"invidia" poems
Luxuria (Lust)
Asmodeus demon of lust
carnal manipulator
****** captor
Castitas (Chastity)
Embracing virtue
honorable wholesomeness
not through one’s weakness
Gula (Gluttony)
The egocentricity
with which the Lord of the flies
upon us relies
Temperantia (Temperance)
practicing restraint
prudence to judge with regard
remaining on guard
Avaritia (Greed)
The Mammon demon
controlling the warmonger
with vows of power.
Caritas (Charity)
Crave unselfishness
give unreserved empathy
love and sympathy
Acedia (Sloth)
Deny grace and God
so evil shall become fact
when we fail to act
Industria (Diligence)
Fortitude is a must
persistence in conviction
zealous for passion
Ira (Wrath)
In its purest form
presents violence and hate
Satan’s fate
Patientia (Patience)
mercy to haters
receiving the grace to forgive
rewards are massive
Superbia (Pride)
Lucifer’s downfall
for excessive vanity
destroys humility
Humanitas (Kindness)
Sympathy without bias
belief without bitterness
inspire kindness
Invidia (Envy)
resentful passion
an insatiable desire
potent cause of dire
Humilitas (Humility)
think of yourself less
and not think less of yourself
don’t exalt oneself
Apr 6, 2013
Apr 6, 2013 at 3:36 AM UTC
*I could compare envy to jealousy
quite easily
but that would be a disservice
to envy
Not to mention a disservice to jealousy.
Jealousy and envy are two
distinct emotions
And two distinct sins but
Envy is both malign and benign.
Envy that most unhappy of the sins.
And, unhappy I was watching you with her.
Envious of her, because she got to touch you
Kiss you, need you, love you.
I wished misfortune on you every time
I saw your joy in each other.
I coveted you.
I scarcely thought of anyone else.
My unhappiness, envy, made me send ill will
your way. Intensely petty thoughts of ill.
So much it made me unhappy, and yet mattered nil.
I'd rendered and reduced you to a possession
MINE.
Why her? Was I not merry and pretty enough?
I desired you above all
yet I was the one to fall from grace.
I turned inward, into a covetous envious hag.
I wanted to deprive you of her
for you to see only me, irony.
In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious
is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire
because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low.
The only one brought low was me.
I gained no pleasure*
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 3:10 PM UTC
VI
Giovane piano, e semplicetto amante
Poi che fuggir me stesso in dubbio sono,
Madonna a voi del mio cuor l’humil dono
Faro divoto; io certo a prove tante
L’hebbi fedele, intrepido, costante,
De pensieri leggiadro, accorto, e buono;
Quando rugge il gran mondo, e scocca il tuono,
S ‘arma di se, e d’ intero diamante,
Tanto del forse, e d’ invidia sicuro,
Di timori, e speranze al popol use
Quanto d’ingegno, e d’ alto valor vago,
E di cetra sonora, e delle muse:
Sol troverete in tal parte men duro
Ove amor mise l ‘insanabil ago.
2k
Uno sguardo ,due anime perdute ,
Un solo attimo per riportarle a galla !
Gli occhi di lei…
Gli occhi di lui …
Una sola anima ormai !
Lui, forte creatura leggendaria dal spasimato passato
si sente fragile e impotente come mai prima.
Le lacrime di lei colpiscono più di mille *****
e il sorriso …oh! Il sorriso , non li dà gioia…no,
perché è il sorriso di lei la ragione della tua esistenza ,
non più la Terra a tenerlo fermo ,ma l’esistenza di lei.
Lo sguardo di lui che colpisce gli occhi di lei fa invidia anche al sole:
dolce, sereno, colmo di un eterno e sconfinato amore
che gli fa perdere il senso della vita e della persona,
quel amore che è l’unica cosa a poterlo salvare
dal suo lurido destino e strapparlo dalle grinfie della solitudine!
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 6:34 AM UTC
The god from the past came stalking,
Came clambering over the hill,
He’d woken first thing in the morning
With a hangover, fit to chill,
Those Roman debauches with grapes and wine,
The reds and the whites of the Tuscan kind,
The fruit of an overburdened vine,
Were sapping his energy still.
He’d rubbed at his eyes in the dawning,
And wondered where everyone went,
For nothing remained of the Roman baths
Not even a soldier’s tent,
And where was the maiden he’d last embraced
The sweet Lucina, so fair of face,
Whose long held virtue was laid to waste
When the force of his love was spent.
Invidia’s green and brooding eyes
Had watched as he laid her down,
Had mixed her potions to match his lies
As they struggled, there on the ground.
She thought, ‘No god should be so remiss
As to offer a rival a tainted kiss,
From now, I’ll act as his Nemesis,
He’ll sleep while the world turns round.
She poured him a draught of her potion then
The last of his thirst to slake,
Though Empires rose and fell again
She vowed that he’d never wake.
The buildings crumbled and turned to dust
As the god dreamt long of his love, and lust,
While Nemesis thought her scheme was just
And the field turned into a lake.
The ages tired and the gods retired
To their mansions, high on the mount,
But he continued to sleep and dream
More years than he could count,
The god slept through in a dream sublime
While generations were buried in lime,
Two thousand years was a blink in time
For the gods in their banishment.
He woke on a chilly Autumn day
And found himself in a lake,
Shivered once, and then strode away
For his heart had begun to ache,
He walked down into a valley plain
Green and fresh in the Autumn rain,
When out of a tunnel streamed a train
With a scream, and the squeal of brakes.
‘By Juvenal!’ cried the god in shock
As the carriages streamed on by,
Then up above, like a giant gnat
A vehicle flew in the sky.
‘The world has changed since I fell asleep
The gods have fled to the mountain keep,
And men have conjured a giant leap,
The world has passed us by!’
