Traveling

Traveling through lands far from home close to heart
Muses peer mischievously from behind marble sculptures
While wild maenads  dance to rustic tunes
That were old before Apollo first caressed strings divine
Valleys and rocky slopes resound to airy spirits
Cities thrum to the vibration of modern life
People packed, car squeezing, winding byways
Leading to age layered mazes
Crammed with shops, bars, cafes
Each cramped doorway a gateway
To the exotic, different and alien
Gaudy  trinkets lie side by side with small treasures
Doorways inhabited by aproned tempters
Lead willing devotees to worship at Epicurean altars
Taste buds are assaulted with myriad sensations
And diners surrender to their plate ladened victors
The eye is drawn with every corner rounded
As the senses are intoxicated with heady waves
Crashing over the mind drowning all with the moment
Overwhelming a simple antipodean with old world charm
The road to the future seldom trod lies open
Possibilities arch towards endless horizons
The new pair of traveling shoes are already worn
By side of the road images burning
Galleries aflame with sensation and untouchable wonder
Experiences parade in rich procession
Even the jostling of the fellow travelers is welcome
Why then is my heart empty?
Cold and desolate as the Etruscan tombs I have wandered through
A soul as dead as the dwellers in that crypt infested town.
The crossroads I come across all look alike
And none are a fork in the road
What light can lead from the dark?
When my eyes are still shut tight
Halfway across the world but in the same spot
How far do I have to travel?
How many more journeys?
Until I find that gentle inner sea

Cemetery

Wrote this poem after visiting a foreigners cemetery in Rome, which is next to a hill that is made from broken pottery shards. All sorts of famous people are buried there including the poets Percy Shelley and John Keats.

In the shade of the broken mountain.
Labyrinthine stone lined hill,
Grass covered streets beneath time eaten wall.
Through ivory vistas range sleek fur-lined apparitions.
Psychopomps or guardians?
While bards untamed in life become brothers,
Silent children of the shadows.
Here their great words are lost to poignant brevity,
And the only verse that is heard is
“All in life comes to this place,
And none return save in memory”

Theatre at Epidaurus

Well it has been a while since I last posted, but i am in Europe at the moment and it seems with a change of scene I have had a change in my state of mind. My lazy and oft sleeping muse has received a timely kick to the head.

Wrote this after visiting the Theatre at Epidaurus. The acoustics are amazing.

Glistening ageless stone bones
Peerless offering bowl to the gods
Where once tramped the heirs of  Thespis
And crowds consumed myth and meaning
Here I stand unworthy of the position
Transfixed by echo divine
Do I hear my own voice reflected?
Or is it ancient whispers?
Windswept shades from healing sanctuaries
Or ancestral voices calling me home

Tiny Quotes – Marcus Aurelius

The next tiny quote are from a work by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor and philosopher who lived during the 2nd century B.C.E

“Nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind as the ability to subject each element of our experience in life to methodical and truthful examination, always at the same time using this scrutiny as a means to reflect on the nature of the universe..”

Marcus Aurelius Meditations 3.2 (trans.) Hammond, M. 2006 London: Penguin

Tiny Quotes – Simonides of Ceos

Simonides of Ceos was a Ancient Greek poet who lived from about 556 B.C.E to 468 B.C.E  The following a few of the sayings attributed to him. I like the second one in particular.

The word is the image of the thing.

Painting is silent poetry and poetry is a painting that speaks.

Simonides of Ceos in Lattimore, R. 1960 (2nd Ed.) Greek Lyrics Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Morsel – Greek Drinking Song

Haven’t posted for a while due to illness. Have added a new Category “Morsels”. Tiny little poems by other poets.

Today’s morsel is from Ancient Greece from a collection of Anonymous Drinking Songs (not exactly what I would expect from a drinking song. Maybe it sounds better when you sing it very loudly and drunkenly).

Oh that it were given to us to open
up the heart of every man, and read his
mind within, and then close it,
and thus, never deceived, be assured of a friend

Anonymous in Lattimore, R. 1960 (2nd ed.) Greek Lyrics Chicago: University of Chicago Press

The Hag

Was in a bit of dark mood when I wrote this one.

The Hag

Bone white wild strands snake from the ancient head
Dead raven eyes beneath a time blasted brow
With ghost like steps she approaches
Reality rended asunder with taloned fingers
Wrenching my head back with chilling force
An ironic leer spreads a crooked crack of a smile
Across a skull beneath taut parchment skin
She drags me screaming again
Through the rended gateway
Portal to the unreality
Dark enshrouded worlds lost in void
Impregnated with vampire mists
And grey wraiths whispering false truths

The Gift

A while back I started writing a Christmas poem each year. Thought it would be a nice personalised kind of gift. Besides which it provides a contrast with the distinctly unimaginative gift vouchers I seem to buy each year

This is the first of three Christmas poems I have written so far.

The Gift

I give to you a cup,
Crudely forged from dreamy musings,
Yet true enough to hold all hopes,
Large enough to slake the soul,
A goblet of the heart never filled,
The mind refreshed by delicate sips,
A vessel containing few words,
Yet brimming with oceans of meaning,
I give to you a cup of verse,
To toast the yuletide season

Slow Tea Time

Was drinking a cup of tea (slowly) when I came up with this one.

Slow Tea Time

I may be the slowest tea drinker in the world
The contents of my cup will be cold
But the conversation is warm
The company pleasant
There are so many things to discuss
So many stories to share
Minds to meet
Thoughts to blend
Time already runs away from us
Each day slips through our fingers
Why measure it by a level in a cup?
The tide mark in a pot?
When it is best to take our time
And savour the moments we have

Tiny Quotes – Pliny the Younger

The next tiny quote comes from Pliny the Younger, a Roman lawyer and landowner, who lived during the first century A.D. In a letter to his friend Caninius Rufus, Pliny tries to encourage him to pursue his creative interests.

“Create something, perfect it to be yours for all time; for everything else you possess will fall to one or another master after you are dead, but this will never cease to be yours once it has come into being.“

Pliny the Younger Letters 1.3 in Radice, B. (trans.) The Letters of the Younger Pliny London: Penguin