Triolet: Cerberus and Eros
Eros waters the plants and flowers with glistening drops from his bath
—Halperin, Winkler, Zeitlin, Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World
His flower watering’s driving me to the brink.
I’m in three minds: Gore his crude cacophony?
Flaunt these eely implants? Exude my foulest stink?
His flower watering’s driving me to the brink.
What the hell: Unseal the door, don’t let him drink
wine, plant him in the Mourning Fields, no coffin: he,
his flower watering’s driving me to the brink.
Three minds chime in, Gore his crude cacophony!
Death’s Triolet
The years went to seed, the seasons grew sillier,
birds walked on water as if life depended on it,
spines shot sharpest from curly bougainvillea.
The years went to seed, the seasons grew sillier,
creamy white moons darkened among grevillea.
Onto the atmosphere smog scrawled the obit:
The years went to seed, the seasons grew sillier,
birds walked on water as if life depended on it.
Stuart Barnes’ first book, Glasshouses (UQP), won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and was shortlisted/commended for two other awards. From 2013–2017 he was poetry editor of Tincture Journal. He’s working on his second collection, Form & Function, and a novel. Poems are forthcoming in Plumwood Mountain, POETRY (Chicago) and Scars: An Anthology of Microlit.
stuartabarnes.wordpress.com
@StuartABarnes on Twitter/Instagram.