"odysseus" poems
A normal kind of guy
Just the guy
No cosmologist
Sans Christian
********* the droplet suns
Distant in the blackened sky
Gotta 'and'er some
The bristled gristle
The cryogenic iris
Steel teeth gnashing
Right-toe left
Ardent in an autobiography
Good man
Soft man
Locomoted his GMC
to the Sea
Thought maybe
With precise aim he
could undertow away
paradise.
No pick-me-ups
In copper-channels
That Ionized the pick-up-truck
With archaea iron
that ugly duck
Reminiscent of the man
In all but--
A castaway
Stowaway
The man who never hesitates
Bop upon the interstate
Lost within
concritical maze
Shoring up
Going home
Giving up
Turned to stone
Marble chin
Solumn grin
Chlidren sing
Seeking wings
How'd he know
Where to go
Will he see
What it means?
He's the guy
The one with the lollipop lap
Licking the syrup off the lip
Of a sweet polished sapphire
Gin
And the kids
My god
They think he
ODYSSEUS
And his dog not yet
Dead but depressive in the gloom
Howling into the midnight grass
And the creatures that stalk
With their ******* youth
Soon their weight will hit the deck
And like a noose,
Break the joints
The planks of which would stress
And bend his eyes upon his head.
God willing
Should he be exhumed
His energies excape to the river
And float,
Penultimate,
into the sea.
Aug 10, 2018
Aug 10, 2018 at 5:03 PM UTC
Dearest, you who have moved with me
as the waves to the pull of the moon,
You are leaving me now.
I know I am not the only moon to your sea.
There is another who sways you to her tune.
Her name is scrawled in the furrows of your brow.
But the tears in your eyes and your heartache
Should they not be mine?
I who live on this island, immortal and alone?
You are leaving me a prisoner in your wake,
You with your talk of crooked highlands and fragrant pine
And rugged crags. Dangerous talk, I should have known.
Now I close my eyes and dream
Not of the sweetness of the cypress
Nor of familiar violet-eyed meadows,
But of birds that spin and gleam
high above the land's caress.
You have turned me into another Echo
Stupidly repeating the names of places and people I will never know.
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 1:41 AM UTC
Your face,
Tender, round and dimpled,
Framed with gilded, carved, tawny curled
Whirlpools of hair, long, lighted, and sparkling,
Your face is the face—
Of Ireland.
Your lips,
Full, moist and deathly deep,
Are wells, not well for me, not safe, taboo,
Tantric, tall told tales of brave Odysseus
Under Circe's alchemies
Of forgetfulness.
Your *****
The zenith of blossom in fabled
Elysium, gateway to the forbidden gardens
Of sage and sinners, warrior-poets, Aphrodite's
Envy, Poseidon's drowning
And smoldering Zeus.
Jul 16, 2012
Jul 16, 2012 at 10:58 PM UTC
let's you and I mingle with the tantalizing Sirens
their Song, so seductive, will distract you while I
lead Odysseus to our spacious secret cave
which-- I have newly prepared with Calypso's blessing
[I dare say she seems to have a crush on my Odysseus!]
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 12:10 AM UTC
(To Sarah Bernhardt)
How vain and dull this common world must seem
To such a One as thou, who should’st have talked
At Florence with Mirandola, or walked
Through the cool olives of the Academe:
Thou should’st have gathered reeds from a green stream
For Goat-foot Pan’s shrill piping, and have played
With the white girls in that Phaeacian glade
Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.
Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay
Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again
Back to this common world so dull and vain,
For thou wert weary of the sunless day,
The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,
The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.
8.1k
He loves his soca and
His carnival.
He calypsos
Like only Dionysus could.
His power is like the
Nymph's - the Oceanid daughter that
Kept Odysseus from
Penelope - only stronger.
So mesmerising: his smile
Bursts with a contagious
Warmth, like the sun
Over his island homeland.
A gold cross hangs from a chain
Around his dark, dark neck.
The smell of his skin spices the air around him,
Making my mouth salivate.
He tastes like Mayan chocolate;
Slightly bitter and tinged with chilli.
The scars on his shoulders and back
Feel like a ripe nectarine againt my tongue.
I want to bite down and feel the juices
Run.
But.
He's a good Christian boy.
This island boy is an enigma.
Tall and willowy
Like a rapier, and
Strong and beautiful.
I wonder if this island boy
Would sheath his faith
In my worship,
For just one, cool, island night.
