#odysseus
What's the real moral of the story?
Why was Odysseus sent on that journey?
Like the horse which was used,
Like the dog he let die.
He hid his face
And led those he cared for astray.
Like men who ****** in the night,
Shapeless forces cursed them
Yet, light did not betray their sight.
He may have been a leader,
But he was only the bravest coward.
When he returned home
Life had long moved on,
For he was scarcely recognized.
Such are the ways like of the soldier,
Not far from the warrior-
These lifestyles where peace is deprived.
Where one couple's love
Is the scandalous affair,
Where one couple's love
Is firmly consecrated.
Why these are such matters
To go to war & die for,
Why these are such matters
To go to battle & **** over;
They're well & truly not.
Individual rights are young,
But even so
They are ancient.
Older than the Kings & God(s)?
Apr 7, 2025
Apr 7, 2025 at 2:49 AM UTC
Where are you?
I heard stories that you departed...
What did you do?
There's no way you got outsmarted
Did you forget I am awaiting your arrival?
Did you not think our house will be full of rivals?
Did you forget you have a son?
Why didn't you come when the war was done?
Other wives have their husbands home
Yet you are leaving me on Ithaca alone
Come back, my love, return to your throne
Come back before my heart turns to stone
Ten years ago you were stolen by a war
Ten years ago you stepped outside our door
Yet I have been patiently waiting
By fears and nightmares I was waking
And I have cried my eyes out more than I can count
This loneliness I feel is not something I can surmount
Come back to our bed, to our tree
Come back to me!
Please!
I beg the gods above
Don't delay my beacon
Don't hinder love
The sun is dawning
Another day without news
Tomorrow's morning
My watch continues
I'll be once again looking out my window
Not knowing if I am a wife or a widow
You never should have left!
Your forced departure was worse than a theft
Athena, guide home your favourite
Or don't you love him no more for his shrewdness and bravery?
Oh gods...
We mortals are but pieces in your lust for glorious wars
May 24, 2021
May 24, 2021 at 6:53 PM UTC
It’s hard to conjure up a forest fire
My flames are quiet and I tremble
I flinch
I buckle at the knees
My fight or flight senses were birds in their past lives
I am sorry I was not born Achilles, marching into every war with certainty, never knowing a sliver of doubt
Prophecies of greatness do not cling to me like summer air
I open my mouth and words betray me, for I am no Odysseus with his honey tongue
But heed this promise: I will create something one day
A great many somethings, born not from innate divinity but perseverance
Like Daedalus with his artist’s mind, craftsman’s hand, quiet thinking, deliberate talking
I am becoming
Like golden witch Circe in Aeaea, feeling her way through strange new grounds
Someday, someday, somewhere else
You will see me bloom
Feb 28, 2019
Feb 28, 2019 at 6:02 AM UTC
O sea! O tide! What wonderful life! Awaits us in the ocean.
Adore! Implore! What wonderful mores! Awaits us in the open.
We roar! We soar! What wonderful lore! Awaits lost trepidation.
Forsake those blinds which you thought chains, to see through the illusion.
Forsake those lies which you thought truths, so you can have perception
of that which does not hide from us, but we’ve betrayed it still.
Though of both life and death, mortals shall ne’er bend to their wills,
but of sole life, though not thou death, thou just might;
before going into the ever unknown day-night.
Jul 11, 2018
Jul 11, 2018 at 2:23 PM UTC
How I’ve trekked with muddy boots
Through superficial swamps to arrive here
Where Apollo’s apprentices laze about
Though slicked with sweat the air here is sweet
Where muses pull on poets like reigns
And all dreams and delusions are bared
And all hope and hell shines without glares
And all our secrets slither from our stoic stares
And all are cradled in a community that cares
Oh how I’ve trekked with muddy boots
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 1:37 AM UTC
Smoke filled dens of drifting ***** scent,
Imagined worlds dancing behind the eyes
of the laying men.
Heads fall back and pupils roll to face brow,
revealing a cloudy unseeing white.
What lies behind the eyes of laid men
that makes them respond to the sweet song of
lotus flower time and again?
Are they taken to that Mediterranean isle visited by
Odysseus in his journey, the idle isle where time lazily flows
and sunrise and sunset have no meaning at all?
If I was bunk mate to Odysseus on his mission home
and our boat met sand on this secluded cove,
would I see it for what it was?
After tasting my first sweet lotus petal, offered
to me by beauty divine, could I resist a second kiss?
Would I have bravely boarded the ship away,
eyes hard and mind set on my destination,
or would I have planted feet firmly to sand
and wave as the brave ones sailed away to face
the ever abundant misery of reality?
Mar 3, 2018
Mar 3, 2018 at 6:52 PM UTC
Odysseus, we greatly praise you
From your strength and wisdom
The greeks are lucky to have you
And so is your kingdom
Such great adventures, king Odysseus
Its a shock you could survive
The journey was very dangerous
But at least you're still alive
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 12:58 PM UTC
One eye in, one eye out
Penetrated by your energy deep into my soul, my unconscious.
I am listening, I have opened
O great Odysseus; brave explorer, my love
You have been at war too long
I invite you, sweet dreamer
Dive into the nectar of my lotus
Come feast upon my euphoria,
I blossom before you.
My king, you are your element
Your love, like water, nourishes my exaltation, my highest power;
My feminine divine
Inner goddess released,
We dance to the rhythm of wavelengths
I let you in, or so it seems
I now understand,
It is all a lucid dream
Jan 4, 2018
Jan 4, 2018 at 11:17 PM UTC
When Penelope bid αντίο her dearest Odysseus
Did she shed a tear for her heart left alone
Or sit alone in the room where she would await his return
And knit quietly
The bereaved bride of a nation grieving,
Groaning from the pains of war?
