Gods in Suburbia

Artemis Beware the critical mind, for it is a self-devouring beast. Like your trusted arrow, sharp and merciless. A lifetime of spouting venom – lashing out, entrapping, calculating, categorizing, whittling the other down, crushing bones, reducing to water and fur and debris, sucking the life away – has kept the rodents at bay, our environment under control. Our faithful companion, we think. And then, at the end of life, it turns on us. Reveals itself a traitor. And we discover that it has sullied our own bed, has poisoned only us. Apollo: At the End of Days Since youth you beamed golden son of light, with gilded heart tall and taciturn sage words glided from your sleek and silvered tongue thick, agile thumbs mollified wood and plucked your gleaming lyre with equal dexterity virility and elegance lived harmoniously in your brave and lumbering form the golden child, the good son the responsible one, bearer of burdens fatherhood came naturally you shepherded your patients, your students and children with a keen moral sense with a warm, rumbling bass-baritone obligation, duty did not weigh you down but propelled you through life with relentless energy

waking early on weekends to tend the garden returning to the kitchen midday shirtless and pink with sweat perspiration dripping in rivulets through your forested chest and from a shelf of sable, bushy brows enormous thumbs edged black with soil you pulsed with plant joy leaning against the counter to savor your home-grown tomatoes and chastise the children: go back and weed the garden you did a poor job the first time

passionate patriarch giver of lessons

corrector of table settings

you held things in their proper place you freed yourself through work upheld your commitments kneeled and prayed each Sunday dragging us, sullen and stiff-collared to bend and sigh in wooden pews the master, the competent one doctor, carpenter, musician you shimmered with symmetry your angles squared should's and ought's flung from your arrow tips locus of wisdom and culture eternal father to which we all aspired perched reservedly on your alabaster throne a keen crow, casting judgement crowned with laurels, ripe and green

and so -- how strange and unsettling this ending of days as years descend your throne has rusted into a sallow rocking chair a lumpy recliner faded beige smelling vaguely of urine matted with cat hair these last days when mastery recedes when what was high is brought low when any hint of hubris has dried and caked flaking in shards from your listless limbs

before our eyes you have returned to childhood nearing infancy, even your body, contracted circles back to its origin having followed the arc of decades gaunt, white and withered you spend your hours dragging your aching form, stiff and stooping in an ever-tightening radius: armchair, kitchen table, porch, toilet, bed your mind no longer yearns to be elsewhere to discover the world to greet the dawn

for hours you sit under tree shadows watching the bluebird flit back and forth retreating to its pinewood house the one you lacquered years ago, but have forgotten-- was it ten or twenty? surveying your garden, humbler than it was in your midlife glory

sunflowers mocking you with their brightness with their cheerful, boasting youth your lyre, with strands once ringing radiantly now lies rejected, withered and limp your tune grows weak and sour we tire of your misanthropic melody repeated stories churning in rickety ruts

your presence is a void in the house you empty space with your weather-beaten soul listless silence surrounds you radiating a low-percolating anxiety suffusing the air like incense during mass even sunshine that sifts through the screen is burdened with nostalgia, with ambiguous fear your crisp bow, once taut arrow poised and sky-aimed droops wearily, lacking a target your bones sag with despair laurel leaves dry and crumble in your peppered pale, fading hair

your world, once boundless—

how it has diminished how fear has gripped you, taken hold

boxed you into your house then your bedroom soon your life will shrink to the borders of your bed

a sullen, lingering house guest you have over-stayed your welcome in this life

gone is the brightness of youth its vast, enthralling horizons its endless peaks of possibility

the beauty of the body gives way to decrepitude skin decays, erupting with growths, brown spots and moles a stubbled beard rimed with woe mind punctured by misfortune

it is not just the aging, but the fear why have you written your story with a tragic end? why must you cower in your corner, trembling with anguish?

you have incarcerated yourself life becomes narrower and strangles you the room gapes, choking with apprehension skin slathered with foreboding

we are unsettled by your angst annoyed by your fretting dragged down by your despair shifting uncomfortably in the tense silence you breathe desiring to flee your space the air curdling with disapproval

your hours flitter away

as you obsessively count them

clutching your routines

the hour of waking, of bathing, of chair-sitting

of meals, television watching

the time for medication

for the dog to be let in and then out, and then in again

for flannel night clothes and sleep

and the long, blank, dark hours

where the mind feverishly wanders in half-dream

you were the symmetrical swan

the loping white wolf

you were the honor and the light

the Bach variations, they suited you

your angles squared, culminating properly in cadences

how you tilt out of balance now, your footsteps unsteady

the mind crusted with repeated thoughts

you cling desperately to your wife

who has become your mother

waking in perspiration at the hour of the wolf

Am I still here? Where have I gone?

