SEMINAL

Tags

Aphrodite, Dream, goddess, Humanity, love, mythology, philosophical, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, Venus

SEMINAL

I witnessed the birth of Aphrodite

correction:
I was
there in person, in a dream
moment she was born

or a few moments later,
if you are asking for exactness

drowning in an sea of
Olympian goo

woke up
moment before I
went under forever

feeling drained, as if
a vampire had been at
or with me
(so more difference there
in that little
preposition)

all I did manage to catch in my
mythscape
was but, exactly, appropriately,
as I’ve already said
the tail end of her

and being goddess tail, tail of
love and beauty,
the wave of desire did
not leave me untouched

and I did
think of you, particularly
when she became you,

shifting from gorgeous shape
to gorgeous shape

before she climbed a sudden
spiral staircase
up to Olympus, or perhaps Heaven

place in this incarnation
I knew I could not, dare not follow

and so
must remain satisfied
with last
glimpse of her apotheosis

her impersonation of every mortal beauty
I ever read
as character
saw
in person

even, as your case,
found the greatest pleasure
and yes, misfortune,
to love
to death
and then way more.

DAZE

Tags

Aphrodite, goddess, love, philosophical, poem, poetry, wordplay

DAZE

my philosopher lecturer
looks like Aphrodite

she is
sublimely good
on the pre-Socratics

serves up
Aristotle and Plato
with such
a sweet sauce

her lectures on
Hegel and Marx
were simply electric

she is happily married to
a guy who
works with his hands, services
jet engines

and when
I sit in her class
I absorb just
about everything

in same ecstatic daze
they discuss in The Symposium
(Plato and gang)
I figure
that if
she were really the goddess
it would be saying something

forget
Heraclitus
and his
never the
same river story

mere mortals
have been falling for her image
from the beginning of time

TAIL

Tags

Aphrodite, la nascita de Venere, love, mythology, poem, poetry, Twist in the tail

TAIL

caught only
the tail end

she disappearing
up some stairs

off
my radar

over
my horizon

Goddam Aphrodite
goddess
not normally visible
to mere
mortal eyes

and I felt sad
to have missed out
having rushed in
for the show

nascita most magical
though scarcely less Heavenly

having to head
off home
with nothing to write home about
but then
under that very obligation

and poetic compulsion
to put special spin on it
being
drowning in her
raw essence
absorbed into
that mythology

only recourse left me
being to become
immersed in her poetry

pick up
the pieces (each a
pure jewel)

as you, her head priestess,
must habitually remind me

of all
the great Olympians, one
above all
whose tales always. regaled
with a twist, yes,
in the tail

SOFT STROKES

Tags

art, Moon, mythology, poem, poetry, Vision

SOFT STROKES

so many stars
in your eyes
cannot
deny

it’s amazing
you are able
to see
anything at all

not least
in the West
a tiny sliver
of silver
crescent moon

read thereinto
face of horned
matriarch goddess

even as
a wispy veil of cloud
brushes across the sky
to hide her

whosoever this artist is
they are absolutely using
very soft strokes

IN PRAISE OF SEMIOSIS

Tags

Aphrodite, Dream, love, poem, poetry

IN PRAISE OF SEMIOSIS

fell into
a fertle ocean, foaming
with love goddess

or maybe it was just
a water tank
sticky
with male seed

a guy in this same dream
swore that when I woke up
the meaning of all
of this would
be obvious, my
life prove miraculous

and she whose star
shines evening
and morning
light
second
to none

is already selecting her
mortal guise (weighing up
what would be
the truly irresistible shape
and size
and colour)

devising the flimsiest, most diaphanous
see-through
pretext

to set up her
diabolically delicious
surprise
text of
truly
irrepressible signifier

CAFE SANS OLE

Tags

apocalyptic, Chaos, Consciousness, Creation, Creativity, death, Desire, Ending, Global warming, History, Humanity, identity, Light, loss, meaning, Metaphor, Metaphysical, metapoetic, mythology, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poem poetry political moral, Poet, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, Reader, spiritual, Truth, Universe, value