Jul 8, 2011
Jul 8, 2011 at 12:36 PM UTC
These birds of war that encircle the sky
painted dark by smoke from fires engulfing
events here: every one of them spawns
an illusion, spreading in all directions, until
no twig is untouched: everywhere only
the Mistletoe. Fragrances of the deep night
by the ford under the moon, silken hair
soft for touch under first rays of the golden
morn, images, return broken like imprints
on the ramparts; where now, those oaks
of love that sustained our passion for war?
Years sunk into the quicksands of greed,
After nine winters, now only the Mistletoe.
Jan 21, 2013
Jan 21, 2013 at 12:06 PM UTC
I feel as if my head is sliding off my neck like ice cream melting down the cone. I am a witch melting, shrinking smaller as my spine stacks horizontally like shiplap. My body has been refurbished into a pinball machine. Something so tiny as a silver ball destroys so much. It bullets through my body, shooting off like Cuban missiles. I feel the turmoil and chaos seeping through the gutters of this old home of bones. It's like spilled oil sludging through my blood vessels or rats scattering through a sewer, nibbling and feasting away on these muscles of mine until they are frayed like gnawed-on cable wires. At odd hours of the night when time is propelled by the safe travels of breath (that weave in and out like Victorians at a ball) from sleepy children who have yet been touched by monsters or nymphs, whereas each of my breaths steer Odysseus's weather-beaten boat through ten years of treachery. My heavy, melting head slowly sloping like clay off a bust makes its home on my dingy pillow as I lay on a prison bed with cold shackles around my ankles that make my bones shatter into a mosaic as if that could shrink my ankles so I can slip out. I feel like a chained hawk at these hours of the night when I just want to fly until I screech to a halt and flail over the cliff that waterfalls into the ends of the universe. I'd be reluctant at first, perhaps, but what other escape does one have other than to make an autopsist's Y-incision on one's body, then slip out like a hermit crab freeing himself from his heavy shell? Embarking onto a new dimension where there's hope for a radical swap of atoms that don't shape a crippled, deteriorating human is the only choice when you want to live a life other than what you were cursed with. May we then find peace and live as naked souls bearing no heavy shells.
Jul 7, 2017
Jul 7, 2017 at 4:53 AM UTC
Oh Penelope, Penelope
in the winds blowing distant!
when storms gather at night
and lightning pierces the sea,
I see how Zeus has struck,
such is time, that
slices through the heart
Oh Penelope Penelope
Did I love you over honour?
Athene oh Athene,
were my prayers not enough?
In the small hours' brewing
pain, how I took valour granted,
oh to believe that destiny
is all but deed and dust,
that victory is about winning
Burying my knees in sand,
set on the horizon, here I mourn:
turning over the wheel of time,
too mortal my soul
for the love of a nymph
Oh Penelope, Penelope,
in the winds blowing distant!
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 2:08 PM UTC
Far too many tides have you held him, Calypso, now let him go:
thus commands Athene daughter of Zeus, She who cannot stand his wails
any more. The fleet-footed Hermes delivers the writ of the heavens.
Does the wail of a mere mortal trouble the mighty Athene more than
the heart of her kin? Will you Hermes not accept a bribe and tell Her you
never found me? That Calypso's home is too hard to find on sea?
The will of Zeus cannot be altered, bow or the bolt will make you kneel.
Twenty years has he suffered, let him go this prisoner of his deeds. Eternity
awaits you: while his soul, death. Let him not regret his life in afterlife.
Thus did I leave on high-tide who steal to my own palace like a thief.
Twenty years play in my mind, but the strongest still is Telemachus's smile.
I leave her who cared so much to win my heart yet only the Zephyr -
Brought me cheer, that carried the smell of home and Penelope fair.
Here I leave the immortal who will die for me: for her who I know not if she
loves me yet. Who Athene brings don't fail me in life, even if they falter.
Oct 10, 2012
Oct 10, 2012 at 2:38 PM UTC
I am trapped on an island in my mind.
I cannot escape this false paradise.
A higher power has placed me here against my will.
If I am Odysseus, where is my Calypso?
I am floating along, unsure of my way,
Surrounded by unknown dangers.
I don’t know my goal, or how to get there.
If I am Odysseus, where is my Ithaka?
Times are changing, people are moving, going ever forward,
And I'm standing still, unsure of my next move.
The paths ahead of me vary. Some light, some dark, all frightening.
If I am Odysseus, where is my Athena?
May 23, 2011
May 23, 2011 at 10:53 PM UTC
Mellow season rain slipping by the thunderstorm
oh you have come, unknown visitor,
unrecognized. Lone rose that bloomed in rain,
drenched always in tears, this morning
shaded beams of light and the song of birds
welcoming the respite bend past you.
