"scylla" poems
They set off from white rocks,
red geraniums, blue tile,
and let the green sea
lift and drop their ships far above the white foam waves.
The stony islands that were home
were swallowed in minutes by the hungry Atlantic
but they hunted the big fish,
the giant whales with human eyes
who rolled and sang and swam
in oceans a continent away.
They came from Sao Jorge, Sao Miguel
Faial, Pico, Terceira, Horta -
Nine island emeralds set in a black volcanic chain,
neither of the old country nor the new:
Halfway there and halfway gone -
secret jewels of the Portuguese sailors.
They sailed into unknown waters,
south around tropical shores
where dragons smoked and writhed on the rocks
and birds with brilliant red and yellow plumage
rose in clouds around their heads.
Then north, and north, north again
to colder waters
where sea lions barked and lunged
at the strange massive wooden beast
that coursed the waters,
strung with brown bodies swaying
on the lines and cursing the sails.
North still they swept
casting contemptuous eyes on
the cheap turquoise waters and monstrous slow turtles
of the Sea of Cortez.
Coming up from the desert, past the palms and the yucca,
the Joshua tree and Spanish daggers,
they chased their smooth grey prey,
riding the vast Pacific on their wooden island,
herding the leviathans onto their spears,
adventurers with an audience of only
gulls and sky and seal.
Until they sailed too close one day
to a rock-strewn shoreline
and saw the golden hills.
Gnarled oaks like grandmothers from home
with orange poppy jewels at their feet,
missions strung like beads in a ruby marked rosary.
The boats slowed, ****** in by a Scylla of soil
rich and brown and loamy
waiting to be seeded with grapes and apricots
peaches, avocados, lettuce, alfalfa,
fertile and heavy with sweet promise.
And the whales sang and the lions barked and the gulls cried
but the sailors were entranced, encharmed, ensorcelled.
The treacherous sea, the mysterious deep, the stony jewels of home,
called and wept
and waited in vain for the sailors
- beached and grounded -
cutting not waves but earth,
tracking seasons not whales,
seduced by dirt.
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 9:51 PM UTC
The hanky he was sobbing into was crusty,
***** unwashed, unclean; yet strangely comforting to a little boy,
as he cried he made his way to a culvert behind the school,
some place the other kids couldn’t see him crying,
it was more comfortable being near rocks
-next to that watershed for some reason?
He looked down at his antagonist,
the scaly-green feet,
they made him cry harder,
he lamented…
“Why have I been tormented so?”
“Who gave me these feet? Who made me this way, lizardly, scaly, an animal no?”
“What class am I, what species? Are those toenails, claws or a disease?”
“The way I’m treated makes me sad. Where is my mommy, where is my dad?
“Did I come from an egg? Didn’t we all? Why do they pick on me, make me feel so small?”
“My feet are reptilian even I can see that!”
“Am I part lizard? Are there horns on my back?”
“I can’t hide in sneakers ‘cause the claws tear them apart.”
“Not great at math, language or art.”
“They always pickin’ on me, today it’s in the schoolyard.”
“That is why I sit here on the rocks crying with my ugly feet and sullen heart,”
“Cannot run fast so no baseball, basketball or soccer…”
“The other kids tried to stuff me in my own locker…”
“One mean little girl even threw a dead mouse at me!”
“But I’m only part lizard as far as I can see?”
“My English teacher says that my words are like a bird song”
“If I talk like a birdie along with monster’s feet, no wonder I don’t belong!”
“Even still, to be so mean to me, I know that it is wrong…”
“ONE DAY I WILL SHOW THEM ALL, THESE FEET THEY HAVE A PURPOSE!”
“MY WORDS OF SONG AND FEET OF MAGIC COMBINE A COSMIC CIRCUS!”
“I am no freak of nature, no forest Pan or Satyr…”
“It is not the way I look, my clothes or feet that matter…”
“It is what is in my heart and mind, the things I do that truly count…”
“For those things that make us different, for they are tantamount…”
“Seven heads, seven stages, seven fables, seven sages”
“Seven stars and seven wonders and seven heavens that we’re under…”
“And all those things they say are great and marvelous about us…”
“Will one day be written in the book by Great Old Uncle Taautus!” *
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 10:29 PM UTC
Half drowned in those wine dark eyes
drunk off those fermented words
that trickle off those lush rose lips
Calypso or Scylla, I know not
it doesn't even matter
as long as I am with you
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 11:20 PM UTC
Aeolian dour fire meridians
Unfettering enlightenments will
Together Scylla with authority
Howling, Charybdis in oblivians wake
Shenting spindel meandering;
The schism termagating sirens
Repasts (diabolic manna)
Refracting ambrosial in the
Lap of Gods eye sophically conjecturing
Ephinany- times charioteering,
The nocturnal triunes discordance
Contemplating consequence thistling
Opothecaric sigels permeating lots
Obstruse lathed cerebral skies
Ruthfully roil whittling indelible
Epitaphs of serpentine repositories
Woefully dawning eternity castening
Harmoniously asunder truths
Deifying yen die.
