house of thebes

This is Constantine's artlog. He posted his poems in his own artlog forum for several years. He named the forum "Constantinople" and described it as "A byzantine journey through life's labyrinth."
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constantine
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Joined: March 9th, 2008, 9:45 am

house of thebes

Post by constantine » September 5th, 2011, 6:30 pm

and the voices come out of nowhere
each memory an oracle
that exposes as it explains,
I wasn't receptive at the time
lost, in the moment
life passes in moments, sometimes

they are spiders that consume their young
and they float on strands
invisible to the mortal eye
coming to rest
in slats and corners, in coalsack darkness
they whisper
and you knew but you couldn't listen

though it was laid out before him,
he was preoccupied, drifting
amongst the eddies and currents,
a swimmer, caught
within the rhythm of the strokes,
ventures far from the shore
unable to return

and though I warned him of
his innumerable transgressions, his
relentless pursuit of mysteries, denied
for his own sanity and protection, still
men do what men do
and grow wise in the underworld

where shadows commune, speaking
of their exploits, what they've done
and what they've seen, eyes
that were better off closed
open now, seeing, perpetually
understanding the intricate patterns that lie
within the narrow path of damnation

we followed as he wandered
and when the mushroom was found
there we built the mighty walls
this house of evil and sorrow
where even gods are the slaves of fate

they will confront you in your blasphemy
they will entice you to the sacred grove
have you spy secretly upon mysteries
but the daughters will find you out
and the mother will devour her son

he is the man who is not a man
born of his father's thigh
consumed by the sacred fire
semele mourns her motherhood
as agave dances upon his blood

deny the gods
but not their attributes
for these are eternal
and can reach across the millennium
with an impact, so profoundly ironic,
as to reveal not only a divine presence
but our own flickering mortality

like death,
you can't avoid them
though you run desperately
for a thousand years,
just as the theban
who chases his fate
as others offer tribute
to the scylla and charybdis
of hand to mouth
no more, no less will do

and the horror of his innocence
exposed the gods themselves,
perpetrators of what no man deserves,
but inherits still - the bounty
buried precisely at the spot
where character surely will propel him
the ambush, patiently waiting
at the crossroads of the damned

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