This is a poem in this series of 144 poems that I’m writing based on the dodeks, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. As far as I know, everybody else calls them dodekatemoria, but that’s a very complicated word to say, so I just call them dodeks.
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Gemini of Aries: The Quartermaster’s Office
5° Aries 00′ to 7° Aries 29′
Filing cabinets and piles of forms,
lists of inventory and personnel,
bandages for medics and sheets for doors;
wool socks for soldiers, shells that unleash hell;
tweezers for splinters, bayonets for guts;
cans of sauce for spaghetti Wednesday night ;
shelter halves for grunts; officers get huts.
“Fill out this form — you didn’t do it right!”
You’re not allowed some shit you requested,
or it’s on our list but not in our crates.
Every item is thoroughly tested —
by testers who’ve never trusted their fates
to hostile places surrounded by foes
with third-rate gear, just to see how it goes.
Image: A soldier, surrounded by stacks of paper and forms, tries to supply soldiers with their equipment.
Important Relationships
- Part of the:
- Term of Jupiter
- Term of Venus
- Decan I of Aries (administrated by Mars): The Double-Bladed Axe
Colophon
This is a part of a series of poems based on the dodekatemoria, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. The dodekatemoria are sub-segments of the Zodiac, each representing two degrees thirty minutes (2° 30′) of arc; there are 144 dodeks (as I call them) in the full Zodiac, or twelve in each sign. Each dodek is supposed to be a recapitulation or miniature repetition or summary of its parent zodiac sign, as though it were filtered through the lens of the main sign.
The Sun crosses this distance of 2° 30′ in about two and a half days, making these dodeks cognate with the Moon, which crosses one sign of the Zodiac, or thirty degrees (30°) in about two and a half days. The Sun’s passage through a dodek thus mirrors the Moon’s passage through a sign, and squeezes a “mini-year” of passage through twelve signs into a single month.
Each series of dodeks begins at 0° 00′ of its parent sign with the same sign, and there are four dodeks in each sequence of 10° degrees. Each poem in this series will give a (my) name of the dodek, its relevant degrees, a sonnet describing it, a 1-2 sentence description of the dodek, and some other information.
