What endures

Immortal horses balked at being blamed,
and told Achilles what Apollo'd done.
No Trojan spearman'd stained his boyfriend's name;
against Olympus, no man could have won.
Too young to bid for Helen's fabled charms,
no oaths compelled this pair to sail to war.
Each happy to sleep in the other's arms,
they'd come to settle Sparta's cuckold's score.
The Trojans never really stood a chance,
once Agamemnon'd rallied all of Greece.
Since Paris failed to keep it in his pants,
the House of Priam'd nevermore know peace.
Domestic bliss was never in their fates;
their mingled ashes guard the trade-route straits.

as Below, so Above

Fleet Hermes offered to take Ares' place
snared by Hephaestos in the smith-god's bed.
Imagining the Goddess' embrace
bright ichor floods his visage hectic red.
The cuckold seems less sanguine for his part
deluded he might be the only one
to stoke the fires in Aphrodite's heart.
As if she'd given thought beyond what's fun.
Athena saw no reason here for mirth;
she'd seen such passions playing out before.
On high Olympus, or on lowly Earth
the fleeting love's prelude to grinding war.
No less than his Achaean kings and queens
Homeric gods seem hormone-addled teens.

Pellenor

The breaking dawn lights silver tree on black
that lady Arwen'd wrought in mithril thread.
Lord Aragorn, with legions at his back
rides into battle, 'though his army's dead.
As Theoden gave up his final breath,
king Eomer sweeps up the pennon green.
Rohirrim roared in unison for ''Death!"
Their blood is high, their lances long, and keen.
The final die's cast at the Crack of Doom
by Gollum in his deathgrip on the Ring.
But such maneuvers need the sort of room
that's only purchased with the deaths of kings.
Great warriors and small, show each their worth
in Tolkien's epic tales of MiddleEarth.

fame

Had Menelaus satisfied the wife
who'd chosen him from all the lords of Greece,
his generation might have skipped the strife,
and frittered lives away in boring peace.
Had Paris died, or--better--not been born,
catastrophe need not have smitten Troy.
The Spartan King would not have earned those horns
from some perfidious young sailor boy.
Had Agamemnon been less insecure,
Achilles would have kept his trophy girl.
They'd be forgotten; nothing would endure
to edify the Hellenistic world.
But stars aligned, and Homer found his theme:
the Western Canon's oldest fever-dream.

generation gap

Immortal Thetis can't have aged a day
since Peleus first claimed her for his bed.
Her first-born's flesh had mouldered into clay,
before she would concede that he lay dead.
Mortality's a "gift" in Tolkien's eyes
to never weary of the tolling years.
A sacred thing, to love what has to die;
to season feasts of pleasure with hot tears.
The immortality Achilles won
was not the sort a mother'd hoped to share.
His glory glows as long as songs are sung,
but she prefers he'd left one heir, one Spare.
Fleet-footed sea-nymph brooding in her fjord
know all too much of mortals, and their wars.

values

Sing, Goddess of the man-destroying wrath
Peleides unloaded on his liege.
'Though Aphrodite'd set them on this path,
Her brother Ares revels in this siege.
When Agamemnon seized his better's girl
he gave offense, no less than Priam's son.
For Homer's audience, in Homer's world,
one had to know what simply isn't done.
Exquisite Helen only dimly grasps
the carnage men inflicted in her name.
Whole worlds pre-empted for a piece of ass,
while paltry few won literary fame.
Penelope's the only worthy prize;
the poet's insight's clear, despite blind eyes.

"Women are like crystals"

Fleet Hermes laughed at Ares, snared by Love.
For now, the latter's spear seems safely sheathed.
Suspended from the brazen springe above,
while Aphrodite cursed and writhed beneath.
The cuckold's not as sanguine at their plight
he'd hoped to come up empty with this net.
Consorting with the Cypriote one night
no god nor mortal's likely to forget.
Loud Menelaos dared, 'though he'd been warned
to wed the fairest maiden in all Greece.
Predictably, his brow's adorned with horns,
his generation's not cut out for peace.
The Western canon's grandest epic text
makes no pretense that war's not twin to sex.

