Prometheus by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, 1762 (Louvre) – Public Domain
here begins her
soliloquy in a minor key
a complex subtext
contortion of the plot
he shouts defense of natural law
impulses of his sexual proclivities
mistaking law for justice
longstanding psycho-logic trick
incestuous gods revenge
apocalypse of politics
the tragic Titan fallout
of an autoerotic tryst
*The title is from Goethe’s Prometheus: ‘Here sit I, forming mortals’
Gryffin stag
Ice maiden descends
Second veil of heaven
Above damp earth
Below ephemeral sky
Land of deer crossing
Threshold of worlds
Mystical sky-horses
Stamp communion
Animal souls devoured
Ink trailed narcotic visions
Nurture strength, she is
Courted by death
At the pinnacle of her
Horsehair mitre, locus
Of regenerative power,
Panther and ram
Preside over quantum paradox
Epicenter of shamanic liberation
Larch kurgan, world tree root
Ecstatic winged snow leopard
Climbs a celestial path
Seductive gracile line
Drawn through the twist
Of antlers and anguish
Ak-Alakha River in Siberia, image by Kobsev at wikimedia commons, used under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license
Faluka on the Nile (Luxor) (c) AM
From the primordial waters
I created myself
I am everything that is
all that ever was
and what is to come
No one has ever laid open
the garment by which I am concealed
I am the Ancient One
mistress of the bow
red crown ruler of arrows
On the muddied bank
in the land of the lake
I birthed the sun
opening the way
to fertile dynasty
In the spectral sapphire room
of her memento mori at Gangkhar Puensum
where the timbre weighs somnolent
and no human eyes ever behold her,
Ratridevi intones her nuanced song
a slow tempo fantasia of peace
painting vividly all imagined heavens
with an intensity of crepuscular delight
denaturing seams of star-trail dreamscapes
her semiotic enchantments, fragments of entangled
thought-forms in an unbounded universe beyond language
azure moon-glow midnights of another dimension
enduring wildness unfurls
snow leopard silence reigns
caesura between verses
thunder dragon roars an
ancient tongue of lost symbols
an imploding singularity of meaning
Ratridevi sighs her secret
descends from mountain peak to
soul-vale, bathed in violet light
Posted for Lynn’s excellent Poetics prompt at dVerse: Summit in Sight. This poem is a continuation of a poem I wrote in 2012: Lexical Shangri-La: Here be Dragons.
refracted photographic imprints
mirrored images, effigies
of a soft, fragrant
long forgotten
afternoon
gracile clouds
dissipating into
pregnant air
earth absorbs
emotion and
forgets
dreamscapes
marred with
anti-compositional devices
ruin punctuated by lilacs
spherical imaginarium
a cultural artifact
cracked by tremors
calibrating pain
at precise frequencies
mensurating oppression
data recorded on
an unending spool
quantum computing
oscillator made of
wolf bone
appropriated symbols
assimilated by the
AI processor
to ensure
it can’t be
personal
yet each embodied
one is attuned
to history
to the iron-salt
smell of blood
pink magnolia
petals cascade
within the space
between the cast-
iron bed frame
and moments of passion,
my semiotic erotica
existing in the same
space as I read an
American Hybrid
Anthology – Super
Target parking lot
transmissions capture
antipoetic phrasing
immersed in disruption
of a linear, temporal path
illogicality seems actionable,
implicitly possible,
delicious even
fragments rupture an
empirical process
while immanence
revolves/devolves
in Google searches
missives in ether
petitions to digital
gods, binary masters
memory terraforms
another exoplanet
spiral galaxy
mimetic minds
contextualize
world building
half comprehensions
poems unraveling
in space-time
microcosmic bees
swarming my hive
incinerate the wasp
translucent frogs croak
a requiem . . . codification
stitches these seams
here in the room
where myths are born
Hypatia calculates an
elegant proof while
Sappho presages
a papal decree
all poetry is reduced
to ash, each word burns
away its discovery
this line will soon
alight upon a zephyr
carried to the sea
