My hands that reeked of death.
I was stained before I knew.
What it meant,
What loss entailed.

I was different once,
Now I'm different too.
The loving gaze,
Reached me from the stars.

One faithless day.
I watched me die.
What I could've been if I never knew.
You stared at me like the gravel.

I laid to rest,
All my innocence.
The light inside me,
Snuffed before it could form.

The cold metallic taste now stuck,
Clinging onto me.
Like nothing ever will.
Because I will always reek of death.

And I will mourn for you.
For what I could have been.
Your life that had only just begun,
Pretending that it was enough.

You will never know what it is, to stop.
-Persephone

For the first time in months,
I prayed
Before my statue of Apollo,
I kneeled
With my candle lit
I held my open palms to the sky
I cried
Before Apollo,
I begged
For the first time in months,
I had to believe
There was something beyond me
That could bring you what you need

Karim disintegrates
To the madness of the Brightest Star
In the fog-thickened day.

That star,
Empowered with the strength of a
Thousand soldiers
And their passion,

And the cunning wit
Of the Great Apollo,

Stretched the fabric of linear veil to pause
The illusion of society

For a moment

Outside of dementia

It would be when the air would feel like silk or like the hues were almost brighter.
It was when the hills felt lower and the low felt lighter.
In the speckles of day when I would sing to the tune of another’s brass,
Somehow my daydreams would still hold a conversation with you.
You’d saunter in with kindness and class;
The kind of attitude that sometimes I wish I had.
Your tone and diction were hard to imagine,
They lacked the luster and the passion.
They were all the corridors to every phrase.
They were all the oddities I wanted to praise.
I can feel the wax melt from my wings with just the thought of knowing you in abundance.
You are a Sun to my sand with a depth I should never learn.
You’re a distance that feels relaxed and at a level I could never convince.
At your hand would I bloom into my hyacinth petals or would my roots begin to rot?
Would I compliment your warmth by offering a place to rest or would my minerals begin to harden into a glass for my next cathedral?
It’s necessity the keeps the unknown locked in a mental maze that which I have mending to wrought.
Still, my stargazing will end when I fall.
Those feathers left to remind me of how little about you I’ve ever actually known;
And yet how bittersweet to imagine having ever flown.

Passing through mid-century
these jazz oneironauts reached Apollonian heights
while society drifted into Dionysian drunkenness
the merchants caught on too soon
The most beautiful parts of humanity
enamored to serve the ugliest:
The merchant class, the bourgeoisie
Buddha’s undeserving in charge
If only in past centuries
those noble princesses embraced
even more lowly patronages
all this potential today could be staved off
Saved from the drive to be commodified
People stopped buying jazz as it reached its height
No more smiles to appease the whites
Jazz for the few
the noble, the individual in the know

Until this too becomes the simulacrum
The Ornette Coleman on the bookshelf
to signify your snootiness
your refinement from wealth
Aging Dads in thousand dollar sweaters
kicking out their 22 year old kids
for being ****** addled hipsters
meanwhile Bird on Verve is nodding out
and Dad’s girlfriend pops a Percocet
to deal with all the stress

four things to know he's in love with you.
1.) he looks at you as if you're the sun.
2.) he will follow you anywhere.
3.) he will love you too much to let go.
4.) he will want you to be the last thing he see's before he goes to sleep

four things to know he's in love with you.
1.) he looks at you as if you're the sun- you're the centre of his universe and oh so beautiful.
2.) he will follow you everywhere- you wished he would stay away just this once
3.) he will love you too much to let go- you don't want him to let go.
4.) he will want you to the last thing he sees- you will be, before the water lulls him to sleep

POEMS ABOUT EROS AND CUPID

These are translations of ancient Greek poems about Eros. Eros was the Greek counterpart of the Roman god Cupid. While today we tend to think of Cupid as an angelic cherub shooting arrows and making people fall in love, the ancient Greek and Roman poets often portrayed Cupid/Eros as a troublemaker who was driving them mad with uncontrollable desires.


Sappho, fragment 42
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros harrows my heart:
wilds winds whipping desolate mountains,
uprooting oaks.



Sappho, fragment 130
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros, the limb-shatterer,
rattles me,
an irresistible
constrictor.



