Melancholy Invoked ~ a Keats prompted work

Melancholy Invoked
*
No, don’t go,
don’t leave,
don’t let me slip furthest                                            into myself
curling too deep within
blackened death beetle shell.
~
Around the cracked handle
rooted monkshood tight
that damn raku mug                                                your knuckle bones white
Skin soon to flush with typical toxin
and a gallon of discounted red wine
~
Don’t unfold away from my reach
skin pale & cool,                                                       like the grey stone of forgotten funerary idols
stowed behind the good bed linens.

~
Those threads of dreary dim
A seductive memory swims
Night feathered familiars
Muted in anguish aching palate lingers
Persephone invokes with weeping & wanton plea
the spectre of a goddess made over Melancholy
all verdant, brilliant and sacred things sent
stir a solitary fog of epitaphic lament
~
taste of moth’s wings fall to ash on my tongue
6 purloined pomegranate seeds sacrosanct smoke in my lung
~
The map to Gehenna stains the look on your face
sleep just comes too easily on these kinds of days


and lasts too long.


e.holloway (c)2018

Keats poem "Ode to Melancholy" inspired this piece.
First posted on G+ community                                 "The Painted Word"                                          owned by Ellen Nelson