Astronomy of Pathos

"warning:" dark -

Astronomy of Pathos

troubled by a harvest moon

made gravid with ichorous spatter

brain matter heaped in neat pleasing elevations

features arranged in a snarky implacable grin

rendered in greyscale

even before this I'd felt its gaze

the weight of photons striking my face

a fleeting barrage of cosmic hail

towed at high tide from my slumber

now could not bear the sight

blurred as it was with eyes near blind with weeping

drew the blinds against insinuation between the slats

bereft for my demon lover

trapped inside his airless engineer's capsule

an empty oyster shell shot glass left to toast

the precise mythos of indelible scars he'd drafted

with thematic aperception, the other

crossed the Styx, eager, hastening to the caverns

foundered on dream-shoals, shipped by whiskey breakers and cheap wine

a toll paid in more than coin, I wonder

if pale sapphires, rose quartz, amethyst, emeralds and citrine

a necklace of fingerprints around my neck

can still be seen under black-light memory

if it was enough to pay the fare

utterly inimical to joy

abandoned like a backpack on the opposite bank

soaked Eurydice wanders, her way lost, in those dark corridors

infatuated with her own suffering

until the mass of all his traumas collapsed inward

sucking all the air from the room

enlarging the void in his soul

she awaits a rescue that never comes

I've stowed my telescope

now prefer my stargazing from the driveway

under a darkness more than night

punctuated in brief sharp notes by winking distant fires

to usher these gathered dots into their coherent constellations

yet the sun rises over charred rubble

green shoots snake upward through irrelevant concrete ash

and beetles gird up shining chitin armour, always the first to return

all this promise rooted in relentless gravity

still our heads turn reaching toward the light

- kmf (RedSonja) 

Author's Note

This may read less obscure if you recognise my attempt to make sensible some painful history - my first husband's suicide, the second's descent into madness, a little murder (almost) and co-dependence thrown in for good measure - speaking in my milk-tongue (metaphor) and poking the wound, insisting on a true voice. May not have hit it yet, metaphores being such slippery little bastards.

Reviews

[TL Boehm]

a necklace of fingerprints around my neck
can still be seen under black-light memory
HOLY COW! You are a formidable poet. I really enjoyed the stream of "mythos" through this piece and the words - yes, your vocabulary is stellar - it is a gripping poem GRIPPING. Intense. Ferocious. I'm a bit blown away. Wow.

[kmf]

Thank you for the thoughtful read (and who doesn't appreciate compliments?:)
Extremely gratified at your response - gripping intense ferocious - spot on, insofar as my feelings, although I'd had concern that it was a bit dense and convoluted, making it less accessible. I dance back to this subject and those slippery little b******s every once and a while, hoping to get closer.