V. the ballad of briseis
my heart is of
the flesh of figs,
and that which
i cannot touch:
grainy sweet
garnet nectar
pretty to behold
but easy to bruise
no god shall speak for me, briseis
for this fig-heart, like the heart of man
craves art as it does god
and though i know you not by name,
but only pseudonym:
blood, words, and love,
we are kindred souls
i'd like to believe that we
are cut of the same cloth
hewn of the same mound of clay
(or cast into the same iron, i suppose
for we became one another's anchor
the day we met)
i once told you, my dear briseis,
that if you taught me symbiosis
i would teach you love
for you found pragma
in philosophy cold
markov's blankets
freud's ego, plato's cave
whereas i found pragma
in alchemy's poetry
chekhov's gun
freud's neurotics, plato's human
it means nothing.
the alchemy lies
beyond the chemicals,
beyond the seed and the egg,
beyond our festivals of atonement,
beyond my prima materia
and your unfulfilled magnum opus
it lies in simple interdependence,
the oceans, the heavens,
the forests, the deserts,
the storms, the famines,
the herds of wildebeest,
the colonies of ants,
the beady dew on the spider web
and the purling river shallows,
our acrid mouths yearning for mother's milk,
the boy who makes us cry at night,
the fiery logs roaring against the cold air,
the hoot-owls and the faces on the wall
(our skeletons never did stay in the closet)
bathed in that slow, hideous wonder
those interplays of love and symbiosis
as i drown and die in reverie once more
pray that the stakes may be forever higher
that i find those eternal elysian fields
so long as our achilles lives to fight again
we are more alike,
than you or i would
ever dare to admit,
briseis
so humor this fig-heart:
hold me and tell me
that it'll be all right
to fig-hearts and fickle fate: we aren't perfect, and that's okay.
~ILIAD~
this series, inspired by the greek epic of the same name attributed to homer and madeline miller's "song of achilles", is a narrative of my life, short as it may be. i [attempt] to explore everything from race to sexuality, to friendships and reconciliation. i hope you take something from this. you can read in whichever order you like, as a series or as standalones.
interpretation of truman capote's "other voices, other rooms", with text taken directly from said work in stanza seven.
