Rise!* Oh, Mighty Jupiter;
Our Father now forgotten.
Come claim your rightful reverence.
Your pagan pedigree misgotten.

You were once our Shining Father;
Great King of all the Sky.
But you allowed your world to set
so a new Son could arise.

Zeus once ruled before you, and
Jesus became your heir.
Today not many realize
how we got from here to there.

I have considered for some moments
how our thoughts of god do change.
Plural notions of so long ago,
today can seem so strange.

We like to think we've come so far,
since those pagan days of yore.
Have we abandoned superstition
or just embraced it even more?

It was millennia ago
that Zeus ruled Mount Olympus.
He, their leader, more than father,
often beaten by hubris.

The Greeks, they worshiped leaders,
seeking standing in this forum.
Such desires, democratic
became their gods that ruled before them.

As the centuries moved on,
your new Latin home was Roma.
Your title too, transformed
to reflect a new persona.

To Zeus we added "Father",
or in Latin, pater, we prefer.
So Zeus, becomes Zeus-pater,
Zupater, then Jupiter.

Our names for gods reveal
exactly how they fill our needs.
Over time our needs evolve
and so a new name supersedes.

As Rome aged, it developed  
a need to know god as a man.
To be one of his number.
To see themselves as of his clan.

This zeus, he can be talked to,
can be greeted and be known.
They "Hail Zeus" as HeyZeus.
And now its Jesus on the Throne.

Through such inquests we can see
the needs Gods fill evolving,
from cold, covetous Kings
to a begotten Son absolving.

We imagine in the Heavens
things to help us understand,
how a universe so endless
can be the realm alone of man.

Blank pages sit before me
like an ocean to be crossed
So, I set off to explore me
finding treasure never lost

Adventure and excitement
have me sailing to unknown
and the need for understanding
has me setting off alone

The journey is not easy
for the truth is hard to find
and ignorance keeps crashing
through the bottom all the time

But I will keep on going
this kind of poem I can't complete
for its the journey, not the end
that makes the heart within me beat

From atop a nearby inkwell
I see the battle rage
Characters as soldiers swiftly march across the page.

Attacking one another
I see a sentence fall.
And me upon my inkwell making reason of it all

Phrases fighting phrases.
Paragraphs collide.
Letters without leaders as the clauses all divide.

When the fighting ended
the punctuation troops arrive
Directing, reconnecting, making sense of those alive.

and now when all's in  order
I see the reasoning indeed.
For, from out of all this fighting comes the story that you read.

This late at night
my mind is numb
my pen has molded
to my thumb
yet, somehow words still seem to come.
Soon my body will succumb.

I cannot keep my head upright
It's been a long and useless night.
The words I write they seem so old.
How often can a poem be told?

Perhaps I'd do a world of good
if I laid my pen upon the wood
and instead of chasing every shred
I'll put my words and self to bed.

It comes like a freight
on a runaway track
and it just keeps on coming
I can't hold it back

At least five hundred cars
plus engine, caboose
Could you imagine the horror
if just one should break loose?

Who knows where its going
it won't stop until
the freight is delivered
and the order is filled

And I just a captain
and into my wine.
I'm afraid to get off
this express of the mind.

How often have I read a verse
then tried to write a line?
As if, through some divine reverse,
the poem, it could be mine.

But, read too many other books,
I've heard them say I do.
My mind and pen behave as crooks.
I just feel the same way, too.