Poem-A-Day #143 : Study #7 (Labyrinth)

I obsess over myths ancient or otherwise.


Study #7 : Labyrinth (8/12/04)

*
When Daedalus sat
looking over the
rolling hillside of Crete

Tapping his charcoal about the desk

His eyes would unfocus

A glaze of rainwater and milk over his iris

The floating olive leaves
would intertwine and mesh
forming a sheen of glazed
leaf pattern over darker leaf pattern

And in those leaves was the key :

          Trap it in a pattern of light
          Move it into the vein
          Place it in the center of god

*
The idea that these walls that drive you mad are the walls that have always contained you this is the thing we must remember

*
When he handed off the beautiful bull
could Poseidon have known
the chain of deaths attached to it

That Minos would cage his only son
his only daughter would die abandoned

Theseus' father would leave a namesake sea
so that the cursed child would always burn -

*
Did Pasiphae know that her bull sex would
unravel a ball of yarn attached to her fake udder
and finishing across the ocean at the feet of the man who killed her son?

*
As the green parts fade
they get red, brown, gray

A gray only seen once in all things
A gray that is only in death

There are bones left

Bones loosing marrow
small holes of air rupture the surface
leaving only the imprint
of canals that once carried blood

The leaf skeletons
          (at their centers)
this is where a light will never go off

*
All I know is this:

His wife gave birth to a creature of unspeakable traits that was ravenous in hunger for human flesh

*
Carved into a mountain
the sharp walls would slice open
and cut everything
into darkness -

Poem-A-Day #141 : Study on Rain #2

After I finished my undergrad I had a long period of time without writing. I worried on this for months. I began to stare at objects and write all the angles I could to fill up pages. Out of that, a series of 'studies' emerged. This is part of one on rain.


Study on Rain #2 (7/19/04)

The road
becomes alive
after a rain storm

The black
a deep well
with an awkward pulse

Dialated
eyes blinded
by moonlight

In Santa Fe
there are no drains
the water pools

Or runs
into little mouths
so that the street's history
can be hissed

Monogenic

Monogenic (chair) 9/11

A rightful sit an upright solid thing filling with light and flesh

Dead tree you are carved up and stoic in your cage

Smooth from asses worn until dirty and never washed

Chair you are a rain spotted site a fresh filled meadow covered in dung

An essay on resting