Home is Homer.
Lovely summer aromas
of fish and salt;
visions of eagles and otters;
people who create and re-create,
forever giving more than they receive.
A city of art and style -
you'll go the extra mile
to stay in happy, hearty Homer.

I am in love with Nobody
And Nobody loves me,
When I roll over in my bed
It’s Nobody I see;
Nobody cares enough to stay
And hold me when I weep,
And Nobody will dry my tears
To soothe me back to sleep;
Nobody is a friend to me
When I am feeling down,
And Nobody knows what to do
To get rid of my frown.

As I go through my average day
Nobody’s by my side,
Offering his company or
proffering his guide.
Nobody is my only friend
Sent from the gods above,
But now it seems that fate has tried
To meddle with our love.
Tomorrow night, my Nobody
Heads back to his old home;
He has a wife and child, he says,
Who know not where he roams;

Nobody has been travelling
For years from shore to shore,
Traversing through Ionia
After the Trojan War.
Oh, I will miss my Nobody
With all my giant heart,
I cannot bear to dwell on thoughts
Of us being apart.
Nobody holds my hand and says,
“Polyphemus, don’t cry,”
But I can’t stop the massive tears
From welling in my eye.

Doctor Larch peers out the window,
Pulling aside brocaded curtains to hide
The grief that he will not show,
The rending emptiness he feels inside.

As his son Homer rides past the sunset,
Not knowing where he goes
But aspiring to see the wide world,
The ocean at Mount Desert,
Seeing wonder in the expanse
And worlds inside a circle of glass.

He has taken with him his heart,
A dark picture of frailty.
He finds unexpected work in an orchard,
Leisurely harvesting round, garnet jewels.
The nomads, dark and wary,
Ask him to read about death and stars.

There are rules for the workers.
And Homer finds that they apply
To no one, neither nomads or
Curious young men.
He sees in the errant father
The reflection of his own,
The man who made him good.
“You are my work of art”
He wrote.

Like an artist with his painting,
Who resists giving it away,
So Doctor Larch holds on to him
Hoping his adolescence ends
And he returns.
Finding peace at the last.

The lack of rules bring about a sea change,
Allowing forbidden love and pain.
He ventures out once more into the vacuum
Of conscience set free,
He devises his own rules about the womb
And how to help those in agony
But eventually…

With all the rules now open,
There is nothing left for him to do.
So he boards the migrant truck
Just as the pilot returns, broken.
He watches the struggle with a wheelchair
Sees his lover watch him with her yellow hair
Knows her future, years of sacrifice.
And he admits at last
That he has a purpose,

The train to St. Cloud huffs slowly away,
With Homer standing in the wet snow.
There is the old asylum,
The orphanage and home on the hill,
Almost black, with the sunset behind,
Homer begins the long climb.
He approaches slowly.

But then, a burst of laughter
And children from the door
Flock around him, dancing, shrieking,
Some holding him like an errant dog,
Who must be told to stay.
“Will you stay?” they ask.
“I think so,” he smiles in irony.
He is home at the last.

Eye can taste
The musky dusky dark
Of a raven on a windowsill

Eye can smell the Witches
Brew, be it stirred or
Be it still

Eye can feel the pain
And sorrow of man
Trapped in shadowy cave

Eye can hear the cries
Of Homer's sirens on
Rocky shore and mystic wave

What you see is what you get
Never has there been
A cliche so obvious
And yet a truth so paperthin

Shouting for longevity,
Slamming at the counterers…
- upon your dignified respite!
Would-be detractors without brevity,
Before the wine-dark Sea at night…
A pleading to philosophy of commonly renowned,
Beating sand and posturing, uncouth before a crown;

“Priam please!”

Sun and Moon,
two sons shall plead,
nay, -beg in tandem with the man;

“He serves the seas, trust him please, our father; this priest of Trojan-land!”

Laocoon

“Fear the Greeks, of mind I speak, approval by a van-i-ty; it surely is a death you seek!

An asp this horse, gift no more and tragedy in due remorse,

I beg of you my call to heed, wooden-burnt this crispy steed,

…alight in flame, glorified name; Poseidon shall endorse!”

Priests of Apollo

“Ridiculous! Worship we must, now bring it to the City thus!”

Laocoon

“The actions of accursed Kore,

Need I remind you all Paris caused this war?

For he mocked this god, the abyss it knows, with terror comes a deadly tide,

**** that fool and his fiddling pride!

Burn this beast we must with haste for Greeks they have a certain taste,

Their acts meant always to confound, wily, since they were unbound.

What harm may do, to rest at shore? Consult the stars of yester-yore.

Assign no chore, one heaven’s night, plus a day, to sit upon our princely shore?”


