We, lost Africans
left the savanna
to follow the stars
leaving the ground
to stride with arms
down by our sides
to inherit the earth
and dirt of other lands
following the caravan
of sacred elephants
taking off our black
helmets to discover
other atmospheres
learning to breathe
here as well as there
drinking and singing
like blood thirsty
tigers the dangerous
songs of maps drawn
and long forgotten.

possibly too much by myself lately
maybe too long without you
but surely untouched in a way
shaken to my core in dreams

nights barely pass without same
waking dreams wishes horses
thundering past in my head
shaking earth of house inside

where ever this place may be
where ever we still abide together
we stayed here for decades hidden
horses never found us, not here

right now, whatever you are thinking
can be felt inside my bones, here
touch me, feel it, my heart pounds
just as it did before, just as it will

forever

So long, love,
say gnite honey,
I'll go pull a stump,
so here I am, the field
of night all around me,
crazy, sad and lonely,
what love there was,
like a bee on a rose
buried in the year book
of past attics, you never lost
my shadow because I
never had one beside you,
though you did lose a ring
once, or twice,
you were like a woman
holding mirrors
over the spring, there
are screws
in the window sill
never sunken to hold
a pane, you don't listen
for me in the rain
anymore, you lie yourself
back into the one
you think you love, cruelty,
cruelty, cruelty, that's all
you've ever known, my love.

Jason, leader of the Argonauts
writes in his log, ‘We have come far
& yet have only found
discarded pieces of her garment
floating on the current as if leading
us on to her lavender abyss;
Asclepius, much like Hart Crane
gaily diving off the side of the ship
fishes her sandal from the waters;

Asclepius sniffing the well worn footwear;
his healing eyes ignite,
‘These surely were worn by the Goddess;
Her foot-odor is all over them’,
the divine doctor says
Stroking the abandoned enchanted instep

Heracles wonders if this is a sign
Or if the doctor simply has a shoe fetish;
Tiresias telling the strongman that
Every fetish has its purpose &
this will reveal the direction her steps have
taken & that it was Prometheus himself
Who gave sheer lingerie to women
To catch the scent & hold men spellbound

After some basic Homeric
conversational one-upmanship
& Socratic back-and-forth,
Tiresias succeeds in convincing Heracles
of the rightness of drooling
Dr. Asclepius’s perverted actions;

The Argonauts are destined for success
By decree of Zeus, father of the gods;  
Calliope, a giant who blows the clouds
into shapes & makes the four winds
sing like a boy band; can become
human size whenever she desires
& ****** mortal men w/ her song

I would think right there on the temple floor
on mats softer than any fur,
We are destined to spend 40 nights
as captives of her furious wrestling tiger-women
whose roar is so loud the sound roils
through the vined jungle and across the tops
of the darkest trees and every living
creature goes into a heat and goes to ground
To mate driven lustily insane by
the unearthly screams,
and just then growls rang out


Her blood boiling hot,
No one had ever come so near,
it was as if a fight to the death was on,
but no death seemed clear


Of all the heroes on the Argos
Only one truly worried; Calliope's
own son would have to endure
witnessing yet again his mother
****** his shipmates; the muse
of epic poetry inspiring love visions
in their heads, meaning Orpheus,
greatest poet & musician
of the ancient world would have to yet
again wield the eternally
perfectly tuned lyre given him
by his muse-mother's master,
sun god Apollo for just this cause;

Another painful reminder that his mother
was a **** who molested him
when he was but a singing child;
she had taught him the ways
of poetry & music but
at the price of his sympathy & as if
embracing the death of love, it would
be Orpheus' task to yet
again bewitch his own mother

Intrigued, Calliope bursting mortal
chains asunder grows into who knows how tall
Only to dissolve from sight
into a swarm of sea creatures;
Calliope, beloved mother of Orpheus
casting bones as the ship goes over the edge of the world;

As if from two separate points of view
the hero embarks on his Quest for the majestic crone,
Only to find his ship navigating through
Amazon territory (so Freudian, so Jungian)
where he searches for the temple of the mythic mystic female;

Every legendary goddess has heard of him
From still-more ancient legends
known only to them; the hero whose name
is as yet unknown goes to the prow of his ship,
at long last seeing her white mountains
& following her thunder

By Medusa & Johnny Noir