You reached out to me
When I thought I was falling

You held me
When I felt broken

You loved me
When I didn't love myself

I thought you'd love me through it all
But you saw the cracks and screamed

Left me shackled
Like Andromeda
And now all I want is to feel the power
That Circe felt when she turned men into what they truly were...
Animals

Oh Aegaeon, oh Aegaeon
God of thundering seas, my true bliss
I long to be drowned by your currents at dawn

A lover of the tide almost gone
Since Emathia, your unknown mistress
Oh Aegaeon, oh Aegaeon

Zeus strikes upon me, a royal thief
lighting my sails, where art thou? Must resist
I long to be drowned by your currents at dawn

My bones creak, aching for relief
My grave shall be your floor, my home further than this
Oh Aegaeon, oh Aegaeon

The salt of your sea I’m drawn
The oceanic abyss
I long to be drowned by your currents at dawn

I lack brawn
Spoken by men in hiss
Oh Aegaeon, oh Aegaeon
I long to be drowned by your currents at dawn

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.

Once again
I am captured
Struck by the rose,
enraptured by the thorn.

I see your reflection in
ivory paper,
and the crown of your sweet head
like a blanket of fallen snow.

Does it matter, I wonder,
if you were truly alive or truly living?
For in these pages I can see your image
as truly as if it were a branding in my head.

The gentle ***** of your shoulders,
the dark and twisted curls-
Now see, you begin to see her too-
the small & delicate hands,
with crooked ring fingers,
the intuitive eyes.

And perhaps if I call Aphrodite,
down from the sea foam
and have her fair lips kiss these words,
I can have you materialize in my breath
and echo into my arms,
a statue no more.

Or perhaps I will lie a fool
my thumbs and forefingers obscured by ink
and your skin that of clay
detached and resolute.

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.