Ceremony

    Socrates: (cont.) it appears to me really laughable, not yet knowing this, to examine (skopein) alien things (allotria)

    // 229ε

    γελοῖον δή μοι φαίνεται τοῦτο ἔτι ἀγνοοῦντα τὰ ἀλλότρια σκοπεῖν

    //

    the white rose

    i. lazy lying

    O love, and your elliptical necessity
    O body, where my hand should or shouldn’t be
    O pain, incongruous with poetry
    O tease, who didn’t even taste her vegan sushi

    and can’t you read your working girl is wired
    how thick her lines, how dense the verbal flex
    through tissue skin she moves for you like fire
    if beggars reach beyond the solar plex

    or if you crowny thorn her goldylocks
    then she could drag your cross by silken hem
    mantic romantic how you palmed her wrist
    and when you nearly slid it in, sweet bitter

    O yes, no, neither, both, if irony
    is logic how she leaves the dead country
    she only wants to be with you, for you, baby
    and how you need it, and how your penstrokes ask for it

    darling prevarication; but your him-hands
    give quaking earth, they land so serious
    and lazy lying on your big brass bed, and curious
    you have her on her back, hand where you said

    her wears a ring to be transcendent lay
    for texture fascinates her fingertips
    down to the valley, where she gives it all away
    hits harder when the moon falls on a Saturday

    //

    ii. the corsage

    my pulse is narrowing and turns the sky
    around this death, heart over air, to fly
    so cradled night, my infant, catching, fell
    for contact, striking, stroke indelible

    a wrist, a pin, the pale stem of a rose
    her point, round by my red hand and my right
    her subtle bite of blood at ivory jaw
    our trinity of sunbeam into sleep

    but here, i kiss the center, mouth for eye
    i taste it, as i take contested breath
    i turn it, making weighted what was white
    i let it fly, and earth will finish the matter

    //

    iii. air terjun

    on this island, there are many waterfalls
    come visit; then your tree trunk thighs will tremble
    and collapse from the steep trail of descent
    we seek her from the bottom, not the top

    don’t think about the arduous way back up
    the rising hell, and you will ache tomorrow
    but the future needs to take care of itself
    not like some infernal baby, wailing

    our path is not yet ruined by the trash
    yet discarded plastic has determined us
    our dirty fingernails pry it out and carry
    made little masters of unending refuse

    shaded by foliage as we approach
    the whiteout sound echoes off slippery slopes
    of mud-washed stone, grip held by cliffside roots
    and every footstep is precarious

    place focus, eyes on feet and hands on limb
    the green ravine her delving argument
    into this living hollow of the land
    the cave erasing history of water

    to where her falling flight consumes the air
    by roiling pool, our temporary here
    our momentary test, like ice for legs
    the same knees wobble forth to undergo her

    into the storm, the fight white vertical
    her standing soaking mountain-height of light
    defeats the gaze, sheer upright counter-thirst
    and roaring riddle; if you reach your arms to touch her

    her closer is the punishment of rain
    she smacks your skull and plasters down your hair
    her current pummeling your blinded form
    her action belongs to nobody

    but how she caught my breath and draws me near
    and how much love precipitous you take
    and how her emptying invokes my ghost interior
    and how i fail again, her force compelling my return

    //

    for Faded Love

    Socrates: (cont.) i am not yet able, according to the Delphic inscription (gramma), to know myself

    // 229ε

    οὐ δύναμαί πω κατὰ τὸ Δελφικὸν γράμμα γνῶναι ἐμαυτόν

    //

    for his Crush

    Socrates: (cont.) and the cause, O beloved, of this, is this

    // 229ε

    τὸ δὲ αἴτιον, ὦ φίλε, τούτου τόδε

    //

    a mystery

    to me
    isn’t growing
    on the wood slat ventillation
    of our teak cathedral sanctuary
    roundish, brownish, like raw dough
    it has been for three months or more
    the same size, surface of a dinner roll
    the same place, distance from center
    tender abstract seamless fungal
    too high for me to touch
    the holy infant
    of poetry

    //

    Socrates: (cont.) but for me, there is no leisure (schole) at all for these things

    // 229ε

    ἐμοὶ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὰ οὐδαμῶς ἐστι σχολή

    //

    photo of a pinkish landscape of grass and distant trees and shrubs with an almost silhouette of hanging vining

    pinkish //

    Socrates: (cont.) he will lack much leisure (schole) for himself

    // 229ε

    πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει

    //

    in memory of Oreithyia

    a pearl exposed
    on the one-way road
    demands a rocky throne
    her tritone howling
    unhinging the jewelry jaw
    its hunger pretending
    its hook line preclaiming
    lip angled by whether
    lost inseam unseemly loss
    the weightlessness of stone

    //

    Socrates: (cont.) as if consulting (chraein) some kind of rude (agroikos) wisdom

    // 229ε

    ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενος

    //

    my christmas tree

    by this typical jaw
    with four, six ellipses
    make up arboreal
    chipping ornaments
    icicles of twisting glass
    still if breathing

    needles if leaves
    it was in the drying
    she would spread her wings
    aroaming like memory
    almost belonging
    a sleeping forest

    //

    . . .

