A modern day renaissance man, Antonio Eramo draws inspiration from the complex, the ineffable, the organic and the mechanical. His lyrical, intricate word play, weaves itself through his poetic verse mixing classical form with contemporary style. His works interrogate the relationship between the individual and the psychological, the sexual, and the religious through an exploration of phonics and etymology. His poetry pushes reader to constantly ask what it means to be human in the post-digital, postmodern world. 

The Fools Ballad

If fools rush in where angels fear to tread 
then angels know not love nor sacrifice.
I battle with this fool inside my head 
and try to seek out words to be concise.
Yet heart cannot express through mere device 
just how divine life is when you are there.
When you are there I tend to say things twice 
     I am a leaf that flutters through your air 

I wish to be like characters I've read
for they walk unafraid of flame and vice
they tend to act with very little said 
yet here I am afraid to break the ice.
What could I dare to say that might entice 
my dreams to not meander to nightmare.
I pray that what I say will sound suffice 
     I am a leaf that flutters through your air 

I parse through all the love notes that I've shred
my loose leaf journals have all paid the price.
I wish that I could voice the love you spread 
yet there's no string of words that is precise.
and yet in dreams I see them throw the rice
and whisper how we make a lovely pair
I am the fool and so I say it thrice 
     I am a leaf that flutters through your air 

I know my role yet fear to roll the dice
and so I sink into my own despair 
I am a fool that needs his own advice
     I am a leaf that flutters through your air

Sin Waves

I cradle her innocence in my palms
like a gypsy moth
for I do not wish to disrupt the powder on her wing
under the covers we undress and undulate 
bending to the unending song we sing 
sin waves
wash over the ashen passion of our burning paradise
choice has reduced voice to whisper
the birds and the bees fall to their knees 
for the wasp and the asp 
and a past 
that we cannot return to
Sin waves 
    "hello"
for now we owe hell 

For now we know well 
the price of our cyclical desires 
too late we learn that frost can burn
and our hell is the ice we pick

Syntaxi Cabs

Syntaxi cabs drive on concrete 
poetry. The road less raveled is barren
of figurative language
and the exits exist, so long as we adore 
the pain that windows let us explore.
Widows are still beside the syll-
able-bodied...yet sedentary.
Cemetery meter
paid in quarters
no longer filled with laughter
or dreams of forever after.
Empty corridors.
Empty core adores the plot 
that selfish writers wrought