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Category Archives: classical

COGITO

29 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by drdamiang in Author, classical, mythical/mythological, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Uncategorized

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Tags

Athena, Author, character, Greek mythology, metafictional, metapoetic, poem, poetry, postmodern, writer, Zeus

COGITO

I presumed
I was but a
character in
your novel

but given
you was stuff
you let me author,
I had to revise
that idea

see myself
more as
flesh and
blood than
sketchy text,
insubstantial
shadow

thing
potent and
bright-eyed
as Pallas Athena

and yet (Oh the strangeness
of this gender
reversal!)
sprung from
the sheer wisdom
of that
split
wide open
Zeus-style
Mt. Olympus head.

AFTER EURIPIDES

19 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by drdamiang in classical, Dionysian, Poem, Poet, Poetry, Uncategorized

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Tags

Dionysus, Euripides, poem, poetry, The Bacchae

AFTER EURIPIDES

the door was open
yawning open

got me thinking
of the play, The Bacchae,
of necessity

most notably the scene
where the prison breaks
all its cell doors broken
every prisoner held
for whatever reason
suddenly freed, divinely free

sole explanation
can only be I must
have been sleepwalking

sleepwalked out
of the house, out
of the yard

across leagues of
open veld to meet you

no-
nonsense embrace
discuss things
gods and
humans do

spoke
very briefly
or
at great length

perhaps, who knows?, thereupon
evaporated

(one of us, logically speaking, must
have done at least)

the door
being open

poem quite wide, yet not
blown off its hinges

PAGAN

14 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by drdamiang in classical, Language, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Sexual, Sexual innuendo, Uncategorized, wordplay

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Tags

Latin, pagan, poem, poetry, Roman, sexual symbolism, wordplay

PAGAN

You thought
South was
below
North

and
time
hard as rock

constant
and absolute

when
I was about to
test your body’s integrity

you thought
this act of occupation
a kind of
coup de gras

these things happen now
the world has given up
on a
Classical education

all that reciting Catullus along
your seam
an exercise in waste
and poetic frustration

counting in Latin
up to
sexaginta novem

left is at an integer needing
to be rounded up (and out)

and why not when it is patent,
this Vestal frame of mind

imagining every phrase
to end in delictio

logical proof of
consummation, if not

generic prayer available to
every common household courtesan.

UNINVITED

15 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by drdamiang in Ancient Greece, Author, classical, Dionysian, Drama, Escape, metapoetic/metafictional, mythical/mythological, Nietzschean, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, psychological/psychoanalytical, Reader, the body, The book, time and space (space/time), Transcendence, transformation, Unconscious, Universe, Vision, writing

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Dionysus, Euripides, Humanity, identity, poem, Poet, poetry, The Bacchae, Universe, writing

UNINVITED

“Do not mistake the rule of force
for true power. Men are not shaped by force.” Euripides, The Bacchae.

I have no wish
to be chopped into pieces
stuck together again
like Lego, like jigsaw puzzle

sacrificed in your honour
on the altar of my own desire

***

this morning a locked door
mysteriously unlocked itself
letting in the outside

my cats
an inexplicable look
across those little, feline faces

your cats are bigger
this aside, the resemblance
is uncanny
verging on exact

and so
here you are now
up to the divinely no good

scenarios springing to mind
I will instantly have to
shelve
in that part of the house cum self
expressly dedicated to things
maybe to
sublimate or
absolutely repress

and now to rewrite this little history, convince
myself clearly

case of obvious negligence Watson
nothing to see here
move on, move on

but check again
and again until the OCD destroy you
that you
beyond HAL-9000 ring of confidence
basically locked the door

***

poor Pentheus
I’m uncertain whether he
secretly wanted to be
or just
longed to fuck a Maenad
(Freud would
highlight here the text above
with note to self:
explore the Oedipal theme
of mother Maenad)

the god himself
with Mother issues

and
changing his shape
to that of wife

settles quietly, unobtrusively beside me
under the covers

asking me
whether I still harbour those haunting
Clarice Starling questions

and questions more
pertinent to the conundrum at hand

“did you
come through that door uninvited
or did I perhaps invite you

did it happen
in real time
or in some dilated state between
dream and death

are you
here for my death or
creative resurrection?

is this house
now other, its doors turned portals

or was it I who
not mindful of myself, ventured out

standing in the cold early morning, pre-dawn air
nakedly calling

not expecting for a second
that you would come.

