HADES: A Poem

All alone, his blood runs thin. And doubt comes. Doubt comes in.

They do not build me temples. They do not say my name. 

To reach my kingdom, they pass through the cauldron-ocean and the thrice-jawed beast. 

Here, in the stomach of the earth, we know the wisdom of fire and the friendship of gold.

Every treasure and demon within these walls I claim as mine, for these are the shadows I know. 



A girl strolls on the shore of my sunless sea. 

She collects sunflowers, I collect souls. 

She tucks a stem behind my ear, I tuck her under my arm and unfasten my gates. 

Every night and every night, she eats of the fruit and our laughs echo against the brimstone,

one spark each of fertile green and of golden gleam in the pitch.



But she misses her garden bed and the never-ending ceiling.

She misses the warblers at her waking

and the Waltzing-Breeze, 

so I let her leave in the year’s morning. 



Up on the surface, she forgets our kingdom and decries my name. 

My queen tortures me with her dancing footsteps overhead, bounding and leaping, then silence while she swings and spins with another.

I am crushed by the weight of the world, by the awakened nightmare of an ever-green ground, unquellable blooms, endless life. Countless mortal growths that never die.



I am a deepened flame wanting for Winter.

I try to imitate the sun’s generosity, his way of rising and rising,

but how could I compete with the absolute lightness of being required to dance like that? 



I am not jealous. I am not angry. I am empty.

I am begging with arms spanning the earth and a pit chest

for her to come back and laugh with me even sometimes. 

Stay here for 10 months a year - "no" - 8 months - "no" - 6 months, at most, my love, please -

"Fine," she says. I can rest again.



But when it's time for Spring, what will her freedom take from me?

Without her, I am nothing. 

She knows this, yet still passes away into life time and time again.

The way of it all, to love, to love, to love, to love!

Then leave, and leave, and leave, and leave.

To unfurl like the flower does,

then close up as a seed.



As is law of nature, 

as all must live, all must die.

So I let her go as she pleases. 

I let her journey toward the sky. 



Here lies even a god's control. 

I give it up, I give it up.

Not wholly, but quite enough.



Will she look back this time? 

Will she turn back for me?