Have I yet descended the dark hole?

but unlike a child, we find you not endearing

and are stirred by an astonishing lack of compassion

the hour grows dull

the decisions have been made

all the words have been spoken

all the books have been read

your eyes, too faded to take in new words

your ears, too deaf to discern fresh anthems

entombed by blindness, fatigue

by the ever-present pain

the deeds have been done

the bridges have been burnt

the love has been given

there will be no new loves, no adventures

no songs and no poems

you have whispered your last prayer

it is the end of days

your light of gold

dims in descent

until it crumbles, vanishes in the horizon

of perpetual obscurity

of unfathomable night its glimmer remains only in our memories Ares at Play

My peace gives birth to violence:

cocooned in your small frame—

a pink-cheeked cherub with flaxen hair and dimpled palms,

a beloved belly, endearing pearls of toes,

masquerading as a child—

lives the violence of generations.

Millennia of warriors, hunters, torturers,

pillagers, violators, destroyers of villages.

The rage of your ancestors lives on in you,

although it has been tamed in your petite form,

suburbanized,

feminized,

clipped and trimmed,

pruned and molded into respectable forms.

But protrudes in abrupt, anachronistic bursts:

the satisfaction of squishing the ant with your rubbery sole,

decapitating the green beetle,

a compulsion to transform sticks into weapons,

the thirsty pursuit of the ball,

your fascination with movement and speed,

your need to wrestle your brother in a tangle of arms and knees,

to dominate the opponent,

an obsession with blood, with carnage and death.

The anger of your grandfathers

festers and smolders—

their sins flow in your blood,

their acts of terror reside in your bones.

You are at the mercy of your instincts,

which we pray will be buried deep,

shamed and shunned,

but are always present,

seeds waiting to sprout

when the threat arrives,

when chaos emerges once more,

when the world falls to pieces. Demeter

We do not think of her – like we do not consider the loyal stone beneath our feet, the firm structure of our walls, our sheltering roof, the obviousness of clouds, the flow of oxygen through our lungs, the steady breath, the soothing heartbeat, the bread, the milk, the warm plate set for dinner, the comfort of our evening pillow, the sun that greets us relentlessly each dawn, the water that fills our unquenchable glass, the twirling of the earth, the eternalness of stars. The brewer of tea, maker of beds, caretaker of plants and pets, cleaner of dusty corners, the baker of bread, the author of soup, rubber of backs with thick, nurturing hands. We give her not a thought, as we return home and are met with touch and talk and tenderness, the things just exist and always will, she constitutes the frame of our lives, the surefooted rock that supports us as we leap into life and soldier and doctor and teach and create art and win races and earn medals. We boast of achieving greatness, how exceptionally capable we are, we say, and she answers with her broad and unconditional smile. She is invisible. Until she dies. Or is removed from us, departing swiftly, heartlessly, or crumbles away from us gradually, leaving our toes dangling off the precipice, abandoning us – reeling, unsteady and unstable, our home collapsing around us, our skin devoid of its skeleton, our invisible web of love disintegrating, our garden withered, our cupboard empty, our sky now cruelly blank. We didn’t know how much she was the architect of our world, until she forsakes us. In the House of Ares Your anger leaves a residue

in the starched, yellow room

clinging to the walls like a gluey film

Cowering here, I cannot help but absorb it

the mind desires to cocoon itself

dread tunnels into the belly like a mole

clawed and fetid, flinging dirt and debris

Your raging, fist-pounding

slamming of doors

screams and fits of temper

are but the sobs of a child

yearning for mother comfort

I should recognize them

and have compassion

but unlike a child

you do not endear me

And so my arms lie limp and motionless

refusing to embrace you

How swiftly nascent joy

dissipates in clumps

like wet gauze

in your burning presence

I can only shrink and tremble

in your Godly, hot shadow

the useless rodent that I am

What beast vibrates with such furor?

