Archetypical Longings by Marie Martin

oh mysterious lump
of effervescent quiet,
oh boy sleeping in the backseat
behind Saturn
you have Jupiter in a headlock
even in slumber
or maybe especially then –-

(and they say they discovered
a new moon
or was it a moonlet
of yours
anyway was i something like that for you?

a moonlet –- )

and so i said i’ll surrender
to the red clay
i’ll strike these sticks together
these worn selves
until you are satisfied, doomed warrior,
bloated tyrant
i will cradle
these famished celestial bodies,
these failed stars…

i’ll wear Mars if you’re Jupiter,
you glowing gassy
intangible thing,
you greedy collector of moons
you glutton of autistic satellites

and i’ll mourn a fierce and fiery god
that is not mine, i’ll share anger
with Ares, i’ll dismiss the sublime wrath
of Hades
if that’s what it takes --

somewhere, in all this mess
Pluto’s shamans dance
with Chiron –
(they would be tired if they were dead
but the skin and blood spun away
long ago, Mars is inside out
with the raspberry jam of their skinned knees)

and bright Chiron,
renewed form of Jupiter's glowing monstrosity
compressed into something useful
and healing

but anyway –-

big bold questions and touching
this body like it was something
you didn’t have to think about,
like it was something
you wanted to touch –

(and so it was okay that
our faces were smeared with red clay
and that my civilization
abandoned me and left no trace
of having loved me and even my oceans
left no trace

and it was okay that no one could ever live on you
and your solar system
was full of angry hyperactive children
who never spoke -- )

and so it was okay
that he didn’t know about Helen
of troy, okay
that he had ignored all the lessons
on female strength –

because anyway he was not beautiful
like Paris, not soft and downy and
narcissistic as that, and he was not
cold and temperamentally handsome
as Menelaus and his ridiculously
inflated justified anger

(not her sugar, not her
center, not her
warmth

they were bound
by self-fulfilling
oblivion, those two,
and blindness, and its
forever undulating
sugary warmth -- )

and if they used her
so often, if they loved her
so much, where
were Helen's beautiful children?

you are beautiful, he said,
like a renaissance painting
one of those women with pale skin
and dark eyes –-

and We, and
You, but mostly I imagine
the others fall away easily
in each others’ arms
that joyful dance
of the next spring
comes over and over again
car ashtrays are emptied and
they cut their hair and they wear
seasonal clothes and they let go
of the never part and they send
christmas cards and they move on –-

so the shamans drummed
in the glow of your baby wisdom, this
new thing that was always there...
but you were still getting used to being,
matter wasn’t your thing
until recently –-

the moon bore witness, toasted us
with balmy light and two
stars and told the sun
to hang out over atlantis
a little longer –-

and after that it merges into Night
where nothing falls away

how could you forget
everything before? what was it like
when you gave up hope
and looked ahead and blotted out
future stars with your glow,
when you strummed
the harp inside you
and tended to your wounds
and slaved over those of strangers
by the golden lamp of your gently
dappled landscape, oh
light craving darkness, oh
noble refuser, oh denier
of the underworld, oh
light being, yin diving
into darkness --

you were always a constellation,
weren’t you, holier-than-thou
bastard, spoiled child of Chaos
hurtling in your pampered orbit
oh you always wanted to be the universe
didn't you, you were never happy in your corner
and so you somersaulted into mine
through channels i dug in Pluto, the warm
drumming, you vaulted
through metamorphosis
and widened the tunnel,
oh gymnast of conquest
your landing was perfect
and we made it easy for you
and held your hand like Sacajawea
navigating the path of her own destruction
and let you colonize
the barren darkness, you noble healer
of nothing --

and i knew you when you were Orpheus
so don’t pretend you don’t know
who i am --

and Helen’s warmth
goes unvisited as men fight
wars and miss the point –-

here, Jupiter, here Saturn, here
you bloated sacks of testosterone,
isn’t this what you wanted? and
impish Ares gloats through
your aesthetic of tightly wound nobility
and allegedly rational destruction
and he wears the blood
so you don't have to

and Aphrodite is sorry, momentarily –-
but when gods and goddesses are sorry
they are dandelions in their fuzzy incarnation
(are they always the same dandelions?)
saying whooooooooosh, gray sparks of fluff
ride the wind, wishes and seeds are born
on the wings of sorrow and decay –-

and anyway that element
of love, the enduring neon –
anyway that element of love
is out of her jurisdiction –-

as always Athena
stares the other way
but none of this is gender treachery

there are as many goddesses
as there are “correct” answers
you won’t use all of them
in “this” life
and some you will use over and
over again –-

and commas of hair curl heartbreakingly
around his temples
frozen stone Bacchae, my animated icon
my beautiful
thing, and he is so lazy
with time, and i try
to gather the intermediate endings
close in a way he won’t notice,
i don’t want to scare him away
with my noticing,
i want to postpone that dark fluttering
Of broken heavy wings of
his impending ascension –-

and so we will travel to the uffizi
and we will be stoic
as if we are oscar nominees watching
ourselves onscreen
we will not blush at reminders
of our vivid explosive
archetypical longings
i will not recognize you in the stone,
i will not touch my last face
and set off any alarms –-

- I thought you understood.
- I did.
and the moon never says never
and so she comes back
and Dandelion, and Tulip,
and their bright forgetting,
their willingness to be born
over and over again –-

they are always one thing,
Pistil and Stamen,
but they share anyway
and let bees pass their powder
and nectar
indiscriminately –-

and so, Pluto, tread lightly
past the hummingbirds
this time around --

(but they will fly away anyway won't they
they will fly away anyway
when they are done -- )

/ when will I get another one
another one just like you –-