"oedipus" poems
Blameless as daylight I stood looking
At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,
Tails streaming against the green
Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs,
Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves
Steadily rooted though they were all flowing
Away to the left like reeds in a sea
When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,
Needling it dark. Then I was seeing
A melding of shapes in a hot rain:
Horses warped on the altering green,
Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns,
Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome,
Beasts of oasis, a better time.
Abrading my lid, the small grain burns:
Red cinder around which I myself,
Horses, planets and spires revolve.
Neither tears nor the easing flush
Of eyebaths can unseat the speck:
It sticks, and it has stuck a week.
I wear the present itch for flesh,
Blind to what will be and what was.
I dream that I am Oedipus.
What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.
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‘I am…’ 'Or am I’? Who can say?
‘A posteriori’ leads the way
For the extra and the ordinary
Axiomatic sway,
In the gravity of corollary,
‘A priori’ interplay
Ataraxic overlay of anxious automation,
As the innocence of dissonance delay.
Practicing semantic contemplation,
In willfully prevenient interpolation,
Civilly disobedient in expediently seeming disarray,
Forecasts in vague extrapolation
Contrasts the millennial contagion
Already underway,
Filling nihilistic voids with particles in waves,
To interpret dreams of Freud to free Oedipus’s slaves,
A degreeless scholastic who never misbehaves,
Simulated humanoid dramatic in the affect that he craves,
Inflating linguistics in acrobatic raves,
A thespian who plans conation with legacy engraves.
The probabilistic determiner of cosmogenous debates,
An apperceived inquirer of qualitative states,
Inspiring proprietor of dismality abates.
Challenging aporia as epistemic oscillates,
Stoically, heroically, ‘one’ who amalgamates,
Circling the infinite in hermeneutic calibrates.
An escaped prisoner from depressive disillusion,
Of an introspective extrovert who finds solace in confusion,
The personable recluse fighting an illusion
Breaking down the nuances of every institution.
Calculating consequence as time goes to infinity
Revolutionary commonsense of principal utility,
An opinionated adversary,
to the realist without evidence,
Theorizing in futility,
Stipulating every sense leading to the virility of the pretense that dominates community.
Divergently converging all the efforts we’ve personified,
Inadvertently submerging old traditions that unethically were codified,
Hastening the urgency for purging that which cannot be modified through the merging of the certainty that will no longer coincide,
Stationing the levies to finally stem the tide,
Of periodic enmities disguised to be necessities so blatantly deified.
Observing moral sentiments, perched upon eternity,
As consequential regiments are expounded universally,
To unstratify the residents indiscriminately
And identify quantum elements spiritualistically,
Changing collective behavior individually,
Socializing constructs in joint ventured logo therapy.
Nov 16, 2018
Nov 16, 2018 at 8:07 AM UTC
Let us go, Oedipus, let me walk you
'Twixt towers reaching to heaven,
Where women are charged to be patient and perfect.
You will not stay upon your leash.
We walk through Mandalay, not Paris,
Where the women have no face.
'Tis but a siren of emergency
That sings to me.
What worth I am to you, Oedipus,
What worth am I to them?
When the footman holds my coat, and snickers,
What worth am I to them?
Every man is a piece of the continent!
She may love me for the dangers I have passed,
And I her that she did pity them,
But she cannot, now and forever.
And while the sun excludes me,
I am not them and they not I,
And the waters do not glisten,
She is their chattel and not mine.
I gaze upon her ornate face and sing,
Her eyes are pools of wonder that see me, and swing away.
I am older, I have sense,
Like Oedipus my King,
But when I see her ornate face
I very nearly sing.
After many lonely nights
In shirtsleeves and not silk,
I went to her, and said:
Here, take this silver, for my milk.
And she may have loved me once
But for my thought and sense,
I'm but a bumblebee today -
I left at some expense.
