ITHACA

Tags

Circe, Homer, mythology, Odyssey, Penelope, poem, poetry, writing

ITHACA

like Odysseus finally
found my way home
after many years

hard to sail straight
when so much
damage control
(and that is exactly
why the people read me
you say
but who asked you
separated as we are
by thousands of years

there could hardly be a more apt
example of the phrase “at a
safe distance”

but unlike Odysseus
not Penelope waiting —
perhaps the gods
taking mercy
has turned her
into stone
or driven her mad

or quite simply the suitors
suited the life out of her

in this tale, sadly, many heroes
wiser than me

who fell for every Circe, any waylaying witch
with magical charms and outlandish customs

so many moments of shape-shifting connection
they beggar description

no in this tale
I arrive home
to find
no Kingdom of Ithaca, nothing
of that order now renamed Roman province

and a stick in the corner
to help me along until
things gray
to the grave

funny to become that thing that
the Sphinx riddled in its last phase
of development

will endure it
with grace

no time for that brash, brainless
imported Roman custom of
falling on your sword

RECITING HOMER

Tags

Ancient Greece, Boris Johnson, Classics, Homer, poem, poetry, satire

RECITING HOMER

for Homer
recitation
is creation

Gutenberg Bible
dispensed with that

and Nietzsche’s rage
against the softness
of a post-heroic age

where kennings neither
flowed like wine-dark waters
clipped together, like
bronze armour

story of the lithe young crazed Achilles
greatest of the Greeks whose
spear strong enough
to find its way
through any shield

yet whose immortal weakness
Paris exploited

recite enough and
there shall be a moral
a way of
allegorical inflection

to fit the truths of
our parable age

OF THE WINE-DARK SEA

Tags

Alien, mythology, Narrative, Ocean, poem, poetry, Reader, sea, Universe, writing

OF THE WINE-
DARK SEA

I regaled the aliens
with the epics of Homer

saw the look on their faces
when they first encountered
the concept of
thousand-ship beauty

nod in agreement when
finding easy cosmic equivalents
from their intergalactic experience
of the
wrath of Poseidon
and seemingly
infinite immensity
of the wine-dark sea.

BONE TO PICK

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

BONE TO PICK

I have a bone
to pick with my species

let’s make it
that Kubrick bone
that the Ape Man throws
right into the landing bay
of the Moon-orbiting space station

that bone
dissolved and refigured
as the heart of the HAL computer’s DNA

red eye watching to
see what bad stuff in the cave
Odysseus will get up to

that bone I came to
pick with you all (so
billion plural)
having so
much to answer for.

AS THE BOAT CROSSED A RIVER

tried in
my poem (like
Homer)

to lasso Proteus
made

every effort to
panel beat
my metaphor
into shape

went down with Odysseus
to see the shades

our faces gaunt for
all the vaunted
poetic chitchat
as the
boat crossed a river
way darker than wine

ABOUT ACHILLES

ABOUT ACHILLES

in poetry
as you might expect

after a few
light-speed metaphors
Achilles

runs out
of things to say

whilst tortoise
goes epic, Homeric

took him
many decades
but here is the
opening line of
his massive saga
about Achilles

CIRCE

wherever there
is binary
there too, shadow

she sits
out
of the Sun,
under the lotus tree
smoking all
in the world
there is to smoke

waiting for me
to make love to her
please her

it is my function, no
escaping this Circe
in my Odyssey

ABOUT MY NOVEL

So I bought myself
a writing pad and
set
about to

write my novel
(a Spongebob Squarepants writing pad
which features him surfing)

thought (back
in parenthesis) how
great it might be
if the writing
became like surfing

so
“go
with the flow”

but then I thought
“shark” and all the paddling out
in the direction of
immensity, and how
straining and
forbidding that
must assuredly be

Homer
blind as a
bat

he couldn’t see
his wine dark ocean
or ping through it
like a dolphin
but did he
not absorb every drop
of Mediterranean mythology

like a sponge
like
a Spongebob

and now I need narrative,
characters a story
because I can’t just slap
it down there
all theme
and metaphor

when Paris seduced Helen
you can imagine how
good (and what
a lie) that
story he did tell her

but quiet I hear my
story, rising
from the deep like a
giant whale
surfing the atmosphere
like a giant meteor

I bet Spongebob’s hang-
ten escapade ended neither
heroically
nor fantastically.

FIRE LIKE HOMER

no one does fire like Homer

nor do flames
move better

than through
dactylic lines

here is where myth
was burned into consciousness
as heroes, towers fall

GRID LOCATION

draw me
to your grid according

into
your Isis Horus hierarchy
simply insert me

everything
is predetermined

as above
shall be below

though
I may be a little
too Achaean in
my inclinations
— still
fancying my chance
with Aphrodite

burnt by the very thought
that in knowing
this goddess
her sexual fire might
melt mortal flesh away