ODYSSEUS

 

 

 

I know you love me.But when the Ivory soap refused to float

I knew then a change was coming; when the hairbrush fell

from the sink to scurry sideways with its flattened carapace.

 

The previous resident warned me of those cacks in the walls

that held the washroom crab with those cranberry eyes, detached

and suffering, now, and desperate to escape danger or disaster.

 

It's crucible hopelessly leading to rashness. The whole world is

larger than this room and is so much faster than the sink, defeated

by it's porcelain frustration.

 

It is extremely terrible this ticking code we used to communicate

our aversion; two taps on the pipes would mean someone is trapped.

Three taps and the love we made is the incorrigible life of warmth and hope,

alone and dismal.

 

Another tap, like another moon, would be desorbing like this tiny,

worthless window that works with a crank, this army of fog, that has

prepared the mirror for my disrobeing. I have studied being pleasing,

 

that tricyclic antidepressant like putting Preparation 8 under the eyelid

for a more youthful appearance or putting a dab of Vick's vaporub

under your tongue so you can remember the names of the Black girls

 

who desire vowels as fashion and draw their hair up in long clusters and

then unfold like some scientific Ulysses who always show in Trojan horse

and sequened heels

 

I wish, after ten eventful years, a tatoo, just to remind me of those

I forget.

Reviews

[writing mojo]

WOW! I love how you spring to life in a reinforcement from objects, or objectives shrugged off by the untrained eye, Your gift of influences is taking the simple and making it utterly complex, it's an enigma in it self, like looking through the rings of Saturn, in combination of particles in gravity dashes
mapping the chaos brought to life sustaining thought...amazing stuff

[Steven]

So many lovely lines.

this army of fog, that has
prepared the mirror for my disrobeing. I have studied being pleasing

There you go again! Must read more...

[Shmoke-Sifted Heftlande..]

this has such a lucid clarity of madness to it; reading it in and out of the context of the mythology are distinct experiences and both unequivocally relevant. I cannot help (from my humble impressions and conclusions) but think that you drew from simple ordinary experience and the circumstantial elements expanded and contracted like a beating heart of complexity..this poem would make the most interesting surreal short film if animated with the execution that was expressed and imagined in this heart wrenchingly beautiful piece of writing. My only regret is the pain that needed to be experienced to manifest such brilliance..conversely and perhaps ironically, i feel like a disrobed fellow who doesn't recognize the man in the mirror.

[Eve]

you 're such an amazing writer. and with such endearing sentiments it's just mind boggling how that crab isn't jumping into that fog clappers and cranberries headlong, truly incredible imagery here, yes, we all love you Dana!

[Circe]

it's like as though a whole lifetime was spent on these rituals... and variable transitions... for the adventuring sort.. but it depresses over time.. somehow the images seem unequivocal to the character... I want to ask, isn't it exhausting yet? I find that verse about the previous resident quite frightening.... the inevitable cracks? maybe because it's true it has so much more impact. this one stabs me with pain, like the tattoo you wish you didn't have to get.