"parthenon" poems
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos,
Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon
till it came out clean.
Allen Ginsberg
Boulder, 26 April, 1980
.
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 5:51 AM UTC
Homage Kenneth Koch
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean
4.7k
The splitting apart
Of man from man
Dooms more than splitting
The atom can.
In one blaze, will
All things be gone:
The Empire State
And the Parthenon?
And must the sudden
Atom's flash
Turn cities, statues,
And poems to ash?
Quick! The foe
In us is curled,
More fearsome than any
Foe in the world!
-Louis Ginsberg
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 9:48 PM UTC
.*if, and however many mistakes i made in typo... attempting to compete with Spawn, using the black panther... ****** please... it's like that "healthy" competition of butter, using margarine... Black Panther isn't Spawn... Spawn is... Spawn... yeah... thanks for ruining my 12" wish fetish... i was so dying... to... i was never going to **** an English girl to begin with... thank god.*
you're seriously going
to "correct" me
using black panther....
seriously?
spawn was the ********
to what....
to whatever you're
doing these days....
i don't want to be
the blank panther...
**** being black panther...
************
i want to be *spawn"..
******* quasi-nigger...
john coltrane...
you a mariah carey
back-up singer or some
otherwise alien whacky
alien-backlog?
compared to spawn...
the black panther
looks like a ******* ******
wing guy...
for what's deemed
12"...
black...
mire like bleak Parthenon...
some columns,
no spirals...
waste of time...
black Panther, what?
so Spawn...
was just a waste of time?
Spawn was the gran-daddy
where the Batman was the daddy
given the Joker
was the gran-gran-daddy...
you get me?
Miles Davis too much for you?
the blank panther is such
a ***** move...
it's like... come Kosovo...
when expecting Sarajevo...
****** this **** will not
stick...
high flying ****
if you think this will become
a ******* pancake...
no, ******
take your blank panther back
to Yakanda, or whatever...
your Spawn was cooler than
Lego Batman...
**** your white *****
and leave me to my existentialism
of... making a "heroic" exit..
akin to Elvis...
but more or less minding
Roy Orbison in a sing along.
p.s.
lego batman movie quote:
black panther *****
spawn go go go! spammy!
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 12:02 AM UTC
"She did the laundry
in the mirror of me
I saw myself in
the mirror and disagreed
with the smell,
The thought of you
was beautiful,
but I was wrong,
and a feeling of discontent
-ment
came over me,"
Misspellings
Mispronunciations
An unconquerable world
of big money
I parted ways with the large
and saw another even larger world,
One that was intelligent and reads
the Wall Street Journal, listens to NPR,
and says "wow" at the sound of hearing
one million dollars, or upon hearing about
San Francisco start-ups,
or Silicon Valley.
Or the opposite, in some ways, but still very
similar to - Virginia Woolf.
whose book on feminism
which I'm unable to explain fully other than
to say that she suggests
that women only need
a bedroom, money, clothes, etc.,
or rather, less than etc.
in that, they need little, but only the bare supplies.
That they should be able to supply themselves with what they need
for when their husband, which, you know, is not required, in her eyes,
for when he separates from her
and leaves her 'in the dust,' alone without anything,
perhaps only with a child, or in another instance, estate-less,
with only a white dress, really more of kitchen-robe than anything else;
like Virginia Woolf says, we should really try and dismantle the patriarchy
that we write and tell about. Reader, what do you after reading a story, article, or book on radical or moderate feminism say? The boys, like me, who will tell, or, try to tell their perspective of the book and say to the closest person around them, "I just read a great book by Virginia Woolf, she brings to mind an image of a university with white buildings and ends of roofs of university buildings leading along to the the main hall of architecture buildings, with sidewalks pristine and underneath people walking in their sweaters, collegiate, and later to make their way to art history classes in the fall evening. So, like Virginia Woolf, who makes you ask why you're not at the Parthenon, but instead are inside of your house, in a city that you don't want to be in, at a hospital, in your apartment, or surrounded by whoever, she nevertheless gives you have a feeling of longing-ness and a strong emotion of want. Virginia Woolf when will we go to Greece together? What do you know about Athens and classical architecture, I nearly beg you.
December 30th 2018 7:11am
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC
She walked out of the watercolor storm of a fresco
Like a cowl-bound form in a light drizzle of rain,
Her mosaic tiles of ancient lovers’ eyes, ceramic-borne,
Just as her hips held the curves of the urn, kiln-fired,
The coiled heat of Greece still stinging through her flesh.