Dead Show

The lyrics raced in flames across the sky,
an alphabet no living mortals know.
Invisible to those who weren't high,
if there were any such, at such that show.
Fierce Revelation of the Fungal Truth,
as Dionysus manifests on stage,
accessible to California's youth,
amidst the strait-laced Ronald Reagan Age.
Old neural circuits latent in our minds,
still close when prompted with the proper key.
Cubensis makes the alkaloid that binds,
but never shared its rationale with me.
Ventura's long since swallowed by LA,
but we remember when gods came to play.

count no woman happy until she be dead

Andromache endured the fall of Troy;
her heir and husband brutally struck dead.
Awarded to the victor's tween-aged son,
expected to consort with him in bed.
When Paris judged one goddess to be best
set his whole city-state against long odds.
To snatch a wife's a grave sin for a guest,
outraging not just Greece, but all the gods.
Fair Helen turned the heads of all the guys,
except Achilles, far off in the North.
Condemned to always be some master's prize,
a thing of value, bartered back and forth.
As ornamental parts to fill a scene;
the role was perilous, to play the queen.

Of arms, and the man

No sumptuary laws constrain a king;
Hephaistos wasn't sparing any cost.
Achilles took the field, in epic bling!
His enemies must know just whom they've crossed.
To flee, or fight once they'd strayed near his path
was all the same, before this day is done.
This godling, incandescent in his wrath
consumed them all, like aspic in the sun.
Patroklos stemmed the tide in borrowed gear
but failed to fool Apollo, so he died.
To counterfeit the prince that god held dear
mere armor can't ennoble what's inside.
The wine-dark sea, the burnished bronze's sheen...
Blind Homer conjured worlds he'd never seen.

the royal writ

Eight legs lent Sleipnir traction on the snow;

it wouldn't do for Odin to get stuck.
The Roman fashion, building cobbled roads,
would need a labor force that gave a fuck.
Heroic architecture's rare, of course,
Reliant as it is on taxing funds.
No king could build such things of he were Norse;
what one boat's crew can't do, did not get done.
The Book of Judges shills for monarchy
to tax, and underwrite as may seem good.
Portraying tribal life as anarchy,
where individuals did as they would.
Each libertarian needs all-wheel-drive
where workers don't contribute to the hive.

Funerary Games

His mother urged Achilles to get laid;
a woman's love might ease him through the night.
But now his partner's dead, his world's unmade.
No drive remains for life, or love, or fight.
Let Trojans do for Hector as seems fit;
that uncorrupted corpse is theirs to burn.
Our hero's too soul-numb to give a shit;
He'll see the forms played out, 'til it's his turn.
The fatal arrow's artfully off-stage;
we only learn he'd died in volume II.
He'll never know the aches of middle-age
or taste diminishment, as mortals do.
Peleides blazed bright by burning fast 
among Achaeans, foremost, first, and last.

changing fortunes

Great Hector did his best, then turned and ran,
confronting Achilleos in his rage.
Enflamed with grief, he's no mere mortal man;
this demigod's the terror of his age.
This Trojan king's a very Zeus-on-Earth
no less than Agamemnon for the Greeks.
But any soul of wholly mortal birth
against Peleides, is up a creek.
Andromache looks on, atop the wall
and understands that for their toddler son
should he survive at all, it's as a thrall.
One blow means Priam's dynasty's undone.
Her sister-in-law shakes her empty head;
her cuckold king still wants her back in bed.

Or zarua l'tzadik

Eärendil and Elwing brought the jewel
that Feanor'd begrudged when he fled East.
Incensed in Valinor that Valar ruled
while Morgoth ravished Middle-Earth in peace.
Yavanna'd speculated She could mend
with such a boon, the luminescent Trees.
But even should the Ban on Noldor  bend,
She's now implacable to all their pleas.

