Vesuvian Memory

Another "nonsense" poem that almost makes sense.

always images I'm told, what about mouths open wide, mute mutation?

gentle felinesteps shiver on my bed (earthquakes elsewhere),

slabs of broken castles, banks, and mountaintops, clay pots

of ancient executioners whose gods came in tall ships,

who knew but to welcome strangers in shining repose

with long hair on their faces.

now look, the horror

without looking even you know it, feel it,

vaguelly misspelled feelings fading until you die.

the wrong in the world runs deep,

from blast out funnels-hot

to in through tubes down down to the core,

it burns this image, not smelts, but burns and freezes this mute image,

like a kiln, cramped and wasted.

Author's Note

There's more there, I think. But I lost the thread.

Reviews

[pasdepoisson]

Exactly the kind of writing I don't see enough of. The ancient executioners remind me quite a bit of the Conquistadores arriving on the Mexican shores. The Aztecs viewed them as a sort of dazzling menace in their shiny armor, astride strange four-legged beasts.

I think the image of long buried-violence burbling underground like lava, or fired up in a subterranean kiln is awesome. Kinda reminds me of Norwegian black metal band Satyricon's song "Black Lava":

"Black lava dripping down the mountainside,
Black lava you can't fight"