Oh I have never loved the razor's kiss,
But a sharper childhood's crazed example
Wrote its lessons on adolescent wrists.
I'm what's left after the flames are trampled.
Is it rebirth for those who never lived?
Seemingly this ultimate weapon's curse
Is its dual-edged blade; between the ribs
The killing intellect is reimbursed.
Yet the fire of the mind ever rises.
Ashborn children may have been their own prey,
After so many daily demises
Perhaps falseness's dross was burned away.
I never loved the wounds of my feeling;
I still hate cuts, but I love the healing.
Category: Sonnet
Oracles
Only those who can dwindle themselves down
Receive the revelation of horror.
Prospective seekers must enter the ground,
Harrow the depths of the ancient borer,
In order for the god's madness to pierce
Cryptic chambers predating humankind.
In the darkness of the cave lurks fierce
Negation of the new, illumined mind.
Inhumed in a grave within another,
Time stops, movement arrests. Everything, all
Is inert. His hymn of silence smothers
Adepts in their mortal clockwork's recall.
Trophonius wrenches senses inward,
Electrifying Orpheus' vineyard.
Words/Actions
Words of an action and actions of words
Are vessels swathed in seas of intention.
Neither are law and either are deferred
To in conflict's caustic condescension.
Nothingness stranding an eternal core,
Enveloping the wildfire of the soul,
Extinguishes hope with a silent roar.
Divide me from the warmth, leave me in coal.
Over the sheer precipice of desire,
Riots break out in free fall to dictate
Being as a tool in fulfillment's mire,
Opens distinctions on which to fixate.
Tell me, or won't you, that I'm beautiful;
How's my faithfulness inexcusable?
Ritual Murder
Wine-dark was Iphigenia's slit throat
At Aulis for her father's winds of war.
Ever did the earliest poets note
Power never blinks, for it's sinned before.
Blood soaks the timeless gruesome practices
Of those poised to think they could rule the world:
Druidic butchers seeking accesses
To gory foresight in entrails unfurled;
Beneath the forum girls and slaves entombed
Alive where order purportedly grows;
The role Abraham readily assumed,
Demonstrating the lengths a "great man" goes.
To this day the powerless pay the price
For fiends who lust for human sacrifice.
Sonnet about you and ducklings
Another day with nothing to write about,
As usual my thoughts return to you.
Particularly when you and I crouched
Among the train of ducklings passing through.
I can't describe the exhilaration
When they huddle around your legs and mine,
Mobbing us with zero hesitation,
Cheekily playing with your shoelace twine.
I adore the gentle way you observe
These sacred offspring in their merriment;
The awe and affection duly deserved
For those precious puffs of life Heaven sent.
The love they show us makes my spirit soar,
And your love of them makes me love you more.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XV
The god of music heard my fervent prayers, More beautiful than any man he looked; I dared not want him yet like needing air, I still besought him while my body shook. Let all take note that who attempts is glad, For when I asked of him he asked the same. And then he said, ah here's my handsome lad, He held my cheek and sweetly asked my name. I begged him to unlock the secret song. He bade me stand and took me in his arms, And instantly to him did I belong For more than songs and divination charms. Is this the thought upon the godly brow That though eternal thinks of only now?
Hyacinthus and Apollo XIV
Your gleaming limbs beneath the streaming light Entice all beauty lovers with their shape, Yet I alone most wondrous of delights Have known—their tender fingers on my nape; Your precious abdomen and milk-white thighs That wrap around my circuitous embrace; Your feet that bring you when you hear my sighs; Your lips on mine, my arms around your waist; The melting timbre of your singing voice; The intimacy of your whispering; With these alone a lover would rejoice. But more, much more than one could sweetly sing, More cherished than the blind could ever see Is this my lot, that you have chosen me.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XIII; Zephyrus III
He loved and lost and left for foreign lands Away from olive branch and temperate bay, Where what was known were climate's cold demands And frost instead of dew proclaimed the day. Around the Earth his refuge lay; the air That gusts upon his tear-stained cheeks ripostes In slicing curls. In perilous despair He flies alone towards the snowcaps' gloss. When Autumn clasped around the one who spurned Him, Zephyr crossed beyond meridians, Equator, spheres and hemispheres; he turned To gentle Spring the sleeping hinterlands. But soon the wind returns again and sips The bitterness of absence on his lips.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XII
A dry and dusty desert now is he With no oases for his parched dismay; His still effulgence matched in irony By flowering winds making him this way. What thrives in Spring and fashions growth must go The way of everything in transience. What breathes and dances in its vigor slows To feed each beast and bower standing hence. But science never soothes a tragedy; Philosophy he has, which doesn't heal; Divine life now unravels emptily; A god without a godhead: what he feels. For though a life is short, a god be whole, Beside both life and death are lovers' souls.
Hyacinthus and Apollo XI
Ye gods that see the mortals' suffering Your own delivered to that fate laments. His deathless blood an offering His cries He'd make, his golden hair he's rent. Incised. The cosmic dreaming gods He sleeps now in Take shape in enervates The Stygian. In Physics' nightmare; Phoebus casts the rod Upon the ground and dashes it in hate. Yet healing arts he holds not culpable, These too he made as surely as the quoit. As well the Sun in seasons pulls His hand: The whipping winds adroit. Dread operand. He drinks the bitter blame himself, The petals blue-on-white as delft.