ELEETE J MUIR.
Jan 13, 2012
Jan 13, 2012 at 11:14 AM 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
So what of love,
Hearts burning fire,
Impaled on the horns of pain and desire,
A villain made true; honest man to a liar
In wretched quest for an abstract that’s higher
And if, perchance, they should vanquish their need,
Will he or she to true love concede
Or never quite sure of heart’s fine intention
Smother such dreams with stifling convention
Then, dastardly torn, twixt right and true
Sully their soul with transitory muse
In fear of the power that thunders within
And a promise once made, to never give in
For the Poet’s dilemma in this miraculous life
Is that when blessed with love, ‘tis oft coupled with strife.
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 5:06 PM UTC
For the Dragon hissed as the Dragon died,
Apollo’s kiss as the night subsides,
Python’s bliss as naiad’s cried,
And the wailing woe’s on a weathering tide,
Water-wall from Kētos scream, tsunami crash, swallow everything,
Rolling clouds and the pouring rain and the serpent dying writhing in pain,
And the Dragon hissed and the Dragon died,
Apollo kissed away the night time sky,
And the Python’s bliss as his naiad’s cry,
The Sun awoke at the wheel-house berth, armor gold, chest-plate of Earth,
And valiance choked, squeezed by Ladon’s girth,
As the serpent swelled with the stormy seas,
To collapse great hero upon his knees,
Apollo, Cadmus and Hercules.
Reborn by fire, Father-Lion’s roar, returned each night to even-up the score,
And the Dragon hissed and the Dragon died,
Apollo’s kiss ward off night time skies,
Oh the wailing woe of ominous tides,
The scythe or club, boulder at night, rocks from heaven and the perilous fight,
Black-oil venom, heart of a beast, starry night’s runner split from the east,
Noxious breathe, flame-seared teeth, smell of death from a ****** feast,
Speared at the neck, pinning head to earth, then celebrated as a day of birth,
The serpent on his shoulder, or dangling from the tree,
Arising from the waters, from the depths beneath,
Cast out under a mountain, yes underneath, then wear his skin and sow his teeth!
And the Dragon hissed and the Dragon died,
Apollo’s kiss as the fight subsides,
And Python’s bliss as his muses wailed, between the horns where Argo sailed,
Call it a man or Charybdis, Scylla, rock, a multi-headed beast,
Or just two horns with a middle disk and Apollo’s fire, Sun’s dawning kiss,
And the Dragon hissed as the Dragon dies,
And Apollo’s kiss create the day time skies,
And the Python’s bliss at his naiad’s cries,
And the Dragon hissed and the Dragon died!
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 12:56 PM UTC
As the undulating bodies part
the neon lights catch her face,
and her piercing gaze catches me.
A panorama of nothing but a blur.
But her- sharp.
Thirsty. Blazing.
Her hair is sleek and straight
but the way she throws back her head,
runs her fingers through the strands,
makes a tousled mess as entrancing and as
playfully wild as the club swirling around her.
Her lips are red. A challenging red.
The color of a delicate rose, but also
the color the harlot wears in old films.
The color of sin; of desire.
To unlock those lips
And tousle that hair
And lure out the voice….
To have the power of a man’s gaze now.
To be able to throw at her the force of
a chiseled jaw and stubble across my chin.
To know my role is to chase her
like a brave doe that turned
to look at me in the forest.
Who bounds away gracefully,
Knowing my sights are set
and the target is upon her.
How she would know my adrenaline
surged with every step she made
that took her farther from me.
All the power would lay in my
virile hands, to pull the trigger
on her when I may.
Ha! I laugh at my roots in the world that
imposes a craving for the rule of power.
Your gaze tells me we don’t belong there.
I move through the bodies toward you.
Toward freedom.
Lift me from my roots, darling.
We’ll run together.
Give up the vision of a pointed gun.
How’d they ever make me think
I wanted to be shot?
Oh, what a vision. What a creation!
My long locks twisting around yours,
how my lissome fingers get their
chance with you. And those
supple lips lend me the magnetic red hue.
