Postcard Poems: Six

I hope you never hear this
because I wouldn't want to see you blush
red like the six seeds swallowed
to give Hades a Queen.
Six seeds for six months
because six months separated is long enough
to abide Hermes' escort from this mortal coil.
But
we all have an Orpheus
willing to follow us into the dark
to plead their case past three trials
and carry us back into the light.
Even if they look back, don't fade away
unless the sadness and the silence
should rival the burning hate of Styx
in ways even Lethe cannot wash away.
For Odysseus does Penelope wait
greater times than half circles round Helios' hall,
hiding daily devotion in nightly tricks.
Sometimes even the brightest lights
cast the darkest shadows.
And I would carry you away like Ganymede
if you wanted to be closer to the sun.

Bonus pic! Because Ethan requested a hand-painted postcard I took a picture of myself in process.

An Image of Eros - May 4, 2012

Start a poem, never finish, draw a pretty picture instead. 

Eros shoots true, his arrows machine gun rapid

pop! pop! pop! and hearts bleed, shirts soaked

crimson by this violence of love.

Venus laughs, a joyous and terrible sound,

echoing down from the slopes of Olympus

Dawning

Dawning

May Erato bless these words:

I am a child of Eos.

A bastard of the morning,

with warm-tinted fingers

I rise from the womb of the horizon.

A herald of the day, I brandish my colors

from mountaintops and flat expanses alike.

I am the settled orange
peeking from the liminal folds of my mother's dress,
standing with a sentry's patience
while pink and purple

ascend the heavenly ladder

to breach Nyx's encompassing grey,

and make way for Hemera in her shifting chiton of blue.

The four stallions of Lord Helios

pull His golden chariot o'er my spinal track,

leading the Helionic parade westward once again;
the consequences of Phaeton's trial continued.

I am sunrise, the final gleaming remembrance

of sword-fire in the east,

my only guide to follow the mourning star,

that last solitary beacon, once fallen,

now fading in the brilliance of the coming light.