JUNG ON JOYCE’S ULYSSES

08 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by drdamiang in Author, Binary opposites, book, Books (the book), classical, Consciousness, cosmic, Creation, Creativity, existential, Fragmentation, Greek, Homeric, Humanity, Imagination, Industrialization, Intertextual, Language, literary allusive, metaphoric, metapoetic/metafictional, Modernism, mythical/mythological, Narrative, philosophical, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, psychological/psychoanalytical, Story, The book, Universe, Value and meaning, wordplay, writing

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Carl Jung, Consciousness, Creation, Creativity, Humanity, identity, James Joyce, Language, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, Modernism, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poetry, postmodern, power, psychological, Reader, Universe, wordplay, writing

JUNG ON JOYCE’S ULYSSES

he fell
into the maelstrom
or maybe he plunged

heroic, invulnerable as Achilles,
nothing about words
did he fear

and yet
the Sirens, his own Sirens,
when they sang to him, they tore
at his humanity
and Scylla and Charybdis
pulling at him
from opposite directions

threatened to tear
soul from self, author
from man

and so
to Homer

a beginning

and a time
before words

from there
fast forward
to a lost time
a divided time
a time
split from itself, savaged in the jaws of Empire
(no hope
of restoration on
the horizon)

but still
the words flow, the pages
begin to tower
up from the floor

flow like rivers mythological
(both Greek
and Irish

Liffey, Lethe

Shannon and
the Styx)

Oh little
Everyman
figure who
incapsulates us all

embodies our
broken, fragmented
common
humanity

swept aside
by tide
of the times

bobbing in an ocean of
self-
generating words

wine-dark empty, kenning free

this is not
the poetry that
proclaimed a civilization

every
moment iconic, as
if tempered bronze

no
this is the dance that goes
around and
around in
symbolic circles

this is the dance
of the cosmos

sleeping, dreaming, forgetting
emptying itself

until
not a word
not
a whisper

nothing speaks
beyond itself

nothing
says everything

so might as well
cross
every horizon
write
the life
to be
endured
forever

write until
there is no more space
to fill

write
the light
write the shadow

eighteen chapters, seven
hundred pages

and still there is space
place for more

Odysseus navigating the Mediterranean
sailing round in circles, prisoner
of conscience, convenience,
prisoner of love, of
the dark arts, by
virtue of
offense to Poseidon
extreme political prisoner

the words
hounding him
every step
of the way

on the return to Penelope
that will never
happen
can never happen

Penelope long gone
unfaithful to the core

****

no moment where
in supreme Catholicity
the cosmos
comes together

sub specie aeternitate
where it
all supremely means

maybe
an echo though

things seem silent but
are echoing out to infinity

everything so tired, outworn,
exhausted,
overdetermined

the mirror
in which we
first
saw things, composed
the image of the self

shattered
frozen in the moment
of shards scattering, pieces falling,

a razor-
sharp rainbow of a
zillion fragments

as images of creation
go
pretty
explosive
and extreme

no
arc of redemption, today at least,
for our great creator

driven
beyond all
limits

urged
to go demiurge

and this
our answer to an expanding universe
to the smoothness of steel
sharpening
all new technology

to
which

what dare the soul, overawed, say

how might it
speak truth to
final objectivity, absolute
science of meaning?

resist
the building of
such binaries as will

house
Western consciousness
in such
prisons of delight?

