OTI:three poems and notes:9/13/16

Open To Interpretation

Pan

How are you feeling Pan?
I can't find a revel
Anywhere
My flute moot.

It Rains On Mondays

Oh!
I have found a song,
An anthem
To make my own
About you and me,
Well,
Maybe just me.
From another's longing path,
A self similar pursuit
So recent
I can still hear
The lyrics and refrains
Echoing in the thunder and rain.

Zeus

(a play in the fashion of the Old Greeks...emphasis 'play' :)
continued from previous post...
scene: Olympus' Hall of Judgement,
the prosecution's and defense's exposition continues...

prosecution

Without Love
There's Hate
And Hate's not Chastity's ingrate
Chastity clothes Love,
As white Aphrodite's Dove,
So Love and Peace and Chastity's Virtue
Provide,
And deny
Hate and War and Unbridled Lust
Their tides.
Chaste Artemis ransoms Cupid,
Pursuing her jealousy,
Her thirst for victory
Dehydrates Aphrodite.
Now women contest everything,
Except Love,
Love has been defeated,
So no need.
Zeus' new law Artemis diverted,
Retreated all Love's advances.
We see in his own tears
All our fears.

defense

Artemis has her selfish way.
Is that not a woman's case?
Don't they all stomp their feet, 
"Only my way!" ?
Some imagined wrong
She nurtures
From her own sister:
So all this they say.
Not so.
Aphrodite has beguiled
Long enough,
Providing targets for Cupid
While Pan plays his pipes.
On Olympus
No one is safe from Zeus' advances
Allied with Aphrodite's lances.
And mortals even more so,
His disguises being such,
They suspect each swan's touch.
Look, in the gallery,
Poor Phaedra,
Struck by Cupid's surrogate dart
For Aphrodite's jealousy
Of Hippolytus' chaste love of Artemis...
Look, his body still not set
From being dragged beneath his chariot.
He sits in dignity beside Phaedra.
With one new law
Zeus thought to overturn all laws.
Bound as he is too,
Like all, mortal and immortal,
He saw a way out.
With half creation,
Women,
Unfettered with
'Women can do no wrong'
The other half would cry out,
Men,
Immortal and mortal,
With one voice,
"Zeus, rescind your choice!"
And Zeus, gladly, would
Sweep all laws into his hands.
But Artemis,
Before Men's outcry could mount
Grabbed out Cupid's arrows
From his quiver,
Snagged his bow,
And the worlds
Above and below went still,
Pan's pipes quiet.
Now she hides Love's
Stinging darts
With chaste concealment
And over all reigns,
Even over Zeus
Now in Chastity's chains.

recess, the chorus outside the Hall...

What time this is!
It is like the sea has no tides...
The shore no waves...
Sails no wind!
It's only been a week...
Relax!...
We'll remember this as a respite is all.
Zeus will return normalcy...
And make a holiday...
To commemorate Love's return.
You favor Zeus?
We were counseled neutrality...
Until all was heard...
Tattoos confided he preferred Hades...
Where is Tattoos?
He went to the can...
Look, far below...
On the high road's approach!
That crumpled figure...scorched.
Oh!
We're eleven then...
Six women...
And five men...
We shouldn't talk.
Did you see Hades' eyes?
Large and round...
Never blinking...
The pupils full black dilated...
And the iris yellow!
He looked right at me....
And me...
And me...
He perused all of us!
Looks from Hades
Are no flattery...
His visage is neither
Light nor dark...
Yes, like shadows
Beneath a wind blown tree...
That's why they are called shades...
They sit so quietly in the gallery.
Dusk falls on our town...
Far below hearth fires
Warmly glow in each home's windows...
One by one
Like the stars in the darkening sky...
I see no moon...
Is the moon too gone?

Take your seats...
One is empty?
We brought up twelve,
Plenty enough...
Take your seats.

We dare not speak...
We dare not move...
We dare not think...
Love's dilemmas were never like this...
Look, see how Zeus and Hades
Stare down one another...
Our suitors!

DolphinWords

Notes: Pan belongs in the play...when witnesses come forth...It Rains...reference again, Rainy Monday by Shiny Toy Guns...a lot of songs go on about Monday...listened on youtube to Monday Monday, an old favorite not heard in awhile...the violins seem quaint, the voices too...antique even!...Zeus...not to be confused with the previous poem, Zeus (the conflict with Typhon)...and I'm confused...I get lost in the back and forth between the prosecution and defense!...giving one's argument to the other!...it would take editing lawyers to keep it straight...reference Euripides' Hippolytus, that in previous post as well...you know, on the iphone, Google has done something wonderful...everything superfluous is gone...just the texts scroll...and there's a Tree In The Door listing that lists each OTI post with a snippet of lines...an index of poems first lines as it were...something I had wished for in my searches...the Poetry Foundation has this for poems they have transcribed, which leaves behind those still on jpeg pages of old issues and new...their command that one can't submit poems one has self published is stupid...poems purchased by another publisher I understand being off limits...I'll not, if I was pursuing such, I'm not, set aside poems to send to them, sit on my hands for response from them, for what?...up to six months!...there's a startup poetry reading group on Wednesday nights I've discovered on 4th street in downtown Santa Ana...all kids, from seeing the facebook page...and with youth's ambitions in youth's kitchen...if I attend, it will be a sneak...wish STG would re combine...same kind of dilemma...oh, we used to hear it...youth is everything everywhere...too...

:)

DavidDavid