Infinite Divisibility

The calls come in voices of need
from those who stake a claim,
a queue breaking into a throng.
There is no ignoring them.
Who will answer but the one who hears?
Responsibility and compassion intertwine,
becoming a 'yes' because I can.
How many time will I split
so all get a piece?
Is there a retreat where blades cannot slice,
where shields are not rent,
and my heart is not cleaved?
Calling for reprieve in smaller voices,
receding to paradox,
less after each division,
there are dozens of weaker me's
roaming the empty halls of unity.
Before the man has left
or becomes too small to see,
ask the question,
what was there to divide,
infinite parts of nothing?

©Eusebeia Philos 2013

A poetical take on Zeno's paradox of infinite divisions as applied to human emotional strength and its eventual limits.

Bullets and Blood

     you threaten with bullets and blood
so you'll be the last to own her
nothing you would not do to satisfy
the corruption of your mind

     you threaten with bullets and blood
and strike her with menace and fear
in a deceitful posture you call to God
as your witness you will change

     you threaten with bullets and blood
after standing in church with raised
hands to heaven and tears flowing
freely from a claimed forgiveness

     you threaten with bullets and blood
forgiveness she gave in full
patience she offered complete
with a hope for a different end

     you gave her bullets and blood
on the couch after she yelled your name
to warn your child to flee from
the house in the practiced way

     you gave her bullets and blood
she gave you love and children
never again one more time
share her flesh, marital bliss
     you gave her bullets and blood


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Written as an anaphora for dVerse Poets ~ Listen To This: Anaphora

Note: This horrible event happened a couple of years ago in our small community. I knew the couple well. The makings of this poem were written days or weeks after the murder as I tried to understand what cannot be understood.

Smoking Angels

I saw a few angels smoking cigarettes
down by the bus stop.
They looked like they wanted to take off,
but the night sky was moonless,
tickets tucked in their wings,
waiting for their ride to next stop.
They passed a rose between them,
smelling it up between puffs.
One's face glistened,
thought of the oblivion,
looked in a mirror with regret,
burning strips of flesh,
breaking the smolder
after the hotel went up.


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Written for dVerse Poets ~ Open Link Night

Note: this was a writing exercise suggested from "The Poet's Companion" by Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Laux.

Cousteau

Fifth grade
recess keep away,
run forever,
no one touches me,
- maybe Debbie and Donna,
sometimes Susan -
if I let them,
if I liked them.
I always loved Calypso,
the old Brit minesweeper
Jacques used to show me
his undersea world.
What kid was an
oceanographer,
marine biologist,
dreaming of seas and ports,
my folks said.
Nobody knew what to do.
Sister Mary Jane Elizabeth
wrote a nice note.
Books, books I read,
pages filled my head,
seeing it all through the bus window
on the long ride home
from Notre Dame,
happy,
alone,

in my blue world -

   currents swept me out

   drifted with Kon-Tiki,

   deep waters I swam

   with snorkels and tanks

   submersibles too,

   coming up for air

   slowly from the depths

   to avoid the bends,

   fought with predators

   a knife in my sheath,

   cut myself on coral reef

   avoiding a moray eel,

   running in white sand

   I lingered in Tahiti with Gauguin

   and worked on my tan,

   birds, mammals, fish

   every creature that lived

   in the sea

   but me

   I knew

   by name

   or sight

Oh, could I go back and
live that dream,
would I make your crew,
Monsieur Cousteau?


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Come To Me

I step, gut tightens.

Dark eyes shift away from me.

Why will she not come to me?


Last night's loving hour,

I gently whispered her name.

Still, she would not come to me.


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

A sedoka written for dVerse Poets ~ Form For All

my goddess

i, a mortal man

you, my goddess

your body a temple

olympus your home

i can never enter


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Released Beauty #1

He found her crying to quench the sun,
sitting on a steamy smooth rock
by the water's edge, alone,
the gulls mocking her.