For her, the treetops had been the summoners of storm,
In kind, she poured down the wet grove of her hair, electral,
Pantheress of humid breath and fanged flair of lightning,
Tamed once in the cloudy cage of Pentelic marble of the Parthenon.
But the world piled dust before her, baiting with its groveled roads,
For her black mullings, much-tasted rain, and heaven’s leaves to fall.
If only the Michelango-to-come had carved the clouds of her
For the light to remain, shining its centuries,
Then maybe the thunder would have been left undone.
Sep 5, 2019
Sep 5, 2019 at 2:17 PM UTC
Once for Halloween
I dressed up as Athena
The Greek goddess
My favorite Greek goddess
And it was a decent costume
Your standard iParty fare
Paired with an elaborate hairdo and some 50 cent earrings
And I knew I was only a cheap imitation
Nothing close to the real thing
For no one would ever build me a temple
Burn cattle in my name
Put on white robes and fall to their knees
For me
No, not for me
But for Athena
Oh, how they fell!
How the ancient Greeks worshipped her very name
Gave her their capital city
And dedicated the most powerful force to her
Wisdom
That force which drove the philosophers
The very energy
That sustained Socrates
And Plato
And Aristotle
And all those dead guys we read about in class
I was in a class
Reading the words those dead guys collected
In their moments of clarity
But all I could think about
All I really wanted
Was to throw on a white robe
And fall to my knees at the Parthenon
Begging for wisdom, wisdom
Please, Athena, some wisdom!
I don't care if it's heresy
I don't care if you're a myth nowadays
Because you once reigned
You once stood on Mount Olympus
In all your ancient power
And watched your people crying out wisdom, Athena, wisdom!
Please!
I wish
I could have been there
I wish I could have seen
The day the goddess cracked open Zeus's skull
And was born
Fully armed
Ready for her battle
Not the fight for wisdom, no
The fight she faced was undying
The war she would lead
Would ripple through the ages
Taking all civilizations
And tearing at their social order
For it was the men she was fighting
The disbelieving fools who put her *** down
Taking all women's wisdom
And deeming it inferior
Substandard
Not good enough
So Athena blazed in glory
And for her, men believed
Believed in their mothers and wives and daughters
Saw in that enthroned goddess
The sparks that fueled women's minds
Yes, I wish I'd been there
I wish I could have kissed her sword
And asked her to stick around
To blaze her way to the twenty-first century
And make these guys tremble, too
Instead
I look around my 80% male college of engineering
And wonder why I need to prove my worth
Simply because I have a second x chromosome
I wish that I could blaze in glory
And dazzle them all the same
That my Halloween costume could be enough to fool them
That they would turn their toga-party bedsheets
Into white robes
And fall to their knees
Gasping, "Wisdom, wisdom!"
And that, for one moment
I could be their goddess
Nov 27, 2010
Nov 27, 2010 at 6:38 PM UTC
Through His mercy we have survived.
Wrath sparing
Temple and parthenon,
Synagogue covered
In moss,
Castles ****** but unbowed
For us to
Remember.
Allowed us to keep
Corners of
Eden:
A bedroom wall slathered
In picture frames,
A front porch dusted with snow—
Fragments
We tore away with
Tears clouding our eyes.
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 3:35 AM UTC
Therein lies the fur, filled with running wind,
Milkweed in the scruff, the scent of wild-wood,
Some mystery-hearted forest where pulse begins.
Therein lies the Centaur, satyr, and god-disguised swan,
Ageless wonders prowled upon by an age-old Parthenon.
You broke your wolf’s tooth through those haunches of lore.
Therein lies the fur, filled with barking dust and dandelion war,
With a spine that stretched back to the she-wolf and city-birth,
The peeled nerve of a howl once tremored your Aurelian lips.
Therein lies the serf, hunter, fairer hand, and lord,
From wattles and daub, the wandering-sands of Saracen, or Crusader’s moor.
You kept the path beside to remind that instinct shines as the holiest earth.
Therein lies the fur, the warm, ungovernable peasant of sleep,
Ever prophetic in your skies by eyeshut-trace of the hunting moon,
Twitching at the day’s thousand faces, all asleep in themselves.
Therein lies the soldier, nurse, chaplain, and fell-prayer,
Mange-like war is the whimpering season with its flea-bitten welts of stars.
You struck blind but true at the throat of gas-hissing war.