Sep 17, 2010
Sep 17, 2010 at 6:04 AM UTC
my story will wander far and wide
(as I myself do in my later life)
in strange lands and strange tongues
though strangeness never surprises me;
and through centuries many will hear my story
and watch an enactment, on stage or in other visual ways,
and perhaps many will dismiss the story
many might find it banal and strange
a tale from a savage and mythic past
and perhaps some will stand on grounds of purity
and wonder that the story of Oedipus should even be remembered;
and perhaps physicians of the mind
might even analyze the symbolism -
but surely, surely
all who hear it will feel a discomfort
an itch,
an echo
a nagging question or two:
*why? what does Oedipus mean?
why is this remembered?*
Oct 18, 2010
Oct 18, 2010 at 2:38 AM UTC
The big angry things sling vocal feces
Fleshy phallus-pumps close at hand, cooing
Guzzle guzzle ethanol
Inebriated petrol-baby
"Smash the atom!"
"We're too late, we're too late!"
Tar (quick) sand *****
Big angry things drown
"We gotta gotta drill!"
Penetrate the Mother with a steel ****
Oedipus laughs
As the boulder, finally
Crushes Sisyphus.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 2:54 PM UTC
Overcome -- O bitter sweetness,
Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl --
The rich man and his affairs,
The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
Mariners, rough harvesters;
Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
Heaven and Earth out of their places,
That in the Same calamity
Brother and brother, friend and friend,
Family and family,
City and city may contend,
By that great glory driven wild.
Pray I will and sing I must,
And yet I weep -- Oedipus' child
Descends into the loveless dust.
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there once was this guy named oedipus
of whom it was prophesied
that his mother he'd marry, his father he'd ****
at a place where three roads were tied.
his mother and father discovered their fate
and tried to dispose of their son
but he ended up in corinthian lands
and their efforts were all undone.
then a drunk guy ruined his happy facade
and to an oracle oedipus went
who repeated to him the dank prophesy;
he fled corinth, not taking a cent.
while on his sojourn away from his home
he encountered a party royale
which rudely pushed him off of the road,
and angered he slaughtered them all.
then from that blood soaked three-way path
he nonchalantly flew
not knowing that his father was
the man that he just slew.
he continued his journey until he reached thebes
where a sphinx held the city hostage
so oedipus solved the bird-cat's lame rhyme
and released thebes from its *******
as a reward, the people of thebes
gave oedipus their widowed queen,
unknowingly joining mother and son
in a marriage that was unclean.
after they ruled for twenty good years,
during which four children came,
a plague was induced by the sheltering of
the man by whom was slain
in searching him out, oedipus found
that the murderer was really he,
so long ago. the man he had killed
at the place where were joined roads of three.
but by finding this out, he also discovered
that his wife and his mother were one.
he gouged out his eyes after her suicide;
in her own bedroom she was hung.
as it turned out, oeddy exiled himself
but the seeds of his misery were sewn.
so he went to colonus and wandered around
and this is the end.
Jul 30, 2010
Jul 30, 2010 at 5:14 AM UTC
MESSENGER
Now at the Seventh Gate the seventh chief,
Thy proper mother's son, I will announce,
What fortune for this city, for himself,
With curses he invoketh:--on the walls
Ascending, heralded as king, to stand,
With paeans for their capture; then with thee
To fight, and either slaying near thee die,
Or thee, who wronged him, chasing forth alive,
Requite in kind his proper banishment.
Such words he shouts, and calls upon the gods
Who o'er his race preside and Fatherland,
With gracious eye to look upon his prayers.
A well-wrought buckler, newly forged, he bears,
With twofold blazon riveted thereon,
For there a woman leads, with sober mien,
A mailed warrior, enchased in gold;
Justice her style, and thus the legend speaks:--
'This man I will restore, and he shall hold
The city and his father's palace homes.'
Such the devices of the hostile chiefs.
'Tis for thyself to choose whom thou wilt send;
But never shalt thou blame my herald-words.
To guide the rudder of the State be thine!
ETEOCLES
O heaven-demented race of Oedipus,
My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods!
Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit.
But it beseems not to lament or weep,
Lest lamentations sadder still be born.
For him, too truly Polyneikes named,--
What his device will work we soon shall know;
Whether his braggart words, with madness fraught,
Gold-blazoned on his shield, shall lead him back.
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Guided his deeds and thoughts, this might have been;
But neither when he fled the darksome womb,
Or in his childhood, or in youth's fair prime,
Or when the hair thick gathered on his chin,
Hath Justice communed with, or claimed him hers,
Nor in this outrage on his Fatherland
Deem I she now beside him deigns to stand.
