Xenia

The golden armor Glaucos gave in trade,
sealed obligations to his dad's friend's son.
Where no constabulary renders aid,
through kinship ties, the Grecian works was run.
Absconding with the Spartan's lovely queen,
the Trojan's faux pas couldn't be ignored.
Such damage to the cuckold's self-esteem,
would doom the whole Aegean world to war.
While Priam got no succor from his liege
to drive marauders from his city gate,
the ad hoc coalition laying siege,
had not yet dreamt that Greeks might form a State.
To Homer, social mores don't exclude
those Asians Greeks had sailed so far to fight.
To stint on hospitality's just rude,
and worthy adversaries do what's right.
Outstanding in the company of kings
proud Diomedes shines in golden bling.

Wanax

The maiden glowed to think she'd be the bride
to great Achilles, though he's overseas.
Too soon, she'll learn that Agamemnon lied;
he'd sold his daughter for a friendly breeze.
At Aulis, there's no swag to pay the fleet;
the great adventure's looking like a bust.
To salvage honor through this rank deceit,
his marriage foundered on a dearth of trust.
His Klytemnestra's not one to forget.
A war to get his brother's woman back,
entangled him in his own wife's silk net.
The victor's victim to her gleaming ax.
Since Tantalus, this dynasty's been cursed;
each generation seems to wear it worse.

Marry well

Her sister'd maddened half the men of Greece,
but Klytemnestra's no great prize to wed.
Her husband won at war, but died in peace;
that garland's useless when you've lost your head.
Twin Tyndarids proved equally unchaste;
One ran off with a pretty Asian lad.
To marry for a famously fair face,
to Homer's mind, is bound to turn out bad.
Odysseus brought home the best of wives,
Penelope, who matched his famous wit.
While other paid for glory with their lives,
the man of many ways proved the most fit.
When we recall the Mycenaean world
the tales turn on Tyndareus' girls.

the Agamemnon

Her sentinels report: the watchfires flare;
king Agamemnon's coming home from war!
Aegysthos, who had shirked his duty there,
starts planning to slink out the postern door.
It's Klytemnestra lays the bolder plan:
she'll lay the crimson carpet for his tread,
surpassing Helen to betray her man;
she'll take not just his honor, but his head.
Cassandra's prophecy's a waste of breath;
they put no credence in such future facts.
She's heard the swirling blood; she's smelled the death
She's seen the subtle net, the gleaming ax.
Peleides died young, but won renown;
Odysseus pushed through to win long life.
But Atreus' heir just gets hewn down
mere barnyard livestock to his fancy wife.
The meta-narrative can criticize
heroic figures, painting them life-sized.

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.

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.

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.

oermatched

His vambrace showed the faintest smudge of breath,
and Imrahil felt hope leap in his breast.
The maid who'd seemed so parlous fair in death,
now waxed heroic in her martial quest.
The terror that has served the Morgul Lord
as shield and armor in a changing world,
availed him nought when facing Dernhelm's sword;
he'd never faced the equal of this girl.
Despairing of the only man she craved,
she'd sought at least an honorable end.
Where only menfolk could be seen as 'brave'
a fiery soul horselords can't apprehend.
The worthy death fair Eowyn desired
deferred when Faramir was spared the fire.

The Will to Power

The balrog's motives nowhere get explored
could he aspire to wield this parlous thing?
He's no mere worm, to stash it in his hoard;
a maia'd be a monster with the Ring!
Olorin'd held it once, but let it go;
he wasn't hither-sent to dominate.
The One's not his to wield, or to bestow.
This Age, it's little folk hold their world's fate.
While Gandalf fell, ring-bearer bore it East
through Lorien, where Time seemed not to pass.
unwitting how the mage threw down the beast
returning through his darkness, at the last.
Of all the characters to face the test,

for Tolkien, humble Samwise comes out best.

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.

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.