Tag Archives: poem

LINEAR B

LINEAR B

the treasure is hidden
maybe they buried it yesterday
perhaps it was not
and will not ever
be discovered

buried as it was
at the beginning of time

but here is Homer
who threw his two
books at my head
as the goddess Athena
instructed

giving me
the choice between the epic,
the poetic, on the one hand,
and on the other, narrative story
via a story that is simply
the mythos
of story itself

having, for my sins and
pretensions, run with
the promise of this goddess,
eschewing the chance
to be loved or
figure of power, status
and wealth

for which
error in judgement
no Trojan war
in my lifetime, but
the enmity of Aphrodite
and
lack of
intimate touch

but back to the drawing board
and the key
theme of this piece

though Homer’s works oral
and recited

I am sure I read of scholarship
of text
voice reduced to word
in script
Linear A or B, perhaps
(given the nature of
this industry) all the way
through (American
pronunciation here
if you please) a
Linear Z

and me, unlike
my Father, so cyclic, so
non-linear

cannot
connect dots together, am
totally
unable to
draw a straight line

my Father sketching plans
to meet highest expectations,
serious
engineering requirements

and here I am, for
my part
a Nobody poet, almost
drowned
still journeying home

my words
running across
strict
line division, gallivanting
this way
and that way
flaunting, luxuriating in
the joy of
enjambment

buzzing like bees
(no
epic simile) all over the page

and so much I have
here
thrown out on technicality

that great 9000 Cyclops red
eye giving me
the wherefores
and whys

and me pulling the plug on
your blackboard your
whiteboard
T square and micrometer

searching
before we leap into
the arms of the Sirens, are
devoured by
Scylla, sucked into Charybdis

for what
the game is here, the genre,
the argument, the premise
the narrative

scribbled
somewhere on that board, in
its circuits and relays

somewhere buried there inside
in the floor beneath in
the wall behind

a treasure, a dark truth,
a secret

desperate to be lost
desperate to arrive

OVID IN EXILE

OVID IN EXILE

in the Senate
on the Forum

they are not talking about it
no one is talking about it
Ovid
  is in exile

the young Emperor
Augustus, formerly Octavian,
friend to the poets, patron of the arts

has blotted his copybook,
sent Ovid
     into exile

no headlines, not a
scrap of graffiti
to record this event

too much truly momentous
on the horizon
to let this
      sublime moral moment
undercut, let alone
overshadow
the great transformation

civil war over
the Caesar legacy entrenched
for who knows how long,
even the most conservative guess
will kick off with
a century or two, a good
few centuries

an Empire has been born
and Ovid missed its birth
for Ovid
       is out of town

and, to be honest, who
really cares,
   gives a damn about the impact
of this on his poetry

lately become
what was promised, always
                                 promised

as the statues go up
to enshrine the new image

Ovid is in exile
and Rome and its fictions
transformed as expected
                continue to be
  

NEVERTHELESS

NEVERTHELESS

raid?
deconstruction?

we can argue about it:
fact remains
with raincoats and
torches

you forced your way
into my poem
in the middle
of the night

outside
     no mob with
pitchforks but
a pyre nevertheless

what is to be burned?
I ask; you
do not bother
to grace
  this question
with
an answer

of course, it is one
of the great questions
of all time

whose true answer
in this context,
this situation,
   makes not much
difference

no
difference at all