poppies and chamomile bloomed roads,
covered in warm dust... such a pity
that these are the only ones left
to be pointing towards the eternal city,

where marble and stone still stand
on places gods used to walk bare-footed,
where belief was more than just demand,
until cassocks have had ancient ways sooted.

A place where manner was turned into art
And polymaths emerged from genius creation,
where Latin blood spills from heart to mart
In a continuous state of vibrant elation.

where green is the colour of oils and lust
and the sun can burn to a lemon flavour,
and the sand on the front of the boot is black
and the wine is more than a bitter-sweet savour...

There, where a walk through square paved markets
is bursting with hand-made stories,
where scratching through history's pride
would always end in timeless glory...

Atlas makes me wonder sometimes about what true struggle is. A never ending hell, carrying the world and the sky apart, so two ancient lovers never again experience the joy of a child who could be their advocate. They bore thousands just to shed their blight upon this world and purge all the divergent paths. Should I release  Atlas from his ******* and tell the two ancient lovers to love again so that the paths between us never again diverge? Or are you terrified in the idea of a path that converges like I am? I know Atlas would be more that joyful to be relieved, but what catastrophe would come from Gaia and Uranus giving birth to their next harbinger of death? This fear is so dumbfounding  and beyond my reasoning. I suppose, my love, that it's because we have no idea where our paths lead. But in the end, words are like the paths we take, ever flowing from the distance we make them out to be. So let's see where these paths lead so we will one day be able to converge at last without the fears of a lonely man. Atlas, begone! We've made our decision. Good day! And goodmorning my love. Let's now have the greatest talk about nothing at all ever and make those paths larger than ever thought to be.

Satietatem potare dulci nectare tua desiderium ego
Ad nos transeat, usque mane
Nostra corpora convol
Corpora nostra lusibus
Sol ortus, Sitis commoratur

Amorem vivere devora tua suavita
Vitae caelestis
Nostra ad et aut angelus diaboli
Quod viget, vitae singulis nobis,
Retorta peccatorum gaudium de salute nos

Corpora *** carnis luxuriam
Tenebrae concupiscentiis saginatus
Dolorem voluptatem servus
Impium impium fames
Sanctus diversitas peccatorum

Ita et nos, in manus nostras et amore peccatorum nos
Nos ad unum corpus est cor

Translation Latin to English

I drink my fill of sweet nectar of your desire
To pass to us until morning
Our bodies roll
Our bodies dance
The sun rises, thirst lingers

Love, live, eat your sweetness
heavenly life
Our call to the devil or an angel
That is active, the life of each of us,
Twisted sins, the joy of our salvation

Bodies with carnal lust
Dark desires fed
Pain and pleasure slave
wicked, wicked hunger
Holy diversity of sins

Even so we, in our hands, and the love of our sins
We are one body and heart

~Wes Noneya

My Latin isn't the best but I gave it a go. I like both versions.

The bodies of paradise
are the fledglings of humanity--
little chicks
that peeped for love
and instead found
what we attempt to purge.

Which is reality
instead warping
and mourning
the placate scene
into what our creation
has never meant to be.

I've become fond of
literature and statutes
that line a facetious library.  

One which mangles
others from stepping inside
yet holds the truest heart.

My finest lines
are not those spoken
but those read
from paper or stone,

because
it is only
to those un-living
the crēvit are not divined
and which Veritas,
can come find
*Amor est vitae.

As the water birds lifted from the morning tide,
I found myself being lifted from an unconscious
state to the dictionary by four unfamiliar syllables

like the many poets before me, searching for
the meaning of nomenclature. Interestingly enough,
it could have been me on the other side of a poem

that I would come back to after sundown: an old,
scientific word who first appeared in 1610,
whose roots grew, naturally, like the hidden

interests of a loved one, from the Latin
nomenclatura (the assigning of names).

But instead, I ended up on this side of the poem,
sitting before an empty screen and a dictionary
in a Yankees ball cap and denim t-shirt, slowly

piecing together a poem about a 17th century novel
while trying to include the sudden interest of my
loved one: French parenting literature on healthy

eating, all while slowly tying the loose ends
of a poem without meaning together.

at non effugies meos iambos

If I were to wipe away the constellations from the sky,
You alone would shine,
There in that,
Devoid of all the light,
Which too often clutters
Your radiance and your mind.

And lightheartedly I say this,
While scrawling desires on yellowing pages,
Which I hand out at random
(et ad absurdum).
And throwing little glances,
Lost in endless distance
Or translation.

There is a grand complexity to sight and sound
Which I with my inherent limitations
Fail to grasp.
Depictions wrought by my hands
Could never do the forms of these things
Proper justice.
And instead of facsimile
They become ruined.

And so I blur the lines
Between the real and perceived
As done with paltry sketches,
When the artist has no more good to do,
And so becomes not a bearer of beauty
But a butcher.

I write dis
Jointed poesy
With you in mind.  
(No better subject could I find.)

And fill the lines,
And fatten the meter out
With syllables and sibyls
With diacritical marks and dieresis
And critical remarks
By means of
Playing knucklebones with words.  

But I’m no Anacreon,
Or Tibullus,
Or Sappho.
And though I may be just a boy reading Catullus,
Anachronistically,
My poems are just as good
Had I been
A wordsmith
Like Wordsworth.
(at non effugies meos iambos)

after the author’s death
bury his work with his last breath*

© Matthew Harlovic