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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Cancer of Libra: Emotional Baggage
22° Libra 30′ to 24° Libra 59′
Tears drip down while handling the mundane —
picking up milk in the grocery store,
or growing in hardwares for paint and stain.
You pay for your goods and flee out the door,
desperately hoping emotions would wait
for a time of convenient privacy.
Yet it was the store that brought on this state,
this mix of distress and anxiety.
Was it the yogurt or was it the chard,
the deli meats, or the fish laid on ice?
What thoughts were aroused, that became so hard
that you had to hold back emotions, twice?
And why must we wrestle with loss and grief
while shopping for limes, detergent, and beef?
Image: A client lies down on the therapist's couch, who is only half-listening while calculating their fees in their private notes.
Important Relationships
- Part of the Term of Saturn
- Part of Decan I of Libra (administrated by the Moon): The Blindfold and Sword
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.