This is the sea leading to Ithaca. Here I stand
on the shores of the land that was my home.
Who left with hundreds, alone I return like a thief.
The gentle hand that passed last from my sight
out of the multitudes that waved us bye,
A hundred whispers of chants and hymns
from shadows that rise from the corners where
I found refuge from pain in these years:
Whom do those fingers choose, honour-bound
whom I left alone those twenty years ago?
Years that rush like a river streaming past gorges.
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 3:22 AM UTC
There were once men, playing a lying game.
They had no heart, they knew no shame.
Like Sirens, what their songs told,
were stories of flesh on beds of gold.
Merely this, is what their songs were about,
for wine and flesh they lusted sparing doubt.
For all their bubbles, fizzle, show and gleam,
true love for them was but a funny little dream.
Some, it is true, had the voices of blue suede kings.
Yet, danced on rubble, coughing smoke, 'n' kissing rings.
Thankfully, their lyrics were quite naturally cold,
faintly sparkling true hearts, despite their gold.
No songs can, in the spirit, ever remain,
or one's path meaningfully ingrain,
unless dotted by a hearty blood stain.
Still, some blind and sleepy were enticed,
those who dropped their heart, who'd lost their *****
Much like a robber, who rests his gun in a heist.
Others, scrambled to plug their ears
wishing to avoid both song 'n' tears.
They knew not, that when fighting fear,
'tis not enough to keep it from getting near.
Simply stuffing their ears with wax,
failed to fade the hottest new tracks,
cause tanks groove on these tracks.
As tanks, they pop 'n' roll till you die.
Therefore... relax, pick your time, and lie,
not to your conscience, but on the ground,
so they pass over you, leaving you safe 'n' sound.
"You cannot fear what you haven't tried."
Remember, Odysseus wasn't deaf, only tied.
He, chose to fight and listen to the Sirens' songs,
using threads of logic, to keep from snapping their thongs.
Tightroping on wrong, he but fell to the song.
He wailed and spat, yet, somehow grabbed the gong.
And after a short but needed rest, after this soul defining test,
he did not lament the virgins lost, but carried on with his quest.
He, knew the lying men and their calls were real,
but to forms he didn't kneel, nor aimed to cut a deal.
He, stuck to his dreams doing his best to warn and tell the rest,
that though Sirens charm, they harm. "'Tis Ithaca who gives zest.'"
So, next time you see the chanting men of lies,
and their enchanting plastic bunnies in bow ties,
know that rhyme and shine may polish coal,
but listening to your heart should be the goal.
*"With a twist of logic to correct your steer,
you will run through fear, and forever, keep it rear."*
Dec 7, 2011
Dec 7, 2011 at 4:27 PM UTC
I, naive
I believed that the break in the clouds
Was the end of rain
Thought those rays of sun weren't burning
I was lying
Myself in the grass,
Asking if the tulip chutes in Anatolia
Were the same sinking green I feel now
Where were we?
Love for a thousand spaces and bottling them into skins
Wanted to touch and know deeply all beautiful things
No you're not allowed, they don't want to let you in
That way, it's a distant place and means too much to understand
The biological and irrational
Crazed, sweeps gregarity above and within an aether-- like milky foam upon the waves
When I return home from excursions
I will be Ipanema
The soft locale, unabashed and known to no soul
Except empty elevators--
The lowly philosopher-king
Maybe then you'll think highly of me
Through the mixed feelings
Unable to handle
Straight through the socket
Ring of fire
Then and only then will you realize
That real life
Is more than just a zone or some local
Brewery on a Friday night
And every other Friday night
Ever thereafter--
You'll unlock the box of atomic intention
And listen deeply to her on the station
"Sade and Other Like Hits"
Slowed down for full potential
Letting your cochlea stroke themselves off to the tune of the universe
And the sound of air moving indiscriminately
Will give you
All this
Somewhere
almost fractal, imbibed
Decimated repetitively
There is a fragment of my voice,
Calling
"Love, how much I'd love to be. "
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 2:22 PM UTC
like a compass that has lost north
spinning without pattern, without end
my heart races erratically, unmoored
by just the soft touch of your hand
Jun 29, 2021
Jun 29, 2021 at 11:00 PM UTC
Will you become the wall and stay silent listening to my wails today?
I count every drop that wets your edifice brick by brick in this rain:
This day of prayer, the festival that comes only once in many years.
