“O Absalom”

Steve Isaak (link on blog roll to the right on this blog) invited me to check out a new poetry site:  One Shot Wednesdays….for poetry lovers.  It’s a linking exchange of poetry and something new.  I’m all for something new in poetry, even if the poetry is something old.

Link:    http://oneshotpoetry.blogspot.com/

Lady Nyo

–

O ABSALOM

O Absalom,

Ensnared by long hair in the

Boughs of an oak,

Pierced through the heart three times–

Yet your nature was only to please.

–

I,

Pulled into mysteries

So abandoned by love

Now given over to lust

Charged with stolen rapture

Dizzy as a drunken dervish-

One hand upward to Heaven

One hand spilling to Earth

Skirts stiffened with sins hard as stone

Corrupted over a life time and now–

Flayed on an unending mandala.

–

Mystery of Life,

Unstoppable desire,

O beautiful Absalom,

We float upon a divine river

Entangled in the reeds of human wanting.

–

This is our nature,

This our calling while

Flesh answers flesh.

What quarter be given when the heart is

Overwhelmed by passions excess?

–

Lie still–

Let the waters cleanse our loins,

Mud of the banks soothe our wounds,

Our blood mingle with the floating grasses,

Our hearts sink beneath the surface.

Let the rivers of Babylon

Carry us away.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010