How different the whole scene becomes
when the both of us are provocative
creatures, two nymphs swimming together
in the water of seduction.
Continue on, Odysseus.
Go conquer Scylla and Charybdis.
Master the seas of half the world.
The Sirens are singing to each other.
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 1:04 AM UTC
To see this old man shaking here
In rage at boys whose apple-throwing jeers
Reduce him to impotent rage and tears
Is to know Odysseus, home from Troy,
Battle spent, no Cyclops left to blind,
And no more Stygian puzzles to unwind.
The threats he hurls are hollow stones
Coming now from a man whose bones
Once cracked beneath a decking plank
As Scylla searched with serpent heads
For men to crush and swallow, dead,
But Nob'dy now remains to save the day.
The hapless tree whose apples green are peltering his home
Is now an oar, pole-planted tall a thousand miles ashore
As penance for the years of taunting gods of wave and foam,
And boys be savages unaware of what an apple's for.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 10:11 PM UTC
You’ve got some new ***** you think is better,
She’s a second rate version of me, doll.
She’s not your freedom, she’s your fetter
I’m the first edition, if you recall.
She’s Crystal Lite and I’m a rich liquor.
She’s Mother Theresa, I’m Mata Hari
I’m a solar flare and she’s a flicker,
She’s a walk in the woods, I’m a safari.
I’m fifty one flavors, she’s vanilla.
But that flavor is bound to sour.
If you’re not careful she’ll turn to Scylla,
her loving gaze turned to a glower.
She’s safe but I know you stud,
you can’t handle a moment of dull.
I’m in your thoughts, I’m in your blood
and you can’t get my words out of your skull.
She thinks she’s got your heart and that’s fine.
She can call you hers, but you’ll always be mine.
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 10:00 AM UTC
Remembering time past.
Hell, searching for lost time.
Idyllic maybe
But
Flowers wilt.
The idle wailing
of Sirens and Daffodils
Allows me to forget:
Nostos holds Algos.
Scylla, Charybdis.
Is the future come yet?
Every word becomes a mistake.
All triumphs a fleeting matter
worthy of none.
Eviscerate my joy and live in its corpse.
Apr 7, 2010
Apr 7, 2010 at 5:40 PM UTC
The whirlpool, it spins,
while the mountain, it twists.
As two serpents entwined,
are surrounding this.
Some had once claimed,
that it started as a bear,
others claimed it began at Canopus,
way over, down there.
Multi-headed or spring of rocks,
cavern, mountain or egg,
a great wheel forever-turning,
with a circus and a one leg!
Pushed along by two giants,
grinding up salt with its gear,
thus responsible for the seasons,
floods and movements and the year.
Two horns of the monster,
but not found on its head,
the Earthen plane a giant treasure,
where Drakon made his bed,
with two stars on his brow,
like the two in his eyes,
the porthole of the ship,
a flying horse in disguise.
Scylla, Charybdis,
Jason, Argos, Deucalion,
Ziusdra, Manu, Noah,
-and the two birds who carry on,
and the mountain from below,
which they all rested upon.
Ameleth or Kullervo,
…and brother Utamo’s great wrong,
…and the whirlpool from above that created this song!
And the evil found inside us, the Id and its kin, will nurture the abused child and continue the sin. The great black wheel of madness, as always, will spin, churning out more abusers to fill the Hell that we’re in. When, where or how did the wheel of blackness start? Corrupting the love and joy into the evil in man’s heart and turning family into tragedy and tearing them apart? Next time you feel weak and let the succubus inside, just remember all those in Hell and the reasons they died.
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 5:52 PM UTC
In place of calm, read stirring ocean,
Scylla and Charybdis,
between a rock and a hard place.
In place of comfort, read your body,
transient, missing, on a plane somewhere
in a car somewhere on a boat somewhere
without your phone somewhere
somewhere somewhere somewhere
that is not my apartment or my arms
but somewhere where you smile.
Somewhere where your eyes
finally focus.
In place of sleep, read blood between the floorboards
and moving boxes scattered,
read burst capillaries and a savings jar
full of Washingtons and no idea
what I’m saving for.
In place of stasis, read
one fast move or I’m gone.
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
I’m doing so well.
I offered you to Charybdis in exchange for my sanity.
Scylla too, at first, but she seemed too great an evil and I’m over it, I promise.
I’d rather watch you disappear into the maelstrom of my memory than
have to pick six pieces of your body from the crags in my head.
I’m doing so well.
I warned you of the Lotus Eaters
and took ten deep breaths when you peeked inside the bag of winds and blew our love astray.
