"antioch" poems
I have almost been reduced to a homeless pauper.
This fatal city, Antioch,
has consumed all my money;
this fatal city with its expensive life.
But I am young and in excellent health.
My command of Greek is superb
(I know all there is about Aristotle, Plato;
orators, poets, you name it.)
I have an idea of military affairs,
and have friends among the mercenary chiefs.
I am on the inside of administration as well.
Last year I spent six months in Alexandria;
I have some knowledge (and this is useful) of affairs there:
intentions of the Malefactor, and villainies, et cetera.
Therefore I believe that I am fully
qualified to serve this country,
my beloved homeland Syria.
In whatever capacity they place me I shall strive
to be useful to the country. This is my intent.
Then again, if they thwart me with their methods --
we know those able people: need we talk about it now?
if they thwart me, I am not to blame.
First, I shall apply to Zabinas,
and if this ***** does not appreciate me,
I shall go to his rival Grypos.
And if this idiot does not hire me,
I shall go straight to Hyrcanos.
One of the three will want me however.
And my conscience is not troubled
about not worrying about my choice.
All three harm Syria equally.
But, a ruined man, why is it my fault.
Wretched man, I am trying to make ends meet.
The almighty gods should have provided
and created a fourth, good man.
Gladly would I have joined him.
2.2k
In a hollow off the main road
sits a village that time forgot
Where things flow, a little slow
and peace of mind need not be bought
The main street beckons all to see
how life ebbed and flowed in the past
Where smiles abound, the happy sound
of a life not metered nor fast
There you'll find the town Silversmith
making jewelry in a forge
The coffeehouse, echos of Strauss
a trodden path out to the gorge
It is home to the Glen Helen
part of a thousand acre woods
Steering the helm, coin of the realm
are the fruits of the craftsman's goods
There by the Antioch College
we spent a good deal of our youth
Climbing the trees, skinning our knees
among beauty we knew as truth
You might just see children playing
Hide and Seek throughout the street
Where "all yee all yee in come free"
sings of a melody so sweet
So should you find that your bones ache
from the pains of life you endure
Take a stroll, over the knoll
to the little town with the cure
Tate
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 3:17 PM UTC
Inside us all, we wish for The One that we have
Ideas of falling endlessly down a blue tinted sky with. In a
Myriad of a countless mind, perfection lies dormant inside.
Vile…the horrors of loneliness in time, and
All lands and waters cannot hold its meaning.
And if meandering glances could speak,
Of Antioch and withered Troy,
My sweet, fabled Helen would be my goddess.
The love I killed without realization…
Remaining requiem lead to devastation,
I solemnly ridicule myself over again,
And riposte, is still there paradise in Eden?
Incredulous, it happens that I know life will not
Pass by my eyes, Sirens will not command their rot,
I live now until entombed, the morgue has never scared me,
But bereft of her, I am a hollow shell that suffers cruelly.
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 9:17 PM UTC
I hung a crusader coin
around my neck
in a custom
silver setting.
Thirteen hundred years
have passed
from Antioch to here.
The head of
the helmeted
mailed- knight is
in perfect relief,
the Celtic-cross intact.
It has no special powers,
it's just a memory
of religious-brutality,
now hanging silent.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 10:50 PM UTC
Lover and lover,
Going to sleep.
Both dreamed of peace,
One dream achieved it.
One counted time,
The other drowned in lemon juice.
One dream found war,
The other built castles.
Both woke up,
Neither knew.
Lover and lover,
Going to travel,
Both went to Antioch,
Neither were happy.
One dreamed of Spain,
The other of lilacs.
One dreamed of ******
The other of balloons.
One traveled lightly,
The other was untended.
One saw paradise,
The other lost their eyes.
But still neither saw.
Lover and lover,
daydreaming,
One longed for poetry,
The other for seduction.
One desired reverie,
The other was solely cavalier.
One dreamed of excusing themselves from the booth,
The other welcomed the operating table.
The surgery never happened.
Lover and lover,
Laying down for rest.
One thinks of killing Stalin,
The other calls from a phone booth to warn him.
One takes a trip through the minds of the gods,
The other hikes the Appalachian.
One desires to **** all evil,
The other wishes to turn it into goodness.
One saw carnivals,
The other saw forests.
One saw dirt,
The other greeted a Frenchman.
One made tea for the poor,
The other recorded a folk album.
One planted a flower in a shoe,
The other visited Greece.
One visited a watchmaker,
The other cast lots for clothes.
One put out a cigarette on the ground,
The other buys sunglasses on the street.
One sailed into Norway,
The other read from the bible.
Lover and lover: Alone in a cage.
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 11:50 AM UTC
I carry an antique
crusader coin
in my pocket.
I keep it there
to remind me
about hardship,
religious
military campaigns
& money.
My coin is from Antioch
& when I read about
what happened there,
I wonder if God
does exist
or if
that bloody-violence
was just about the coin.
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC
Trying to heal a broken spirit
Damaged by loss
and in search of purpose.
Echoing richness in
Peripheral thoughts.
Crying for atonement in
each anguished breath .
Knowing this is our precious life
Even if any soft places
remain well hidden .
Fleeing outside to disappear
into the seven streets of Antioch
Asking for a God to save me
Cutting the fool , with prayer.
Losing the trust of the world
As bells rattle the belfries.
