Lines Written in Consolation After the Reimbursement of Stolen Traveler's Checks, Istanbul by Dave Shortt

halfway between the first xmas

& the latest byzantine technology expelled

from a petrified evergreen on Ararat:

snow blows parallel to plateau life

dissipating in the dry air of separatist conversation,

where grazing ideas clash

on points of gulped coffee mapped by foreigners

itinerants follow Helen home to western consumption,

the flipside of Achilles' ace (a sword)

& Ataturk's trump, young Hector

will study agriculture, against further encounters

with lust's uselessness & perfidy

the army? Argus, in relation to

Athenian questions that left in search of space

& intermarried with the fig daughters,

while oranges are contemplated as exports to the heart

by dervishes not coinciding

with democracy

coasts of ancient tourism, waves

touching the world's necklaced madonnas

in Ephesian high-rise assumption,

refracting in glimmerings of iron

a gold-leafed page glitters between book paradises

as dreamlands of olive modesty

work in a stupor of prayers shrunk

into personal poems secularizing

the savior meat & pulses into savoriness

a prophecy of education

keeps Aphrodite exiled offshore,

unveiling a monogamous uniform avoidance

of Homer's alphabet, that Smyrna boy,

& the girls will rarely think to touch

lightly with both hands in spontaneous unison

the covers of his songs

the soul of Hecuba is rescued by Roma:

a platonic obstacle to sexism & genocide,

her shade speaks eloquently its way against

a warlike identity displayed mythically

where Paris is embroiled

in the latest fleshpots of Hades

anonymous princesses, made

into secret yearning dark-eyed riders

by red-eyed Alexander,

read oracles devoted to their horses' health,

that someday, far away,

their own escapes are galloping

in the letting-down of their black manes

Rumi re-arranged the mineral populace,

old men look up

at an air strike on a restaurant's TV

while diners upstairs bow

to an energy of rain clouds & cardamon

tingeing mercy,

that monolith looming over mundanity

on entry, the Guest

admits a birthday, a survival,

apparently placed among similar multitudes

near but not touching a mosque's moon,

where a message is instilled in the air

as from an unorthodox tapestry,

or a minaret sticking into celestial azure,

whispered likewise in bazaars

by earth's fraternal hucksters,

& during unpackaged blind dates

with bluejeaned haggard Sophia

as protests against the Archetype

are swallowed up by Asia

Bio

Dave Shortt is a long-time writer from the USA, whose earliest work can be found in the 20th century print journals Mesechabe (New Orleans), Bullhead (Ashland KY), Sulfur (Ypsilanti MI), Nedge (Providence), as well as archived in various online venues including Astropoetica and Ygdrasil. More recently his poems have appeared on the internet in Silver Pinion, Mercurius, and Sulfur Surrealist Jungle.

Author's note

The use of imagery that involves myths, functions to break down time and space by creating bonds with ancient mythmakers or storytellers, and also by somehow translating, through time and usually space, a particular stage in the evolution of the psyche. This is one aspect of myth that inspires me as a writer to reference it.. I guess it could be said that this poem, sourced partly from the Iliad story/myth, is itself the evidence of its creative relevance, at least to me, from the fact that I wrote it. Since one of Carmina's ascribed aims is to "showcase how the stories of the past are still creatively relevant," it seemed a likely submissions choice to me. Ultimately, any determination on creative relevance beyond my personal experience of writing it, would be up to the reader, the editor, the audience....