Rhododactylos

[serge gurkski]

There’s a bit of rosy blood

in the first morning hour of the boulevard,

dashed with pencils red and blue,

but the colors are rehearsing still.*


Rosy-fingered dawn, Ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς

kisses him softly awake

to a world he finds hard to love

at first sight, at least.


He needs a warm coat of booze or smack

or best of all: both

to make it again out on the streets

cackling with arrogant disgust.


He can quote Homer to himself
(Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ... )

but that does not buy him

a bowl of soup nor cigarettes

nor a friendly bottle of Rum.


He must refill his tank

of senseless but meaningful

hope again.

He grabs the glass filled

to the brim with a musical Jinn

and consoles himself by

listening to Sappho's praise

of Atthis, unique among

Lydian women.


The Lesbian queen of poetry

stole the rosy-fingered epithet

from Homer's dawn-young sun

only to give it to her blue love-thirsty

moon: σελάννα.

--------------------------------------
* stole that stanza from another poem of mine:

[rowens]

I know a fellow of the Dionysian hope field when I see one. So far I simply feel your poems, and the feeling is pure enough.

That hope we only feel when we or someone else is singing. And since the feeling's always abstract, we need the chorus to give it words. And you seem to know how to do it.

[serge gurkski]

cheers!

Serge

[shotknot]

This poem was nice and had a very unique touch to it that made it original (which is somewhat rare to come upon in "novice" poets.) I believe this poem has a lot of potential, it just needs some tightening up. For example in the fourth stanza you say "so badly needed, nor a friendly bottle of Rum" it seems a bit awkward, a little too wordy because you elaborate and say "so badly needed" and it ruins the flow, thus causing the reader to go back and reread that stanza to understand your full intentions. Your fifth stanza the one that starts with "He must refill his tank" needs some editing because it creates an imbalance in your poem, due to your wordiness, but I'm not sure what to tell you to cut out because I'm sure all the words in that stanza have a purpose to you and I'm simply the reader so I don't have the same outlook on your poem as you, but either way if you edit the fifth stanza and the fourth one and maybe overlook some of your other ones you feel are awkward then you'll have a pristine poem.

[serge gurkski]

Hi Shotknot,

Thank you for reading and your valuable comments. I agree with you on "badly needed", which is - funnily enough . absolutely not needed. ;-) I am a bit short on time right now but will think about wordiness vs tightening more.

cheers
Serge