Phoebus Is Folksy Clown
© Surazeus
2026 03 19

Because each repeated fall of the sun
feels so much like the final end of time,
I growl with animal passion in fun
at sweet enchantment of the breeze-kissed chime
when I lounge in ruins of Carthage town
to confess my Phoebus is folksy clown.

Though my days eat away eternity,
my hours have no need to pardon their loss
for I have joined Jester Fraternity
that Lucilius presides as first boss
since Juvenalis taught me how to praise
Lucifer with mask of the golden glaze.

I still wring my bread from war-bloodied stones
and fence my garden with bones of the dead
whose tales I carve with runes on dragon bones
till clever Athenus springs from my head,
so I pluck fruit that grows from tree of light
my ancestor planted in moonless night.

Seed of the Serpent beams inside my heart
light of salvation on wild ocean shore
where I build glass house on rock of Astarte,
star goddess who teaches me timeless lore
so I construct boats and tend fields of wheat,
yet sing with nightingale and parakeet.

I think it strange that when I kiss the skull
of Pluto on computer screen of fate,
I learn no secret of the laughing bull
who feeds my spirit to the fires of fame
till serpents resurrect my ghost to life
when I drown attempting to save my wife.

Olympus is my home Death cannot bomb
for gleaming dome of mirror-flashing masks
protects my family in vast crystal tomb
where miracles are kept safe in wine flasks
that leave me blind to virtue of weird truth
encoded in riddles by our dream sleuth.

Heartbroken by secret I never share,
that Lethe oozes from my brittle tongue,
I meet Cynthia on the heavenly stair
to give her puzzle from which angels spring,
so we stroll on the apple-sweetened shore
past fruitful garden to the grocery store.

Though honest Herakles struts on world stage
to brag the Roman Empire still stands strong,
I ask strange phantoms of conceptual rage
if they will come when cathedral bells ring,
but Charon waits on shore of River Styx
while Dionysus teaches me his tricks.

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Orpheus heckles Robert Lowell at his poetry reading at Harvard University, so they wrestle each other till he dislocates his hip and renames him Israel.

#Poetry #Poem #Pastoral #Necropastoral #MetaModernism #Transrealism #NewSublimity #NewRomanticism #AmericanDream #Cinemism #Existentialism #Surrealism #NegativeCapability #NewGnosticism #MetaRealism #NewTranscendentalism #Astarism