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Love: Greek to Me

Michael Montlack | Poetry

It’s an alphabet from another galaxy.  
Like an ecstatic idiot, I try to listen  
through a telescope, expecting logic  
in the hysteria of a typhoon. Often  
it’s just a furious dialogue between  
a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros.  
The cataclysmic chorus of hubris.  
A hemorrhage. Why do we expect  
nectar then need morphine? It starts  
out an orchestra. An Olympic-sized  
orgy. Sometimes ending in a visit  
to the clinic. It’s supposed to be epic.  
Cardiac ambrosia. But we’re more  
hypochondriac than hero. More panic  
than music. All our technology and 
philosophy … and still its arithmetic  
is enigmatic, lacking rhythm. Eons  
under the spell of its rhapsody and  
still we are basic barbarians, not one  
iota closer to Eureka. I don’t mean  
to be a cynic, but what the hell is it— 
architecture or alchemy? Is there  
a strategy? Metaphysical? Political?  
How is it possible to tantalize when  
your protagonist metamorphosizes  
into a parasite. Your psyche arthritic  
after the diarrhea of nostalgia. Seems  
senseless to study its syntax when  
even Sappho left only fragments.