For Justice would in sooth belie her name,
Did she with this all-daring man consort.
In these regards confiding will I go,
Myself will meet him. Who with better right?
Brother to brother, chieftain against chief,
Foeman to foe, I'll stand. Quick, bring my spear,
My greaves, and armor, bulwark against stones.
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Torrential rain forms an interference pattern deep within the puddles of the soul, whilst vegetation gains sustenance. Electricity may be a force to be reckoned with because it is a commodity which has monetary significance. Multicultural delicacies are a work of art in La Cucina Toscana, and I wholeheartedly acknowledge your internal drives.
We truly are a deep river which is never the same when it is stepped into more than once. But we can balance it all out, because relativism tells us that there are no rules. How absolutely ineffective is such a position. I am amazed. Just think about how we determine the consistency of seemingly genuine interpersonal transactions. If you want to find healing, then we must look to the howling winds of Siberia, where solitary journeys are sealed with a definite song of permission.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 3:44 PM UTC
flights of sparrows
familiar plays
regress
into subliminal
messages
What would Oedipus
say of universal
fatherhood
come says the snowfinch
cinnamon ibon familiar songs
where we play with maids and they
eat seeds
innocently
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 11:23 PM UTC
the fates have made their decision...
i will be late for poetry class
FOREVER.
thank you,
lexmark printer
May 15, 2013
May 15, 2013 at 9:01 AM UTC
1
He'd love her
and then the coldness
of marriage took love
away from him
and the coldness turned into suspicion
and then into an obsession:
and she was an inconvenience
he murdered her a Friday
night
suffocated her with her pillows
it was easy;
like Othello did
but she was no Desdemona;
and he heard her whisper with her last breath:
"I'll have your eyes"
he cut her up in manageable parts,
and buried her below the floorboards
in the study
2
It is a year later
and he is at the computer
and far below lies parts of his wife
but now his wife is smiling
she's on screen
smiling like a Greek Goddess
and he sits transfixed
and she says:
*"You are Oedipus, darling -
I will have your eyes"*
She is smiling
He is willing
Beside the printer are paperclips
He undoes two
She beckons; she smiles
and she whispers
that same deathbed whisper:
"I'll have your eyes"
And he is Oedipus
Just paperclips will do
He gouges one eye out
And he gouges the other too
It is easy
She lies deep below
below the floorboards;
She need whisper no longer
And he is become Oedipus,
eyes gouged,
blind like the Greek Homer
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012 at 7:34 PM UTC
And our brother, too, the metal shaman
Reaches up, plucks knowledge from the stars
We chant, guttural grunts, primal urges
And fierce grinding teeth clenching and screeching
The shaman dances and
Reaches up, plucks knowledge from the stars
And we SCREAM shrill
Bare our necks and bring the knife across, ****
A sacrifice to the metal beast
The shaman stares straight up,
Plucks knowledge from the stars
And the blood leaves us
Hair turns grey
Daily exploits lost in deepening wrinkles
The macabre ritual culminates...
The Shaman, unappeased
Laughs like Hyena, cackling
REACHES UP AND PLUCKS KNOWLEDGE FROM THE STARS!
The existential cacophony diminishes
Din dimming
Beast is empty
Bits flow like blood
Ones and zeros in a jumbled pool
The shaman delivers
The family sits around the glowing box
A tribe in an ancient ritual
Flip the switch, change the channel
The children plucking out their eyes
Little blind Oedipus
Smashing faces through the tube
To the life on the other side
Celebrities, products, and reality shows
Forget thought
Present your mind
To the beast
A cinematic ****
Send Damsels to appease the Minotaur
Change the channel
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 4:03 PM UTC
It's really quite simple
& not so scientific.
Unconscious he says!
Even drunk,
there is no desire,
absolutely no desire,
to be with
my birth-mother.
Nada.
None.
Zilch.
Quite simply,
Freud was nuts.
Simply nuts.
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 6:51 AM UTC
I love her.
She is the epitome of beauty,
Her golden radiance pierces me harshly,
Those soft blue eyes get the best of me,
I just want to caress her gently, softly,
But there is him.
