This jar is different – each shard and crack tells the story of me.
I slowly piece myself together
Carefully choosing each fragment
Each break
That highlights what I have experienced and endured
Each fragile piece reminds me
That the greatest beauty is not in the unbroken
But in the mended
This is my new jar
My restored essence
In which light flows and reflects all
That I have become.

I don't want to
forget any fragment
of your memory
Even when
I don't love you anymore.
I want it to stay as
A wish,
I wanted to be my destiny.
A happiness,
Once I Cherished.
A Pain,
That I overcome,
A path of blighting,
I should never walk in.

Shes breaking inside,
Leaving behind shattered fragments of who she used to be.
Hes lost but following,
A trail of something deep with no end that he can see.
Hes closing in on her,
As is her fear.
But she lead him to a destination,
Without knowing it is here.
And now he has arrived,
With the piece
That will transform them
Into a masterpiece.

The best pain of today
Is the hope you had yesterday,
Loosing to the regrets
of what is passed;

Now, pick up,
Pick up,
Pick up the shards

And wound yourself;
Wound yourself hard

The aquarium is a jar
that crams the bottomless sea,
within a glass bottle.
Like the pool of liquid in my palms
that reflects the starry sky above,
it is a fragment
of what cannot be fractured.

Ibykos Fragment 286, circa 564 BCE
loose translation/interpretation 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.



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.

Keywords/Tags: Ibykos, fragment, translation, Eros, Aphrodite, Thracian, tempest, lightning, jolt, soul, spring, apple, trees, river, flowers, grape, vine, shadows

Ibykos Fragment 286, circa 564 BCE
loose translation/interpretation 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.

Keywords/Tags: Ibykos, fragment, translation, Eros, Aphrodite, Thracian, tempest, lightning, jolt, soul, spring, apple, trees, river, flowers, grape, vine, shadows



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.

gathered the storms,
and gathered the winds
of undying suffering.

sufferings of pleasure,
psychedelics of exalted warmth
stalked and stumbled
around the planetary man;
the dying and the undying
the man and the un-man

       both together excited to the darkest night.

who lost is unknown to me;
the wall blears the boundary.

unfixed the shape,
darkness deepens the dancing dolphins;
sanity swirls,
words skip the stray lips
as if forgotten bones collapse and crumble.

seaming with flabby fragments
the mouth of Thermopylae.
drawing a stick out of spillikins.

       there remains the tongue-tied taciturn;
       as if dead and done to bones.