He had passed her once and
could not continue ignorance,
for the sound of her pain he heard
through waves speaking in her stead.

Some noticed by glance, but he spun and
traced his footprints back to her side.
Never looking up, she sorted lies
pulled from a hand basket on her lap.

The darkest were on the bottom,
hidden long as endurance allowed,
below the sweetness of the handsome
lies used to deliver the most onerous.

She dug deep and with every one she
stared, as looking inside far away,
rubbed her head where the pain
would not relent its intimate throbbing.

Gently, he removed her hands from the
midst of the basket, took the last lie in
her clutch and dropped it to the sea,
the others he set in the hot white sand.

A fragment of a smile arose in those
moments when she unclenched the lies.
Her allure burst in that long pause
of freedom, a magnificent bloom.


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Written for dVerse Poets Pub ~ Poetics: Beauty Is Everywhere

Complexity

Complexity
creates tasks harder to complete.
Complexity
has always been my tendency.
It fills, consumes - my life replete
with its stress, and no way to cheat
complexity.

©Eusebeia Philos 2013

A rondelet written for dVerse Poets ~ Form For All ~ The Rondelet

Tony is hosting in the Pub tonight, and has thrown this French form poem of seven lines our way. Lines 1,3, and 7 are the refrain of four syllables. The other four lines each have eight syllables. The rhyme scheme is AbAabbA.

How Long I Stood

how long i stood
standing

grass grew
birds flew
dragonflies around the pond took
   rest from ceaselss flight
the sun went down
and still the ground
felt no relief
of leaden feet

wind blew
wet with dew
long grass no longer lay bent
   in the footprints
where once you stood
my greatest good
forever bright
gone from sight

how long it took my heart to start
   again
was measured by empty space
the void you left behind
to fill what is to be
that all my eye can see

standing
how long i stood

©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Written for dVerse Poets Pub ~ Poets OpenLinkNight ~ Week 100

Dust to Dust

If the gods turned you to stone,

I'd lie in long sleep at your feet,

dissolve to the ground and wait

for time to chisel you to dust,

so we could be one, once again.


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Aergia Will Rest

The sun is up and Horme is moving about.

She never rests.
"Zing, zing," her blade sings
on the sharpening stone.

The sun reflects her face in the killing steel.
A tight smile, she is to her task,
hilt to stinging tip,
grinding the length of the blade's edge
for battle this day.

Eager, Horme sees the battle as a dream -
     
     rehearsing her moves like
     virgins dancing for the gods.
    
     The field just over
     the shallow river is her temple.
     Men rush to meet her,

     beauty, they try to embrace her beauty
     - a long reach for them,
     lying on her green altar,
     sodden in their own blood.

I see the glint, the restlessness in her eye.
"Zing, zing," her blade sings
in the middle of the camp.

I recline in my chair,
sweat beads dot my face
in this pathetic season of war.

Horme pauses from her deadly study,
sneers at my canopy of shade,
calls out from five paces away
in a blood scorched jest,

"Aergia, will you not go out with me today?"

I turn away,
my answer rests in a thought
- less than a thought,
I bite down on a grape,
its redness fills my mouth.

Any word I may have considered
dies with no effort,
no escape from my throat.

I hold another grape to my eye,
examining it closely.

"Zing, zing," Horme's blade sings.

©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Written for dVerse Poets ~ Meeting the Bar: Volition & Velleity

In Greek mythology Horme embodies the spirit of intense action and preparation, especially in the furious moments leading up to the first clash of battle. Her opposite, the goddess Aergia, was quite lazy and ill-prepared. Such lovely contrasts the Greeks gave us. I felt these ancient spirits might suffice for Anna's request at dVerse Poets Pub: write a poem that incorporates the concepts of volition and velleity. This my attempt.

Embrace

Photo credit: NASA

 

Embrace

 

Light from

bright heaven eyes

winks in dark dome of night,

distant witness, our love's tender

embrace.