Ideals were put to the torch
Sequoit creek smelled
Rich and dark
With sweet sentimentality
Creative vibrancy and
My loves lost laughter .
Nothing happens that has no meaning
All of our experiences connect
Our lives
Through the open window of time
Into the nuisances that move the tides , paint the terra cotta steps with snow and
steal the deserts wind .
I make an incantation
for mercy
Un reconciled to suffering
Waiting to be cleansed of the unknowable .
The uncaring and indifferent
Stars watch from above .
Like fate .
In a mysterious biblical betrayal
Laughter fled and
Became a spider
Lost in the snow .
Mar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018 at 10:42 PM UTC
The first place people were
Ever called Christians but
That Antioch was in Syria
My Antioch was in Yellow
Springs Ohio. It was founded
By Horace Mann who has
Been given the title Father of
American publiceducation. He is
Best known to many for saying
"Be ashamed
To die until you have won
Some victory for humanity"
It does seem to me that if
shame alone could keep one
From dying it would be highly
Prized and nobody would have
To die any more so that they we
As allll probably can truthfully
Summon up an adequate supply
of the product in our biography
But come to think of it I believe
Horace Mann was a Christian
Of some type and He probably
Knew it-was way to keep us alive
In default of the great act which
May prove to be beyond our
Capacities, a perverse blessing
You might say but Antioch is a
Special place-A few years ago
It got resurrected and who can
Say that Horace Mann and may-
Be even shame had no part. Any-
Way I can claim it as my alma
Mater, a still living place and
I did meet Billy Graham there
Well actually it was on an ex-
cursion to Indiana but that is
Another story I'll leave for later.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 1:20 PM UTC
I can hear myself think!
Why this morning
As clear as the cold I heard it
As the almost music of a sigh
Convulsed me in its clasp.
I was dreaming of a city
An immaculate city
Passed before my eyes.
Antioch, or were you Ephesus?
A procession of torches
Barely lit you. Immovable sands;
An almighty blank page
Spoke of an absence of belief
And were you not better for it?
O Edith do always look back.
Awake!
We belong to grime
The cities we dream are too clean
Other dreams, of other times.
They were just as ******
For we are ******
Our hearts gasping through pavements,
Tongues tasting each other in the air.
But I dreamt of pewter skies
Of grounded clouds
And woke up choking
On a liniment of dust.
Mar 10, 2017
Mar 10, 2017 at 2:29 PM UTC
In a tragic of despair
that she could espy of something unseen
but what I know now in the nowhereness of triumph is the oblivion that’s long forsaken . My mother, the earth , has loved the truth of my words . My mother of memories, where my intricate roots embedded in her many wombs , with her,
my mother who is the mind to my soul, with her crystal teeth, puncturing the veins of my spirit, I am uncured from the illness of illusion.
with the love that is filled with the sickness of the cerebral ;
that every nerves, they only now yearn to forget, to erase, to delete,
what should never end , will ;
of those forward to ,
is like catching light,
my mother's arms, wrapping my dead body,
for that great freedom that ought demands
but now encountered swords that I see no farther onward impulse stirr'd,
from every dew-drop in this sequestered heart.
it inculpates the soul’s wigwam,
to love , that is unpure
powered of perception ;
for me , do so as what say I
the abyss will never know -- without noise, bad field of unfamiliarity, to create the creation of layers, layers of spectre, phantasm, apparition;
I exorcise & exterminate this being of nothingness, name that is uncelebrated ; & be merrily skipping in their long farewell,
you gave your face , I gave mine
& there shall be a bow of
hypothesis, musings, mirage
I inject, dementia
trying responsibly to digest over
my own ignis fatuus
/
there will be hanging gardens
the commotion of untendered bones
down beneath your cloaks,
knowing sympathy, to bully an empathy
death come, came & in repeat
through the lullaby of Antioch,
sorrow wholly unexpected, in scarcely discernable; but far descried
black winged demon vanished through the chested barrier of feelings, when justice lynchings in the centre of my core,
twixt vows, where from descended upon myself alone, indecent, in deep scrutiny —
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 10:13 AM UTC
the momentum of revealing the weapon
was slowed
at the knock heard from the door
was slowed
as antioch was conjured
by your voice
as you entered the room deliberately
was slowed
to a stop
because you appeared
and the would-be thief fled
c. 2023 Roberta Compton Rainwater
Dec 25, 2023
Dec 25, 2023 at 3:32 PM UTC
Antioch
The place where my great battle with faith was first named Christian.
Am I?
Aren't I?
A label I so desperately need to put my wandering mind at ease
I can say "Christian! That is what I am! This is what I believe"
But for me, faith is not that easy
Antioch
Where it became a club
You're in or you're out
Antioch
A joyous event for those there
Their truth recognsied
At last
For them, God's promises being fulfilled
The day that the small Jewish sub-sect became...
Christian.
The day one more barrier was erected on this insignificant man's long and arduous journey of faith
It's a journey that's not over
Not even close
Some days bounding, overjoyed, into the loving arms of God
Some days a single seed amongst the thorns
And in spite of all this
Whether I like it or not
I know That I am the lost sheep
And I know
That the shepherd is looking for me
And I know that with man this is impossible
And that with God all things are possible
And I know
That the Lord is calling me home
Whether I like it or not
Sep 1, 2020
Sep 1, 2020 at 8:53 AM UTC