The God of War sat upon his throne
In a wing of the Olympus palace
Under the sun his bloodied-eyes shone
Setting atremble his servants, Discord and Malice.

The wars below, as he viewed
Were hard fought and stalemates, it seemed
He sighed and spat, quite bemused
Why could no winner be deemed?

His bed of flesh from enemies gone
He rested within its dermal folds
The howl of the dying, singing its song
As Apollo’s chariot grew far and cold.

The roaring clamor of vicious scandal
Woke him from a bloodlight dream
And he looked below at victim and vandal
Appalled at the disastrous scene.

And Now, with Eos rise to morn
As the dew mixed with blood and sweat
Discord arrived to comfort her lord
Her company he did not regret.

“You have seen my battles
Look now below and explain
Mankind has become brainless as cattle
Look how they are, vile and maimed,”

“Milord, I see,” she spoke with grace
And her eyes did glint with fire
“Perhaps if you showed another face
The battle would be what you desire.”

And though her words were softly spoken
The answer they did present
And Great God Mars felt, at once, heartbroken
A message had to be sent.

Mercury, the winged messenger
With winged sandals and helmet
Arrived to be the harbinger
And was told to fly beyond the sunset.

“Beyond the sun and stars
There is a palace where a woman sits
Tell her that our Lord, God Mars
Invites her here, if she permits.”

Discord and Malice saw him off
And sweet Hermes, how he did fly
For the sound of war was not far-off
And nightly he heard people die.

The palace beyond the heavenly sky
Was one of silky web and silver
And within its courtyards did lie
A splendid woman that made him quiver.

This woman was Lady Nike
The very Goddess of Victory
Sister to Strength, Force and Rivalry
Who had fought the Titans in day old Glory.

The fair-ankled Nike heard the message
And smiled a fair, rosey smile
“Tell your lord that if he has the courage
to come and woo me here in my exile.”

When Ares heard this, he maddened with rage
and tore through Olympus with sword
and threw rocks down on the world stage
and sent hiding the servants, Malice and Discord.

Soon after saw Mars chariot race
Flying twice the pace of the sun
passing Mycenae and Athens face
to where the wooing would be done.

Aphrodite flew at his side
“God of War you’ll need  Beauty to aid
in wooing the Victory that hides away.”
The God of War grew weary and sore
and by the time he arrived at Nike’s door
his mood had taken a turn for the worse
and he muttered colorful curse.

Lady Nike was patiently waiting
For Victory is always calm
Her soft white dress billowing, baiting
An almond blossom in her palm.

At first Ares was rough and coarse
And Aphrodite grew red in the face
Seizing the reins, she stole his horse
While Nike kept him engaged.

The Goddess of Victory never made answer
Her voice quietly humming to the bloom
And though Ares voice cut like a cleaver
She paid it no heed, fearing no doom.

Ares grew tired and finally rested
Beneath her feet as she sat on the wall
Victory obviously had him bested
This had been a fruitless call.

Finally, Nike climbed down to join him
Her dark hair loosed from its plates
And in the dawns coming, the darkness dimmed
And she motioned beyond her gates.

The battle below was louder still here
And Nike gave him a glance and frowned
“Every night I listen and shed my tears
for no victory can be achieved on this ground.”

At hearing her voice and seeing some hope
Ares let a rough smile play on his lips
Finally she was going to put things in scope
But rather, she moved and gave him a kiss.

“Lie with me and perhaps...”and silence then
Ares agreed and the two made a retreat
And there, in her palace, deep within
Blazed a terrible and passionate heat.

When Ares awoke in the middle of the next day
He found Nike gone from her home
Cold and angry he rose, intent to be on his way
but Goddess Aphrodite had left him stranded, alone.

But then he heard the softest sigh
the sound of a babies voice
and stealing to the sea, there Nike lie
holding the prize of his choice.

Within her arms was the smallest of creations
A child so pale, so weak it might barely survive
But there was Nike, crowning it with starry carnations
Sure, it seemed, that the babe would stay alive.

“This is my daughter and yours”
said Nike of this newborn miracle
And slowly stepped forward the God Mars
And took the child, his rough hands careful.

“Her name is Ireni, Goddess of Peace
she will bring calm to the wars below
and be the most coveted in all of Greece
hair dark eyes brilliant, skin as snow.”