    //

    🌘

    Socrates: (cont.) if someone, distrusting these, will make each come nearer to a likening (eikos)

    // 229ε

    αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον

    //

    diptych oceanic amechanica

    hysteriac at home

    woe! i am a not altogether fortunate woman
    my pocket seams with potsherds polishing
    a bag of skin trailing portentous signs
    and i am broken news, my sand is yellow

    to find my edge, i walk into the sea
    her seaweed briarpatch of gorgons birth
    surrendered sky by pegasi recovery
    as mermaids sing flat edges for my shanty

    woe! her thanatos uncanny, even for me
    the horizon roars for blessing every line
    shore smashing every bauble blending shades
    soft seashells made tangible the breast of ocean

    and time is a tangent tracing its beloved snail
    and the cradle failing of her continental tail
    and she is drawing, drawing, under seasons wax
    pink salty glowing in her seamless milk cocoon

    woe, woe! my every mask a bending earth
    reflowing throng of placeless impossibility
    and desires every glance she didn’t chase yet
    my marbles rolling in her depthless pocket

    //

    uteri

    get em hot
    skim cooling

    like sumber bor
    in 12 hrs or more
    chocolate lava cake
    stone melting

    tropic shiver
    truly your

    earth dwelling
    tacky decor
    tasteless tasty

    ova in—
    ice tailor—
    screaming

    wicked

    //

    . . .

    oh no!

    dessert
    amazing

    1, 2, 3, ho!

    smashing
    to order

    . . .

    //

    Socrates: (cont.) and then out flows a throng of things such as Gorgons and Pegasuses and multitudes of additional impossibilities (a-mechanos) and of such things giving birth (phuein) to placeless (a-topia) storytellings of monsters (teratologos) . . .

    //

    καὶ ἐπιρρεῖ δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων Γοργόνων καὶ Πηγάσων καὶ ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι τερατολόγων τινῶν φύσεων

    //

    Plato coins “teratologos” from teras and logos; teras means a sign, marvel, wonder, divine sign, omen, portent, or monster. So teratologoi are words, accounts, stories, arguments, or reckonings about signs, marvels, wonders, divine signs, oments, portents, or monsters.

    //

    photo of the sea, the horizon, the cloudy sky, with a small boat off to the left edge of the image with a few people in it, one tiny person in neon snorkel gear in the center of the image, and a tiny dim silhouette of a boat to the right of the image, near the horizon

    coverage //

    Socrates: (cont.) for no other reason than that for him it’s necessary after this to straighten out (epanorthousthai) the form (eidos) of the Hippocentaurs, and then again that of the Chimaera,

    // 229δ

    κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδέν, ὅτι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, καὶ αὖθις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας

    //

    pink non eraser

    under fan
    ceiling
    by socks or slippers
    whispers inside the softest rain
    disordered bee
    bonnet be let out
    two dimensions on a wednesday
    piece of obsidian, cool in hand
    her dilating pupils
    her pink paper sand
    clawless pawing my pencil
    .;,,32wu8x
    pathomistry traces oily
    whiff papyral

    //

    catspoon
    container

    //

    Socrates: (cont.) yet they belong to an exceedingly terrible (deinos) and laborious (epiponos) and not altogether (panu) fortunate (eutuches) man

    // 229δ

    ἐγὼ δέ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα χαρίεντα ἡγοῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρός

    //

    anywhere but poppies

    it’s there
    her pane of a window
    passing passages

    the passing offer to carry
    ten thousand atomic lighters
    black specks on a braid of challah

    or liberate sweet nappers proper
    a chilli-laced hotpot, shiitakis, bok choy
    garlic, in the valley of compost boxes

    loose her transportive reliquaries, poultices
    dank delicious opacity compressed of air
    silkworms for the mundane pocket

    warm pillow for docket signifiers
    fingertips heavy with tawny heads
    inky notations with nowhere there

    to fly, but into the measure, slightly high
    pitched on a dry stone wall, for her
    a pinkish reddish hazy third, with leaves

    to breathe, past purple on the milky way
    eclipse, her eyelid, her lippy friend
    seamless tracing moving core

    //

    🌗

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