Sappho, fragment 54
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Eros
descends from heaven,
discarding his imperial purple mantle.



Preposterous Eros
by Michael R. Burch

“Preposterous Eros” – Patricia Falanga

Preposterous Eros shot me in
the buttocks, with a Devilish grin,
spent all my money in a rush
then left my heart effete pink mush.



Sappho, fragment 22
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

That enticing girl's clinging dresses
leave me trembling, overcome by happiness,
as once, when I saw the Goddess in my prayers
eclipsing Cyprus.



Sappho, fragment 102
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Mother, how can I weave,
so overwhelmed by love?



Sappho, fragment 10
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lust!
I crave!
Take me!


Around the same time Sappho was writing in ******, in nearby Greece, circa 564 B.C., we have another poem about the power of Eros:

Ibykos Fragment 286
translation by Michael R. Burch

Come spring, the grand
apple trees stand
watered by a gushing river
where the maidens’ uncut flowers shiver
and the blossoming grape vine swells
in the gathering shadows.

Unfortunately
for me
Eros never rests
but like a Thracian tempest
ablaze with lightning
emanates from Aphrodite;
the results are frightening―
black,
bleak,
astonishing,
violently jolting me from my soles
to my soul.



I hate Eros! Why does that gargantuan God dart my heart, rather than wild beasts? What can a God think to gain by inflaming a man? What trophies can he hope to win with my head?
―Alcaeus of Messene, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Have mercy, dear Phoebus, drawer of the bow, for were you not also wounded by love’s streaking arrows?
―Claudianus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

In Greek mythology, Cupid shoots Phoebus Apollo to make him fall in love with Daphne, then shoots Daphne with an arrow that prevents her from falling in love with her suitor.



Matchmaker Love, if you can’t set a couple equally aflame, why not ***** out your torch?
―Rufinus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



I have armed myself with wisdom against Love;
he cannot defeat me in single combat.
I, a mere mortal, have withstood a God!
But if he enlists the aid of Bacchus,
what odds do I have against the two of them?
―Rufinus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Love, if you aim your arrows at both of us impartially, you’re a God, but if you favor one over the other, you’re the Devil!
―Rufinus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



Either put an end to lust, Eros, or else insist on reciprocity: abolish desire or heighten it.
―Lucilius or Polemo of Pontus, loose translation by Michael R. Burch



Steady your bow, Cypris, and at your leisure select a likelier target ... for I am too full of arrows to take another wound.
―Archias, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Cypris was another name for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Here the poet may be suggesting, “Like mother, like son.”



Little Love, lay my heart waste;
empty your quiver into me;
leave not an arrow unshot!
Slay me with your cruel shafts,
but when you’d shoot someone else,
you’ll find yourself out of ammo!
―Archias, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



You say I should flee from Love, but it’s hopeless!
How can a man on foot escape from a winged creature with unerring accuracy?
―Archias, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Many centuries later, poets would still be complaining about the overpoweringness of ****** desire, and/or the unfairness of unrequited love, by which they often meant not getting laid!



Spring
by Charles d’Orleans
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
drawn from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab at whatever passes,
so we can only hazard guesses.
But they rear like prancing steeds
raked by brilliant spurs of need,
Young lovers.


Fast-forwarding again, we find the great Scottish poet William Dunbar, who was born around 1460:

Sweet Rose of Virtue
by William Dunbar
translation by Michael R. Burch

Sweet rose of virtue and of gentleness,
delightful lily of youthful wantonness,
richest in bounty and in beauty clear
and in every virtue that is held most dear,
except only that you are merciless.

Into your garden, today, I followed you;
there I saw flowers of freshest hue,
both white and red, delightful to see,
and wholesome herbs, waving resplendently,
yet everywhere, no odor but rue.

I fear that March with his last arctic blast
has slain my fair rose of pallid and gentle cast,
whose piteous death does my heart such pain
that, if I could, I would compose her roots again,
so comforting her bowering leaves have been.

Keywords/Tags: Eros, Cupid, Phoebus Apollo, Cypris, Aphrodite, love, blind love, cute love, love god, love goddess, bow, arrow, arrows, desire, passion, lust, heart