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Merlin's Cave
Love-cursed is right;
you didn't do it;
least not the cursed part.
No, you are no gorgon,
not even close.
I always wonder how anyone ever made it through
your walls.
And how many defeated their head on the out-
side
I feel I am walled up
inside your wall.
I can't go forward and I can't go backward.
And every direction I turn, I'm surrounded by your absence.
Does Anteros with his inverted arrows
satisfy, being turned to stone?
All I see beyond a scorched forest of the Impossible,
my drive and goal,
Love, even more impossible.
I might as well believe in God.
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This is wonderful, as usual (when you're "on"). Had to look up Anteros - useful deity, stings me daily.
As for Merlin... which was his imprisoner, Vivien, Nimue, or Morgana? What long thoughts he thought, vitrified in his own mind... but I also like T. H. White's take: Merlin tells Arthur (to his confusion, as usual) that, living backwards, he's well aware of how he's going to be trapped. And, he confesses, "rather looking forward to it."
It's a good feeling, isn't it, breaking up with a girl? Even if you see her again in some later year and she gives you a white feather on Mafeking Night? Anteros' arrows must be fletched with them...
Non-practicing atheist
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This is the Surfaceside. The Sewer "Work" is the Nightside.
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I have came back to this poem like over 5-6 times since you posted it. Definitely one of my favorites of yours. This is one of those poems that if I saw in crit I wouldn't give much feedback in fear of messing up a great piece. The thing I do love about alot of you're writing is the references and how much there is to learning within a poem that is completely relatable.
Thanks for the read
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
--mark twain
Bunx
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A trick with using stock figures and popular characters is that you can write about yourself without mentioning yourself.
And, when you do mention yourself, you are a hero as an ant among greater heroes, and if the poem works, you are a Romantic.
Beyond the hero, beyond the shaman.
Da DaDa Da Da Da
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(04-28-2026, 11:15 PM)rowens Wrote: Merlin's Cave
Love-cursed is right;
you didn't do it;
least not the cursed part.
No, you are no gorgon,
not even close.
I always wonder how anyone ever made it through
your walls.
And how many defeated their head on the out-
side
I feel I am walled up
inside your wall.
I can't go forward and I can't go backward.
And every direction I turn, I'm surrounded by your absence. ... the wall metaphor does nothing
Does Anteros with his inverted arrows
satisfy, being turned to stone?
All I see beyond a scorched forest of the Impossible,
my drive and goal,
Love, even more impossible.
I might as well believe in God.
I feel you could lose some of the deadweight
Posts: 470
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Joined: Sep 2014
The Love-curse and the wall are literal, or actual
Merlin is the wild man, like Enkidu, "tamed" by love as he's rejected by it.
"Defeated" is a term in American literary theory for when a critic gives an assertively backhanded compliment to a poet whose work they consider nonsense. This poem "defeats" my criteria.
The opening cadence is also a throwback to my pome Summer in Autumn.
Also, a cave is both a pace[sic, also place, both work] of origins and a place of delusion. Which includes poetic figments, magic and religion . . . and most especially marriage, as per my poem, Patterns as P # 2.
