Your Myths Where You Find Themby David Matthews

You take your myths where you find them,
Or they find you,
Abduct you, seduce you,
Take you where they will.

Your myths are yours, and mine are mine.
How might I know yours as I know the ones
That are as much who I am as blood, bone, eye,
The pleasant soreness in my legs after a good run,
The way a certain slant of light
Winter afternoons,
A mystery of cloud and shadow,
The air bright as mercury,
Trace shadows of melodious utterance
On the pages of this life
In the fate that takes us over,
Whoever we are
Or suspect we may be?

You have your great American road,
Hitchhiking and cheap wine on a hillside
Where the flowers burst into riotous bloom,
All that prairie and purple sky,
Snow-cone mountains
And the salt taste of sea air,
And a good saloon in every single town,
Tight jeans and scuffed cowboy boots,
Willie Nelson on the jukebox,
Homage to cigarette smoke, cold beer,
And hormones on the rampage.

That glorious myth of freedom and hope...
Where a saxophone might caress a rainbow
And the milk of stars find its way
Into reveries of a spring evening
On a bridge over the Seine
With a tourist boat passing below
Filled with Asian girls
Sensuous in black, heads bowed,
All intently studying the same map of the city.

And on down the way at Notre-Dame,
You fish all the funny-shaped coins from your pocket
And leave them for a mime
Because he makes you think of Batiste
When he tries to tell Garance of his love,
When she explains that this kind of love
Exists only in dream, not in reality,
And he says, dream, reality —
It's all the same,
Or what's the use in living?

My myth is coffee in a Parisian café
On a street with a statue of Danton,
Visions of Picasso
And les poètes maudits
Who chase a scrap of beauty
Through the alleys and bordellos of their time.
A man and woman
The morning after
The night before
Drink coffee and nibble croissants
At a table where they sit without speaking.
A university student ponders Hegel
And contemplates absurdity
And wonders if he might be
The Camus of his generation,
Until he is distracted
When a girl with abstract expressionist hair
Slings her book bag over her shoulder
And flounces out the door
Like there ought to be a law against her
And maybe there is
But not in Paris.
I tell you, those myths they will take you
By the scruff of your scrawny neck.
It has happened to me,
An afternoon with Chloé
In a film by Rohmer,
A brightly colored kite
Dancing in the blue of the air
On the side of a hill
Above the ruins of a theater 1800 years old...

Young Camille Desmoulins
Embraces Lucile in his thoughts
While the big blade gleams
Brightly above his bare neck
On the fifth day of April in 1794,
And Danton himself,
Comes his turn,
Instructs Sanson the executioner,
"Don't forget to show my head to the people.
It is well worth the trouble."

...those myths where they find us,
Abduct us, seduce us,
Take us where they will.

Comments

[aurora]

What a jangled sense of imagery that colourfully and smoothly flows into one full length poem.

[Felicia]

those myths where they find us,
Abduct us, seduce us,
Take us where they will.

Wonderful!

[Don Iannone]

David: This is wonderful. You might say...a mythical journey...

[Joseph Armstead]

David, I really enjoy your work...! The imagery and the mood are mesmerizing.

"Until he is distracted
When a girl with abstract expressionist hair
Slings her book bag over her shoulder
And flounces out the door
Like there ought to be a law against her
And maybe there is
But not in Paris.
I tell you, those myths they will take you
By the scruff of your scrawny neck.
It has happened to me,
An afternoon with Chloé
In a film by Rohmer,
A brightly colored kite
Dancing in the blue of the air
On the side of a hill..."

I read this and I'm there. Amazing work!