A poem with a fancy German philosophical term for a title.

I should probably have memorized more Bible verses rather than write a poem…. But when the high-and-mighty and oh-so-very-stereotypically-female-aka-moody-and-fickle Muse grants the ability to write—or, as tonight, grabs a huge handful of your hair and yanks until you follow her—you have to write. There’s no choice.

So although I don’t know my memory verses, I’ve got a rough poem for you all to read. And—be excited—it includes footnotes to explain the ALLUSIONS. (T.S. Eliot would be so, so proud… except for the fact that I’m explaining my allusions. He would probably be pretty disappointed about that.)

Enjoy. Feel free to interpret at will. The little numbers in parentheses denote footnotes at the bottom. 

“Ewige Wiederkunft” (1)

 

I’ve met you before, a thousand times.

I know this and do not know this.

We shake hands, we smile, we make small talk, we laugh,

and I wonder, When will you remember me?

When will I remember you?

When you yawn, your throat is a glassless window to the pyramids,

and a blast of hot sand scours my face.

I’ve walked the Shari al-Haram before, (2)

and I walk it now, and I’ll walk it again.

 

We meet in a cathedral crowded with bronze statues,

peasants, princes, pariahs frozen here by some Medusa’s magic. (3)

You comment on how your eyes reflect in their cold ones,

how they seem to steal your eyeballs right of your head

and I agree.

On their emotionless, worshipping faces,

your eyes blink back at me, warped and skewed,

one hundred cobalt distortions.

 

You chance across me in my apple orchard—

harvest time, and I have empty barrels and full barrels.

We shake hands, we smile, you ask me,

What do you do here?

And I glance towards the top of my ladder.

Gold light drips down the rungs,

light you cannot see.

I try to get to Faerie, I say. (4)

Will you remember me,

remember when I’m gone?

 

We speak of love, a trifling toy,

We speak of love, a ploy, a ploy.

We speak of love, but not of joy.

 

We see each other in a dusty gas station in Nevada.

You say, I’ll bet those cigar Indians come to life at night

and hunt coyotes and hares—

that’s why their hands are red.

I say, No—no, they don’t.

And you ask me, scoffing, Do I know you?

No—no, I say, you don’t.

 

We meet in a zoo, in the reptile house,

in darkness like the shadows in some primordial temple.

Our heads press against the glass, and you say that

your eyes reflect in scales, too,

and I don’t agree,

but something is blue about the lizards that should not be,

something glints like indigo flame on an ancient altar.

 

We meet, we meet, we meet,

our faces running like mercury through fingers,

like Sisyphus’ boulder from our memories, (5)

and we cannot remember

meeting in Oslo, meeting at dinner parties, (6)

meeting in the smoke of séances, incense hot in our lungs,

meeting at the edge of Andromeda with stars choking our throats.

Through the suffocating blaze you ask,

Do I know you?

No—no, I say, you don’t. 

 

(1) This nice little German phrase is something that our dear God-is-dead philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche coined. It’s kind of hard to explain, and even harder to understand, so I’m not going to go into it here—Wikipedia it if you’re just dying for knowledge on obscure and irrelevant information, or take the same philosophy class I took my senior year—but it basically means “eternal return.” That should make sense with the rest of the poem.

(2) The road to the Great Pyramids, according to a slightly sketchy Internet site so I’m not positive about this, but it sounds good, so don’t argue. Great poets have made bad allusions before and not been hurt at all for it.

(3) Medusa is a figure in Greek mythology who would turn you into stone if you looked at her. Sorry if you already knew that, Greek mythology buffs… just trying to help out those of us who aren’t such huge nerds (a.k.a. blessed with a wealth of knowledge that allows us to make life richer and fuller through understandings of universal archetypes… haha).

(4) Faerie is the land where Fairies live. This is sort of obvious, I think, but then again, maybe not.

(5) I kind of don’t think we can be friends anymore if you don’t know who Sisyphus is, because he’s basically my favorite Greek myth next to Daphne and Apollo’s story, but I suppose I’ll let it slide. Because of something he did in his life (too complicated to explain, but basically he pissed off the gods), he was sentenced to spending eternity rolling a giant boulder up a hill to only have it come crashing back down again, and he’d have to start over again, ad infinitum. 

(6) Oslo, which is now the capital of Norway, fits into the rest of the poem because it is located in a region that, in ancient times, was closely associated with mythological characters from Faerie.

 

So… feedback would be greatly appreciated. Love, hatred, confusion, annoyance, fits of giggles, you name it, I’ll take it.