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Chris Saitta Apr 2023
Sings a small boy whose hair is tousled by the wind,
As too the folds of his mother’s peplos and the robes of clouds,
When Greece gathers in silence like the stillness for a deposed crown,
And all Athens around, the song of eiresione for firstfruits of Autumn,
Singing boys with the olive branches of colored wool and garlanded gourds,
A fall-bird to wander the Ionic sky, foretelling of new sunrise.
How that joyful ancient voice still haunts the songbird of sunset.
Eiresione was an Ancient Greek song associated with a fall festival that some maintain was a precursor to Christmas.  Boys traditionally carried olive branches with colored wool and sometimes hung with jars of honey, fruits, and gourds.  They were then left by boys on individual doors as a token of good will and prosperity.
Chris Saitta Jun 2020
The soul has as its sextant the ribs opened wide,
The heart its compass in fluid circuitous diatribe,
When each to zone the geometry of Greek sky  
With its powdery fabulism of centaurs and jars
From Aesop’s wine of words, the untimeliness
Of sundials to Charybdis’s bloom of giant watery eyes.

To know oceans by the dry riverbed of my pulse,
To scale only as high as the sparrow’s tomb of my heart.
Charybdis is one of two sea monsters (Scylla being the other) in Greek mythology.  Aesop relayed this myth as well.
King Arthur Apr 2020
Most of the time, I don’t think of you
Maybe it’s because of your age
Maybe it’s because we’re safer now
Or maybe it’s because I live in always-sunny California
But when that sky does darken
And the rain comes down
I’ll hear you
Like some primordial call, dug up from the Earth or my bones
Sometimes-I’ll even see you, but just for a moment
By now, I’ve forgotten what your face looks like
But I can’t ever unlearn that power
Its no wonder you used to be the king of gods
King Arthur Apr 2020
Praise be to Sappho
Noblest of poets
Lover of words and women
Who gave us that language
So we could love women
As well
Chris Saitta May 2019
Blow, Lyceum grasses, blow,
From coiled lips of your wolf-god Apollo
Whose dawn-padded paws to starprints roam
This temple-tribute to thought-illumined roads.  

Blow, Lyceum grasses, blow
Of wave upon wave of your brushings-by,
From staff to sandal-fall to cloak hemline,
For rhapsodes, your song-odyssey to sew.

The Greeks built the sun,
Upon scaffolding~acrobaticon~  
With pear-skinned lightness to glow,
Or like leavened bread from the woodburning stove.

Blow, Lyceum grasses, blow,
The sun lies old on its famine-cracked pillow,
In spittle of gold and yellowed phosphorous,
With the gods past-blown to ruin.
The Lyceum, known for Aristotle’s peripatetic school (or walking school of thought), served as a temple dedicated to Apollo, who has been known as the God of Light, Poetry, and Wolves, among many other things.  “Rhapsodes” were verse singers, or stitched-song singers, in the Lyceum and Ancient Greece.  Scholars believe Homer’s works were sung this way.
What am I?

"Cast your body into the ocean,
   ask if there are Greeks down there?

Sail, as it were, upon the Seas...
   ...and find yourself; every where."

A: The Phoenicians who created the alphabet. The Alphabet has risen and falling with world trade and it has become a universal system. The art of language has been both hindered by the oceans and delivered by them.
Métis, Themis, Ma’at, their banter was for naught.
All the tides and tithings wisdoms and their teachings, Daemonium forgot!

But the heavens cry  manna as Nix cried out reprieve!
An act that loosed the flood, the chaos of her sea.

Her pain arose a champion to tend to all her needs,
Formed of Celestial Ocean he bore down on the freed.

A giant wave of madness, thrusting mist of sadness eradicating gladness... One led the ruthless breed.

Opaque in their beginning, formless shapes in twining.
Conjoined but not together, accompanied the weather.
Thalassa’s stringy tether wrapped them all forever.

Come or go in seasons, live or die in age.
No Spring to Fall in reasons, travailing of the mage?
Black tentacles the streamers, rooted into wave.
Witness the all-wise and snaking phantom phage...

Chiron watches while he prances, his dressage on the shore.
Arising liminal of beings wettened ambiguity of yore.
Even Iblis is impressed, such black rotten to the core!

Merkabah or egg, mountain, belly, tree they squabble.
All elements do I cobble, such are actions of the wobble.
"To have loved and learned in ancient Greece,
And to say nothing more in the least."

George Anthony May 2017
you will drown, you will drown
you will drown
and i only like you for the taste
of blood in my mouth

you will drown me, you will drown me
you will drown me
and she sees it, too
the way you **** me under your skin

oh, darling, you're gonna burn
i'm already burning;
i think it's time you joined me,
searing sunlight smiles sparkling, laced

with plasma, ichor,
these white teeth take a bite
and i remember you're mortal
for the copper tang on my tongue

i only like you for the taste of blood in my mouth
i only like you for the taste of blood in my mouth
i only like you for the taste of...
there is no taste to describe the feeling of falling in love

i wish i could lie to myself better,
maybe it'd make me more convincing
when you tell me you love me
and i say i don't love you at all
Few people recognize genius when they see it…
…even less understand it.

Eileithyia does though for she gave birth to it.

— The End —