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    AC Benus
  • AC Benus
  • Author
  • 07/05/2016
  • 216 Words
  • 2,065 Views
  • 6 Comments
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

One Hundred and Fifty-Five Sonnets - 18. Swimming the Hellespont

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Sonnet No. 35

 

Leander kissed all over by Neptune

Had no room for doubt swimming the Hellespont

That the love on his lithe body bestrewn

Said the god made no mistake in what he want.

So sad to think the majority rules

Say the past must change and be sanitized,

And that those who loved openly were fools

Whose private lives should not be scrutinized.

But, Alexander had his Hephaestion,

And side-by-side long years of war campaigned,

Never once held his love in hesitation

To say the gods had a mistake ordained.

Love's always certain, despite others' views;

It can change their hearts, though their minds refuse.

 

 

Sonnet No. 36

 

I think a pair of eights are you and I –

A mark others see but can't comprehend;

A linking amplitude to signify

That like-energy into one can blend.

Infinity flows – one to the other,

Never fading; never diminishing –

Always fresh that we may discover

The Alpha and Omega's beginning.

For the cipher's key is written in sand –

The "open sesame," a word soft-spoken,

And your lips upon my own can then band

The tie between us never to be broken.

For it is love which unlocks realities;

Its eight-ball foretells all possibilities.

 

 

_

Copyright © 2018 AC Benus; All Rights Reserved.
  • Like 7
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Chapter Comments

Parker Owens

Leander swimming the Hellespont is a tour de force. There is no sanitizing the classics. And your image of Leander kissed all over had my full attention in less than a heartbeat. You outdid yourself in 35. In 36, you turn to mathematical images that made me smile, including one of my favorites...amplitude. So much meaning and implication in the infinite sine wave. I thank you for each of these treasures of your fertile talent.

  • Love 1
AC Benus
On 07/05/2016 04:31 PM, Parker Owens said:

Leander swimming the Hellespont is a tour de force. There is no sanitizing the classics. And your image of Leander kissed all over had my full attention in less than a heartbeat. You outdid yourself in 35. In 36, you turn to mathematical images that made me smile, including one of my favorites...amplitude. So much meaning and implication in the infinite sine wave. I thank you for each of these treasures of your fertile talent.

Thank you for a lovely review, Parker! Writing these Sonnets was an interesting experience. Some themes reappeared – like thoughts of mathematics – over the course of say ten or so of them. Some subjects just seemed to offer so much room to explore, and notions that I had not quite said what I wanted drove me on to try again.

 

And Leander, yes – so hot. One of the hottest moments in Classical history for my money ;)

AC Benus

AC Benus 36,633

Posted (edited)

On 7/7/2016 at 5:48 PM, Defiance19 said:

Loved, just loved 35.. That's a deep sonnet of a deeper love.. I know that's not quite how it goes but it seems appropriate.. Plus I love when I get your poems.. Lol..

Sonnet 36 was very nice too...

Thanks for a great review, Def. Leander is kinda special, so I'm really pleased to hear you liked it. If you (or me for that matter!) need an explanation on No.36, Parker's our man. He 'reads' my savant math abilities, latent and otherwise, and can even palm read numbers for me. :)

Thanks again!

Edited by AC Benus
skinnydragon

The first line of 35 stopped me cold.
It was very difficult to get past.
Like sipping a new wine, one must take the time to savor the myriad of messages it is sending to your palate.
If poetry is meant for you to view the familiar as unfamiliar, and at the same time, the unfamiliar as familiar, then that line has won the prize!
It changed the entire aspect of Leander's love story by making it Poseidon's love story, and hence created a Hero of Leander.

 

Beyond that jarring introduction, the sonnet beautifully expresses an important concept.
Nicely done. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

Sonnet 36 was incalculably clever. Perhaps its cleverest aspect was, for the eights to fully expand their amplitude, they needed to lie down, beside each other, to become the vastness of the love you so carefully expressed.

 

Lovely writing, AC!

  • Love 1
AC Benus

AC Benus 36,633

Posted (edited)

On 7/7/2016 at 7:51 PM, skinnydragon said:

The first line of 35 stopped me cold.

It was very difficult to get past.

Like sipping a new wine, one must take the time to savor the myriad of messages it is sending to your palate.

If poetry is meant for you to view the familiar as unfamiliar, and at the same time, the unfamiliar as familiar, then that line has won the prize!

It changed the entire aspect of Leander's love story by making it Poseidon's love story, and hence created a Hero of Leander.

 

Beyond that jarring introduction, the sonnet beautifully expresses an important concept.

Nicely done. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

Sonnet 36 was incalculably clever. Perhaps its cleverest aspect was, for the eights to fully expand their amplitude, they needed to lie down, beside each other, to become the vastness of the love you so carefully expressed.

 

Lovely writing, AC!

Thank you, SkinnyD! I have to say the opening image of No. 35 is 'lifted' from Marlow.

 

With that he stripp'd him to the ivory skin,

And crying, 'Love, I come,' leapt lively in.

Whereat the sapphire-visag'd god grew proud,

And made his capering Triton sound aloud,

Imagining that Ganymede, displeas'd,

Had left the heavens; therefore on him he seiz'd.

Leander striv'd, the waves about him wound,

And pull'd him to the bottom, where the ground

Was strew'd with pearl, and in low coral groves

Sweet singing merrnaids sported with their loves

On heaps of heavy gold, and took great pleasure

To spurn in careless sort the shipwrack treasure.

For here the stately azure palace stood,

Where kingly Neptune and his train abode.

The lusty god embrac'd him, call'd him 'love,'

And swore he never should return to Jove.

 

I love the 'proud,' for we know exactly what was standing proud ;)

As for No. 36, I thank you humbly. You have beautiful things to say about it, and please know these comments (on both Sonnets) raises a broad smile on my soul.

Cheers!

Edited by AC Benus
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