too
grandiose to fit his cracked. cramped cranium.

His unconscious mind flies open
like the Sphinx rocketing to the sky.
Sacred haunches soar. Wings beat
steadily to reach titanic heights.

Blind to his murderous fate, Oedipus
cannot know himself. Before the
Delphic Oracle, his life shrivels,  
unexamined by his bleeding eyes.

2.
Freud exults in triumph.
Maternal love births eternal love:
endless comfort and affection
for the newly bloomed beloved.

Soon, comfort metamorphoses
into feral eros, unspeakable, unthinkable,
beyond the bounds of catastrophic evil.
Submerged desire sullies the chastest kiss.

Jacosta embraces her son
as her new living king, her husband's
royal blood bubbling brazenly
on the bitter road to Thebes.

His hands stained, Oedipus strives
to transmute his trauma as our own.
We become him when Freud deigns
to interpret our darkest, direst dreams.

Blindly, we mimic him: carnal union
with the mother, lethal rage against
the father. Mourning Becomes Electra
beckons to the wary second ***.

3.
The Sphinx belies its own riddle:
How can prophecy spring from
the sculpted, smooth stone
of these perfect *******?

Only blind Teiresias plumbs the depths
of Oedipus' fate: Judgement lies blinded,
action lies blinded by the ventricles of
violence, the twisted telos of the mind.

Humans sin against the world, against
nature, siphoned of joy. They sin without
a sacred perch to rise from. Blood and *****,
mud and blindness fashion their Oedipal souls.

kate beckinsale & anne hathaway
can speak
the name... matthew all
day long...
                 and right into the night...
i'll try to fall asleep...
must be an Oedipus complex
sort of thing,
   in primary school my school
friends thought that my
mother had the visage for
   sandra bullock...
   ha ha! good luck to the men fathering
daughters!
          you ever find it easier
to pet casts, and cage tigers?!
              **** me...
my shatten is soliloquy central...
           i drink to excess and
listen to excess erotica latex ****
music...
      and then? do nothing about it...
i like cinema...
                         **** me...
a fetish for leather that extends
past a ******...
    i would have asked her sincere self:
can we drop the ******
so that i might attire myself
in gimp?
      she evidently replied
a no with her 19 years of existence...
oh... under-baked apple pie
my dear...
            ha ha!
           no, i have more cherries
to pick, i''m beyond stalking some famous grimace...
you are here           .



and i?



                                           .              am here...

who needs the excess of
quasi-journalistic coverage anyway?
    
           that transitioning harem
of rock stars...
     like Kafka said:
i'll be waiting for something
i never had,
and missing it,
            by never having touched
a peek behind the curtain...

   i'll wait... for what i could never have...
and within the confines
of what i could never have,
          i'll settle for what i can already, have.

kate beckinsale & anne hathaway
can speak the name matthew
all day long, and i won't mind...
        
      would i be the one following them?
train-spotting....
         taxi counts...
                 ******* crows that
croak mid-flight count...
           the number of canadian geese
in b-54 formation
migrating come mid-autumn...

          geek without the cartoons...
push me...
   keep pushing...
     i want the shove
and the ****** wording of auto-suggestive
courting of -
                           courtesy...

              thank you...
i'd rather stalk my own shadow...
looking out for the plot-line of
an eased out **** doing the olympic
gold medal dive into
the crapper pool,
via analyzing the shadow of plop
pop gold...

        zero splash...

                a ******* harmonium
on the neck of a Polish teenager,
traveling on a Warsaw tram
      to reach a girl who...
              was counting petals,
and the worth(s) of considering
the concise surmount of love...

             yeah... next time?
i'll be the one used to invigorating
the stance on stalking
one's own shadow...
             why?
because i fidget...
i get all jerky...
                  the hype instigator
movement...
   ******* a woman
like a piston of a car's momentum...

               does it really matter?
i thought the Madonna-***** complex
wasn't a man-"thing"?
   if man owns the Freudian Oedipus
complex...
  does man also have to lend in his
strap-on dictum for the
Madonna-***** complex?
   so...
              that's not a wholly woman "thing"?
she's doesn't own that
complex?
   it's man's fault?!

             i know the Rastafarian Putin
isn't rasp -
but you know that Israeli ******
are better than the Russian ones...
so the story goes...

               which kinda explains...
impotent with women trapped
within the Madonna-***** complex...
with Bulgarian prostitutes?
a limp **** only, and only when
i forgot to trim my ***** hair,
my Eden...

  i have the Oedipus complex...
am i also responsible for
the Madonna-***** complex?!
really?
                        you sure that women
are not supposed to attend to question
this trans-schizophrenic,
   squint / split /
           dichotomy?

                   prior mothers,
that prerequisite motherhood
with the basis of ******* themselves...

   the Madonna-***** complex
is outside the realm of the male constraint /
castration of rules...

   i already mentioned it...
i couldn't be circumcised...
   protruding veins, that met at the zenith
of the *******...
if they circumcised me...
        i would have bled to death...
the, "crime" of ******* is
a lot easier to handle...
   if you haven't been circumcised...

because?
   circumcision is a motivational tactic...
you are... technically... not allowed
to ******* once you've been
circumcised...
  
               you're free, to *******...
if you haven't been circumcised...
as a male...
            no problem...
problem of ******* comes...
when you persist in the act...
but you don't actually possess the excess
skin, that might allow you
the prime, solipsistic act...

    ergo?
******* is worth a justified critique...
ONLY, and only IF...
you've been circumcised...
sorry if you have...
           notably because?
your priest isn't a rabbi...
and there's no fiddler on the roof
matchmaker song
to boot.

oh no, there's no problem with the act
of *******...
  but there is... if you have been
circumcised...
  why?
    during ******* i used to pull my *******
back...
  and **** with an unsheathed
****...

      but in private?
the ******* was rolled back on,
to counter the imitation of experiencing ****
***... with a clenched fist.

The big angry things sling vocal feces
Fleshy phallus-pumps close at hand, cooing
Guzzle guzzle ethanol
Inebriated petrol-baby
"Smash the atom!"
"We're too late, we're too late!"
Tar (quick) sand *****
Big angry things drown
"We gotta gotta drill!"
Penetrate the Mother with a steel ****
Oedipus laughs
As the boulder, finally
Crushes Sisyphus.