THE NATURE OF THE POEM

12 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by drdamiang in Civilized, classical, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, Uncategorized, writing

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Tags

Humanity, poem, poetry, writing

THE NATURE OF THE POEM

can’t imagine
what the first poem
looked like

was it
scratched on
a clay tablet

or simply an arrangement
of stones and sticks?

if so,
how could you tell

whether a line
was run-on or
nicely end-stopped

or was it just all one line
no one has finished yet?
all one line
till the end of time

GOLDEN AGE (IMPERIAL MEASURE)

04 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by drdamiang in classical, Colonialism, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, ROME, Uncategorized, wordplay, writing

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Tags

Caesar, Empire, Imperialism, poem, poetry, power, ROME, tank

GOLDEN AGE (IMPERIAL MEASURE)

I traverse left
traverse right

not a reader
in sight
(as well, because
I’d machine-gun
the lot of them
orfire HE/AP
blow them
apart)

yep
keep your head down
here chuck, don’t come
running to me
in saucy surrender
waving white
peace lingerie
much
open-armed

bearing gifts
though indeed you
are goddess
though not
exactly Greek

for the moment
I am of a mind, in a mood
to put all
in my crosshairs

and here
taking my cue from
the great Imperial poets,
scions of Rome,
children of Mars

sublime both Silver and Golden Age at
picking off their targets, slaying theatrically

at behest
of the patron, in
service to the State

wedded to the pleasure
of tablet and stylus (not yet
quill and parchment) and
razor for escape clause if
invoking Caesar’s displeasure
the soothing final
warmth of the apt
blood bath

for who
can predict
the whim
of an Emperor
better than the
weather

we are all
tabula rasa when it comes to such power
however good we might feel
in metaphor
of battle-tank.

LACRIMAE RERUM

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by drdamiang in Cat, classical, loss, love, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, ROME, Uncategorized

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Tags

Cats, Catullus, Latin, poem, poetry, ROME, wordplay, writing

LACRIMAE RERUM

Catullus
in tears
because
Lesbia
is in tears

her little bird
died

Catullus’ cat
in tears because
Catullus in
tears

and because
that poor little bird died
before he could eat it.

LEAP

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by drdamiang in classical, Desire, love, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, ROME, Sexual, Uncategorized, woman, Woman, wordplay, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Catullus, Desire, love, poem, poetry, writing

LEAP

“Better a sparrow, living or dead,
than no birdsong at all.”
Catullus

I shuffle
my poem
leaps

so my obvious solution:
sleep with
my poem
if not
with me

for that creature
is fired, is
child
of my desire

is pure
living embodiment
of all I dare
imagine

that which
once was
and can now
never be.

27 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by drdamiang in BREXIT, British, classical, Poem, Poet, poetry, Poetry, Poetry, satire, Uncategorized

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Tags

Boris Johnson, parody, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire

OF THE GODS
(a prime ministerial parody)

you cannot beat
the poetry
of the gods

like music
it sounds
even when
like Prometheus
you are chained
to a slag
in Tartarus

an android pink-eyed slag
sent the future from to masturbate you
capture your seed
in a tube
of fennel

did I say “masturbate”
I meant terminate by which
slip of the tongue
I meant wash and care for
when you are old
and wear the bottoms of
your trousers rolled
we will not
speak in the august company
about bottoms

whose bottom the gods sent an eagle I mean
an evil to spank forever and amen forever
because this Prometheus did
lie in print, did steal fire
to burn
some divine politician
quite satirically

like the nightmare mattress which
monitors your Brexit
telling all who need
to be told when
your hard on for it
grows soft
ardor is waning and the
red bus from the
future sent to terminate membership
has faded to pink, looks
too LGBT
helpful butlers rush
to the door to check
your personal credentials

you may be that immigrant, lost as
to the basics in the Aristotle logic
and mythology of Brexit
we cannot
in terms of our programming, your
programming
let you in
let you in

Carpathuan wolf stealing jobs
from the locals

look how freely I word-
associate

like Joyce and like Pound and
like the great Virginia Eliot

who wrote our great English lighthouse
Winston beacon of Empire I always
in my most Zeus moments
set out to be

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