I told a blind Polyphemus you were sorry for his loss.
He said Nobody is sorry, and I knew that he was right.
I’m doing so well.
I amble through Phoenicia on sidewalks that remember all the stories you told.
I bump into Nausikaa. She asks if I am Circe, and I tell her my name.
She drops her gaze to the pavement before admitting that you never mentioned me.
I’m doing so well.
I don’t spite the olives that dare to grow without our bodies entwined beneath them.
And I don’t mind when Antinous calls me ahead, begging me to finish our shroud - to leave the loom,
and us, behind.
I’m doing so well.
I buried all my anger in Kalypso’s wet sand
And as it followed you out to sea with the tide she came up and commiserated;
You left her once, too.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 6:37 PM UTC
An Abandoned School
Young dreams, now scattered fragments on the floor:
A little handle into a corner flung
The disc of sizes never again to fit
A number two pencil into place for a trim
Nor will the made-in-Chicago hopper
Ever again save for the classroom prankster
Sweet-smelling slitherings of cedar shavings
To fling about while Teacher’s at the board.
A new Ticonderoga ****** into
The spinning Scylla and Charybdis blades
Was tested by steel, the dross savaged away,
By turning the handle and grinding away,
And from this grim ordeal emerged The Point,
The perfect point, the adventurous lead…
It’s not really lead, stupid, it’s graphite;
That’s what Teacher said. Don’t you know anything?
Girls are stupid. They play with dolls and stuff.
I’ve got a real cap pistol. I’ll draw it.
You want to see? Look! No, wait, that’s not right;
It’s better this way…Ma’am? Uh…integers?
Arithmetic is stupid. Science is fun.
I’ve got most of the Audubon bird stamps
And I liked it when we cut up the frogs
Old people are so mean. I’ll never be old.
A leaking pipe drips the minutes away
Outside a broken window summer sings
Its songs of freedom as it always has
The desks are gone, the electricity is off
The air smells of education and decay
The classroom now is littered with the past:
A broken crayon, a construction-paper heart,
A silence longing for children’s voices.
Nov 16, 2016
Nov 16, 2016 at 8:04 PM UTC
welcome to a place you used to call home and now is full of strangers
the smell of coffee, forgotten faith, and lost memories cling to the bronze walls - broken friendships (at least partially your fault) taste like bitter chocolate and your could-have-beens echo off the high ceilings
upside down city lights drown in the reflection of leftover rainwater - your tires slash through them and you think quietly about the skin on your forearms
your favorite album isn’t enough to drown the pit of guilt in your stomach and the raindrops don’t wash away your anxiety no matter how hard you wish that they will
what used to be a mirror is now broken, and the shards jab at you, not hard enough to break your skin, but enough to know that something is very wrong
that candle you forgot to blow out last night makes your room smell like every other thing that you left unattended until they grew to be too big for you to handle anymore
you are odysseus, and the world is both scylla and charybdis. you can only hope you’ll make it home.
Dec 26, 2015
Dec 26, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
He found her hiding
In the cities cowers
And thought to befriend her
By offering a carrot
She wouldn’t take it
But she couldn’t leave it
Her eyes
Droopy half moons
Darting between him
And his offering
*The Scylla
And the Charybdis*
Knowing that if
She didn't starve to death
This fox would eat her.
But the fox was a Magnus
He knew her pain
*A Pea - hard as tuppence ha'penny
Under twenty mattresses*
And appealed to her sensitivity.
He too had been alone
- His rhombic truths
And scared
- A slant on the straight and narrow
And when it was time to leave
He asked her to dine with him
In his burrow.
But still she hesitated
So he scuttled away
Leaving her to follow
And apologize
For having vexed him so.
*If he had wanted to **** her
He would have done so already*
And she was very hungry.
So they talked of books
*Peter Rabbit
And the Velveteen Rabbit*
As he sharpened his knives
To dice potatoes
And chop carrots.
They were going to have
A German dish
-Hasenpfeffer.
-What does that mean
She asked
Sniffing the broth.
- Rabbit stew
He whispered.
And then he bit her
Hard
And held her
Until she stopped struggling.
He really did love rabbit.
Nov 22, 2011
Nov 22, 2011 at 3:44 PM UTC
All are cast upon life's Seas
All have cares and doubt
We can freeze at 0°
Or we can Scream & Shout
The Tempest tears at our proud sails
The waves crash on our decks
The winds wail, our strength can fail
And we can end up wrecks
Caught between two destinies
The Scylla and Charybdis
The devil and the deep blue sea
The malstrom comes to haunt us
But... avast there, mate! It's not your fate!
