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.

Byronic

Lord Byron hid his penchant for the lads
behind the pretty objects one expects.
To publicize those conquests would be mad,
when England criminalized even sex.
What fantasies Don Juan might entertain
while mingling sweet in someone else's bed,
in neither prose, not verse did he explain.
We're free to speculate, now he lies dead. 
The literary version of a man
elides complexity, as fiction must.
At best, it sketches out what verbiage can;
there's nuance lost, when simplifying lust.
Vain groupies, hoping each might be his bride
don't grasp he's batting for the other side.

nothing weird here

LaTrobe seemed safe, Trump thought he'd humanize
his bid where voters trended staunchly Red.
Rhapsodic about Arnold Palmer's size,
and how he dreamt of foursomes, while in b,ed.
No prosecutors charging him with graft,
no women seeking child support again
just drooling over Arnold's "strong...stiff shaft"
the way one does when bonding with men's men..
The millions daddy gave him now long gone,
whole fortunes dribbled through his stubby hands.
This textbook insecure spray-tanned DonJuan
seeks --vainly --validation he's a man.
Trump fawning worship of their golfer ace
is weirding out his homophobic base.

"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.

the editor's art

Achilles let fair Thetis teach his son
fierce hatred for the royal house of Troy.
Andromache had hoped the worst was done
until she met the feral red-haired boy.
Sage Chiron'd taught his father how to heal;
nine Muses taught him song, and dance, and more.
This lion's cub seems not so much to feel
as to subsist on carnage, gore, and war.
It's not enough her lord and son lie dead;
the tyke will never get a proper pyre.
She's now consigned to warm her victor's bed;
her high estate now rides the sucking gyre.
Euripides leaves such a scene off-stage;
what Homer wouldn't treat, he too won't touch.
The hero's scion's plainly not of age;
to picture him with women's just too much.
The artist frames his work with end, and start;
and Homer's still unrivaled in this art.

prologue

Achilles found the harem kinda fun;
his mother'd never dressed him in such bling!
A hundred foster mothers for his son
repaid the nights he had to serve the king.
Tiresias foretold; he must be found
to fetch fair Helen back from strong-walled Troy.
Those battlements were never coming down
unless they brought the sea nymph's darling boy.
Odysseus stepped up (disguised, of course)
to dangle high adventure to the lad
before he'd dreamed to build a wooden horse
or thought to duck the draft by playing mad.
The audience should know what went before
to understand blind Homer's song of War.

balcony scene

Young Montague addressed his favorite hand
that soothed his lonesome adolescent nights.
Alone on stage, he's dimly seen to stand
and must exclaim to someone on this light.
Fair Juliet's his winsome second love
although--so far--they hadn't even kissed.
She fit him like his digits fit his glove.
'Til now--like Enkidu--he'd loved his fist.
Doomed liaison across divides of tribe,
or politics, or economic rank
left neither House to boast an heir alive;
twin dynasties as sterile as a wank.
"Butt-soft!" coy cutesy coinage by the Bard
for Romeo's best friend when times were hard.

reconditioned

Poseidon took sweet Pelops by the arm,
and Hermes held his luscious slow-braised head.
Hephaistos undid Tantalus' harm
to prep this dainty for the Sea god's bed.
Let Zeus snatch playthings from the walls of Troy;
Mycenae has enough for most gods' need.
Be that a blushing maid, or smooth-cheeked boy,
 no cause to shop abroad for Ganymede.
Cassandra told Apollo to get lost;
she'd rather dally with some Asian youth.
Integrity like hers bears a grave cost;
she wins no kudos for unwelcome truth.
When paths of gods and mortals intersect
our lives seem just their smorgasbord of sex.

used and rebuilt

Poseidon took sweet Pelops by the arm,
and Hermes held his luscious slow-braised head.
Hephaistos undid Tantalus' harm
to prep this dainty for the Sea god's bed.
Let Zeus snatch playthings from the walls of Troy;
Mycenae has enough for most gods' need.
Be that a blushing maid, or smooth-cheeked boy,
no cause to shop abroad for Ganymede.
Cassandra told Apollo to get lost;
she'd rather dally with some Asian youth.
Integrity like hers bears a grave cost;
she wins no kudos for unwelcome truth.
When paths of gods and mortals intersect
our lives seem just their smorgasbord of sex.

in Man's image

Apollo was rebuffed; he took it ill.
Cassandra's meat to Klytemnestra's ax.
The prophecies she speaks are swift fulfilled,
but no one heeds such inconvenient facts.

By contrast, Zeus takes anyone he wants--
except fleet Thetis, whom his own wife guards.
The girls he meets on drunken Earth-side jaunts,

must know a pregnancy is in the cards.
Fair Aphrodite chafes at wedded life;

Hephaistos doesn't feature in her dreams.
If only Ares'd taken her as wife...

but they're full siblings, flesh, and blood, and genes.
Olympians feel sure they rule as kings,

but Eros plays the lot of them on strings.

Florida politics

Matt Gaetz discovered girls a little late;
his high-school years were spent with dolls, and toys.
When headlines blare "That Loser Got a Date"
his colleagues still presume that meant with boys.
Like Foley, Gaetz was smitten with a page
who copied documents, and scored good pot.
Untroubled that the lad was half his age
these later Humberts find pubescence "hot".

