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Giving Thanks to Apollo’s Mother

Anthologia Palatina 6.272 = Perses (Hellenistic period) To you, o Leto, Timaessa dedicated Her girdle and her frock of flowery colors, The band, too, curled tightly round her breasts- Having in the tenth month escaped the grievous burden Of a childbirth with fierce attendant pains.  ζῶμά τοι, ὦ Λατωΐ, καὶ ἀνθεμόεντα κύπασσιν, καὶ μίτραν μαστοῖς σφιγκτὰ περιπλομέναν, θήκατο Τιμάεσσα, δυσωδίνοιο γενέθλας ἀργαλέον δεκάτῳ μηνὶ φυγοῦσα βάρος.

Hawaiian Mother and Child, Charles W. Bartlett, ca. 1920

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Watching the fire

It was the third time Notre Dame faced near ruin, but nothing like the flames racing over the roof, eating the last holy remains of a forest over 1,200 years old. Faith, in God and country and history and art and love, were all stores in the old stones growing dark. The city became listless as Our Lady of Paris slowly, slowly burned in front of them. Save the people, save the artifacts, save the memories, then save the body if you can. Hands with lost names built her first on the old temple site, hands with knowledge and talent now lost, or at least no longer perfected, brought her through century after century. The old organ at her heart drowned while the church burned. Around 8,000 organ pipes, many from instruments even older, may be cleared but the windchest may not breath again. Night fell and the smoke disappeared in the night, the flames seemed to glow even brighter. And the people of Paris sang for their burning, drowning Lady.

In a small Midwestern town 20 years ago a house burned so a church could grow. The old home had been abandoned years before, empty and condemned in the middle of town. Before it had been a home this a husband, a wife, their three children growing and learning and fighting then falling apart with a divorce. But that family had emerged from rubble and a father raised his three children while becoming the local saint and historian of an old farm town and an old farm church. His daughters clung to each other, cried and shared memories while their childhood home burned, freshface volunteers practicing a new craft where their family had been made, broken, and made again. Their father’s picture hangs above the door in the church’s new addition and his daughters bring his soup to every potluck.

A different fire consumed my uncle. We could only watch. Beat it back once, but a little oxygen was all it took, just a slight breeze to bring the coals of his cancer back. Lumps and shallows appeared on his body. The color of his skin yellowed and purpled. The scaffolding of his body burned. We gathered around him as we watched him battle the spreading death in his cells. Most of the time we wanted to be quiet. But it was hard to breath and he didn’t want silence. He would push through it for each visitor who came to his room for one last story, one last word of wisdom, one last prayer, one last joke, one last time to hold his hand and see his smile. We tried, each of us, to memorize the curve of his face. Except for his children who could not bare to see him disintegrate and instead focused on his hands and voice. But his wife still watched his eyes until he could not keep them open.

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My mistakes

I’ve done a lot of things but I’d think it’s easy to see where I went wrong,

Don’t take the only road I wish I never traveled,

Read the signs and warnings, honey, those good times won’t last,

This doesn’t lead where you want to go,

Trust me, you’ll end up circling back around a few years wasted,

And nothing much to show,

You don’t wanna go that way,

You don’t wanna take that name, 

You don’t wanna get what comes with all this shit

You’re too smart, honey, too pretty, honey, too happy, honey,

To go taking up with my mistakes

He’s got a smile full of promises but he only meant half of them,

Don’t give out your trust where I’ve wasted mine,

Blue eyes and blue stories and blue nights are all he knows how to give,

Along with some bad debt and court fees,

It all comes with a high price tag for what you wouldn’t take for free,

And it won’t be easy to get it out your door.

You don’t wanna go that way,

You don’t wanna take that name,

You don’t wanna get what comes with all this shit

You’re too smart, honey, too pretty, honey, too happy, honey,

To go taking up with my mistakes

You don’t know what you’re getting with that white gold diamond ring,

Don’t throw your good years after my bad ones,

Every sweet  thing you’ve gotta plant every year but the weeds grow back easy,

And the stairs squeak every night when he comes in late,

A pretty house with a bad foundation ain’t worth the time it needs,

And the heart he’ll keep breaking

You don’t wanna go that way,

You don’t wanna take that name,

You don’t wanna get what comes with all this shit

You’re too smart, honey, too pretty, honey, too happy, honey,

To go taking up with my mistakes

Don’t go taking up with my mistakes

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Holy Sonnet 10 (or 14) by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town to another due, Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, But am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

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convenience store at midnight - 

because my heart drove me here & my body  is rusty in wanting you, I hover in the light like  a moth, my poor wings in desperate flutter. my body, (I bring up because I have to) flashes in absolute firework; neon is a powerful thing  to love - I hold it in my mouth like candy &  pass it to you, spit-soaked & glowing,  like crushed ice, cherry flavored. I love you as much as I need to buy gasoline. convenient, I could have mistaken you for the same thing.

