First, Mother Nature met Diana.

Mother nature, autonomous woman
Place the elixir of life onto my tongue,
Three drops, put your mouth above mine
Let your saliva drip in
Touching the roof of my mouth.

I’ll now tilt my head back,
Choking as it runs down my throat,
A beautiful agony, as always
Into my body,
Down to my stomach,
The tonic of life,
Our life.
Now we shall create.
Amen.

Second of all, with fountains of love, they created a child. They went on to call her Rosina.

let your bees come in,
pollinating, creating life
but only under my terms,
only when i choose
to let them feast upon me

let a small peach form
on the branches of my womb
but let her core be poisonous
hydrogen cyanide,
to keep thieves at bay

if my body is a garden,
let it be ripe,
ever growing, ever flowering
a stretch of soft grass,
for us to lay our heads

mother, mother, daughter
the heavens will sing.

The stretch marks on my thighs prove that I am a descendant of the mermaids and the gods.

They shine and appear light on my skin like how the sunlight dances on the top of the water.

They are signs that my body has endured and will continue to survive as the world moves on.

They weave across my skin like the beginning of a beautiful tapestry that will only become complete in time.

Learning to love myself again is hard, but my naked body is slowly becoming mine again.

The stretch marks are art on my skin, my own natural tattoos.

Let them show.

[In which Aphrodite ponders monogamy, 21st century style]


She’d come far since that whole Botticelli scandal,

astride a shell, hair tumbled about her ******,  

sensuality and a taste for illicit thrill (a real wild myth)

but now the candid canvas only required a google by the Book Club’s prying judgment,

she’d since traded Olympus for a semi-detached.  


All his shirts were folded, perfectly pressed,

ham and chips congealing by the microwave  

and he should have been back before Hollyoaks.  

They met in their local, he bought her a pint and mused

over Milton of all people, his degree finally put to use,

justifying the ways of God to men.  

Impressed and tipsy his back was soon against the wall, no tricks needed.  


He kissed all over her divinity,  

admired the quote encircling her ankle, from a trip round Asia

to find herself, at age nine thousand and nineteen.  

As they made love a spell fell on her for once in a millennia

Married in months, too young, well he was,  

and her face had always been twenty-two.  

Then came the mortgage, the Labrador, the kids, the affairs.  


At the bottom of a wine glass she pondered on the irony

after all what was the point of an eternity weaving passion into the world  

with your husband’s ‘lunch meetings’ equating to rolls on Travelodge sheets?

Not her style at all, too tacky.  

She could work her charms, make everything rose-tinted,  

but the bitterness intoxicated.


On the sofa, her side, she dwelled again on Botticelli,  

spilling her beauty on a page,

passion and dexterity, a lost breed- this century was so unpromising.  

Aphrodite thought on her conquests- Ares, Poseidon, Adonis

gods between her thighs, making her mountains move,  

oceans boiling madly, bruised skies crackling with fire,  

tangled bedsheets,  

hair,

hands caressing skin and creating worlds, and…


…and on her mortal, a balding, a boring, a bland  

disappointment.


Off came the clothes, the wedding ring and the phone from its hook.  


Imagine the pizza boy’s confusion as the door opened to the sound of the heavens singing  

rays of ethereal light warming his pubescent, pock-scarred face.  

A naked, pearly goddess,

and those golden, flaxen locks snaking, seducing, ensnaring as he staggered into the rosy blur.


It was impossible, after all, to justify the ways of gods to men.  


But how clichéd.

Should we head onwards towards our future?
Make the best of what we've got.

Or set our sights on new beginnings,
And face the ragnarok.

Night so often brings a lack of force,
But in this other world
That hums alongside ours,
There is a golden line riding in the sky,
A horizontal meridian
That runs like a road,
Across the plains
Where invaders roam
And you should not travel
On your own.
So hang onto the line and fly
Above despair or fear,
Until you reach a darker cliff
And enter the realm
Of Pythagoras.
Along with his elfin helper,
Who spun the golden line
Steered by Pegasus.
And slung below the stars,
Thin as a spider’s web
And strong as steel,
He gives frail dreamers
Safe passage from world to world.
Above the winding roads
And forests of dark mist,
Those of Eriador, Earthsea and Hyrule
Sail like Odysseus past rock-bound isles
And Sirens’ songs and Loki’s smiles.
But what lies beyond those hills,
The dubious mortal asks.
To which the winged horse replies,
“Only those who dare
And trust me safely to consign
Will ever know where leads
The Meridian of Pythagoras,
The endless, golden line.”

Poor poor Sisyphus
Rolling a stone up a hill
Nearly get to the top, he did
But the rock rolled down and fell.

Crushed beneath the burden
Of his own type of hell
Destined to labor forever
Rolling that **** stone up a hill.

---

A bag of clothes, a box of books, another smaller box of letters and photographs & an old guitar are sitting in the backseat.


It's 3am and she's driving through the Blue Ridge mountains. All the windows are down, warm summer air billows in and sends her hair dancing. 


She doesn't know where she's going, but the warmth calls to something in her blood so she heads South. 


She'll probably end up on a beach somewhere in a little East Coast town. Maybe she'll sell flowers and jam by the roadside or find a little bookstore that needs help, she'd wash floors all day if she had to and wouldn't think to complain. 


It all feels like freedom. 


The air smells like rosemary and thyme that grow wild along the roads. The stars are so bright she can hear them breathing. A jackalope dashes across her headlights & is gone before she has time to turn her head.


She parks in the back corner of a gas station somewhere in the Carolinas & stretches her legs out the window, takes a few sips of whiskey and reads a while before she falls asleep. Lightning bugs dance in a nearby field to the voices of cicadas. 


Somewhere a voice is screaming, glass is breaking, sirens pierce the stillness of a quiet street, but she doesn't hear it & she never will again. Even in sleep she is smiling.

we are milliseconds away from mortality, you and i,
your impending doom hanging over like suspense and the ghost
of your touch
lingers longer than zeus, hurts harder than your voice
the day is yet to break and the time
is a hair’s breadth between now and forever,
when the sun strikes you down i will fall with you
but for now, let us lie like gods in this space we call home;
wrists against wrists and teeth sinking into skins