Who Governs?

The camp falls silent;Nestor stands to speak
this Argonaut knows much that's gone before.
Experience is precious to these Greeks,
who'd never contemplated ten years' war.
He'd left a son Telemachus' age
to fight for Helen, whom he'd never wooed.
But with Achilles seething in his rage
the enterprise may utterly be screwed.
The ego Agamemnon can't control
precludes commanding loyalty from men
who see which kings could better play the role
without inflaming rancor, yet again.
If leadership's not vested in the wise,
the greatest squabble, for the merest prize.

the good wife

No towel dried her husband from his bath;
fair Klytemnestra swathed him in her net.
The victor's victim to his woman's wrath;
their firstborn's not some kid whom she'd forget.
Aegysthos lurked just off the killing floor;
no royal blood would stain his dainty hand.
To stay at home while others sailed to war,
the playwright marks this one as not a man.
Her cousin labors tireless to reweave
the shroud that she'd unpicked by candlelight.
The faithful wife who's careful to deceive
the villains violating what is right.
The textile arts, deployed for good, or ill,
no less than bronze, can bind a wound...or kill.

Plausible Deniability

Zeus nods his head; Olympus toes the line;
gods won't engage this combat any more.
Hereafter, they'll just meddle with men's minds,
while Greeks and Trojans prosecute their war.
Athena deems this ruling went her way;
the contest will be played out on her field.
She's picked the champions whom she can sway
and doesn't need the fools who doubt She's real.
That leaves the demigod; what man could stand
against Achilles, when he deigns to fight?
Apollo wrought a bow for Paris' hand;
His breath just nudged an arrow in its flight.
Our hands are all gods have, to work their will
but Eros plays us all like puppets, still.

the Fig Leaf (Vayigash)

Exposed, ashamed, the brothers can't deny
they'd sold Yosef, and thought him gone for good.
'Til Joe contrived the diplomatic lie:
they'd merely done what God has meant they should.
The intervening years great changes wrought;
the tactless teen has learned to temper truth.
A handsome lad those Midianites bought
has gained in wisdom what he's lost in youth.
Yehudah, for his part, had grown his soul.
'Though fourth-born, he's now leader of this mob.
Where Reuben's proved unfit to wield control,
the man who can steps forth to do the job.
Pericope of unaccustomed scope
finds reconciliation, past all hope.

Rodef Dam

Orestes saw his duty, and proved true;
Elektra's orphaned by her brother's hand.
Good kids stood up to do what they must do
to purge the regicide taint from the land.
Orestes can't shrug off the family weight
Until Athena will adjudicate.
Orestes was ordained to break the spell;
Athena took him for her very own
Inventing courts to thwart the Hags of Hell.
Exiled from Mycenae, he found a home.
His father's murder cried out from the Earth.
Orestes knew what duty'd bid him do
to prove himself a pious son of worth.
but matricide's a Capital sin, too.
what could Orestes do in such a plight
he's next of kin and must avenge the king
in his dilemma, no decision's right
the best of actions consequences bring

echoes

The watchman on the walls of Elsinore
called forth Horatio, that he might speak.
Athenians had seen this scene before,
'though Shakespeare can't have read it in the Greek.
Oresteia saw his duty, and just struck;
pained vacillation's for a future Dane.
He won't get mired in introspective muck
when father's blood cries from the bathroom drain.
The terrors young Oresteia knew at night
are not so obsolete as they might seem.
For Hamlet, torments don't dissolve in light;
They echo in the Prince of Denmark dreams.
Time-hallowed gem from Greece's Late Bronze Age
the bard of Avon cast back on the stage.

long fuse

The wound in Shelob's abdomen's still sore
where Samwise penetrated her with Sting
She's not allied with Sauron in this war
and nursed no appetite for Elvish rings.
Staunch mountain guardian, beyond all worth
no salary could hire a better ward.
She'd never known a fear in MiddleEarth
until this Hobbit, with his spell-wrapped sword.
Bucolic people, rarely moved to wrath
yet dauntless in defense of kin, and friends
like David facing down that guy from Gath
the Little Folk, on whom the War depends.
No witnesses were there to tell the tale
unless a palantir watched Morgul Vale.

The watchman on the walls of Elsinore
called forth Horatio, that he might speak.
Athenians had seen this scene before,
'though Shakespeare can't have read it in the Greek.
Oresteia saw his duty, and just struck;
pained vacillation's for a future Dane.
He won't get mired in introspective muck
when father's blood cries from the bathroom drain.
The terrors young Oresteia knew at night,
are not so obsolete as they might seem
For Hamlet, torments don't dissolve in light
They echo through the Prince of Denmark dreams.
Time-hallowed gem from Greece's Late Bronze Age
the Renaissance recast on London's stage.

family feud

Dire Klytemnestra's not one to forgive
her husband gallivanting like he's Zeus,
with Trojan women, thinking they might live
beneath her roof! She won't take such abuse.
If Agamemnon ever could forget
Iphigenia, pleading for her life,
he can't escape his own Queen's well-knit net.
Surviving war, he's fodder for his wife.
"Great King" abroad, proved mortal once back home
No loyal minions guard the royal neck.
Pink from his bath, unarmored, and alone,
her axe proved more than towels could deflect.
While better men won fame at distant Troy,
Thyestes was avenged by his glib boy.

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.