Today I stand kneeling before the skies that fumed in thunders
I have weathered life to walk up to this shore where you stand,
Your watery eyes the lighthouse that guided me lost in the sea-storm.
Polyphemus could not stop me, nor the Sirens, not even Calypso.
Here I come, your pilgrim in my hood, I who accepted war over love
The war in which I lost everything: friends, comrades and mates.
O Athene, have my sacrifices been in vain, will you not bring her to
speak? She who has gone silent like a wall, wet in this wailing rain.
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 3:53 AM UTC
i want to walk
the same shores
odysseus did,
i want to be
important like
him, i want to
be important like,
i want to be
important
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 3:51 PM UTC
Barking along the seething sea
Tethys sparkling
Sans Pellagrino
Bubbled up with volcanic
Albido
And it exposed the cragged shores
Of a incessantly compiling
Or
Completely snuffed
Mountain
Bored and drilled by time
Sharper than a dying dimond
Cooked and left to rest
A Dinar plate
To which an all you can eat
Buffet
Played out pleasently
From antiquity
To present
A gift to an aging child
To be which pure joy can behold.
Today it is home of the Croats
The ancient Frontier of a meiotic Rome
And over small-grain time
Made coats
Of arms and animal manes
To give a name
To the nameless
To give a place
To the missed
That old Tethys barks like a fish
Beyond the Odoacerean boot, Scylla and Charybdis
Where the whales float
And great souls
Stolen deep within
wishing to find god
Fumbling in the dark
Searching for Alexandria
The flame of life
Become great stories to be told
And nothing more.
Odysseus
Hug the shore
Follow the land of the mysterious Croats
Do not venture beyond the threshold
Or you will be consumed by time
And lost to her Circedean jealous pines
Do not anger the constant love of
Helios
No,
These Croats have never croaked
They know not of amphibiotes
And the sharpened clades of life
Made and tailored bespoke
Sowed
In the fractals
Of the quiet word of
Eloah.
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 2:41 PM UTC
Crimson shades that hang on late
on cloudy mornings, cormorants
that carry tidings from afar
reeds that roll over slow in their measured nuances:
wind roars, noon bells, distant shorelights at night.
I sought glory with love in my heart
Midas-like, glory became my gold.
Every wave carries a new meaning
for one who sees life
from the window of death;
How many deaths for honour, how many
for glory, how many more for perfidy?
Ah blessed love, that
- when the glitter of glories descends
into quicksands of darkness -
from whom nothing can ever be snatched away,
the one love that shone before my birth
as Athene, who I loved as Penelope and
who loves me as Calypso, receptacle of worlds!
Nov 27, 2012
Nov 27, 2012 at 4:12 PM UTC
Distant clouds lining the endless horizon hurtling back in waves,
rugged trees on the blue-barren shore, courtyard of this palace-
prison: the world shrinks, receding softly like
the last light of the evening sun:
Neither Odysseus King of Ithaca, nor a captive prisoner of
my own deeds, now, the world drops from me, in this
deep night I really am no-man, now, I am merely
the awareness of nothingness.
New worlds emerge: where I ride flying elephants, a hero I am
who won without recourse to a decoy horse, where Achilles
lives and Laodamia grieves not, where I rejoice
at my home the year after we won:
Fair Queen, worlds as real as my prism-world at dawn, where
the sea-nymph reigns; Many pasts converge and onward
to many futures from this present-point, I am really
ever just the silent witness.
Oct 11, 2012
Oct 11, 2012 at 9:53 PM UTC
I would like if I could, to venture out
into a baroque cave where the walls are translucent
and all that surrounds it are rivers of coherence
and incoherence
where I can scream, and when my echoes
radiate they bounce off on me and touch
the spaces in between my fingers
bizarre and ornate
rococo chimes lift my spirit
progressive, regressive
subliminal rising, into the sea of whispers
and final decisions
and crazed hands
and melting lips
and bruised knuckles
and fighting wrists...