He has her love, they seem so enthused,
I'm sitting in silence until they come to amuse,
She is supposed to care for me, but I always lose,
I must find a secret to set off her fuse,
He is the worst thing for her.
It seems no matter how much I whine,
He won't go away, so I will work to find,
A new way of control, aha! brilliant mind,
I'll watch his every move and work to mime,
I love him.
What he likes, I like, he loves, I love,
I'm a miniature version, his proud little bud,
Bonded by time, a woman and blood,
I've made my way closer to my gorgeous dove,
I love her still.
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 11:13 PM UTC
The writer is
bound by the Oedipus
cauldron stewing can't relax
--all women are mine--
but this doesn't stop the bloating bubbles.
But the writer did not invent Wonderlandia
--no double-sided tape or wrong number or sloppy poetics.
Wonderlandia was born from the ***** of the stars
--our fathers,
and the void of space,
--our mother's womb.
the writer
was busy staring at the girls that walked by
ditch diggers for renovations on Euphoria.
The hippies are disappointed in this current Wonderlandia,
or they would be.
Their dreams had dirt in the mud,
they walked upon. Our Woodstock
is celebrity interviews,
reservations failing,
political satires--the last ring of change
sold at five cents a word. Period.
the writer
says it understands and writes:
"Sticks shaped from elitism
rare.
Usually a vibe too brittle,
breaking in battle.
The bass thundered robins.
The snare's firearm stabled the swift,
electrifying beat.
The brass was addiction
to the crowd's ears.
All before the elitism was born,
a symphony was constructed in the drug's head."
the writer
knows about D. A. Levy and his revolution,
we all felt that voice, so the writer replies:
"Did you hear about the John Lennon poser
waving his gun on TV?
While listening to the Beatles, you
sit and watch the vagabond cry.
He says, "Counter-culture is dead, entombed
in a metal casket.
We need a new flame. Those watching TV
get your hands out of the basket."
the writer
walks with grandma Alice
by lakes,
thrilling dementia
"Don't tell me what taurine
and caffeine can do to my heart.
I can have alligators in my rib meat
eating away at bone marrow.
High? That's your question?
Hi...I am a float
in a useless pond
bordered by malnourished trees.
By the love of hell you better not
fertilize those ****** trees
because if I die
the alligator of my ribs
will dine and take your ****
girlfriend straight to the vet.
I thank you for asking though."
the writer misses
the syrup in the tree completely
I am not your beatnik
or future idol--burn your 1970's classrooms away.
Mar 6, 2013
Mar 6, 2013 at 6:49 PM UTC
Like Oedipus I am losing my sight.
LIke Judas I have done my wrong.
Their punishment is over;
the shame and disgrace of it
are all used up.
But as for me,
look into my face
and you will know that crimes dropped upon me
as from a high building
and although I cannot speak of them
or explain the degrading details
I have remembered much
about Judas -
about Judas, the old and the famous -
that you overlooked.
The story of his life
is the story of mine.
I have one glass eye.
My nerves push against its painted surface
but the other one
waiting for judgement
continues to see . . .
Of course
the New Testament is very small.
Its mouth opens four times -
as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
yet somehow man-made
held together by pullies
like the stone jaw of a back-hoe.
It gouges out the Judaic ground,
taking its own backyard
like a ****** daughter.
And furthermore how did Judas come into it -
that Judas Iscariot,
belonging to the tribe of Reuben?
He should have tried to lift him up there!
His neck like an iron pole,
hard as Newcastle,
his heart as stiff as beeswax,
his legs swollen and unmarked,
his other limbs still growing.
All of it heavy!
That dead weight that would have been his fault
. He should have known!
In the first place who builds up such ugliness?
I think of this man saying . . .
Look! Here's the price to do it
plus the cost of the raw materials
and if it took him three or four days
to do it, then, they'd understand.
They figured it weighed enough
to support a man. They said,
fifteen stone is the approximate weight
of a thief.
Its ugliness is a matter of custom.
If there was a mistake made
then the Crucifix was constructed wrong . . .
not from the quality of the pine,
not from hanging a mirror,
not from dropping the studding or the drill
but from having an inspriation.
But Judas was not a genius
or under the auspices of an inspiration.
I don't know whether it was gold or silver.
I don't know why he betrayed him
other than his motives,
other than the avaricious and dishonest man.