Therein lies the fur, outracing the rain and the spout,
Nested with more birds and Autumn song than rain,
Your sleeping ear pooled like cool eaves of the barn.
I sing once more like a boy into your unfolded ear.
Listen always for my ancient, choral voice and your chores of play,
And race earback to the sun in the belly-grass of your free-eyed fields.
Leave your last paw mark, torn on the red clay of my hand.
You are forever wrapped in human touch, ageless and aged,
And if ever the dark in madder darkness encroaches,
Leave black eternity to my faithful eyes.
Jul 24, 2019
Jul 24, 2019 at 1:23 PM UTC
if i were in Paris
i would march for you
hold up a banner made from scraps of your favorite shirts
if i were in Greece
i would carve your face into a column of the parthenon with "God" written legibly across your lips
(for He is love, and i love kissing you)
if i were in China
i would cover myself in paper mache
disguise myself as a Terrecotta soldier,
move up to commanding officer and lead the whole army to guard your resting place
(because
you
are my emperor)
if i were in Israel
i would build a bomb shelter
and safe from the heat of those who hate us,
our bodies would discover fire
if i were in Argentina
i would lay claim on you
the way the country claims LAS ISLAS MALVINAS and vows to never forget
if i were in the United States
i would miss you the way that Obama misses his intelligence briefings
we would sit on our smartphones and text haikus back and forth as we sat back to back with each other
darling?
i love you to the comet Europe landed on
and back.
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 12:38 AM UTC
At the sacred heart
of the profane
Utterly forsaken
in the tranquility of exile
An Unformed prisoner
emanates...
Prowling dead space
and blue skies
As if
they were
the hearts of Men ~
At the center
Of the Unmade
A Leviathan sleeps
dreaming of
Truth.
Roaming the Confines
Of Paradise
Sequestered in the throng
Of our savage lives-
Witness to our Miracles !
This One
Strides
Through the Parthenon
Of our Ruin
A Rook amid our vapid fictions -
Savoring the daily wisdoms
That Delight
In our
Surprise.
At the naked heart
Of the cloaked Soul
Utterly untarnished,
by the ashes
Of our distant fires...
The Unexpected -
Dominates Reality
Immune to our convictions
The Banished One
Is Lord.
It takes no shape imagined
and remains
Beyond the nimbus
of our Theories.
Unadorned.
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 11:57 PM UTC
Crumbling pillars of the Parthenon
Like the gods be praised,
Are eroding away to bread crumbs.
And as the conquerors came
To claim the land for the king
Were reclaimed by the gaping tide.
And the forays into memory
Bring back nostalgia,
Breaking into burnt Polaroid past.
The sea swept the tide from under me,
Gone are the gods and their kings,
Gone are the photos of useless things.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 11:27 PM UTC
Lord Elgin of Britain, that perfidious thief,
robbed Greece of its heritage, its marble reliefs.
The Parthenon stripped of its decorative stone,
a victim of rapine stands forlorn and alone.
Phidias’ statues, rendered so fine,
Are lifelike and glorious for now and all time.
The British museum houses the collection
Which Elgin purloined while avoiding detection.
Greece, more than most, has been robbed of its past
By ephemeral empires who thought they would last.
Now that the sun sets on the imperial throne
Isn’t it time that those Marbles went home?
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC
Come and feed
Opalescent mouth
Come break bread with.
My kith and kin
Seek to join.
You can doff your.
Hat and sit,
yes, they're in
The parlor.
Is the Parthenon
But my clan is borrowed
From the Coliseum.
Come and see 'em.
Ranged in chair by
Height.
To bite,
Now you can go in to
The table but only along.
One side as
Leonardo
Would suggest.
Our featured feast begins with mother's grin.
But ends with wiping father's ****** chin.
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 7, 2010 at 6:31 PM UTC
Former lover,
Indulge me this anguished plea,
prefaced by this confession:
You are the first and final piece of my soul.
My lungs inhale air and exhale a prayer;
A request to the divine forces that you remain whole,
That no shred of your perfect self is stripped away,
That the only thing that changes is how you perceive me.
That whatever trespass or gaff on my part is ripped from memory
That you hold even half of the opinion I hold of you.
Before you carry out that box
Of personal effects,
Of joyous memories,
Of melancholy epiphanies,
Of sensuous encounters,
Of laughs,
Of tears,
And all the material and otherwise classified fragments of this broken romance,
Realize that I am a man in love with you,
A creature on the brink of the chaotic crumble of his being,
As the pillars of love gone would destroy the Parthenon.
