Greg Delanty

I promised to show you the bowlers
out the Blarney Road after Sunday mass,
you were so taken with that painting
of the snazzy, top-hatted peasant class
...

I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way
of your ultrasound, scanning the dark
matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say
is chockablock with quarks & squarks,
gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout,

who art there inside the spacecraft
of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,
hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft
on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious

to make contact, to ask divers questions
about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss
the whole shebang of the beginning&end,
the pre-big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend,

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die
for you even, that we pray you're not here
to subdue us, that we'd put away
our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.
...

Let there be a ban on every holiday.

No ringing in the new year.

No fireworks doodling the warm night air.

No holly on the door. I say

let there be no more.

For many are not here who were here before.
...

from The Greek Anthology, Book XVII
The rocks below on the river trail foam fins
as if they swim upstream along with the salmon
returning to their spawning grounds, leaping
falls, freshets, the ancient anonymous struggle.
The fish age instantly to mottled old-timers,
dying in the nursing pools of their birth waters.
A tour group of elderly are the only other diners,
their skin mottled not unlike the salmon.
They seem to get along. They jaw about the weather,
the water height, the amount to tip.
One woman's trembling hand fills the diner questionnaire
with praise. I scribble this on the back of mine,
and tip the kind waitress a little more than usual.
She laid their steaming bowls like a priestess setting
her libation on the altar of trembling elder gods.

- Honestmedon
...

Did you know the life-coupling way
of the swan is also that of the crow?
Greg Delanty (in ‘On the Marriage of Friends')
When lover looks at lover on a date,
the reward and pleasure zones of the pate
- the ventral tegmentum and caudate nucleus -
blaze, all but blow a fuse,
driven by a powerhouse of urges,
current surges.
Such ogling each other's eyes,
the agony of bliss, each one another's prize.
Then the spiraling into misery, doubt, worry,
texting each other to hurry,
"We're too long apart." Serotonin
usurped by the coup of dopamine.

*

Soon enough the highs fade. The Adonis or Aphrodite
turns into the ordinary, the ugly.
What did he see in those eyes,
that gazelle neck? Consider the blackheads
on her aquiline nose. Look at those wobbly thighs,
his paunch, the way she lies
with her back to him, that noble head
developing a double chin. How she wishes him dead,
daydreams how an accident would release these two,
a common fantasy that few admit to.
How guilty she feels, such thoughts in her head.
And "What about our kids", the reason behind
the chemical trick; the lies that bind?

*

If the couple survive the dopamine withdrawals,
- the shattered Cupid spectacles -
they may begin the slow-burning relationship
soldering them together. Companionship
inducing oxytocin into the blood of matrimony,
healing the phantom bliss, the monogamy monotony,
building a network of companion receptors. The couple grow
into each other, learn the way of swan and crow,
tolerate the raucous caw-
cawing of the regular day of the jackdaw,
helped by chatter, laughter, the weekly lay, shared interest,
kids, building the family nest.
When one of the partners passes on
the oxytocin-bond is evident in the drifting lone swan.
...

"As a chimpanzee - usually an adult male - gets closer,
and the roar of water grows louder
he quickens his pace, his hair bristles
and on reaching the waterfall he stands upright,
dances from foot to foot, dips his hand
in the stream, stamps and splashes in the shallow rush.
He has been known to pick up and hurl rocks,
climb slender draping vines
and swing like a chasuble out over the flow.
The spray is the incense of his water ceremony."
...

from The Greek Anthology, Book XVII
Three women talk about their men, boyfriends,
crushes. Each looks beautiful.
One wears a ponytail and the tattoo of a star
on her wrist; another has shower-wet hair
scented with hyacinth, the third one sews
(surely Clotho) without a glance at her handiwork.
They take no notice of me at a nearby café table,
invisible as a cab driver - my hair thinning.
Clotho says of one beau: "I'm really not gone
on him. He's too nice." Said in earnest,
no irony intended. The others nod, don't laugh.
I wish I had been privy to this conversation
thirty years ago. I, who was always fallen over myself
being nice to women I most longed for,
hardly ever ended up with. If only I'd known.

- Gregory of Corkus
...

from The Greek Anthology, Book XVII
I tried to finagle my way out of another
military campaign, But what could I do
when Palamedes placed my son
in the path of the plough horses? The tears of my boy,
on being manhandled by that wiseacre, turned from fear
to grief. I consoled Telemachus, said I'd not be gone long,
that he was boss now. What I missed most on the plains
of Troy amid the debacle, the death of friends,
the infamous voyage back, was my laughing boy
with the big brown eyes, the pillow fights, the games
of tag, football, letting him pip me in the hoop race.
When I did arrive back to my son, the man,
it was right that I should approach him disguised as a beggar.

(Fragment from the lost poem Telemachus)

- Danichorus
...