Nike smiled her wise smile and stood
Holding Ireni as gentle and kind as the child
A silence spread under evenings hood
the ****** scene turned serene and mild.

And though Victory was not claimed
The battles ended for the stress and fear
And from nights cloak, Ireni’s tears rained
wiping the blood and sweat and violence clear.

And peace remained upon the land
Until the great War of Troy
When Aphrodite and Zeus would play their hand
With fair Helen their devious ploy....

drowned the Earth suddenly.

  underneath honest light,
                                  all
   submerged. this cataract of feeling —
waters pursue beginnings. cradling them
to unknown ends, washed by the shore.
        gluttonously the night swallowed
all — parliament of birds warble no longer.
             midnight, the   Moon
claws the supple skin of organized stone
  displaced
               where all the edges bloom
forth torrid froth of dappled light which kills no less than a brief life of matchflame. tenuous spar of wind on
the unserious twilight; bulge of death
in the stream — a body haul, rafting
  in compost; stench of all topple like
resins held loose in vats. rat **** becomes
           as inviting as moulding bread;
tantric music for no instrument, hoarse
cries unbeheld —

            until the flesh no longer flounders
pressed against sleep-shaped youngness
hewn lissome in the hours of no succor,

       modeling silence in the thrill of
this enthusiastic space,
           hands scouring muddied
  obscure, atremble,
      shadowless hours fill stomachs with
the plump word of rescue yet none
  of these fingers unwished the
ingenuity of dull gods — this twilight
  nor twinight could ever grive
in forethought, striking bells to signal birds
         to arrive again so we could feast
in  silver  fish, with bare hands scaled to callouses,
    
      looking at it twice-over, this battered yolk
of whiteness, with deeds of the viridian
   now atrill in new fragile woodworks

       lurching and
         ameliorating as we all
    stutter and sing
       haunts dabbing open
  lips of small wounds that
   wish to shut quietly,   almost
every threat of gray     or pummel of
   wind startles the flyblown ornate,
  
   hurrying us back to cornerless homes
where all photographs washed away,
    very few hang
               swayed by verdure
  of the gradual throne of sea
        curving perpetually the several stars
we have ignored for a while,
     where everything quite begins
    again to enthrall with a melodic
  leitmotif of the most tender of
       instances loose
            in mouths
                 and in endless recall
                  
                                               breathless—

A very firm intention
To tell it as it is
Has the audience attention
On its toes and all afizz,
Though channelled to the circumspect,
With a patterned thought awry
It chaotically cascades
Across the prism of the eye.

It chaotically discharges
In a scattergun array
Of verbal innuendoes
Through a thin, saliva spray,
And all the passion spent in telling,
All the effort of the tale,
Sends a barrage of confusion
To occipital portrayal.

Where the tiny bones of balance
All atremble with the sound
Have discharged interpretation
Through a penny to a pound.
There’s a lost extrapolation,
There’s a blank look on the face
Where the balance of exchange
Has frittered nimbly from this place.

A calmness in both parties
As a sad pretence prevails,
Where communication nexus
Is ignored to save the whales.

Marshalg
Incommunicado
30 May 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie

I have waited in certain landlocked towns,
Near and far, and far from here.
And I have sailed and been in low ports found,
Their inlets clad in salted air.
And I have dreamed on oft spoken of starry nights and on largely unspoken starless nights,
Of select places with opportune and tactless new found faces.
And I have lain out restless and uncomfortably awake,
Hearing human voices shriek and drown,
In salt clad harbor towns,
And heard those specific siren calls of those particular siren girls,
In those inlets, salt clad by the sea.
And still awake I have heard, in those waiting-space landlocked towns,
Curiously, those curious sounds,
Of only human and yet inhumane calls.
Dressed in that specific gauze of an agony-tone,
For that specific landlocked home,
Where drinkers go,
That drunkard’s throne,
And been sullen at that once and forever shoreless drone.
And I have also been, you see, in places left unknown.
And in a daydream I would hear and be heard by almost gasping voices,
From waking and still somehow sleeping and unbelieving men.
Grasping out onto air that has been made thin and further,
Been gasping.
Searching for woefully inaccurate words,
With a woefully inarticulate tongue,
And I have danced and been set atremble by the timbre of your breathe
And then enamored by the resonance of your gasp,
And I have gasped with a tongue set dancing behind lips all aflutter.
In those unutterable places with specifically unknown locations,
I have listened,
Through rock and metal,
Between those landlocked towns and those salt clad harbors,
For the full sound escaped from your trembled lips.
And I have listened, through daydreaming mist veils,
And through known and unknown places,
For that voice that speaks through space and time and rock and metal,
And I have only heard that curious sound of human and inhuman calls,
And I have heard those particular siren calls of those specific siren girls,
And that cry of human voices that shriek and drown.

