09-27-2016, 09:29 PM
Exceptional Beasts
These are the tired themes:
my love, my sex, my dreams.
O life, you are a lion's den,
all love is for the children:
there is no sex among the grown,
and all your dreams are wicked.
Meat -- torn from the bone,
no fillets, only enjoyed
raw, red. Water -- how you fear it!
as if your pride can be sustained
by a dry well in this sweltering plain.
O love, you are an eclipse,
with God the sun and sex the moon
and life in your shadow a dream.
How I long for egress, however rare
these seven minutes in heaven are --
hell could not possible be
how plants eat, how men see!
You demand too much of me,
demand I take off my thinking cap,
demand I pull out my taroc pack.
Can't you be content
with my rose-tinted lens?
O sex, you are a flute duet,
and dreams, they are the flautists.
I am bathing naked in a stream,
my long hair (for my hair is long,
the air about my neck is how I hide it)
flowing freely with the fishes' eggs.
You are stunned -- I cannot believe
it is the song that my dreams play
whose notes you see dance across the air
and land like drops of dew upon your hair.
It is lust, red and black -- let us mingle
in the water like hot blood
prefers to mingle in the dark,
with black stone, on the arc
that resurrects the night.
Let embers turn to flame
and fire turn to ash!
Let the audience suffer
an unresolved chord
until the Liebestod...
O dreams, you are a television screen.
From this distance that is sleep, I watch
another farce: Hippomenes winning Atalanta
with golden apples gifted by a goddess.
I cry out: do not forget! do not forget!
But the pyres remain unlit,
and the show goes on as written.
In Cybele's temple, they elope,
and in Cybele's temple, Ovid sings
another song of metamorphosis.
That is their egress. My egress is this:
from boyhood love to manhood life I move.
Trapped in a lion's den, God protected me
until I learned these crafted hands could hold
a pen. Lost in an eclipse, love guided me
until I learned the mind and heart were one.
Tamed by river songs, lust heated me
until the season drew me into sun.
And dreams: was not my childhood Song of Life
fulfilled? Yes, that show is done,
and the summer of my poetry begins.
These are the tired themes:
my love, my sex, my dreams.
O life, you are a lion's den,
all love is for the children:
there is no sex among the grown,
and all your dreams are wicked.
Meat -- torn from the bone,
no fillets, only enjoyed
raw, red. Water -- how you fear it!
as if your pride can be sustained
by a dry well in this sweltering plain.
O love, you are an eclipse,
with God the sun and sex the moon
and life in your shadow a dream.
How I long for egress, however rare
these seven minutes in heaven are --
hell could not possible be
how plants eat, how men see!
You demand too much of me,
demand I take off my thinking cap,
demand I pull out my taroc pack.
Can't you be content
with my rose-tinted lens?
O sex, you are a flute duet,
and dreams, they are the flautists.
I am bathing naked in a stream,
my long hair (for my hair is long,
the air about my neck is how I hide it)
flowing freely with the fishes' eggs.
You are stunned -- I cannot believe
it is the song that my dreams play
whose notes you see dance across the air
and land like drops of dew upon your hair.
It is lust, red and black -- let us mingle
in the water like hot blood
prefers to mingle in the dark,
with black stone, on the arc
that resurrects the night.
Let embers turn to flame
and fire turn to ash!
Let the audience suffer
an unresolved chord
until the Liebestod...
O dreams, you are a television screen.
From this distance that is sleep, I watch
another farce: Hippomenes winning Atalanta
with golden apples gifted by a goddess.
I cry out: do not forget! do not forget!
But the pyres remain unlit,
and the show goes on as written.
In Cybele's temple, they elope,
and in Cybele's temple, Ovid sings
another song of metamorphosis.
That is their egress. My egress is this:
from boyhood love to manhood life I move.
Trapped in a lion's den, God protected me
until I learned these crafted hands could hold
a pen. Lost in an eclipse, love guided me
until I learned the mind and heart were one.
Tamed by river songs, lust heated me
until the season drew me into sun.
And dreams: was not my childhood Song of Life
fulfilled? Yes, that show is done,
and the summer of my poetry begins.