even the lion, king of assassins, hunts coldly

with an inward focus

holds no contempt

for its prey or rival

Your voice is crusted and jagged

rumbling rage courses in seismic waves

threatening to burst beyond borders of skin

taut and boiling

Your face, crumbling coal

explodes with savagery

scarring us with words, keen and barbed

lava vomits from your mouth

eyes, murderous crows, unflinching

It's the spark of sin

the seed of war

planted only in men

buried deeply in our soil

but in you, so near to the surface

Some things cannot be forgiven

It feeds and multiples itself in our bones

flecks of spite, fast-breeding children

consuming our benevolence

searing empathy in its flames

You set your life ablaze

immolate your own house

and stand

sobbing in its ashes

Persephone When she considered your name— Emily, or Anne, or Lily— swelling with your burgeoning body, with powdered fantasies, lacy anticipation, rose dreams, if she had known this sacred name would one day be coupled with dread, with disorder, that people would sigh as they mentioned it, with a withering pity, a resignation, implying a lost cause,

that those vegetal dreams, dreams of translucent skin, of dripping breasts and small animals crying in the night, might be premonitory of her daughter’s fate?

When she first clothed your tiny limbs in cotton, dressed your form in perfumed cloth, swaddled you in a white blanket knitted with a grandmother’s adoration, could she have known that this person the name would become would someday loathe you? Speak words of spite? Curse your name?

When you washed her impish body, slight and dark and smelling of warm milk and the sweetest sweat, or blue-eyed and pale as a magnolia blossom, what if she had known that this was the body she would someday rescue, half-starved, self-mutilated, injected with chemicals, from an asylum in some foreign land? From the devil's embrace in the underground abyss?

That this infant face, the face of love, with eyes deep gems,

would one day be the face of a ruined woman, drained of spirit and of the will to live,

that you would collect her in pieces, scattered like trash on a windy day: a plastic bag tangled in tree limbs in an urban wasteland, a grime-covered coin on a city sidewalk, or picked through like rotting pomegranate seeds?

That these eyes sparkling with future life would one day be the eyes of the dead? That the life you labored to bring into this world and meticulously rocked, and nursed, and washed,

and comforted, and read to, and schooled, made grow with your hopes into a new person would someday come to this? How easy and natural is our love for the baby, pure of mind, unspoiled and unspoken.

How can we love the stranger she becomes? Aphrodite

Having been held under for so long, she emerges.

Her beauty urgent, shameless.

Sparkling eyes like the glistening gold dripping from her earlobes.

She meets and holds a man’s gaze until he turns away.

The room is dark and warm and lusty,

the underbelly of some sweating beast,

heaving and sweltering,

the steady bass its heart’s rhythmic pounding.

Words come easily.

A glass of wine and a black dress.

Crowded.

Feeling his closeness—

his lips at her ear,

fingertips tracing her backbone,

thighs pushing in,

muscles moving and tightening beneath the collar.

So close.

A tingling, a letting go, an anticipation.

Searching, longing, desiring—

seduced by sound and skin, filled with need.

Glancing eyes, nervous laughter,

limbs that cannot stop twitching.

In the dim light, drawn to her,

fingers slim and inviting,

a neckline begging for affection,

a shoulder bare and brown,

captivated by form and shape,

enchanted by color, sliced by the warm, murky nectar of her voice,

Again and again, reaching for perfection.

A senseless desire propels them,

all else a distraction—

ambition, career, commitments, tomorrow.

No, just this.

All she wants – the sole thing – is to have him in her mouth.

To touch. To taste. To hear the sounds.

Oh, the body.

