Temple of Artemus
Callimachus wrote:
'Let none disparage Artemis. For Oeneus
dishonoured her altar and no pleasant struggles came upon his city. Nor let any content with her in shooting of stags or in archery. For the son of Atreus vaunted him not that he suffered small requital. Neither let any woo the Maiden; for not Otus, nor Orion wooed her to their own good. Nor let any shun the yearly dance; for not tearless to Hippo
was her refusal to dance around the altar. Hail, great queen, and graciously greet my song.'
So the Great Temple was for the Amazons, who mated with their neighbors
Every 26 years.
The Temple outlasted that,
But not by much:
It was both wooed and raped
By the Earth Herself,
The first Amazon of all.
poem by Stan Petrovich
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Is Austerity Possible
Liquids: are alcohol and gasoline
The friends of man, food for thought?
I have bumbled through many thorny nights,
Heavily drinking ethanol,
And many a stormy day with beer in hand;
And I pumped gallons of gas
Into strangers' tanks as well as my own,
To travel to far-off deserts,
Where drinking alcohol like am idiot,
I tore up off-road tracks in the land that I love. It was foolhardy.
They call it democracy.
But, rather, I would fain substitute
Powders-psych meds I need to take,
Combined with recreational pharmaceuticals,
In which powder,
Condensed into pills,
Or encapsulated into capsules,
Tear up the brain I love,
Are not a friend of mine,
But open up a spacious nature
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Machinery For Raising Water
Great passage of water
Through pipes, branching from the Euphrates:
That was Nebuchadnezzar's gift to his twerking wife Amytis,
Who longed for trees,
Who longed for Medea,
And its heady fragrance.
Strabo's map of the world,
Going all the way to India,
In 17 volumes it is said,
Was a product of his squinty eyes,
So closely set he could watch Babylon from Athens.
He could also see the back of his thining hair,
Like a hare,
And divined the sizes of the sun and the moon,
With which he discussed with Augustus,
Over black wine,
That as well as the mysterious perfection of Imperialism,
While Augustus drooled
And the Empire slopped up his spit,
Just like the pipes
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Ode to Conformity
Do as I do, not as I say;
Find an effing way;
Go beyond the stupid teacher;
Be your own inner creature.
Run the glue onto the blue paper,
Then stick it firmly together;
On it draw a perfect face
In exactly the right place
So if you hold it up to a mirror
You'll see your own interior,
Your intelligence
That is your diligence,
And astounds the professor
Who now has become your confessor.
Get one job for effing life.
Get out of bed
And head for the rifeness,
Turning your back on the ol' blue paper,
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Clownfish
Boneless beasts
Whose life is no more
Than a wabble in the succulence of plankton,
Far below light,
Were mutations struck in a bad moon,
And being prey
Is the purpose of living.
In another sea
Bereft of eyes today
Some early pupfish gather
In glee,
Living for the rain to fall,
Bumping heads with eating teeth;
Wearing a grin to fill the entrails of a killer.
Now we picture the clownfish,
Fashion plate,
Courtesan appendages plentiful
Chasing its shadow under the spray,
While unthinking rocks
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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In Arizona
Take the rounding road west
Of Old Tucson, after the mock gunfight at high noon,
And stop at the Point where the
Grand Sonoran Desert is at its best-
I have scoured that desert
And found things stranger than arrowheads and old cans of A-1 Beer: seashells.
What is that?
Testimony to a forgotten time quite differing. Now the dark desert pavement,
Hardened by the harshest of heat there is,
Is underfoot, and Bigelow's Accursed chollas,
Looking like teddy bears,
Are poised to get you.
Rattlesnakes abound. There is something in the air, the smell of misfortune and ghastly death,
Around the corners of abandoned shacks, hanging black widows,
Broken window panes,
Ghost towns,
Where even the glass
Seems to melt
In your hands.
poem by Stan Petrovich
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Tearing Of The Cloth
Stuffed full of dense clouds,
My head is heavy with non-emotion.
Such is the present weather;
And I cannot keep thoughts of Kafka away.
(He tried to burn all his work,
But ((good for us)) it was saved.)
Men of the cloth have been deemed
Tarantulas. They slowly abrogate
Mind and sense. I rather respect dedication,
Except for nazi-like ideas, creepy communism or capitalistic cronyism.
De-evolution in society and politics
Is running rampant beginning
With the Industrial Age.
There's the rub: to 'improve' living
We have to sacrifice the planet.
Forever.
Waking up to a new day,
The azure morning following
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The Mystery
Where is he come from,
Why is he doomed?
The Genome is only the punch-card
Computer of a generationor more ago,
Filling up buildings, no colored displays,
Just the buzz of magnertic tapes-
You need a quantum computer to solve
The real equaations, everything in between.
He beckons from the eleven dimensions.
He repeats and does not repeat.
The folders of his quest
Are infinitely stacked
And infinitely variable.
Time stretches-
I finally get it perhaps-
His tombstones need not bear resemplance
To one another.
(Although they may) .
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Issue
'For Her I'd Even Try and Turn the Tide.'-Johnny Cash
To the feathered decks
To the breadfruit isles
I suffered, we suffered,
And I alighted after much
Ruffling and unease
At a land unknown,
A vault of the sea.
My woman held me comfortably, Balanced perfectly,
And we were rewarded
With an issue,
A vegetable-child,
Who cried not,
Who teethed not,
But who grew handsome and sturdy,
Promising in his wild-eyed youth
To become artistically profound,
And feed millions his tuneful song
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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Inferior Man
He grovels at shooting ranges,
the peicemeal remnants of
luck that he cannot make
for himself. Greed,
laughing at the portent,
he is wholly fraught in his
present goodness. The wizards
and gods present his presentiment.
What call does he make to the
blue mountain ridge? His anguish.
What makes him laugh the most
is the suffering of animals.He
kills animals with high-powered weapons made
in Connecticut. They discharge back
back into his gloomy face, a
face to be reckoned with, red
and drunken with self-destruction.
His sex is violent and unworthy,
pocketed in $100-dollar jeans
he never paid for, his wives paying
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poem by Stan Petrovich
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