"proserpina" poems
The girl I love is sitting in her mother's garden,
clusters of rain-heavy blossoms dripping from her hair,
the golden curls at the nape of her neck gleaming,
the sunlight catching in her hair.
O, I am drunk on the richness of the sun
and the flowers and light, and on
glancing-eyed Proserpina, reading Lorca,
listening to the hydrangeas sing.
The girl I love, her body is a greenhouse,
lush and lovely, rainlily-white--
O, my goddess, glancing-eyed goddess of spring!
Jul 3, 2013
Jul 3, 2013 at 11:04 PM UTC
She was just a young goddess
About what modern people would call a "teenage girl"
Running through a field of lotuses,
Her white dress lapping at her legs
Her golden hair whipping in the wind
Her friends, they call out
"We'll be asleep. Don't wander so much,"
She reassures them she'll be fine
With a smile and a nod, they rest in the field of flowers.
Flowers catch the young goddess' eye
Appealing with its bright colors
And lovely shape,
She thinks, Who could resist such beauty?
For the answer is none,
Maybe not even the wisest of mortals
She bends down, the flowers poking at her covered thighs
It's a bright flower, just like the blue skies
Proserpina, our lovely and innocent goddess, she picks until her heart's content
Flower after flower.
One is gone, another shows up, and so goes to the cycle.
She's gone too far, but Proserpina doesn't know that
She's about to sit and inspect these lovely flowers that she has picked
When there's a rumble below the earth.
Alarmed, she recoils, ready to break into a run
The ground opens up, a man in armor
This is the one they call Hades, God of the Underworld
Proserpina, alarmed, cannot see his face for it is pallid
Pale and sunken, but that doesn't matter now.
Hades, with his might, grabs the young goddess, who is screaming for help that she does not receive
Help! I am being abducted, but why me, a goddess,
When there are plenty of mortal women?
Proserpina doesn't know the workings of a god's heart, no,
Especially one who's her father's brother.
She's taken down under,
Where death rules and ghosts go by, like some sort of dead city
Inhabited by soulless spirits
Proserpina, it seems, will not be seeing her mother or the land above in
Quite a while, but Proserpina, soon she will not care.
Ah, to be young, and to be a goddess.
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 9:29 AM UTC
Backdropped by your setting midnight sun
This blackened tree of gnarled and crooked branches
Shorn of starlings nest or buds of leaves to bloom
Is but Mother Nature's abandoned child awaiting Proserpina's call
As its frayed ropeswing hangs unstirred and unmoved
A seat for two carved and formed of connecting crosses
One of breathing heart, of hope and purest salvation
One of loneliness, despair and decomposing isolation
For time has never seen right to pass our way
And I've long since stopped believing in some afterlife
Yet with you, i dream to reincarnate another life
Where everything is different yet nothing has changed
And I will seek you out, I will hunt you down if i must
I will choose your beating vibrant heart
Encapsulate it forever in that painted yellow sun
So connected crosses can dance as one before thy Spring is done
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 3:15 PM UTC
Delgada y sinuosa
como la cuerda mágica.
Rubia y rauda:
dardo y milano.
Pero también inexorable rompehielos.
Senos de niña, ojos de esmalte.
Bailó en todas las terrazas y sótanos,
contempló un atardecer en San José, Costa Rica,
durmió en las rodillas de los Himalayas,
fatigó los bares y las sabanas de áfrica.
A los veinte dejó a su marido
por una alemana;
a los veintiuno dejó a la alemana
por un afgano;
a los cuarenta y cinco
vive en Proserpina Court, int. 2, Bombay.
Cada mes, en los días rituales,
llueven sapos y culebras en la casa,
los criados maldicen a la demonia
y su amante parsi apaga el fuego.
Tempestad en seco.
El buitre blanco
picotea su sombra.
676
“You are sacred to Me,”
speaks a steep disembodied voice,
lifted by the lowly, rescued by the reed,
quenched by the eagle.
She has been delivered to the underworld
from sliding scree, into silence
from the long sigh of a still black flag
Hung for her Eros.
The one raised by no one,
Pounded into poet,
Scorched by doubt
and blessed with scars.
The doubting beloved is dancing
Despairing, the impossible possible.
Her solemn spin stirs open the rose petals
Far away in a waiting redolent garden
That is thirsting a tear from Proserpina,
wept for the company of a nightingale.
The beloved arrives with blood red wine.
“You are the sacred of the sacred
for your heart has eyes
I’ve no wings of fire, nor beast I be.
See my unseen heart
and I'll return to Thee.”
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 3:01 AM UTC
Sono nata il ventuno a primavera
ma non sapevo che nascere folle,
aprire le zolle
potesse scatenar tempesta.
Così Proserpina lieve
vede piovere sulle erbe,
sui grossi frumenti gentili
e piange sempre la sera.
Forse è la sua preghiera.
516
someplace else
alice never bothered leaving.
i know a thing or two about girls who jump rabbit holes —
all dead eyes and ripped laces and cigarettes;
there was no white rabbit to begin with.
i know a thing or two about girls
who run away from themselves.
alice — a wildflower as they say:
with limbs made of wilted dahlias,
with wasps nesting in her chest — alice,
has the cat not told you that
one can only lay too much flowers
on just a single grave —
just a single hollow body,
before they grow into forest of trees
from where all your nooses hang?
nonetheless, tiptoe and fall.
this way to wonderland —
this way to the rabbit hole,
this way to the cemetery,
this way to your eyes,
to your chest,
to your palms.
has the fickle cat not told you that
there was no white rabbit
in the advent of your own apocalypse?
this is your fairytale, sweet, sweet girl.
light that cigarette and set yourself on fire,
your mind already is hell anyway.
and i know a thing or two about a girl who descended to hell —
you are proserpina without the weeping.
you are proserpina without the crown.
but in someplace else,
alice never bothered leaving.
no one's waiting back at home,
and no one's waiting to be found.
Jun 28, 2020
Jun 28, 2020 at 3:13 AM UTC