So she arrives

and will not be ignored. When Zeus Returns Home for Dinner At the late afternoon hour when sunlight oozes with pleasure and dust glistens in sunshafts wafting through the languid parlor mingling with blue wisteria that dozes on windowsills when my tranquil breath droops ripe with poem and song the door slams and you enter Now the sun strains and pulls taut with anticipation of the contained fury penetrating the house an electric and nauseous orange like before the storm Your face tight, limbs brusque you rush and bluster chest clenched in breathless agitation hands manic arrows eyes marbled and eagle-fierce your grey gaze hunts for its prey Suddenly I am the receptacle for your turmoil I present you my trembling chalice my spine fragile as its slim glass stem my thoughts dispersing like vapor We must follow where you lead, our surly shepherd, we, your quivering lambs

You have imprisoned yourself

in a box built of years

of nails and raw timber

splinters and sawdust

you lash out and bleed

you rage in your cage

holding us captive

in your world of wrath and right angles

So let’s sit down

and eat our daily meal

of spite and fear

pour us your nectar of bitterness

we will consume it, dutifully

its broth boiling in our bellies

For decades we live like this

battle weary

you enfold your old wounds

in the fresh gauze of tyranny

your calloused heart

crushing our tender, fleshly centers

grinding us all to stone

Aphrodite, repressed, approaches middle age Where there would have been love there is just absence nothing but a ravine of yearning cleaved by a stream of sorrow slick stones, pebbles of bitterness tears of flame the only passion is in the mind skin is the vessel through which love congeals peaks, becomes palpable the storm cloud darkens and aches to release its sobs

it remains untouched, my tender wound, untended no man has awakened it from my mouth pulled it from my tongue searched for it in the irises of my eyes touched me in that place, velvet and wet

my blood is made of sugar and fire brewed to sweeten, sting his senses, burn his lips but untasted it remains I am a lute un-played a song unheard a pyre unlit

I have crossed the threshold begun my decline a blossom browning, curling at its edges its scent mawkishly sweet, nearing decay grasping desperately for any passing bee or butterfly, indiscriminate I have left only my lament a melancholy, clichéd refrain before me a girl dances at the seashore she contains, in her lanky limbs and fresh face and in her yet uninhabited, taut abdomen a magnetic stone that men desire to unearth a nectar they dream of sucking from her a tide pulling them into her sea just by existing, she is wanted, coveted just by standing still, like the moon—blank and mute

but now something is lost that magic that men crave as you age it withers, diminishes, wears thin as the voice, which cannot hide its years at first pure honey then it wobbles, cracks at its edges, desiccates as the hands crease and crinkle, collect brown freckles, swollen blood vessels we can no longer hide our age with cloth, with jewels, with paint

Love, it’s an addiction would a quarry full of nights of passion have satisfied the longing, or would we always thirst for more? Love, its nature is unquenchable its nature is novelty a ravenous beast that desires sacrifice after sacrifice of skin, of eyes, of sweat and flesh sadistic, it wants to hear the groans of men a greedy fisherman, a voracious hound its appetite incapable of satisfaction At the crossroads— we have always lived for love, or its hope, always on the path of its discovery restless mariners now we must find another reason to exist don’t hold onto the past that has slipped away the memory of our young face there can only be pain and regret don’t look expectantly for that thirsty gaze of men it exists no longer we must turn elsewhere

Our faces broaden with middle age, thicken, we become more of who we are, a more concentrated version of ourselves. In old age, the face and body sag, dragged downward, anticipating our fast-approaching journey to the soil, to the seas.

Become what you are, what you are meant to be. Then let it go.

This can be cruelty or relief, depending on the color of your mind.

No, there must be a new beginning,

a transformation

beyond vanity, beyond body

an admiration of the beauty of my own soul

buried deeply in my form

an essence of spirit

leaning closer to God

shimmering on the inside

with his ecstasy Hera's Lament: From a wife to her husband of 20 years You ask me, what do I want for my birthday?

Please, no more things: Books that sit expectantly on my shelf, reproachful met only with craving, with guilt after I return home from my forty hours, bone-weary Trinkets to clutter our formal living room, collecting dust a blue ceramic elephant, a bronze statue of a girl holding a balloon, more objects to give away after our death Expensive clothing, jewels to hang from this sad old body made of ash and fat

Picture frames that cage ambivalent memories furniture to populate our stiff parlor with its lacquered floors and haughty chandeliers with its dense, burgundy rugs and stodgy lamps A bottle of wine promising comfort, a parched mouth at midnight No, I need your sweetness, your awaiting ear your patience your broad arms to envelop me I need, when I come home and am all tied up inside for you to look deeply in my face rather than turning your eyes as soon as I begin to speak I want to come to a home built with stones of peace mortared with gratitude, with prayer sewn together with laughter rather than donning my armor, gearing up for battle I want the air to be soft and supple, not taut with the metallic fear of your rage, tense as a balloon, stretched rubber