CAFE SANS OLE

we drank tea
swopped mythologies
shared
what we could
across the table

noting up close
and personal
though our
toes once
did touch

perhaps forever destined
to look at each other
from opposite sides
two
parts of
a Hegelian dialectic
an
unwinnable chess game

on occasion we would
take a Hellenistic turn
explore the logos, and all its
vaunted -ologies

but try as we might
there was no
undoing of the done
nor the shutting out
of the looming demolition of the world
as pure hypothesis, abstract indulgence,
speculative fantasy

wistfully,
you did ask
(a note somewhat
off -key) whether
star is
etymologically embedded
in disaster

our contribution to the atmosphere
already heavy
already
all the barometers sensing
a downturn
towards the existentially fraught,
cosmically absurd

as if
the spirit of the place
feasting upon the dystopia
and apocalypse
in our eyes

or perhaps
just sipping, hellcat licking

hard to avoid this
since we speak as we write
act as
we are written

reaching the boundary, singularity,
event horizon of our characters

about to strip
and consume matter with

the weight
of our gravity

where once we might explode like a
Supernova, all light revolutionary

the last word
of our physics will
be very
dark I fear

***

and so,
talking of endings

here we are
already

quite beyond ourselves
our narrative
thread lost

two creatures
worth forgetting

Oh were
this meeting, this cafe
metaphor of something
greater than
fear of finality
of
endgame and
nihilistic creator

not
something you might show
up on a Sky Sports screen

(ending
of everything Plato
every
last Olympian dream)

MY PRAYER TO APHRODITE

Tags

goddess, lost time, love, poem, poetry

MY PRAYER TO APHRODITE

what child is this
daughter of Zeus and Dione
wafted across the ocean
surfing to the shore
Queen of her conch cell
goddess of the love
I have never found

I watch her risking
danger to my mortal eyes
which must not look
on goddess beauty
on the goddess of beauty
watch her as
she ages gracefully from
girl to woman
even as her charmed feet
touch the land and
the beach sand gleams like
tiny jewels
off the beach flowers grow
as she glides, dances across the landscape
transforming, transfiguring as she goes

and
as I see her disappear into the distance
the Sun setting
on my life

for what seemed like minutes
was in fact years

I say this prayer, calling her by all the names
I remember from my life — all
her mortal avatars, incarnations

for in no
small measure

it is
her sublimity that
they share

APHRODITE

Tags

goddess, love, poem, poetry

APHRODITE

I saw Aphrodite once in
a supermarket store

she was
in convincing disguise, yet
unmistakable

her dark beauty
blazing at the till
(and this in the month of
her lover Mars) as
I stumbled and
stalled to
drag out the check out
almost painfully

and unable to
turn upon those openly
exasperated in the queue behind me
to
advise them
best be still
in the presence of a god, even more so
a goddess

even more so
the goddess of love herself

who, I can assure you
has mortal needs too, and mortal
moments to cherish

as I have come to
accept from
her reading of this poem.

QUEEN OF CUPS

Tags

Beauty, goddess, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, Tarot, Water, Water power astrological

QUEEN OF CUPS

queen of cups
the water
loves you

and I feel
my thoughts
all heading South
(deep below that
girdle known
as Tropic
of Cancer)

the water licks you
into glorious shape

and I
can die now
having absorbed
this vision

nothing my old
tired poetry can do
to capture
in word or phrase

this desire, this beauty
pure, unadulterated

AFRO-DITE

Tags

Africa, Aphrodite, Beauty, Desire, goddess, poem, poetry, Venus, Water, Water power astrological

AFRO-DITE

friend, do not call
out to Olympus for
your Greek Aphrodite

whose star
morning and evening
brightest in the heavens
goes by
her Roman name

word has it — and more than just word —
shared collective vision
tells me that
far on her seashell
she has travelled
to return to
Africa her
most sacred home

where her
love and beauty would
threaten to
soften us
make us slaves to
the poem
she has always been

she who
put Helen to shame,
and sister Clytemnestra
beguiling the worth, enriching
the very Earth
as the water that
is her element
begs to take the
shape
of her frame