Day 2 - "Traveling in an antique land"

Well, here we are at day 2, moving right along... I don't exactly know why I chose to post this particular poem here today, but for some reason it just seemed appropriate. Maybe it'll mean something more to someone else right now than it does to me at this moment, but who knows - but isn't that really the beauty of poetry itself?

In any case, I wrote this poem shortly after finally meeting someone in person - someone I had greatly admired for a long time - but then was tragically let down by the nature of the individual whom I had thought would have been so much different; so much more than what they really were. Not that I ever saw that person as superhuman or anything, but I at least saw the person as someone decent and good at heart, which, I came to find, was not the case whatsoever.

So here it is, a Greek-inspired poetic tribute to the tragic realizations of our lives:



"Traveling in an antique land"


How famous people seem to be so far away
With their pictures on the covers of books and magazines
From who and what we are
We, standing at the Kiosk, as naïve in our hearts
as
innocent little Ariadne,
left standing on the shore of Naxos

we cannot conceive
that even the authors cannot read
or pronounce their own works correctly half of the time
Like deities confused with the
physics of the new planes of
being they have inked into creation

We unconsciously assume they are altogether
unattainable
unreal
Until we are near one – or see one
And then our hearts flutter as if
The fresco of a king suddenly shook off
Its frozen stance and strode out of the wall
Saying
“I am all you can define as the
Word which takes the place of everything
you’ve ever believed or wanted”

and, in that moment, we don’t know for sure
if we should bow to ‘it’
or not, for now we can see the paint
begin to peel
and fall about its ruddy soles
a form now lacking a monarch’s aweful dimension

The autograph book drips with black blood.


- Joshua Clarke