Senecio's Lament

[busker]

Senecio’s Lament

Lust dragged down to memory, 
a planet cratered by the impact
of so many succubi.

In the war of sex, I sought out Lilith, 
rebel, demon, banished from Eden,
or one of her daughters, whose bodies 
still illuminate my dreams with aching light, ...these lines are, for me, the soul of the poem. The rest of the piece struggles to live up to them
make my sleep a wave of vanishment.

I wait to be swallowed up.

Then I wake 
watching those sex-holy demons fade
into an old man’s secret morning.  ... I love this last line...there are layers of meaning in the 'secret', and it's just the right choice of word...BUT ...

the part after 'then I wake' is predictable. Yes, I know that your dreams will fade once you wake up and get back to reality. It doesn't hit hard enough. Maybe if you could go from 'swallowed up' to this line with a 'then spat out' in between, it would do well. But the idea of waking and fleeing, and day bringing back night is cliched.

Senecio’s Lament



Lust dragged down to memory,

a moon cratered by the impact

of so many succubi.



In the war of sex, I sought out Lilith, 

rebel, demon, banished from Eden,

or one of her daughters, whose bodies 

still illuminate my dreams with aching light,

make my sleep a wave of tremors.



I wait to be swallowed up.



Then I wake 

watching those sex-holy demons fading

into an old man’s secret morning.

















Senecio’s Lament







My lust is weighed down by memory,



a moon cratered by the impact



of so many succubi,



a long exhausted volcano



now drowned with a lake



where wind rarely disturbs its surface.







When I needed to hold the Other



I sought out Lilith, never Eve,



rebel, demon, banished from Eden,



condemned to sing only at night,



or one of her daughters, whose bodies, 



so unobtainable, still inhabit my dreams with aching light,



make my sleep a wave of tremors.



I wait to be swallowed up.







I wake and my yearning 



sees those sex-holy demons fade 



into an old man’s secret morning



who will fly no more in Lilith’s arms.

Senecio is a persona who's been with me for 40 odd years (first appearing in a never to be published novel around 1983, in which he played a kind of alien from God), so that I almost see him as another person, but a person made up of a Me who has lived almost seven decades, all wrapped into one warped DNA string.  Anyway, only reference point (the origin story) is Paul Klee's painting.







Oh and don't miss:







https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith#/me...0-1750.JPG