Former lover,
Before your foot steps have finished echoing against my walls,
Please heed the request of an explanation.
Please grace this dead love with the dignity of reason,
As opposed to leaving it in a cloud of an enigma,
Abandoned like a fish on a dock, left to slowly suffocate.
Abide this request as you would a dying man,
As you are doing little more than killing me.
Former lover,
Letting you go will be like releasing a tightened vice,
As my love for you is as a part of my being as my heart.
Saying our last goodbyes,
Sharing that final kiss that did little more than indulge me
In wistful fantasies of an inevitable reunion,
Consummated with regret, love, and reconciled with intimacy.
Your goodbye left strings,
Like a strand of saliva still connecting our lips even as you parted them.
Former lover,
You left the door open when you walked through it.
How could you be so cruel?
Oct 22, 2011
Oct 22, 2011 at 2:45 PM UTC
When we stopped at the mission
The cracked Adobe was a message from god
Saying,
Centuries are just cracks in the stone, my world runs on diamonds and hydrocarbons
On charming interactions
On moments of synchronicity
On rubbing out heat to be dissatisfied into the void
To give feed for the new ones
In the feral zodiacs.
She frowned at this answer, said she wanted something less ethereal,
Something tight to clutch
Like the Parthenon's Corinthian columns
Or the great gables of a Neverending tabernacle
She was a greedy and godly girl
I was stupified, staring intently at the cracks
Asking what strange beings were created in between
Tracing the canyon routes with my hands, pressing the palm against the grooves
They were warm with lost sunshine, they had dust and life and creatures of God that sought not the gaze of us, but the eternal love of the dark
I have neglected many times this fact of life, pretending to be a stone in a world of pulsating flesh
Wanting to be abused eternally in exchange for experience
To be Boulder--
With granite cheeks and dusted neck
With cobalt eyes and chiseled chest
Tectonic movement, sparring feet
And left forever towards the seas.
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 2:08 PM UTC
Socrates died in the ******* gutter,
his head smashed on the marble
pillars of the Parthenon,
blood soaked the streets of Athens--
the **** of the city was dry,
the **** of the city made wet
with weeping.
The river ran red down the legs
of Athena, the rose of mysterious union
made her genius shudder & contort--
bloody was the sunrise,
bloody the terrible roofs of
marbled Athens.
The jeweled night was loud and furtive,
the philosopher's blood made stains
on the nation, rusty were the gates of
the aqueducts, the asylums.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 7:04 PM UTC
I was putty in the hands of an innocent and curious child
that ran with scissors and
didn't know his own strength
or the sharpness of his own nails,
his ability to rip me apart, slowly,
and into a million loose and flimsy pieces.
I'm not half as strong as I pretend to be.
I meant nothing. I was nothing.
I am.
It would take me too long to realize that he never meant
nearly as much to me as
I always held him prisoner in my mind,
forcing him to be someone to my soul and
pretending he was strong enough
to hold the broken spirit that even the pillars of the Parthenon could not support.
Dec 26, 2013
Dec 26, 2013 at 2:31 PM UTC
We all
ALL of us
Everyone
We all
Are slaves
SO
........let us build the pyramids
.....let us build the Parthenon
let us build America
And
Let us watch time make it all fall d
. o
. w
. n
What we create
In the service of our masters
Is only temporary
Our Titanic on a very first voyage
The only thing
That last forever
Is what makes us most afraid
What makes me most afraid
We are all slaves
And it will
ALWAYS
Be this way
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 12:32 AM UTC
Drifting on fragments of fractured reason
On a tangent trajectory cruising an insatiable instability
Sanctioned sunrise with its surreal surprise
Escapism now justification for the fool who invested, entrusted their truth to a bunch a wolves
Malfunction has entered the realms of mathematics, it has been force fed multiplication
So apparent, ambience has absconded, the Parthenon has perished, the Coliseum has collapsed,
Sanctuary, a penitentiary, high walls of glass shards,
Imprisoned, individuality, no way past these guards,
Prosperity without profit, punished and ridiculed,
The desire to abstain and refrain from normality, its fire is fueled
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 9:25 AM UTC
I arouse myself from joyful slumber
and contemplate the assault
on all my senses
that I know will aggravate me
as I anticipate
the odour of freshly chopped onion
that assails my nose,
in contradistinction
to the aroma of freshly mown grass
that elevates my soul.
