Seagull's Den

I am immune to her, it is as though I were dipped in the Styx by my heart.  She cannot hurt me, cannout rouse me, Cannot drive me to that desperation which instills fear into my gods. If she cannot vanquish me, then How can she hope to temper me? At her side, there is only the one future Singularly suspended in its niceness. And there I see the thing I fear most: Comfort and all of its boredoms, Boredom and all of its niceties. There is no triumph for me here, How can there be? I have been this person already. I would rather return to the field and lament. 

New pains are dulled by repetition, Eroded by routine, habit, monotony Curse you, Aion, and the funny ways In which you invert my sufferings Every day I wake to watch the sunrise Over a world which changes Not fast enough for my liking The birdsong is the same as yesterday’s,  The clouds find no new shapes to mimic I find myself bored, dreaming instead Of what today’s torture might entail O Jupiter, I welcome your wrathful talons, They remind me that I am still here, That there is still something of me To feast upon and exploit Give me the eagle’s beak over the shackles, My restraint is more cruel than my destruction; At least when I am destroyed I may choose How to put myself back together again Though even that is disappointing Still, I regret nothing But perhaps that too will change in time

I love each of your phases, faces The way your beauty lights the pasture  And silvers that dark valley By your distant magnetism I wonder at your influence Oh, that divine push and pull Which sways even passive Okeanos You pull my flock’s wool over my eyes, Whisper away my waning consciousness And abandon me to my own blissful ideations Which bay as Lycaon’s sons under a full moon Do you want me to dream of you forever? Would you be so cruel?

Deceiving death And by death deceived She haunts me, melodically Alive in every lyric and tune As I sing on our way to the threshold Why must I keep looking back? Unwittingly, I lose myself in memory Reveries labyrinthian and alluring; Infinite pathways that unfold, Of which none lead forward How does one move on  From a love that may still live?

The poet stands before the muse Defeated by forces predating him; Those cursed hands that set the stage Far before he had even arrived A man, he thought, Now that he could face,  But how could he compete with the past? He gasps for his words,  Choking on each moment That had conspired against him. And yet he feels strong, perennial Finally, he apologizes For his only mistake; That of being too late Clio weeps, she is torn between  Present perfect and future conditional, The limitations of choice itself Where peace and promise  Diverge and converge endlessly Her eyes are clouded By the dew of a mourning Which has not yet come, says “How does one fight history?” The poet holds his breath, Takes respite in pauses, not endings,  says, “One grain of sand at a time.”

In an attempt to orient himself The youth reaches above With shaky, greedy hands And pilfers the zodiac from its perch You hoarder of time, you thief You steal moments from yourself Only for them to be stolen back again Now he is unbound, directionless Lost in his apathy and atrophy He has shirked necessity, and in doing so Has become further entangled in its net Inevitably, he appears again Before his entrapped, frozen self To steal from his past And appease his present; To squander his present And deny himself of his future

Here I lie, wasting away  Within prophecy and rot Foreseeing my own decay And the fallout of my undoing  And there you stand, beneath The not yet crushing weight Staring at the coming end Rooted by anger and loss And fear and righteousness We are both powerless To change our natures You simply can't let go And I can no longer hold on

I love you Echo repeats The phrase which used to flow easily And escape that world of reflection I cannot hear it My eyes turn inward I see him, but can’t grasp him His hands, my hands Reaching out in the darkness of self Oh, how cowardly it is To justify sadness with beauty Dull the pain with poetry and song Obsess over the phantom in my head How desire and repulsion Are pumped by the very same heart I love myself but I do not love myself Accept what is and demand what isn’t Perhaps I will die Kneeling by this pond Only to leave behind a flower; Content, simple, gazing outwards

Necessity is the boulder That will crush Sisyphus At the end of eternity

The world is halved by mother Gaia's scar two hemispheres, cleft like lovers who may never be Oh divine Ourania,  would you place my dear in the starry vault of heaven? And unerring Atlas,  may I hold my darling if only for just a moment? May I become an astrolabe, and you, a beacon in the sky that I may be the one that  catches your celestial body

In Apollo’s dreams, the Sun never sets and my eyes see only you with blinding, unblinking clarity And I chase visions of my beloved Daphne in that ephemeral eternity where the days are immortal and the light is full of love And how I long so  for the unending night; that I may rest besides you and welcome that decadent dark

His embrace, fleeting sounding of suggestion, like feathers and burning wax Is he madly in love, or just arrogant? His touch, misguided sounding of innocence, like ripples and lost reflections Is he a fool, or does he know his fate?

Dragged to Hades against my will by way of snakebite and sorrow, dark deception and dishonesty I stand in the council of death And there, pleading, begging protected by the teardrops of gods I ask him to return my lost love And stoically he replies that he cannot return what was never mine and in place of my sweet nymph an aberrant apparition arises And I fled from that void haunted by Eurydice’s true face and the phantom of lovers aghast No looking back now, the time for that has passed