There asleep upon your lee
Is God so great, He's never late!
And he can calm the sea!
Have you heard? He has awoken!
He's not in the grave!
Tho we are broken, He has spoken!
He's Ruler of the waves!
So do not fear the hurricanes
For as sure as I was born
Tempests wane, in sad refrain
Before the
Maker of the Storm
SoulSurvivor
(C) 7/14/2016
Jul 15, 2016
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:24 AM UTC
The walls are dripping black
My inner monologue
A flat, dull rasp.
My heart
Like the flicker of a dying candle
Happy to fade.
There is nothing left
nothing to lose
to keep me safe.
You think I'm here
Playing those endless ******* games
Keeping score.
No
I've written my goodbye
Carved in flesh.
Idling,
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Just for kicks.
Courting the waves
In final damnation
Yours sincerely.
My empty gaze
This twitching wound
Your cruel tongue.
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 6:23 PM UTC
Last thing I remember, was that drastic times called for drastic measures
She was out of town
He was out of order
The amalgamation of ***** little secrets and the insecurities I picked at
Which put me between Scylla and Charybdis
Urging me to make Hobson's choice
Tie up loose ends
Went to the bazaar
To pick up an ambigram of the word "Psalms"
And mirror image of the word "Proverbs"
Buyer beware
We speak in strange slanguage here
So get on with it
Share sugar
Sniff out your own kind
Only time can tell
Tell time to hold up
Bank on tomorrow
On Eastern/ Pacific/ Mountain time
Local and global
Try to save face
Not aimed at any anyone specific
If you're wearing the shoe, you must fit it
Overbearing
I'm painted as a neer do well
-Tommy Johnson
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 12:21 PM UTC
I swallowed Charybdis somehow...
I was in the Dire Strait(s) of Messyna,
Doing my Odyssey thing (such is life)
And I just swallowed Charybdis.
The funny thing is this
Maelstrom, it fits
Within me just fine
It's even vaguely useful
(drank that Scylla's blood like wine)
But there's still a sensation
I have of...mild annihilation
Of everything that was mine.
But it all still seems fine
I may be filled with a vacuum
of violent wailing waves that's
coated my heart with rime
But it'll melt with time.
(I imagine.)
But one thing does now worry me
Moving forward, my journey
Leads to that pesky island.
Helios's; the Island of the Sun!
(Yes he's quite a brilliant one)
Now that might warm my blood
And it might tame the waves
Transform the vacuum to a tender sea
Giving more control to me
Less reckless and more truly free...
Live as who I was born to be...
But also-- Charybdis might just like...
eat all the Sun's special cows or whatever
and either he will never rise again
or I'll get speared with a lightning bolt
Which both would ****
So I'm stuck
Imprisoned by Charybdis (ironically)
I sit here a bit catatonically
As I lock up Charybdis
Wondering how the hell (Hades?)
This monster fits within.
and wondering who swallowed who.
May 6, 2017
May 6, 2017 at 8:35 PM UTC
we are stuck
between Scylla
and
Charybdis
we know the path we must take
but
I fear
we will ignore
the warnings
we are still off course
Feb 3, 2021
Feb 3, 2021 at 10:48 AM UTC
I don't have any photos of when I was young
because they look like Chronos holding a gun
I just need slow-mo or time totally undone
or maybe I just need to hold onto someone
because I can't hold on to the before
after bombing all my bridges with C4
so now I walk on the sea floor
wishing I could see more
but all I see is myself as an aquatic gorilla
after spending too much time with Poseidon
precariously between Charybdis and Scylla
as pictures make me look more like Joe Biden
while I feel like I'm the one with the trident
but I'm just Janus' migrant
and that guy is a tyrant
because no matter which way he's facing
he can always find someone to replace me.
So I don't ever take pictures
because they give time a fixture
from which to taunt me like a trickster
showing me the different colors in the mixture
like a lowkey Loki
giving me the okie-dokie
luring me into moseying moping
leisurely leading to rope-a-doping
a mirror-morphed bizarro-me dope fiend
wanting to stay in a Kumbhakarna dope dream.
Time is a sausage link
clogging the gothic sink
of a drain we all would think
seems as fast as goblin's wink
so I try to focus on the myopic pink
but always end up finding reasons to drink
the ambrosia of a nova from Krakatoa
the ebbs and flows come and go with intensity
brought by the power of Jehovah
as well as two cameras with which I can see.
Aug 20, 2023
Aug 20, 2023 at 9:52 PM UTC