When politicians speak their lies
my nostrils twitch,
in complete contrast
to a metaphysical debate
that enchants my essence.
I consider the “gherkin” in London
that degrades my sight,
so divergent from
the view of the Parthenon in Greece
that arouses my spirit.
And as I make the best of it,
I grit my teeth
and hold my nose
and settle back to contemplate
my inner peace and calm.
Mar 19, 2019
Mar 19, 2019 at 4:06 PM UTC
every heartbreak at 21
will make the ground beneath your feet tremble
and you will feel disposable
like the impression they will leave you behind
on white-and-blue-striped creased sheets.
like the spotify playlist youve forgotten about
and the walls you thought were impenetrable.
but when youve learned
that your legs stand like the Parthenon
instead of autumn twigs
you'll unlearn the concept
of a boy's ability
to cut through your steel teeth
and garden bed tongue.
every heartbreak at 22
will teach you to plant flowers
and not to pick them.
and when a wound reopens
like salt on papercut
you'll recall a memory
not too far
and you will have mastered turning
those tsunami eyes
into a calm sea
instead of an enforced desert.
you are 23;
and the city could no longer fit
into the palm of your hands.
you'll realize it's overbearing enough
that people break hearts all the time
and will never have to worry
about seeing the damage
on their morning train.
you are 23
and healing
doesnt quite mean like what it used to.
every heartbreak
comes back in a second.
and in the next,
you get on with your day;
the same creased sheets,
the same bitter-tasting coffee,
the same route home.
only that home
always varied in meaning.
Jul 7, 2019
Jul 7, 2019 at 1:13 PM UTC
He hears those voices, distant, intimate
And trembles at their meaning;
Recognising truths, but unwilling to accept;
Embarrassed, unable to respond;
Reluctant to admit his failures and their insights;
Reminded of times left high and dry,
Where he screamed for recognition and connection:
When he cried in frustrated sobs, lamenting his lot;
Times imprisoned, within and without; close, but trapped.
He hears those voices, clear above the clamour,
And he knows they call to him, entreating;
And he knows he should respond, but his silence is protective;
His silence denotes the inner turmoil's unreconsoled,
And the coincidences yet explained and little understood.
And he's acutely aware that his silence is deafening:
Those attuned bewail, entice, threaten.
He hears those voices, but cannot, will not, respond.
He doesn't remember, as they obviously do;
He doesn't see how he fits the picture;
He knows he's attached, an unwitting cog;
He knows the cocoon's embrace is constricting,
And he pushes its warm security to his detriment;
Knowing his metamorphosis has taken far too long,
But knowing, all too keenly, premature emergence
Will have disastrous results - he still has the scars.
A Parthenon of voices amid a plethora of noise,
But he only follows some, until he stumbles upon another,
Then the pressure builds anew and he curses;
Screams - exasperated, vulnerable, open, exposed;
Naked and angry, unwilling to concede and unable to deny;
****** at the certainty resounding and the consequences entailed;
Annoyed, enraged; humbled, shamed.
He hears those voices, but is stubborn, unrelenting;
He knows the time isn't right and refuses to be pre-empted;
He sympathises with those aware for years;
He feels their frustration and resents their intrusion,
But the more they push, the further he retreats,
His dumb isolation has become the core of his existence.
"F**k them!", he thinks. "They've found their niche";
They've found an outlet, an audience, a forum;
They can ***** and moan, and draw thousands to their cause;
They can enjoy the fruits of their labours and wait;
Along with everyone else, they can wait;
He'll not be rushed.
Mar 7, 2014
Mar 7, 2014 at 7:15 PM UTC
Design it.
but refine it.
From drafting class
in junior high with the protractor
I have always
longed for progress
in architecture.
A harking back to medieval styles
(along with an old fashioned look in big cars)
in the seventies depressed me
but how I know
that Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. is
still respected
and the STate Farm Center
is a marvel.
There has been progress
just as much as individual success
so that the Parthenon
and the Colosseum
and the Agricole
and Agraharam
deposit on us
a new found lust
for the glory that was Greece
and that grandeur that was Rome.
Charles Sturies
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 2:41 PM UTC
the periodic table of gods--
is elementally overturned.
as their accretions leave the
columns of the Parthenon
betwixt.
so the semantics of myth &
legend can copulate in peace.
with tinctures of chaos spasmodically
preconceiving release~
Dec 1, 2023
Dec 1, 2023 at 2:33 AM UTC