World Poetry Day

Yesterday was World Poetry Day, so I started something but - what with teaching evening classes and one thing ad another - fell asleep before posting it. So, a day late, but here is an offering of sorts. Some readers might feel it ought to be a burnt offering, which wouldn't surprise me as I'm not a fan of blank verse. Too often it's a euphemism for badly written meanderings. So at least this is in keeping with the general quality! Not entirely sure on a title... maybe Digital Deities?

Digital Deities (or, perhaps, Virtual Mythology?)

Narcissus sinks into selfies,

Lost from sight.

Eyes gouged, Aminias fallen

On the stick discarded by his love.

Clattering in the empty hall,

It dislodges, echoing –

Empty memes meaning faded,

Pasted into perpetuity, pointless.

Theseus lost, his thread unravelling

As, harried by beasts

Part-man, mostly bull who,

Troll-turf tramping with horned hunger

Bellowing, stalk each other

Armed with sharpened barbs.

Each locked in labyrinthine logic.

Medea chanting blends the ancient recipes –

Nature’s pharmacopeia purified of agenda,

Hidden in pages lit from within, unclouded

By reason.

Her children sacrificed on the altar

Of Hygeia, Hecate forgotten in the flight to become

Pelias’s saviour, vaunted healer,

Gaia’s unclaimed prophetess who

Will not be scorned

By those who chase the Golden Fleece,

Guarded by the serpent of Asclepius.

Lotus juice lulls,

Plastic petals infuse in black pools that

Flow forth from flat-screened palm pitchers,

Entrancing thirsty minds,

Saving them from the toil of talking

To each other,

An island in silence sits, citizens

Lost in a world not present, deaf

To despair untexted.

Compassion undelivered.

Olympus waits for a signal.