Tantalus
Double gravity’s weight sets on these arms
as they go stretching in spite of it
with veins of marble carving.
For all of eternity statues reach so,
teaching this god the life of humans,
those ones given dreams but not the circumstance
to see them realized.
Should I learn how to entreat favor
when anger was willful & power abused?
Does such punishment fit the crime?
Yes, greed is my guilt, that hunger now tantalized
by branches so close with fruit as bait
& taste coming as only more air.
I should be drunk from it, with the fairy dust
of some distant mirage while I bend down & down
for water to retreat also.
How pure & tempting it looks, but feeling is the thing
depression is not allowed. Instead that dark manta ray
falls across my chest & shrouds the back
until the cloudy head is hooded, & I, a phantom
for desire itself.
Under that mantle I refuse still to slouch
nor yield to my scoffing kin, pleased to play
& never be caught by their own bent god rules.
You’ve all made a net for me where above towers
one threatening stone. Unlike for poor Sisyphus,
it just hovers like your hands,
their outspread fingers mirroring mine.
But they cannot touch either my forbidden,
forbidding muscular palms, so who is more wanting,
truly greater in magnitude?
For all time my asking laughs back
while we wait each other out.
Closing Eyes
Music is much deeper, a finger waving come, come,
here murmurs listen to what’s rarely said aloud,
some particular current heard beyond the daily
mediocrity or the superb dailiness, correspondent
to providence, to aches estranged but for this
reception now swelling, rocking, now still
in every difference who’d love to know closed eyes
turned to only what that difference says: you, you.
Burning Person
She lost the S & became He
who lost the h & became E.
Then E was anyone, incredibly tired
yet incredibly full of faith. Faith kept E
going through newspaper headlines,
the black & white buildings, the ink roads…
E tried everything—–
petitions & phone calls,
protests & conferences,
prayers & charms.
Nothing much changed. The tyrants of centuries
were replaced by other tyrants. The toppled were
plentiful, & the bystanders more so.
New regimes always rose up,
& papers kept reporting – tick, tick, tick –
the flickering lives.
This fired E’s soul & E knelt like stone one day
at bureaucracy’s intersection.
The holy jar did its dousing.
The lighter worked as lighters do.
E’s life flashed in the ticking
which reported only E’s heat remained.
E’s faith found this appropriate & returned
to the she & he who keep turning the world,
let us pray.
Zenaida Morcoura
Mourning dove, turtle dove, rain dove true,
your coo starts the day with solace
for the natural melancholy of the world,
the hope that all sorrowing things
might find renewal.
Sonation is the technical term for, yes, the sound resonates,
calling to us all, communing with grace as only the most celestial can
will themselves with ease.
Your amethyst-tinged feathers turning maternal
monogamous light beige, do as much in the sun,
your wings, elliptical, whistling silvery at take-off
to land with a soft whoosh like the hush of a blush
when a secret love comes close.
Angel of earth through millennia of kingdoms, villages, fields,
how your survival’s our good fortune after every uprising,
every fall.
Bathe in the dust of such, plucky with luck,
so we may learn that perseverance is a humbling phoenix,
hollow-boned, of simple notes rustling, settling
to let the soul know life is full.
About the Author
Stephen Mead is a retired Civil Servant, having worked two decades for three state agencies. Before that his more personally fulfilling career was fifteen years in healthcare. Throughout all these day jobs he was able to find time for writing poetry/essays, and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum – artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall.