Poetics, the sequel

Another Sunday has rolled around with no original content on Chuckling, the on-line magazine. Since last week's poem went over so well, I will offer up for sacrifice the other one I've written. If you don't like them, don't worry. I've worked on each for about four years, so it will likely be 2011 before you see another.

It's kind of fun to tell stories this way, with more elevated forms of language, but I won't be putting out the requsite "slim volume of poetry" anytime soon. I don't even submit them to magazines, other than Chuckling, which will publish just about any crap I submit.

In response to several emails I recieved on Pan, although my soul may well be wracked with the tortures of the damned, these poems are just writing exercises for the most part. Pan, like much poetry, takes the perspective of a mythical personage, in this case a forest god tempted by the sea. On the Eleventh tells a similar story.


On the Eleventh

My heart
is confusion
together with my soul
It is desolate
like consuming fire

Conceal yourself for a little while
in the midst of these coals
where living creatures,
torches, as it were,
burn in place of my grief

A vision will come
Life and old age
Counsel and prudence
Secrets of all living things

The days will hasten on fast,
draw together, bone to bone,
joint to joint,
sinews come upon them

To those without sense
from the earth
there will be
nothing
For them, graves