He ran headlong through the tunnel
Hoping to find Lucina again,
And that was the great explosion that
Nobody could explain.
The diesel engine was rendered flat
With carriages piled on top of that,
While Nemesis on the mountain sat
Her tears flowing like rain!
David Lewis Paget
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 8:49 PM UTC
Las fuerzas, Peregrino celebrado,
afrentará del tiempo y del olvido
el libro que, por tuyo, ha merecido
ser del uno y del otro respetado.
Con lazos de oro y yedra acompañado,
el laurel con tu frente está corrido
de ver que tus escritos han podido
hacer cortos los premios que te ha dado.
La invidia su verdugo y su tormento
hace del nombre que cantando cobras,
y con tu gloria su martirio crece.
Mas yo disculpo tal atrevimiento,
si con lo que ella muerde de tus obras
la boca, lengua y dientes enriquece.
1k
The first spring
There’s this barrier,
Either of contempt or pride.
Further exchange of words,
Watching you pantomime,
Reading your mind,
Engulfing the spaces we worked.
You were on the other side;
A simpleton with a great mind.
Barrier: Glass-like but steel.
The other side was me,
A vessel of conceit and pretense.
The distance made by the war
Of tugging and pulling drew me out.
It made sense:
I never got to you.
Instead, encased in fragility and adamancy,
I was caught in between.
Breathless and shamed,
A fool who believed.
Second spring came,
Still encased in dense air.
I remained satisfied,
You’ve crossed the other, other side.
Not to me or where I was,
But to the intensest place.
Watching you, I stopped struggling.
A leaden body replaced Houdini,
who never truly escaped.
I faced my death as the glass crossed and cut,
Tearing me whole.
Unshattered but assailed
with withering condemnation.
Regret, it may be it
To never dared knowing,
trying, and believing.
Self-abjection is all there is.
Deep anguish and boiled eyes,
Unused lungs and cased gasps,
Churned stomachs and a sliced mind;
A night of wilting and rue,
A kiss of damnation and a touch of breath,
Caresses of Judas’ darkest blue,
Impassioned foreplay to one’s lovely death,
Copulation in hell with Valentine,
It is bliss to know that such is a dream
Of life, of love, of hope, of memories in galleon’s dusts
The end to **** with the whimper of lust.
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 1:17 PM UTC
GULA
Castor and Pollux
joined forever at the hip.
I could split myself
into two halves just
so they could each get a taste.
I will etch into
both their ribs and lungs
so when they exhale, it’s my
name that warms their breath.
ACEDIA
I have done nothing
but consult oracles to
find a solution
and like Oedipus
I will sit here on my throne
to repeat fathers'
sins. Dear God, am I
the miasma that reeks here?
Would I change, if so?
LUXURIA
Eros and Psyche
have yet to match us, dear boys.
In confessional,
I speak of the flesh-
bruised like rotting fruit, marks
of desperate youth.
Heads bowed in prayer,
this is Dionysiac
ritual madness.
AVARITIA
Will Hades greet me?
If I spit coins from my mouth,
will the ferryman
take pity on me?
He must know my odyssey.
This is déjà vu,
a fable passed down
by generations. A hymn,
Homeric and worn.
IRA
Adonis river
runs red like veins filled with blood.
The anemones
for my two brothers,
a crown for each of them to
decorate their heads
before guts are spilled.
I know this will end in war,
no glory for me.
INVIDIA
Heroes never die,
they say. So was Heracles
jealous of Linus?
To know forever,
to escape the throes of death
sounds like Hell to me.
What lives on except
curses and their tragedy?
I am no hero.
SUPERBIA
I will take my fire,
let it blaze until I die.
Prometheus would
have been proud of me.
Maybe from this, I will kindle
something from the heat:
Write poems in ash,
for the ones I have scalded,
or the ones I love.
(Maybe those two things
are not unlike after all.
Maybe so, maybe not.)
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 1:35 PM UTC
exquisitely righteous to have the embodiment
of each and every one
standing before me
for all to see
packaged up (I can't say neat and tidy....but all in one place anyway)
it seems reasonable that one person has one or two
but to find them all in one place....
astonishing
I see you
*Superbia
Avaritia
Luxuria
Invidia
Gula
Ira
Acedia*
they all ring true as they emanate out of you
we all know what happened to Ursula
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 11:38 AM UTC
Acedia
My god it's 3 in the afternoon
And still I have yet to move,
My slothful torso
Curling into a comma
To hide my face from what rests
Beyond my maroon sheets.
Avaritia
I want to enjoy this moment
Without feeling guilt
For letting the sunlight
Filter through my black curtains
Onto my fuzzy, outstretched legs.
Superbia
There are some days
When I refuse to let myself
Have this
Peace.
Today is not that day.
The knowledge makes me smile.
Softly.
Gula
I rose only once
To make orange spice tea
And to eat sugar cookies
With lemon frosting.
They're delicious, and I can't be
Brought to care
That I won't be burning
Them off later.
Luxuria
I sometimes wish,
Fleetingly,
That I had someone to share
This feeling with.
Someone to curl into
Quotations with.
I sigh into my pillow,
Slowly.
Ira
I grow upset with myself
For wanting something -
For wanting anything -
I see red,
But only for a moment.
I couldn't have this peace,
I knew as much,
So the heat quickly fades.
Invidia
Still, the people who
Allow themselves such
Simple pleasure,
Such halcyon,
Are who I wish to be.
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 10:21 PM UTC
What good am I
if my mind sees through
the eyes of thieves and knaves
and my words
are fashioned from malice
so as to say
I lie with vagabonds and sleep
with flea dogs
these are my brothers
tell me do
What good am I
absit invidia
Jun 17, 2022
Jun 17, 2022 at 10:53 AM UTC