I subsist to consist
of the fluid that makes me up
lavender barely breathing
flowers/continue/endure
hang tough, low by lakes of conspiracy
and hate/ block eyes/ shed those ill states
I carry this entity/essence/life gentely
in my arms like a ancestor. mother .
press its head against my skin and give it everything
in my blood filled hands, sinful/blessed/ tiered creatures
I feel beautiful in these worlds.
eyes closed in sleep, palms spread forth
oceans cleansing, I feel like an infant
stomach twists and hearts bat burnt wings
and learn to fly
I radiate.full hearted. eminence spoke to me
through her portal of solid grass and dieing trees
in the outskirts of the vagabond, slowly unraveling
like a child speaking
slowly growing like new love
stricken instantly
I am in
between Cleopatra and Mark
between Orpheus and Eurydice
between Odysseus and Penelope
between Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy
between Salim and Anarkali
I shiver in that love
that breathes in determent
and breathes out fragrance
temperate plasma hooked onto
the grind of my woman I beat like
the robins breast/ trembling in awe
like a living leaf blowing in the winter wind
resisting/giving in/ perishing/ breathing
to the sound of this beautiful life
Apr 29, 2011
Apr 29, 2011 at 5:53 AM UTC
Let’s go on an odyssey, an epic
we’ll never forget. Let’s turn the world upside down,
fall into the sky, fly at light speed
and wish on white dwarfs and red giants.
I don’t want to wait for the time it takes light to travel
across a vacuum. Take my hand and we’ll reach
farther than footprints on the moon, brush off the dust
and jump. Impossible is the space between our fingers.
Let’s sail across the ocean, feeding fish and taming sharks.
We’ll swim to the depths, tickle coral,
watching polyps break free.
I want to learn to glow like jellyfish,
lose my eyes to detect predators.
We can lay out on the sand and let the sun turn water
into gas.
Let’s shrink to atoms and build proteins,
untwist DNA just to watch it coil into chromosomes,
increase ATP just to expend it.
Did you know one electron makes oxygen a free radical?
It builds up in your system just
to break you down.
I’ll be your helicase and you’ll be mine.
We’ll replicate, transcribe, translate.
Dec 9, 2012
Dec 9, 2012 at 8:38 PM UTC
I have not heard the siren's song
in quite some time.
In its absence I
have taken up knitting; socks and hats, scarves
of dubious color and shape.
I would give you one, if you knocked on my door.
I'd open with mock surprise,
and, snow covering your messy hair,
you'd smile at me, open that sweet mouth
and say –
But, as I said:
I have not heard the siren’s song
in quite some time.
Feb 12, 2011
Feb 12, 2011 at 8:57 AM UTC
You have always found a way
to inflate yourself,
a thunderhead of you
a rainer upon parades
keeping your own side dry.
Praise your portolio,
record yourself accomplishing that,
but wait, there’s more of you
the lost boy
dressed as a hero.
The prison of ego comes first,
then the crippling psychic wounds
and the inevitable chaos
that just ****** you off
because there is just too much to manage
and you cannot do it alone
but you don’t dare tell anyone
so you fake it
and you don’t make it
and one day
while you are too busy
refusing to be grateful
for the awesome mystery of your own chi
a tagger defaces your BMW
in the parking lot of Whole Foods
and you weep into your tofu.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 7:28 AM UTC
It’s not much, I mean, but
uh, nothing, sorry, man I got butterfingers
slippery as my tongue, here
did you drop something, are you sure?
cause my thump-thumping heart dropped
so hard to the floor when it knew you were near
that it bounced right back up
right where it goes, then straight out my crown chakra,
only to dissipate and erupt
into Truth
the literal and the metaphorical
allegorical nebulas that resonate in full high-definition colour the way
all Nine symphonies played simultaneously
would look
sedimentary, like a cheesecake
when I first saw you, something
shifted in my horoscope with the same scope and scale
of a modern Greek myth – Prometheus rising, fire
in the eyes of one woman, that’s all
all Aphrodite could gather up—fix it to the mainstay, Odysseus
let’s get to it, in siren seas, eating weeds to survive
if there’s nothing left when Cthulu
comes alive, I hope at least
I’ll get to talk to you at a party
like, once, where we’ll mix some more
mythologies
Once Inana birthed the world, and Spider Woman showed her how
I could show you how Saraswati
makes music, and old Bacchus stays on his feet
Care to play my Isis? If that makes me Osiris
then drown me, chop me up. Throw my body
to Mr. Lucifer; the Morrigan will come to inspect your ****
and finding it satisfactory
will whisk you away somewhere better
How’s that last part sound to you, eh?
there’s not much left to waste in the techno age
of “nothing in moderation,” with all our
degradation,
defamation,
discrimination,
and mild inflammation caused by
nonspecific anxiety medications
in our nation of constant false elation,
so
my point is time
the one thing we got left to waste
is time, and I’m a dedicated pacifist, but
I wouldn’t mind killing
some of that, with you
Let’s blow this pop stand
and go hunting.
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 12:52 AM UTC