​Anger, the seductress
Lips as red as sin
A swirl of flames fall to her shoulders
In curls of scarlet ribbons

Envy, with her scowls
And eyes of darkest green
Insecure in her olive skin
Ever the angsty teen

Fear, the wallflower
Mousy and so pale
Delicate hands atremble
Half-hidden under her veil.

Joy, her golden locks,
Dripping into her eyes
A daisy twirling in the meadow
Full of sunshine and surprise.

Melancholy, with her lovers
Countless as the stars
An enchantress leaving behind her
A trail of broken hearts.

I fell in love with a frog,
who was sitting alone on the banks of the Nile,
mooning over the premature decease of his beautiful wife.

He was sobbing his heart out,
his lips convulsed with woe, dripping emotion,
his chin atremble, the words buried in a raven black but deafening silence.

I instantly knew he was the find of my ultimate search for love.
A bathos unknown to those seeking earthly pleasures,
a poignancy knocking vulgarity off its temporal pedestal.

My dear love, dearest of all other loves,
my love for this frog, please become a wreath
a halo, a redemptive power to soothe all pain

i have already something
  new and sublime to say
  about love.
as two people on the bench
   where the birds are
unashamedly perching right by,
  pecking on the cheek of the world
soon enough now, the hand of
   which mad drivel shall tear
   this photograph in two
  and with a hand on the knee
   as a gentle stamp to
  a reaching-for-and-out epistle,
  we are far away,

and love is as sad as the
   flower that has grown
weary of waiting for the sun
   to fulminate altogether with
    its eyes staring in the
   veranda of hope wide-awake.
  and love is as short as the
   sudden jolt of bones, atremble,
  as though you have fallen
    completely into,
   but have only fallen out,
  partially, one foot first
    out the yawning door
  and into the heavy premises
of a heart's trying forgetfulness.
  to have heard once, the call
   of a tame voice through
   the wild hand of trouble's immensity, and to have held it
   once so shortly bold thereafter,
  with leonine eyes i see only
  a small distance i cannot seal
    with one kiss. i need a hundred more of you and a thousand more of this before i can fill your nebulosity with a million star-like
   kisses traced only by the
   white hand of time that continues to punctuate our
   sentences right even before
   our lips quiver to speak them
  softly like how i first sank
  in you and you in me, a flotsam
   of memories.

i have something new to show
   about love with mine eye's
  unresting shutters capture
moments held loose like a mother's
   frail child,
this photograph with your hand
   on my knee,
  cleaved into worlds from the
  silence of our eyes and
  only longing
     speaks so much the straightforward,
     we are far away.

rose alone, cannot grow.
my hand on your hand,
the twilight of this
inner whirlwind.
palm brushing off the dust
of a dream,
your tear on my cheek
slenderly needing all of my rivers,
is your reflection,
my tender night,
      rose alone cannot grow.

i watch the tiny hands of rain
fritter back to your breast.
i witness everything seek its
asylum, in your arms, where
no love breaks, only sings,
laughs atremble,
  and i see all the roses, alone yet together
in all-consuming silence, needing
  your transmissible voice to
make resonant, the day or
    the bend on our roads,
like saltwater, like complaisant
  air meaning only one word
through all the roses that
   spring in the field
of the ephemera: your
too sudden image claiming
no sound yet all of my language.

I.

All atremble
Listen to each falling log
The harpist trills string vibration 

Of the winds and leaves
Of a gown unlike all others
Sing, a song of autumn.

Melodic vase dripping
It’s time to reunion
departure or Farewell?

Vivid brightness against sorrow
Heated summers tuned
All darkness


II.

Possess our being: wrath, 
Uncertain, fear, quivering tense,
illusory victories.

Of the lunar and roundness fairy
Of the sun in his polar hades
Dance, the last movement of rhythm

Those black swan whirl, flat rocks.
Hidden to a blue coffin, sing and dance.
until next, winter solstice.

23/09/2020