A make-up artist? Um … no thanks.
That’s not my kind of courtship caper.
I want the girl who wrote a paper
on Massachusetts’ failing banks.
You can keep your belly-dancer.
The nimbleness that I would seek
is cerebral: I need the geek
who’ll find a cure for prostate cancer.
A chick who’s slick in silk and satin
is just what I’m inclined to spurn:
the only beauty I discern
likes reading Ovid – but in Latin.
The field is very small, because
I’m fussy, biased, preferential:
to me, it’s utterly essential
she knows who Dosso Dossi was.
I need you to be erudite:
call if you can tell apart
bead-and-reel from egg-and-dart:
the stamen from the Stagyrite.
One thing that’s truly terrific’s
knowing the plot of Lavransdatter:
write to me about grey matter
in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Sharon Tate? Scarlett Johansson?
My type is more Diane from “Cheers”.
She had stuff between her ears:
so save the blondes for Charlie Manson.
My ‘ask’ should now be quite transparent:
I’d love a lassie with a brain,
who writes reviews of Citizen Kane.
Where are you hiding, Hannah Arendt?
My friend talks
of Ovid and the Vespers
She is on a train
past Colchester
to see her parents
I will surely miss her
I always get this way
when shes gone
I will go to bed early
and hope to get an email
on some roman theme
The ends justify the means...
Machiavelli, an oxymoron
or Ovid, a paraphrase (?)
I consulted with Spinoza
he spoke of God and Nature
I want something ovid
that cant be destroyed
Truman and Eisenhower
grew the Military Industrial complex
but in my dreams
I cannot deny that I'm agog
but since they have gone
My life has never been the same
The ends justify the means
Machiavelli oxymoron
or Ovid paraphrases...
Some kind of Boccaccio
they open The Book,
borrowing thoughts
and stories from muses,
for it is a tome
in its entirety,
each muse, a Page, unamused,
to be plucked from tomb,
those sepia petals thrown up in the air,
unravel, the yarns like confetti,
land at the feet
of others
weeds and rows of perennials,
who bend like willows
backwards, they watch
unhooded falcons soar up
against the sky,
all shades of colour
the ever-moving clouds
like music, divine,
pull them up as if on strings
threaded through needlepoint
of a sharper mind,
they are carried away, drugged,
making wishes, like dandelions
blowing each the other,
they become - more - storks,
each a story, undone,
sewn and seeded
for the larger Ovid
in exchange for kinder souls
they dangle, each and every one
their spines entitled,
The Decameron
opened up,
lives fluttering,
they are read
as the in-betweens
some Prencipe Galeotto
engaged with Dante’s trust
Candide Diderot. ‘24
Page
stork, stalk
the Decameron
Prencipe Galeotto
Dante
Ovid
PARADISE LOST AGAIN
I’ll write an epic, I resolved,
In the style of Milton or Ovid.
Then thought of all the work involved,
And decided I couldn’t be bovid
17th August 2021
Your best four line light verse poetry contest
Sponsor - L Milton Haskins
Envy is a green-eyed monster
wrote Shakespeare and Ovid
You think they were jealous
~ of the appearance of covid?
I'm the cirizen of another country,
the long penynsula that stretches
into the vast Mediterrean Sea;
has anybody ever seen how lovely
it is with its snow-capped mountains
and verdant rolling hills oveerlooking
towns with castels and churches?
Has anyone ever heard the warbling
of canaries and of sparrows?
Before I pledge allegiance
to another flag and swear my loyalty,
I may feel a sense of betrail inside,
I'll overcome it and love both flags
and countries fairly and equally...
can one love two countries?
The farewell of a young boy departing
on his seventhenth year wasn't
as sad as that of my parents who were crying;
I sought an exciting future that
only America was offering
to the most adventurous spirit
flying over an unknown ocean...
navigated by hundres of ships under an airplane.
I'm a cirizen of another country,
a country loved by Michelangelo, Dante and Ovid;
no, I wasn't expelled from their cities as they were,
I obeyed the will of mom and dad.
I'm a citizen of another country
obeying the laws of the land and respecting everyone.
Ovid
never wrote of
COVID
Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch
“Burn Ovid”—Austin Clarke
Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imagining watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit sex was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.
I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, masturbation, sodomy.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.
What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her breasts rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?
“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,
cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,
my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:
all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.
Keywords/Tags: Ovid, god, religion, church, Sunday school, sex, sexy, sensual, lust, desire, passion, choir, hymn, hymns, devout, devotion, faith, purity, chastity
S oul of any mem is precious to God
O pen your eyes and see things God's way
C ovid-19 is bigger than any human being
I ntelligence of men is tested beyond measure
A ll of you around the world
L earn new ways to value the soul next to you
D istance yourself from infectious behaviour
I llnesses don't move but people move it
S ocial distancing is one call we should answer
T o help us combat the spread of Covid-19
A matures-social media entrepreneurs
N ullify the importance of heeding GVT call
C omic material circulated by the amatures
I mpair government call to protect its citizens
N ever allow ignorance to blind your vision
G overnments are servants of God,obey their call.
whooshing wits woven
crushed tongue cloven
dark age drooled
felon fate fooled
haughty nature's nimble
foiling feasts feeble
salient seal bruised
callous crave cruised
vying voluptuous view
severed passion smoldered
crushed, crimson asunder
squashing lanky lethal
farcical fury fumbled
fiddling fostered fickle.
'20:03:15:09:28
Note: Dedicated to Ovid.
Narcissus And Echo
Thou scheme a tale, rightly told through Ovid,
Entreat thee twain hearts thus thee speak thereof,
Grant thee their role, dark, yea set thee forward,
Born per a nymph, reverse, a nymph in love.
Narcissus, hunter, heavenly vision,
Echo, spent in love and a shadow be,
She paces him in hopeful liaison,
He senses her presence but cannot see.
He beckons, his words albeit rebound,
Her confession irks him, she is ignored,
She kills herself, transmutes as a faint sound,
Nemesis made Narcissus self-adored.
He loved his image, were not meant two halve,
Killed himself for the one he could naught have.
*A glen echoes a rippling stream whose banks beget flowering golden Narssisci.
February 21
*1st Place*
Your Favorite Legend
~~Chantelle Anne Cooke
*3rd Place*
STRAND NO 800 ,any theme,any form FINALE
~~Brian Strand
Howmanysyllables;
14 lines x 10 syllables per = 140 syllables
To Flower
by Michael R. Burch
When Pentheus ["grief'] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by Dionysus, tore him apart (Euripides, Bacchae; Apollodorus 3.5.2; Ovid, Metamorphoses 3.511-733; Hyginus, Fabulae 184). The agave dies as soon as it blooms; the moonflower, or night-blooming cereus, is a desert plant of similar fate.
We are not long for this earth, I know—
you and I, all our petals incurled,
till a night of pale brilliance, moonflower aglow.
Is there love anywhere in this strange world?
The Agave knows best when it's time to die
and rages to life with such rapturous leaves
her name means Illustrious. Each hour more high,
she claws toward heaven, for, if she believes
in love at all, she has left it behind
to flower, to flower. When darkness falls
she wilts down to meet it, where something crawls:
beheaded, bewildered. And since love is blind,
she never adored it, nor watches it go.
Can we be as she is, moonflower aglow?
Originally published by The Neovictorian/Cochlea
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