Supernal glow pre-dating moon and sun

is henceforth only present in the sky.

While heroes'  journey at great peril's done,

their tots are fostered on the other side.
'Til Feänor himself proffers the gems,

not even Valar have clear claim to them.

the object of desire

Eärendil saw Gondolin destroyed
last bastion of the way life'd been before.
No opportunity to be a boy
as Middle-Earth's configured for more war.
This half-blood princeling grew, and took a bride
with lineage as quirky as his own.
Each, Elvish royalty on mothers' side
and she's the heir to Elu Thingol's throne.
The twain defied the Ban, to bring the Gem
Yavanna'd called for to restore the Trees
of gilt-edged leaves and burnished argent stem.
But she's contemptuous of Noldor pleas.
One nova in the skies of Middle Earth
is all one salvaged silmaril was worth.

maia-a-maia

At terminal velocity, they clashed
the Balrog and the Wizard, undeterred.
The Elvish sword, the many-stranded lash--
What none could watch, the deafest cave troll heard.
Far under Moria, the utmost shaft
that wakened from deep slumber Durin's Bane,
now bore them to the peaks of Aule's craft
Resuming combat in the storm and rain.
The Endless Stair no living dwarf had trod,
persisting only in their griots' rhyme
succumbed to combat of these demi-gods;
it's rubble-shuttered 'til the End of Time.
Tivaldo may land graceful as a cat,
but balrogs hurled from mountaintops, still splat.

fireplay

Two Maiar clash in flame on Durin's span
who hadn't met in Middle-Earth's Third Age.
The fearsome bane of Elf, or Dwarf, or Man,
was unprepared for combat with a mage.
Utumno fell, most balrogs went to ground
disdaining leniency in the far West.
There dozing deep, 'til Durin's folk delved down
insatiable in their mithril quest.
Istari'd played no part in Eru's scheme
as first enunciated long before.
But this old swordsman's tougher than you'd deem
he'll need an entry in Ents' rhymes of lore.
Grey bearer of the Elvish ring of fire
dispatched his foe to the infernal choir.

playing the role

The balrog that contested Durin's span
had slept through the best part of the Third Age.
Proud bane to any dwarf, elf, ent or man
was wholly unprepared to fight a mage.
Olorin--for his part--knew what he faced
debriefing Melian on the far shore
He knew that foes of his own Maia race
survived another generation's war.
Exactly why Iluvatar dispatched
Istari isn't anywhere explained
To Sauron, such might seem a fitting match
a Maia designate as Maia bane.
Earth-rending combat wouldn't mean a thing

except to rear-guard Frodo, and the Ring.

foul air

Olorin hoped a pipe might help him think;
no memory could guide him at this fork.
Some fragrant smoke might purge the evil stink
that couldn't be attributed to orcs.
The caves of trolls had their unwholesome smell
but something worse offends the wizard's sense;
What Pippin wakened in the guardroom's well
predates the coming of the Elves, and ents.
Each option leads to leagues of lampless gloom
without a stick of fuel to catch a spark.
If anyone's to get through Khazad Dum
one mis-step could be parlous in the dark.
Staunch friend and guide to dwarf, man, hobbit, elf
shows no regard for safeguarding himself.

heirlooms

"As weregild for my father, I'll take that"
Quoth Beren as he clasped Barahir's hand
from orcs struck dumb with wonder as they sat;
his motives were too much to understand.
That ring of Felagund can open doors;
An oath like Finrod swore, no Elf forgets;
'though Melian'd foreseen the coming wars,
to Thingol, mortals seemed mere useless pets.
The Oath of Feanor grants no respite
'though Elu Thingol never took the vow,
Dark Elves, no less than Noldor of the Light
are compassed in its mischief, anyhow.
Late-comers play our part in Eru's scheme
however frail--to Eldar eyes--we seem.