Tag: Victor Marrero

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The Opiate Books

The Opiate Books Presents: Atlas, Bound by Victor Marrero

There are few poetry books of its kind. And perhaps for good reason. After all, a collection of this nature isn’t easy to achieve. For Victor Marrero manages to take a hyper-specific subject matter–Michelangelo’s unfinished “Four Prisoners” sculptures–and deftly expand it so as to apply to such universal themes as humankind’s endless quest for meaning in existence, its tendency toward self-imprisonment and the author’s own … Continue reading The Opiate Books Presents: Atlas, Bound by Victor Marrero

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Poetry

Atlas, Bound by Victor Marrero

1 And here he too is caught. The mighty man, the Titan. A noble crushed, enslaved as well. But even emasculated he steals the show. His physique overburdenedbecomes a hunchback. Muscularity overwrought, grown weary by force, with age. He crouches. He arcs. His head half-formed recedes. Locked inside a hunk of uncut rock, he craves more space, as if gasping for air,as if being devoured by a mass of stone his … Continue reading Atlas, Bound by Victor Marrero

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Poetry

Prime Study by Victor Marrero

Early morning musings. These callow lamentations speak my piece. I posed for oddity. A freak creation  left undone, buried uncut in solid rock. Still, I feel. I think. And I rage as I bend beneath the scourge of the ignoble globe my shoulders are bound to bear. No line of defense disturbs the contradictions I cast as sacrifice of a master’s mold. I model a prime study in suspense, while … Continue reading Prime Study by Victor Marrero

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Poetry

Underside of Being by Victor Marrero

1 Exertion itself must be the thing. Surely the tension is there. Pained devotion to exhaustion and gritstiffens will near the finish line: a native instinct of muscle and nerve, a twitch to flight, an ache wound-sprung deep inside each cell. Each recalls the captive’s limit of self-restraint. The reflex to be, the impulse to become what being begs to be, the primal need itself, blend as one. Outcasts seized within … Continue reading Underside of Being by Victor Marrero

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Poetry

Unfinished* by Victor Marrero

1       He carved what he carved and left them, just as they are. And so they stayed from that moment on. Untouched. Undone. Four figureson display model, a mold cast aside. Their striking postures style mastery unbounded by matter or mind, immured to imperfection.  The coarse-grain stones languished in the rough, imprisoned in solid vaults quarried from their native rock while the master lived and worked … Continue reading Unfinished* by Victor Marrero

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Poetry

Mere Replication by Victor Marrero

      1                            The more life is given, the more it wants to take away. Its rending always rattles, most insistent for the originalwhen mere replication will not do. You wanted more than sculpture to turn faulty clay into flesh, the earth’s full bounty open to the sky. I had reason to withhold. So your handicap from the start:not apprehending why I halted revelation at the borderline of heartbreak from headlong reason in decline 2 In the … Continue reading Mere Replication by Victor Marrero

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Poetry

Between Rock and Hard Place by Victor Marrero

1 The queries of our age demand to know much more than we will ever know or admiteven to ourselves. Our beleaguered figures on display, curios of these corridors, inspire probing. Invasion comes without explanation. Off the charts. Our images chronicle calcified fractures of the past, record the minimalist chatter of present now drained of remembrance and aspiration. Pressed between rock and hard place, airless and indisposed like miners trapped  in a cave, we … Continue reading Between Rock and Hard Place by Victor Marrero

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