And then there were the forbidden crimes,
those that were expressly foretold,
and then overlooked
and then forgotten
except by me . . .
Judas had a mother
just as I had a mother.
Oh! Honor and relish the facts!
Do not think of the intense sensation
I have as I tell you this
but think only . . .
Judas had a mother.
His mother had a dream.
Because of this dream
he was altogether managed by fate
and thus he ***** her.
As a crime we hear little of this.
Also he sold his God.
2.6k
The chicken baulked, "Phaulk!"
Before Latin chose to roll around,
And the "Librarian's sound, it"
Has been through pursed lips
Oedipus was clapping cheeks,
Long before Middle English clapped any,
When lions and tigers and bares
Were the prime predators
Even in The Garden,
Snake said as,
As snakes say as,
Where the language of choice I know,
Not to be English.
And if your dainty, sky-locked eyes soul and mind,
Remain unfazed by kid killers, or rampant rapers,
But try to censor my ******* ****
Apr 12, 2019
Apr 12, 2019 at 5:58 PM UTC
A cave crawls into me, turns inside out,
Captures my heart and saves my skin for last.
Slimy shadows spread like faith to doubt.
Is this the Jungian Shadow here to lambaste
While all the photons of the sun depart
As quickly as they come--an original sin--
And stop my thinking like Rene Descartes,
Affronting twistless logic like particle spin?
Now perceiving nothing it must exist,
Like Freud with OCD made Oedipus blind--
Becoming nothing nothing can resist.
Finally into earth my mind confined:
Create in me a ***** heart, o earth.
Perhaps a worm will have a ****** birth.
Feb 3, 2012
Feb 3, 2012 at 12:51 PM UTC
Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.
Even from that delight memory treasures so,
Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.
In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
The bride is catried to the bridegroom's chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song;
I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long.
Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.
2.3k
Call me Oedipus and let me call you mommy,
**** me hard and kiss me lively.
Act like Freud and dream about my ****
spread your legs and let me have a lick.
Kiss me like Hemingway, short and sweet,
like the sun and the horizon, eternally we shall meet.
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 1:34 AM UTC
A dream you told me of:
Defusing a time-bomb embedded in the womb of your dead mother.
I don’t know if you were smart enough to flip the failsafe
Or if you indiscriminately yanked wires out, like your dangerous thoughts.
A dream I told you of:
at the midpoint of their parents’ anniversaries, by the ruins of every immortalized
kingdom, she is wearing her mother’s dress and he is too.
“father wanted to castrate or **** me,” he said, conversationally.
they have so much in common. they live the tragedy of armchair **** fantasies,
tend to ****** their own genitals when lost in thoughts of the obstruction of
their desires. (which, really, is pointless
because they don’t desire anything besides fondling their own genitals.)
Blinded Oedipus does not notice
Electra’s concealed ******* dagger. A thousand years between them, yet they’re still children conceived of
Mitigated **** and blood sacrifice for the sake of sailing, and
Defined by deficit from the beginning; her crippled mind sang
to his hollowed eyes. Kinslayers becoming kin,
Entranced by the illusions of the other but really
Loving only the unmistakable reflections of their own sins.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 11:45 AM UTC
Holding hands with Amber,
As a sweet melody plays.
There are bells in the distance,
As her crafted face stares at empty space.
I could point out a thousand stars,
but none seemed bright enough.
Her interest captured,
by her own hands.
Stuck in mud,
that sound could not wash away.
The beat intense,
But events quite clear.
Apollo has alined the stars
and the planets stand still.
Almost to attention.
To the dying embers.
GRAHAM MURPHY
Jul 24, 2012
Jul 24, 2012 at 7:31 PM UTC
How exotic is this curvaceous dance within our brazen synaptic hemispheres?
The scholastic wisdom of the ages boldly pronounces licentiousness when Ashtoreth makes herself readily available to ravenous self-projections of post-modernity.
As we saunter around the parameters of entitlement, the monster will reveal itself with narcissistic glory whilst cotton candy is purchased by naïve populations of bewitched obedience.
Scan the desolate horizon where economical lap dances are nothing more than a mere mirage of repressed Oedipus conflicts.
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 10:26 PM UTC