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 10:01 AM UTC
I am the son of Thor.
The blood of Odysseus runs in my veins.
I breathe thunder.
My heart is the ocean.
Do you think I am the son of Cain
To trade my inheritance for your bowl of soup,
For your shiny things that vibrate and spin,
For your **** and violence,
For your ***** pills and swimsuit models?
I will close my eyes to your neon lights.
I will hold my breath against your sweet poison.
I will close my ears to your siren call.
I will dive below the cluttered surface of my consciousness.
I will seek in the darkness and find the spark of the sacred feminine
where she slumbers in the cold stone stillness,
Lightning will surge through my nerves
and I will explode into flame.
Your filth will rise from me like smoke,
Your carnal lies will fall away like ash,
I will smash your idols like twisted mirrors,
And you will remember god.
Jul 13, 2017
Jul 13, 2017 at 8:29 AM UTC
here is something that
mother told me
about god complexes:
“everyone believes themselves
to be gods among men:
even that hideous monster from your
half-remembered Hellenistic dreams
will retreat back to
his craggy hideaway and continue
with his hedonistic ways.
the poor creature:
he will don a halo,
iconize himself in caricatures
pretending that if for a moment
his veins flow ichorous that
Icarus may have envied when his wings
beat in tandem with the footfalls of
the sun chariots’ horses.
“the sun shines upon
hallowed ground, though Polyphemus
will avoid Helios’s scornful gaze.
he herds sheep––his only acolytes––
an unabashed king in his realm,
like a god plays war, or as a child
would play house,
humming hallelujah,
veins running gold-blooded.
when moon rises,
he will hang his weary
shadow at his door and retreat
to his fire-pit. perhaps this will be
the closest he will be to the gods,
basking in the heat of Hestia’s
humble hearth.
“in the end,” mother said,
“Nobody will end up deified.
Icarus may have rained down wax and
feathers in godlike fury
before tilting his head to Helios once more;
Polyphemus waded into the sea,
eyes clouded in godlike fury
before resigning himself to fate, head bowed.”
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 12:24 PM UTC
welcome to a place you used to call home and now is full of strangers
the smell of coffee, forgotten faith, and lost memories cling to the bronze walls - broken friendships (at least partially your fault) taste like bitter chocolate and your could-have-beens echo off the high ceilings
upside down city lights drown in the reflection of leftover rainwater - your tires slash through them and you think quietly about the skin on your forearms
your favorite album isn’t enough to drown the pit of guilt in your stomach and the raindrops don’t wash away your anxiety no matter how hard you wish that they will
what used to be a mirror is now broken, and the shards jab at you, not hard enough to break your skin, but enough to know that something is very wrong
that candle you forgot to blow out last night makes your room smell like every other thing that you left unattended until they grew to be too big for you to handle anymore
you are odysseus, and the world is both scylla and charybdis. you can only hope you’ll make it home.
Dec 26, 2015
Dec 26, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
Oh Penelope, Penelope
in the winds blowing distant!
when storms gather at night
and lightning pierces the sea,
I see how Zeus has struck,
such is time, that
slices through the heart
Oh Penelope Penelope
Did I love you over honour?
Athene oh Athene,
were my prayers not enough?
In the small hours' brewing
pain, how I took valour granted,
oh to believe that destiny
is all but deed and dust,
that victory is about winning
Burying my knees in sand,
set on the horizon, here I mourn:
turning over the wheel of time,
too mortal my soul
for the love of a nymph
Oh Penelope, Penelope,
in the winds blowing distant!
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 2:08 PM UTC
I am twenty-one years old and
I have saved two lives—
a girl whose throat closed despite her
and a boy who thought he had no other choice.
By all accounts, I am
a heroine,
a savior,
some divine-palmed human spread thin
among peers who are the same. The same—
who fear the dark as fully as I
and need the quiet, sometimes,
when the din of all the mouths talking at once
becomes more heavy than loud.
Be gentle, love, approach me slowly—
do not touch my shoulder when
my eyes turn to glass and
know that I hate to be hugged
because your arms will trap my fear somewhere
within me.
I suppose there’s a reason no one writes
what happened to Odysseus
and how the gods felt after their story ended.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 11:23 PM UTC
My soul is a maelstrom
How dare you maim my son.
You’ll choke on my sea
My beasts will eat your heart.
I am god of the depths
You are fragile meat.
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 7:43 PM UTC
Sometimes I wonder,
if my lines,
For Ulysses,
Are chains,
Instead of freedom,
Closer to a siren,
Then the angel I wish I was,
My great poetry,
A trap,
Setting me up,
To remember,
A waste of time,
Not that You are a waste,
Oh great one,
But my heart spends its energy on useless things,
Add my mouth eats too much chocolate.
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 3:38 PM UTC
What should we have expected from new ascents?
You think there is simple safety in messages sent?
Melancholic waves descend, lonely veins sink in,
If I was simple before, you'd be able to see,
See through the extremities that bounded me.
But how could a flower begin these internal spins?
Bounded by piety to seek love away from sin,
Destined, we hope that this one will sink in.
If life's a play then this one is just pretend,
And the toil of tragedy, revealed at play's end.
But if this life is an Odysseun ode,
Then oh! the wonders to be told!
For each new ascent, a heroic tale,
On the way down, purified hail.
For we have cast Circe like Jonah's whale,
And fly alongside a dove's tail,
Whose wings spread in glorious white,
Revealing Leila, mistress of the night.
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 8:43 PM UTC
let's you and I mingle with the tantalizing Sirens
their Song, so seductive, will distract you while I
lead Odysseus to our spacious secret cave
which-- I have newly prepared with Calypso's blessing
[I dare say she seems to have a crush on my Odysseus!]
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 12:10 AM UTC