all sorts of blue

Wayde Compton. "O."

As a major mythology buff, I thoroughly enjoyed this reinscription of the classic Osiris myth - particularly the injection of ebonics, which juxtaposed with the authorial commentary of the incestuous relationship between Osiris and Isis (sadly, not mentioning Horus) and the underlying formality of the resurrection myth, makes for a fascinatingly intense poem.

The use of ebonics is startlingly appropriate here - ebonics being the 'ghetto-ized' language of the 'margins' - as it provides strangely contemporary imagery for ancient acts of violence, with lines such as, "cut you up,/like a DJ would a groove, splintered you like a busted mirror,/razored you good". But this contemporary imagery also removes from the visceral nature of the act - by injecting similes, distance is similarly affected. Through the use of ebonics to represent the myth, the myth takes on a previously unknown tone, placed within a modern context; the previously accepted notion of incestuous love/devotion is called into disgust with the lines: "Isis, your sister, renewed you/and knew you/in an obscene way" as well as "cool Isis, who loved you right (wrong)", and Set - who has mythically been identified as the source and embodiment of evil - becomes a "punk motherfucker". A certain level of irreverence becomes present within the text, which dissipates toward the end with the question and answer session of what heaven is like - and, apparently, it is like a colour.