Without consent, relations are a crime;

each State enumerates who can't, or can.
Transporting juveniles across State lines,
or out of country violates that ban.
When even Trump disdains to take his calls

the prosecution's got Matt by the balls.

despair

To reassure herself that she's still hot
each frantic pick-up butts against the next.
Each night, out clubbing, shaking what she's got
Her need for love's unsatisfied with sex.
Each binge just makes her crave another time
but with another lover, not this one.
Each morning sun reveals another line
and introspection never does get done.
The same old stimulus just can't excite
the oxytocin circuits like before.
Realization's dawning, night by night
that what she needs is different, not more.
No one-night lover can assuage her pain
the way the needle snuggles with her vein.

Falwell's downfall

The oath of Chastity at Liberty

To students is transparently a ruse

The Falwells' marriage keeps their love-life free

the student-body's their's for private use.

Endorsing TrumptyDumpty quashed the tale

that Michael Cohen meant to publicize.

For Jerry Falwell, everything's for sale,

the truth no less than any practiced lies.

A university should form adults

participating in a nation's life.

But Falwell's enterprise seems more a cult

 procuring meat to sate his cougar wife.

Humiliation's just what he enjoys,

but satisfying her needs troops of boys.

immured

The walls close in; we're forced to isolate
a new corona virus stalks the stage.
Until we find the means to vaccinate
we're forced to find amusement in our cage.
Without museums, restaurants and bars
we fax, and teleconference, and text
but hooking up  in cyberspace is hard;
without the face-to-face, we're starved for sex.
Trump didn't think we ought to mobilize;
the threat he feared was to the price of stocks.
But even those who want to trust his lies
are losing family to this new pox.
'Though Dickenson might not have deemed it bad,
such isolation's driving most folks mad.

off with his hat!

McCarrick bribed a foreign head of state
a Cardinal sins with impunity!
Regardless what the codes of law dictate,
no prosecutor wants such enemies.
But Francis doesn't play Ratzinger's game;
he's unimpressed with wealth, and pomp, and stuff.
What's most important is to spare kids shame.
Lord knows, the Vatican's got cash enough.
A Jesuit well schooled in sacred texts
a chemistry instructor to the youth
wants Church intent on Love, and not on sex.
Obedience won't bend him from the Truth.
An institution married to the past
may face an honest reckoning at last.

vayeshev IV

Yehudah bought his firstborn son a bride
but got no grandson to enlarge his name.
Another wedding, this groom also died
immortalized in English for his shame.
Tamar did what she must to get it done.
She saw her future in its breadth and depth.
Her fam'ly's a dead-end without a son
but men seem too consumed with fear of death.
Predictably, her father-in-law's pissed
and threatens consequences for her act.
But he'd been partner to her road-side tryst
and now, he's man enough to own the fact.
Moshiach's ancestors were deeply flawed
and when he comes, it's 'cause one played the bawd.

"friends"

'Though Jeffrey Epstein offered to post bail
to savor some last hours of liberty,
the judge remanded him to rot in jail.
Fake passports signaled this perp's poised to flee.
Nobody knows where all his money's from
nor how much he might shortly owe the court.
'Though Justice may be blind, She's not that dumb
not everyone will bend whom he'd extort.
Since Roy Cohn died, Trump's never made a friend;
it's decades since his mentor passed away.
His means secure him his romantic end;
some girls, he forced; but more would play for pay.
Jeff's not too proud to cop a plea and squeal;
no love for Trump will bar him from this deal.

Elmer Gantry

This week, we learn that Jerry Falwell  paid
Mike Cohen to suppress salacious news.
Flamboyant hypocrite on his own stage
must now contrive to blame it on the Jews.
The Fundamentalists who form Trump's base,
like sheep queued up where they're enjoined to join
made all the diff'rence in this hair's breadth race,
all bought and paid for in this tainted coin.
This pious fraud, as bad as his old man
sings Pilate's praise and hopes nobody learns
he's swapping photos with a courtesan.
But threatens others that they're gonna burn.
A televangelist with feet of clay
consorts with presidents in pay-to-play.

Agon III

Sing muse, of Achilleus and his ire
the only male immune to Helen's charm.
She's fair, but not the type to light his fire
and Paris never did him any harm.
No oath obliged him in the Greeks' dispute; 
to court the Spartan heiress, he's too young.
The kin of Ganymede are smokin' cute

and like their  famous horses, nobly hung.
Nine years, the booty dangled out of reach
the oak hulls rot, the linen sails lie furled.
Our hero with his boyfriend strolls the beach
'til Agamemnon gives him back the girl.
The Western Canon's greatest epic text
makes no pretense that War's not twin to Sex.

Agon III

Sing muse! Achilles awesome in his ire
remained immune to Helen's vaunted charm.
She's fair, but not the type to light his fire
and Paris never did him any harm.
Unlike the other kings, he'd sworn no vow

to court the heiress, he's not yet of age.
He's told he's dying young, but can't know how

but Destiny requires a broader stage.

Nine years, the booty dangled out of reach
the oak hulls rot, the linen sails lie furled.
Our hero with his boyfriend strolls the beach
'til Agamemnon gives him back the girl.
The Western Canon's greatest epic text
makes no pretense that War's not twin to Sex.