 

©Eusebeia Philos 2013

 

A cinquain written for dVerse Poets ~ Open Link Night 96

Origins (1)

From early on, looking for an answer,
One single, clear explanation enthralled,
To ease an intellectual fracture

Of how this grayish world came to be called
The home of many, of various kind,
Together and apart, hopelessly walled

From an origin they're hoping to find.
Wandering in thought, as nomads by birth,
Was it a good God - or a watchmaker blind?

Upon their suspicion they base their worth.
Where are we from, the argument begins.
A battle for high ground, there is no mirth.

Each to his own thoughts, on this earth, it spins,
Until tribe against tribe - and no one wins.


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

A Terza Rima Sonnet written for dVerse Poets ~ Form for All ~ Terza Rima

Volkodlak

Keeping my distance,
sitting calmly outside
in the dark
on the porch
alone,
picking at my nails
running fingers through my hair
fighting an urge to eat
when I heard again
through the window
the story,
our old myth
told in the small, stuffy kitchen
a few sitting around the wobbly table
others leaning against the dated wallpaper

Teta, wrinkled, small,
with a slight five-o-clock shadow
commanded the room
breathed the legend out
in wispy stutters

     ...Her voice merges with my thoughts,
     there is no difference
     but for my perspective
     having lived and heard the myth
     since my birth...

Our people, descended from the
Kingdom of Illyria
crossed the waters and their fears
not for freedom from oppression
   - no war so great the the world was invited
     to attend, had spewed its curse yet -
but to flee the small village
our own had named
as home for untold time,
myths being persuasive in
our culture

Volkodlak had returned

Immortal
our ancient wolf-skinned man
left tufts of bristling hair in the pew
the vivid corpse eviscerated
in the ancient chapel
where crusaders
said their final prayers
before never coming back
from the land of Saracens...

Legend does not leave so much evidence
eh, Teta croaked

...wagons were loaded
deep rutted roads
led down the Adriatic coast
to harbors
departures
with haste arranged

Mati was young, single
and scandalous
swollen with child
a pretty peasant
on a slow
undulating voyage
barely into her adventure
  
     Cries in muffled echoes of steerage
     
     ...I hear them

     This world brought my life and
     took hers -
     a perverse exchange...

Uniforms slid her sheet-less body
over the side
in the dark
her prayers
making the bigger splash
as the void
swallowed them whole

     ...Teta and Stric wrapped me,
     fitted a bonnet of sorts over my
     unusual thick bristled hair, and
     I came to this land as
     their own...

     (I dozed through this portion, having a violent, vivid dream)

Teta wound her words to an end as
she shook the last of the slivovice from
the bottle on to her tongue.

     It is late and there is no need for a full moon

     ...I stir,
     chuckling at the irony
     of my people bringing more than their culture
     to these shores.
     Unknowing and eager
     they brought the myth
     that never dies...


©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Slovenes tell the tale of Volkodlak, a wolf-man who transforms to hunt at night. So, go ahead, take your chance. Even if you manage to kill one, it will resurrect as a vampire, this time with the ability to transform to a wolf-man at will. They don't die easily by natural causes, and live as immortals unless killed in the usual, special ways. It was said the wearing of a wolf skin could turn one into a Volkodlak. Sometimes one was born as a Volkodlak, with the evidence being a baby with a head of wolf hair.

Slovene Translations:
Teta = Aunt
Stric = Uncle
Mati = Mother
Slivovice = a strong plum brandy


See Mythical Creatures List: Volkodlak

The dVerse Poets Pub doors swing open, myths and legends walk in with Fred, and another Poetics session begins.

No Room For Doubt

In the pious ghetto,

 

shuttered,

 

gated,

 

safe,

 

no room for

 

doubt

 

between the lines of

 

faith.

 

Pharisees mutter,

 

"apostate"

 

via emails of

 

concern

 

and the little children

 

run

 

from the

 

questioner.

 

 

©Eusebeia Philos 2013

Written for dVerse Poets ~ Open Link Night