I want kindness to come easily And these are the things I know you cannot give

Athena When you look upon me, I wither shrink from the hard insistence of your gaze— unblinking as an owl pierced by a blade of judgment in your presence I babble words flow from my throat in shallow, breathless waves or get caught there, interrupted, half-formed my tongue turned to stone my little poems and melodies the precious secrets of my life seem the whimsical play of butterflies whose fanciful, amber wings disintegrate with the slightest touch or the frivolous vanity of irises— useless beauties, slender maidens of pearl and indigo, that collapse with the breeze, bowing obsequiously in the rain No, you are a woman of substance a warrior grounded in soil with a mind to be reckoned with only the bravest adversaries dare confront you we cower in your shadow obey your orders without question you lead us—our cold mother, our choleric queen without you we scatter like the erratic fluff of dandelions

Born not from your mother’s womb but from your father’s head you have no patience for the world of women polite, soft, on the outside sweet to the tongue, yet at the core conniving and sour you prefer the directness of battle to make a clean kill to defeat your enemy or perish a keen strategist you peer into my soul, like down a well and find it lacking water, substance I am left with a hot, blazing wound penetrated by your sharp word yet beware— lest your allies desert you, betray you in the hour of your need, lest you inadvertently murder your friend with the cruel accuracy of your merciless axe Hestia My one wish is to embody your grace at life’s end, after I have put to rest Persephone’s childish innocence, whimsical as a wildflower, and her tragic fall, led astray by the dark one to the place of no return, emerging from girlhood sharp and savvy or crazed and scattered or a woman whole and centered, but wounded— having lost something in the depths— a purity, a sacred unity, Aphrodite’s addictive passions, her perpetual falling in love with men, her thirst for touch, her lust for skin, her hunger for adoration, her dovelike vanity, a single-minded devotion to art, a wild creativity, manic energy, growing and loving and building in a frenzy, a rose blooming to perfection, but then setting herself ablaze in a sudden and violent desire for destruction, murdering romance in a fierce and dramatic immolation, Demeter’s bottomless well of self-sacrifice, her daily devotion to the child, a practical, unglamorous love, as ordinary as bread, as natural as grain, her sleepless nights, incessant washing and cooking, a tireless labor, a steady presence, her life an endless circle, absorbing the child’s pain and deflecting his dramas, a love emanating from the soil, from some deep instinctual place, Hera’s uncompromising loyalty, her desire to couple, her allegiance to one man, her jealousies and pettiness, affections and tenderness, easily wounded, sour and sensitive, yet holding fast to a commitment which has converted her, has disintegrated her incipient dreams, and birthed a new, copper pride: wife and partner, joining her life with his, shouldering his hopes and sharing his burdens, transforming her singleness and fragility, into a stalwart whole, a merging of two lives into one, Artemis’ skillful aim, a diligent focus on achieving her goal, a devotion to excellence, to stalking her prey, the thrill of the hunt, a zeal for the glorious kill, her strength and single-minded purpose, protectress of the weak and vulnerable, her sharpness and self-righteousness, her fulfillment and mastery, All these Gods— I have inhabited their robes, peered through their masks, answered to their names, but at the end of life, I must disrobe, unfasten their belts, slip off their jewels, release their burdens, their goals diluting like mist over sun-pierced waters. And return to you, my peace-loving aunt, my beloved nun, my wise companion, you are not concerned with beauty or achievement, appearances or politics, attachment to ideas, you slowly release your intensity, your anger and your affections, for any one person—your child, husband, sister, lover, enemy, your mother. Your embrace widens to encompass them all, for creatures you have known and not known, for the dead whose bodies are slowly melding with the earth, for owls and earthworms, for new pink buds that emerge on branches as babes in mothers’ wombs. You arise in the morning to tend the hearth, with passionless hands you stir the embers, with a creased brow, greying temples, sip your tea by the fire, as you admire the sun’s modest awakening mirrored in peach and violet-streaked clouds, to ponder and read, to whisper your daily prayers, to sift through memories, contemplating the stirring of trees in the wind, solitary but not lonely, in harmony with the living and the dying, realizing you are a thread woven in earth’s fabric, a wave cresting and returning to the sea, a single note in life’s endless melody.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti