I cast the muse into the sea
to wake her from a peaceful sleep.
This poet’s quill is void of ink;
it needs her words to strike the page.

She’ll fight the waves Poseidon sends
til Sirens drive her back to shore
to sip an oleander brew
and hoist the cup of Socrates.

Bring wolfsbane and a death morel!
Bring nightshade and curare too!
We’ll fatten her with woe and pain!
We’ll ready her for war and hate!

She’ll writhe and quiver, seethe and foam
until she spews her putrid verse
upon the blackened sands of time
from which men’s darkest dreams are built.

And when the gods are satisfied,
when Ares’ sword has slashed and burned,
this poisoned pen will rest at last.
Calliope shall sleep once more.

You who stirred the words into my soul,
Brought them to life, animated them
With allegory and wit.
As if the Nine Muses had sung to my ear,
And Calliope herself had donned me
With the poems she'd once writ.

Or Sappho of ******, among secretive violets,
Absorbed by the lyre, she pens to revive it;
Not the song, or the tune,
But the calm way the song moved
The violets across the field-
This inspiration, she could wield.

Don't you see now, how it's not poetry the poet will choose?
For every poem the poet pens one shall require an equal Muse.

Ma muse, j'ai un tout petit dilemne.
Il est écrit qu'il y a en tout et pour tout neuf muses
Qui ont pour nom par ordre alphabétique
Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe
Melpomène, Polymnie, Terspichore, Thalia et Uranie
Nulle trace d'Aura.

Es-tu vraiment celle que tu prétends être ?
Aimes-tu vraiment le chant de deux voix qui s'alternent ?

Et dans le cas où tu serais bien l'une des neuf
Pourquoi m'as-tu dit que tu étais le huit ?

Si je te pose la question
C'est que j'avais accès à ton site sur muses.com/aura
et j'ai égaré mon mot de passe.
Tu sais, ce mot de passe sécurisé
Qui nous permettait de nous exhiber tranquillement
A l'abri des regards indiscrets.
Je ne me souviens pas s'il y avait douze, quatorze ou vingt caractères.
mais il y en avait plus que huit
Il était fort et aléatoire
Entre majuscules, minuscules, symboles et chiffres
Impossible à craquer
C'était mieux que Fort Knox
Dedans tu avais mis ton âge, ton poids, ta taille, ta pointure
Et les lettres, arbmu et umz
Et un symbole étrange un t avec une virgule souscrite.
J'ai appelé à gauche et à droite les Muses pour retrouver ta trace,
Je t'ai googlisé. En vain.
Es tu vraiment ma Muse ou Furie ?
Par acquit de conscience j 'ai vérifié les noms des Furies
Tisiphone, Mégère et Alecton.
Et j'en reviens à la seule et unique question :
Qui es-tu ? Mon ombre, certes, mais encore ?

J'ai rêvé que tu étais astronaute et moi Martien.
Tu m'avais réduit de la taille d'un minuscule atome
Que tu gardais bien au chaud dans son berceau
Au fond de la planète Utérus.
Et tu m'allaitais d'eau de vie de mirabelle et me berçais
De câlins sucrés. Et je gazouillais
En regardant tes yeux, Aura,
A l'époque rouges jaunes orange bleus
Puis un jour tes yeux sont passé au vert
Et tu m'as sevré sans un mot, sans une parole.
Tu m'as mis hors du miroir
Et tu m'as dit d'aller caresser l'oiseau.

Et depuis j'erre comme un bateau ivre
Mais revenons à nos orphies :
Le mot de passe !!!
Pour simplifier je te propose
Qu'on efface tout ça et qu'on mette à la place
Juste une phrase comme :

Amant alterna camenae (Virg. egl III,59)

Je suis Orphie, fils d'Orphée et d'Eurydice
Petits fils d'Oeagre et de Calliope,
Bercé par les Muses et les Naïades
J'ai hérité de la lyre à sept cordes
D'Apollon et j'en ai rajouté deux
Rien que pour caresser ma Muse
Ma voix est miel
Ma voix est feu
Ma voix est pierre

Elle joue, elle chante, elle danse

Elle s'insinue comme un fleuve secret sous la roche et la fissure
L'attendrit et elle s'élève tel un ballon et flotte dans le vent

Elle dévie le cours des laves en fusion
Et pénètre au coeur du Stromboli intime
De la colère des Muses
Quand elles se font Furies.

Elle dompte les bêtes féroces et charnelles
A distance elle fait fondre
Les résistances et les fantômes

On m'appelle aussi Amore

Les Furies pourront me déchiqueter

Me mettre en lambeaux

Me jeter comme mon père du haut du mont Rhodope

Je chanterai encore du fond des mers

L 'amour de mon éternelle Muse

Ma naïade bien aimée

Nue.

Calliope
has spied in me
a hollow dark and cold.

She gives it free,
that panoply
of new ideas bold.

But as of late
that dinner plate
of musings has been bare.

Could it be
Calliope
Has little left to spare?

© Jason Comeaux 4/12/2019

Jason, leader of the Argonauts
writes in his log, ‘We have come far
& yet have only found
discarded pieces of her garment
floating on the current as if leading
us on to her lavender abyss;
Asclepius, much like Hart Crane
gaily diving off the side of the ship
fishes her sandal from the waters;

Asclepius sniffing the well worn footwear;
his healing eyes ignite,
‘These surely were worn by the Goddess;
Her foot-odor is all over them’,
the divine doctor says
Stroking the abandoned enchanted instep

Heracles wonders if this is a sign
Or if the doctor simply has a shoe fetish;
Tiresias telling the strongman that
Every fetish has its purpose &
this will reveal the direction her steps have
taken & that it was Prometheus himself
Who gave sheer lingerie to women
To catch the scent & hold men spellbound

After some basic Homeric
conversational one-upmanship
& Socratic back-and-forth,
Tiresias succeeds in convincing Heracles
of the rightness of drooling
Dr. Asclepius’s perverted actions;

The Argonauts are destined for success
By decree of Zeus, father of the gods;  
Calliope, a giant who blows the clouds
into shapes & makes the four winds
sing like a boy band; can become
human size whenever she desires
& ****** mortal men w/ her song

I would think right there on the temple floor
on mats softer than any fur,
We are destined to spend 40 nights
as captives of her furious wrestling tiger-women
whose roar is so loud the sound roils
through the vined jungle and across the tops
of the darkest trees and every living
creature goes into a heat and goes to ground
To mate driven lustily insane by
the unearthly screams,
and just then growls rang out


Her blood boiling hot,
No one had ever come so near,
it was as if a fight to the death was on,
but no death seemed clear


Of all the heroes on the Argos
Only one truly worried; Calliope's
own son would have to endure
witnessing yet again his mother
****** his shipmates; the muse
of epic poetry inspiring love visions
in their heads, meaning Orpheus,
greatest poet & musician
of the ancient world would have to yet
again wield the eternally
perfectly tuned lyre given him
by his muse-mother's master,
sun god Apollo for just this cause;

Another painful reminder that his mother
was a **** who molested him
when he was but a singing child;
she had taught him the ways
of poetry & music but
at the price of his sympathy & as if
embracing the death of love, it would
be Orpheus' task to yet
again bewitch his own mother

Intrigued, Calliope bursting mortal
chains asunder grows into who knows how tall
Only to dissolve from sight
into a swarm of sea creatures;
Calliope, beloved mother of Orpheus
casting bones as the ship goes over the edge of the world;

As if from two separate points of view
the hero embarks on his Quest for the majestic crone,
Only to find his ship navigating through
Amazon territory (so Freudian, so Jungian)
where he searches for the temple of the mythic mystic female;

Every legendary goddess has heard of him
From still-more ancient legends
known only to them; the hero whose name
is as yet unknown goes to the prow of his ship,
at long last seeing her white mountains
& following her thunder

By Medusa & Johnny Noir