F*g from this hard-scrabble heaven.

for toni jones, pickled fish.

 

 

 

HATE. From the medium of trinity, thinly rolled and twisted like hyssop tea of  purificatory,

sprinkling rites like those of the ancient Hebrews. My cousin wears the veil, the drag veilling

with slur and abandonment, with those pantyhose of myelinated nerve fibers bundled into

tracks of contoured, sacrifice; body of mycelium, in that vision of the fairy ring, exvoto,

where luxuriant trees mop up the sound of dangling earrings or the geometric patterns

that cotton balls make on the falsetto of mascara and dew.

 

Even Freya, goddess of beauty, rode a chariot pulled by cats, dropping segments of the flower

from innocence and hyphae. Thor dressed in her clothes as a trick of Fafafini silk, whose allegence

to loyalty stumbles waveringly over gowns and high heels left in the hallway. When two men

holding hands won't let the bible burn thru the blood of faith. When love is love, when two

souls fall there together; when two women, fragrant whole or rosy flower, flame holy as a new

convert on the verslibrist star, sing vespers in their evening mask. We only know the wet

robes of the pentacost.

 

Oden sacrificed his eye for it, the gift of poetry. The poems that make you lay flat on your

stomach on the floor of that old Ford and dream, between the drips of rain or the intrusion

of that same yellow jacket that visits each summer, with his short lived buzz as musical

synthesis, to sermon

the myrmidon, black air.

Reviews

[Tree]

Your knowledge of history and mythology is ripe in your poetry. It is a tool that you have handily at your disposal to weave eloquent, and thoughtful metaphors and Iive beating analogies. I like the way you just got the word hate, quickly out of the way. But you never let it go, you gave it color. And texture. And in the second stanza you give us insight, valuable insight. "Love is love, when two souls fall there together ..."

But that last stanza/paragraph you portray a sleepy vivid vision, that I will be thinking about for quite some time. I will come back to this

[Britt Foster]

Wow. This is amazing; I agree with Diego in that your historical knowledge is very apparent and rich. Your word choice throughout is very advanced and adds to the air of historical backdrop, and that final paragraph is delicious. It ties the whole poem together in such a beautiful and entrancing way. Keep it up, you're an inspiration!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"love is love"--regardless of between whom it is cast...

and those who cast away lovers of a different nature do not really have love in their hearts.

[Brandon S. Whitten]

A love many will not understand, I am happy to have experienced. Brilliant read and write. I agree with the others, there is a lot of depth to this piece. Will be saving it to read again.

[Emily B]

this is not something a quick glance will touch, like Marie I will read it many times

finding new layers in each and every meeting

[Corset]

If I as a baleful stinky fish should cry upon reading a page wrought with the confusion or the made up rules of wanna be gods from ancient rome when man decided on what love should look like and wrote it otherwise in the bible as an abomination, If I should shed a few broken tears for a child I never knew but could hear in my sleep, would that make me a monster? Doe it make me a monster to have compassion or desire as a woman? Goes it make me cheap and ugly to want to share a physical love, hate has no room to mourn over children, only compassion and love can find tears for lost innocence.

[Marie Anzalone]

I am intrigued by the images. I read this once for meaning, then two times for sense and vision, then another time for meaning. Poetry drips of blood of life itslef, and the ancients knew that. We silly beings put it into form to say how it is "supposed" to be, just like we do with all of the other great concepts: love death revenge jealousy hate grief despair hope. We find a truth and call it everyone's truth, drawing rings around it and etching its visage in the stone of our hearts and the strictures of our lives. Meanwhile, somewhere out of sight, Truth laughs and claps his hands and dances merrily away, for just like quarks, as soon as you observe it, it is changed by the mere act of observing it. The Old Gods drank blood from goblets and had no pretensions about the seat of the soul in profanity and sanctity. The space between the two is where we find poetry. Those who think otherwise never lived it.