GRAPE FLAVOURED DRINK.

GRAPE FLAVOURED DRINK

has always been
messing with me
taking an
unhealthy interest
in my affairs
ruining my
love life
(except for a single
stupendous orgasm
that
rewiring the switchboard
of my brain
flipped my
orientation
to transcendental)

ah, yes
first stumbled across you
in Euripides’ play
me
slipping through
the fourth wall
to commune with you

hunting down that
rather fascist King
as a matter
of legacy and
brutal vengeance

chaos and the irrational
so
wedded to

and you smirking on
the sidelines
as at the end of
that production

I danced
to the Stones, so wanted to be
pop-rock star
cult
phenomenon you
would claim
to be
created in your image

how much
I suffered from
your love
no less than others
suffered
from your hate

and she
with me that night of
cathedral
huge
sublime
flesh knowledge

falling incandescent like
meteors
to crash and
burn

finding our grounding
in the
wet
dark loam
of irreducible earth

your earth
and your wine too, being
your distinct province
as commonly
agreed-
upon deity
of it

though out of wine (red
and
white alike)

we sanctified whatever
you needed sanctifying
drinking
lurid purple, grape-
flavoured drink a

RIDDLE

RIDDLE

drop me from
from nearly thirty thousand
feet

or maybe
more aptly
two thousand and one
plus which
in Arabic numerals
at least will
tally up
to two thousand
and three

the sneakiness of three
plunging us
headlong
via Oedipus, foot leg and
stick of the Sphinx
into the heart
of riddle

whose subject
              framed by that odd
counterfactual
joke
   of time

we now seen
born
    held up to the Sun
but dreaming
of Moon
    strangely named Moons

Phobos, Deimos (Oh, I
mean
Demos
Titan, Europa, Miranda,
plus others
as well

five listed here for
every toe on
your foot, finger
on your hand

held up to the Sun, ball
of such Uranian energy

watch him
      long for that furnace

given
the slightest opportunity
doomed to there
walk, hobble,
crawl

MEDUSA

MEDUSA

Medusa, she of the serpent tresses,
unjustly transformed because
women cannot be innocent

knows they are coming
the reporters, the cameras,
the cliche
hunting commentators,
the writers and poets
with all
  their reflective surfaces

knowing
    she can never
forgive or be forgiven

and this her logic
is that
   until she is killed
(sure she
is to be killed)
she must
    strive to turn
each of these
paladins of brutality
contempt, injustice

to mute outcrops
of fabulous stone.

OF ORPHEUS

OF ORPHEUS

nothing stopped
slowed down

the clockwork
kept running

Hermes
on time with
all the crucial mail

and lacking all hiatus
the merest suggestion
of a frozen moment

flesh and
spirit
      finding themselves divided
wondered how the
world could
yet
  be green

time ticking and my lyre
learning of this
to spite
    every serpent, in the main
those deadly
in their venom

refused to play, eschewed
all that can
plug in, be electric

and me looking back
not eyes dead ahead on
the road to
consummate
my love

should have them glued
sold my limbs on the dream
of finally
    your touch

for real
not in this most
central of myths, key
to our
entire mythology

ultimate heart of
every lost dream

ANACONDA

ANACONDA

syllable by
masticated syllable

came across you
filling that legendary belly
devouring every
morsel
of my name

seems
my being a snake too
according to
the ancient astrology

made me
as regards foodstuff
near
    exact fit for you

a task for you
to slide into wisely
without apprehension

if you were
      to call it
a marriage here not
of convenience

but
made it Heaven

consummated
in Hell, in devilish fashion

I would have
to agree

although
equally I might just add

it sounds
just
   as good

the other way round.

ARACHNE

ARACHNE

I implored
the goddess
for an advance
to cover my needs

willfully mishearing
she proffered advice regarding
my need for brevity,
to come to the point

write the scenes
in strict succession
creating characters
who could not
fail
   to convince

and thus, my fingers
immediately responded
inspired divinely

exploded at once
across the keyboard
worlds
    apart from my usual plod

pinging away, spinning tales
rich in revolutionary output
soon impinging
upon a critical mass

whereupon
    I dreamt such

a perfectly sound and logical
left-brained dream

much scissor snip snap
and fabric flowing
output growing

and the clothes by no
means invisible but
fit for an Emperor

consummately tailored
yet desperately clinging

whilst
     the goddess acknowledging
my supremacy in
the very shape
    ot this transformation
ss I
rappel, abseil, become
finest
      weaver of treachery

suspended by
the divine strength of silk,
my silk

and you now dangling, reader,
hanging on for dear life.

VISITATION

VISITATION

Had a bad dream. A stinker.

Dionysus, Apollo
moving in
as next
door neighbours

tightest of brothers
bitterest of rivals

neatly trimmed
the hedges between them
swarming with vipers

and me
in my own garden
drinking posh tea
Ambrosia flavoured

when
     at their joint house party
episode war erupted
after guests
spoke brazenly
           reacted ill-advisedly

blows, shots
exchanged, heavenly dactylic
style of sibling fighting

and all caught as collateral
in a disciplined rush
to
   escape to high ground
live to tell the story

and me
waking from this dream
finding myself
worse off
    plunged into another

hated, loved
by the gods

lost
    at sea, shipwrecked unless
forever sailing

no sight of land
just the great
            fiction of Elysium  Hades, Olympus

eternal wine-dark sea.
   

PROMISED LAND

PROMISED LAND

succubi
  could not keep their
claws, feelers,
hands,
    tentacles (the whole
caboodle) to themselves
or whatever

and she
    of snake coronet and
stony glare

stood as an edifice
rock
   of ages in
a desert of desire

inclined if for just
a foretaste, foreshadow,
to prostrate
   herself before him

there to find her, fix her, frenzy her, feed
her,

fashion her into
something the gods who
thus condemned her
might not
   fully comprehend

running those serpents
through his fingers

sifting for gold through
her every
   grain  of sand

turning her click back
way before history

right to the border
of all (so-called) promised land