all is transformation
in a universe of energy
conservation, an unending
causal chain unfolding
from the first shift force
directing matter as
particles coalesced
within an atmosphere
of censure I carved an
ivory key, securing
esoteric runes –
legacy of what
was once lost
Psyche Revived by Eros’ Kiss by Antonio Canova
Eros falls from a sunlit chariot
into a sea of destruction
adrift in the salt-sting
of an inner exile
golden wings beating
swift as the whirlwinds
of a tempest roaring
melancholic around him
loosing breath and bearing
his desire broken upon
the craggy shore
he pines for her
transforming love
butterfly wings alight
liberate her longing
she dreams of moonlit nights
the salt-sting of his kiss
ravaging tempest of bliss
transformational encounter
a consummate release
his true nature
centers her in the
splendor of their love
reunited after trials
wounded and contrite
she is awareness
wed to his glory
enlightened cosmic sight
immortal soul revealed
she breathes life into the circle
he lights the internal flames
forever entwined in flight
iridescent wings lift lovers
to yet unknowable heights
Seraphina cries out at dawn
voice emanates from hallowed bells
incarnating disembodied minds
A call to haloed presence
echoes: eternal glory abounds
through the broken chords of song
Jophiel weeps benevolent grace
embodies immaterial beauty
winged proclamations of joy
Celestial delight fuels their fire
igniting sparks of the divine
within each miraculous one
The Harrowing of Hell, from a fourteenth century manuscript, Anonymous
Upon a muddied road
long lost to the noise
and bustle of everyday
inanity I came upon
a wound in the land
from the bottom
of the ever deepening pit
he winks his brightest blue eye at me:
‘nothing in the wide world,
of which you seem so attached,
has any real existence’
ontological jokes
for the squeamish
‘I’m a figment –
pigment stain
of your wall-eyed,
lolling fantasies’
dancing as he heckles
my raised hackles
‘ogling my impish
grin gets you nothing
but sin,’ whispers
‘it’s meaningless din,
for all is naught’
with nihilistic glee the
trickster jests his own
dark thoughts
rhyme, don’t rhyme
on moral principle –
even the damned
need amusement
he laughs aloud
‘what gods are left
to damn me?’
there is no purpose
in the gilding
of my golden cage
and my resentment
may be stonily wrought
I’d be devastated
but remember
his existence is
nonexistent, another
prank on my sincerity
and so merrily continue
my journey unencumbered
Written in response to Claudia’s prompt at dVerse Poets Pub to write a poem where character from a book intrudes. My character is Woland from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. The title is the beginning of a poem from Eunoia by the experimental poet, Christian Bök.
Weminuche Wilderness / Image Credit: David Chamberlain
Sappho’s disastrous god
devoid of love and sorrow
wept not upon the metrons of her tragedy
His moonglow blindness
to her ornate melodies
rapturous abandon of polyphonic ecstasy
Her enduring wilderness
echoic lingering metaphors
gestalt harmony of a vision pale
Sunlit peaks preside over pulpwood coffins
effigies lit by Apollo’s fire-licked arrow
fed by the inexhaustible breath of Aeolus
burn filigreed epitaphs to her bright star
Notes: This was written for Victoria’s excellent prompt on patterns at dVerse Poets Pub. The poem makes allusions to Greek mythology, Christianity, the Weminuche Wilderness in Colorado where some of the peaks include Eolus and Sunlight mountains, poets John Keats and Sappho, and patterns in nature in its exploration of the recurring historic theme of the oppression of women and their expression. Together these allusions create connections of meaning, explicate the contrafacture and intertextuality inherent in poetics and religion/mythology, and indicate a deeper layer where we encounter the patterns that undergird the psychological entanglement we experience in our engagement with poetry, religion, and culture. It also demonstrates a pattern of themes within my own poetry.
I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.
Chromapoetica 