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“Quell our rage,” Pt. 32

There was little sleep on the temple floor

Higher on the mountain, the winds were stronger and he could not tell if those were whispers in the wind

Sunrise must have ended his battle with Hypnos but he could not be sure with the binding around his eye blocking out even light

The wounds of restlessness carried throughout the day

He heard the gorgon move about, constantly humming

Twice she set a bowl and cup in his hands then took each when he finished

Perseus did not know how long it went on like this

He lost track of time without much to mark its passing outside of his two meals a day

She did not stop him when he crawled around, or when he finally stood and started to carefully walk around the ancient site

“Halt”

It was the first word she had said to him in what must be days

Perseus froze like her statues

“If you move and farther to the left, you will fall down the temple’s front stairs”

Edging is foot in that direction he found where the first step dropped

He then bowed toward her voice

Swishing fabric, louder than he was use to from her, followed her to the back of the back of the temple.

“Come, I have your supper”

Cautiously he went after her voice, and she directed him up the steps to the altar space

Eating quietly, likely curled at her feet, he felt warm for the first time since entering the temple

“You’ve been here for eight days”

The words were soft and small emotions seemed to be woven through them, but he was too unskilled to pick out the threads

“Tonight, you will sleep out of winds. Tomorrow you will decide how you will die.”

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“Quell our Rage,” Pt. 31

He kept crawling into large pillars of stone strewn throughout the temple court

After carefully placing his hands on the fifth, he found his hand wrapped around a smooth, strong calf

Sick gathered in his mouth and the former priestess chuckled

“I have been given a stone garden by the goddess of wisdom

“She sends them to death like her brother, whom she sees as the ruler of lesser wars

“If you were not soon joining them, I would tell you they were a lesson

“ Cold vengeance kills just as bright rage. All war is war, all death is death”

He heard her move and then sit on what must be the steps to the alter

“If I could differ...goddess”

Her voice cracked over his prone form, “I am no goddess”

He swallowed then continued, “There is war better than hollow peace. There is death better than torturous life.”

The gorgon was there in a second, her robes barely making a noise in the time it took for her to cross the temple

A hand grabbed his chin, forced his head up with his neck stretched

“Death is not a victory when you play against the gods.”

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José Rico Cejudo (ca. 1890)

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When my best friend’s heart breaks, I watch him brick and mortar a bomb shelter into his body. He pencils her name into all the wet cement. Right in front of me, he is holding a wake for the person he used to be and I am not invited. Later, he will thunder or earthquake, but he will not accept any tenderness. In the close-out sale of his heartache, everything gentle must go.

exerpt from NOT THE BULLET by Ashe Vernon

(full text available through my patreon)

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“Quell our rage”, Pt. 30

He began to open his eyes, then shut them tight when he heard a heard a ‘hiss’

It must be her. She had come down from the temple itself to reach him. Perseus would not become another stone figure in her garden because she would not let him get that far.

He would be the first dire warning to all who came near.

A scared, cowering boy taking up space on the ancient stairway.

“Keep you eye closed and your mouth silent”

The gorgon hissed her words as well.

Perseus felt his heart beat like a rabbit stuck in a trap. He remembered a small hare found and caught by a large snake. It had been paralyzed in fear, though it still shook as the strong jaws clenched around it neck.

He was shaking himself. The gorgon held his chin in her cold hand. He kept his eyes screwed shut as she turned his head, inspecting him.

He heard something rip.

Then she wrapped a fabric around his head, tying it around the back of his head.

“If you want to live, you will be silent. Or my sisters will kill you before I decide what I want to do with the child Athena sends to do her gruesome work.”

Perseus heard her move past him and back up the stairs.

He stayed still until he was told to follow.

Stumbling up the steep steps he tried to stay quite. He believed she was silently and cruelly laughing at him, crawling up behind her.

But the only way he would be freed from her was if she retracted her fangs and let him go.

But the only way he would strike her down instead was if he remained close.

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Here, I am the only kind of holy, and there is no room for nonbelievers.

Ashe Vernon, from “A Lesson in Sugarglass,” Not a Girl (via lifeinpoetry)

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We’ve left words under stones with buried shadows, on the hill that guards the echo of the ancestors whose names are not in the family tree. What we have said without witnesses will long haunt us.

Nikola Madzirov, from What We Have Said Haunts Us (via nemophilies)

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I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke.

Meredith Grey (via purplebuddhaquotes)

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venus and adonis

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Atlas and the Hesperides by John Singer Sargent 

American, 1922-1925

oil on canvas

MFA Boston

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Acropolis

Joe Szalay