Setting
(read/spoken at the fastest pace the reader can go)

A horrid hiss above the wave as two doth slither from out the cave…

  The creatures from the darkest days, ancient spectacle for the knaves, bear witness to the punishment, commanded by a great trident, hearing screams of bannermen, for King and council a shocking twist, serpents ****** from out the mists, encircling priest and his kin, the howling they had done no sin, never be forgot-ten, as Typhon cried out merrily, serpents and the tragic sea; swallowed up all the three.

Priam

“Farewell dear Laocoon and two sons with thee!”

She fluttered like the heart ascending o’er that ‘a way,
her swirling flower petals trailing scents throughout the day.

Heaven’s hounds are following, the wolves who chase the moon,
who chased after the birds and eagles, -who clamored to the sun.

The meeting followed once the bull, and the man,
tree and mountain, rivers and ship; found they met as one.

And finally the snake appeared to join in Tlaloc’s face,
All the actions, movements and motions that occur in outer-space.
Each apportioned in a name and symbol, time and order, or function each unto its place...

When the heart did see them afterwards and it fluttered like the early birds, inhaling in the wondrous, feeling something marvelous, and trailing through the skies upon and over time…
…and song or poem, bardic tale, kenning and the rhyme,

And set in stone or scribed on scroll, clay-carved or remembered in the mind. Lost of rhyme or reason and forgotten of their meaning until thought of as sublime. A tragedy or travesty, our lost past and history and that Dragon from the mine; and who he was or who he is and what we’ve lost or what we did.

A sleeper nay, a beast they say, who directs the evil Id...

And the birds shall fly and flowers grow, the ship arrived and animals stowed. The rivers, tree, mountain, bee, the bull and last, the man.
An ordering too and of all things said to be a plan,
…and that Dragon in his awful cave,
when Homer died became the grave,
...for over time did man forget them and thus became a slave.

chorus

…qe te awis petō, beehelōtis krēskō, plowós ghēmi qe kaiwotos karpō,

Te danus, deru, uros, bheiqlā, te ukson qe póstmos te haner,
…qe tagjōvi do-qe-pe olja weqtise seke do esmi e-men,
…qe jod Dherghen en-hen ghouros-te-speqos,
jom e-Homer walóm weiṛtō en-dō bhodsās;
…uperi tempos, ye man ne-mē, qe-en-dō e-dōsos.

By David John Mowers

Oceanus, Acheron, Styx and Gyges, Phlegethon,

Phaeacians lament, mourn the loss, Scheria, dissolved in froths.

Virgil’s tale, found correct, a land too good, a nation wrecked,

Nausikaa, burn the ships; their minds released, cool airy nips,

Below the wave, watery grave, submerged to bottom, fathoms by stave,

Fathoms some more, until the whorl, descending to, another world.

Through Omphalos, to Land of Sleep, awaits a beast, where time has ceased,

Darkness here, underworld, cold and frigid, below the whirl,

In solemn grave, souls released, judged and counted, by the beast,

Deeper than, the deep itself, past drowning fairies and dying elves,

Who did mourn them? Those golden men, magic mariners, Mino's kin?

What wrong was seen? What vice not true? What awful sin? What did they do?

One thousand years, first black age, Two thousand more, to find the stage,

Cast off Aries and cast Orion, to find beginning, of Golden Lion.

Man of Heavens, Beast agrees, Bull of Sky, Ox of seas,

Land of Punt, Land of Éire, Ogyges blue, hearts on fire,

All the seashores, all the mines, Tribe of Dan, from ancient times,

Port of Sais, Port of Thera, Port of Lagash, bygone era,

Sailor’s horse, Minotaur, a lyre is crying, strummed guitar, nation dying, abattoir.

Ochre foams to sanguine depth, there they rested, where Kronos slept,

He’ll never answer, he doesn’t care, we’ll never know, if this was fair.

Our hearts in sadness, hands on the gates! I curse you Poseidon!

. . .and your Sea of Fates!

As the walls of Troy
came crumbling down
I wonder where it was
that you ran

I keep a small faith
that something stole you
           instead
wrenched you onto its ship
           bedded you

I have words
which taste like venom
           or a sinner’s eulogy
the way
that I can put them together
bringing rhapsodists to their knees

            and you
have a self-conviction:
           your words
are better than mine
           my words
are merely the stink
which rises
from the suburban ******* tip

you forget that we speak
            the same language
the same words
over and
            over again

I wake up in May
there is dew on the sill of the window
            culminated
from my ****** foulness

you climbed through it
             said goodbye
with a dry mouth
and a steady voice

every evening
is an odyssey for you

I was the antagonist
I wanted to flood your ship
I wanted to drown your men

you are the wise man
               the one
with the ideas
               the one
who in the end
is meant to save us all

a different you – I know it’s you
you feel the same
                same
strength in your knees
                and same
self-conviction

returned to me
and to this archaic city
at the start of May

your words are different
and now
you have a kiss
like the world is ending
and I am your final prayer

we are always searching
for a way to disappear
indefinitely
inside each other

between the walls
of a timber stead
we have cycled
back to the beginning

                   begin again.