"aeschylus" poems
The man who rightly acts without coercion
Will not be grieved, can never wholly sink in wretchedness;
While the lawless criminal is forcibly dragged under
In the current of time when from the shattered mast
The elements rip down his sails.
He shouts, there is no ear to hear him
Struggling, hopeless, at the maelstrom's center.
Gods laugh at the transgressor now,
Watching him, his pride now wrecked,
Caught in desperation's shackles.
He flees the rocks in vain;
His fortunes smash on retribution's reef
And, unmourned, he is engulfed.
2.4k
This tomb hideth the dust of Aeschylus, an Athenian, Euphorion's son, who died in wheat-bearing Gela; his glorious valor the precinct of Marathon may proclaim, and the long-haired Medes, who knew it well."
On the Plain at Marathon
We stood in Darius’ way.
An outnumbered band of Athenians
who the Medians sought to slay.
They had first crushed the Ionians
Then put Eretria to the Torch.
Wherever Darius conquered
the bleeding earth was scorched.
Our Hoplites held the high Ground
and penned the Persians in.
For several days a stalemate reigned.
Neither side could win.
But when the Persians spit their force
and sailed on a friendly tide.
Our hand was forced
there was but one course
if Athens was not to die.
Our Phalanx moved against each wing
of the Median horde.
Though numerous, they were lightly armed
against our spears and swords.
We burned their ships and slew their men
Their Panic turned the tide.
Aeschylus seemed to be everywhere
urging on our side.
A Legend holds Pheidippides
To Athens then made haste
to proclaim: “Rejoice , We conquer!”
at the end of his last race.
Nov 30, 2011
Nov 30, 2011 at 8:39 PM UTC
“Suppliants of the Hearth”
~AESCHYLUS
With suppliant olive branch, to what kinder land could Man return?
Whose cities and earth of brightened water
Olympian lords, ye ancient gods below
Whose end possessed the tomb, though Savior Zeus
Keeps pious souls and yet receives
(respectful in the airy lands of men)
Those suppliants of the Hearth, rehearsed!
Though for the smarmy scorn of ****** men
Before the draught tastes the dregs of waste
Return their ships upon the brothing seas
And wintry stings of hurricanes the braved
Pressed on by lightnings, thunders, cast upon
More wild of winds, by facing life to death
Undo what wrong the law forbids
Cousins of pain who lie in strain upon unwilling beds!
Who shows the faithful witness
Still unknown by natives here
As unexpected to the false
Unknown upon who know and last at length!
Meloncoly more of song than Ionian strings
My heart unused to tears on Nile’s cheek
We gather bloom of sorrow
Anxious friends
Someone in search of strength
As exiles, far away on an empty mist!
Hear then, ancestral gods
And kindly look upon the tears of justice lost
With hating people, nothing left to lawlessness undecreed-
Our union justly met!
Behold the Heavens
Invincible in bulwark
Touring always the lasting weary
Among men, respect of gods!
Now will be done
Traced easy in the Earth
Uncompromised of fortune
And blackness through the hearts of men!
Dec 10, 2011
Dec 10, 2011 at 10:47 AM UTC
Smoke trails up into the air
Sticky with the scent of
Vanilla and stale cigarettes
That stings my nose.
My shirt sticks to my back
and the sweat collects in my hair.
I swirl hot tea in my mouth
Vanilla creamer
Softening the bitterness of the tea.
My mind clouds with the words of
Aeschylus
Running in and around each other
I cannot make sense of any of it.
My head aches
from the smoke
and the stress
And I just want to stop.
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 22, 2011 at 12:47 AM UTC
8. A four line poem for my 8th grade teacher
an A for my efforts and a weekly pamphlet feature
'Blue' by Sam a tale of: spilled ink
of an endless ocean; the whole blue kitchen sink
19. 4 stanzas for a professor of mine
a little splotch of blood or maybe red wine
an A for the reference to Bukowski at the end
but I guess he didn't know the bluebird too, was my friend
Blue was it's name, it was almost the same
as the one hanging in my lounge in a frame
this time it talked of the ocean of endlessness
and was penned like the spill it referenced
A mark for my friendless existence
with lark he congratulated my sedulous recklessness
an Aeschylus with a reflective tragic fecklessness
driven to or destined for the precipice
so I hoped when
I hung beside my poem
the professor did know then
not all doors should be opened
Aug 20, 2016
Aug 20, 2016 at 5:27 AM UTC
with citation of Aeschylus, when Clytemnestra's ghost
enters Apollo's temple seeing himself slain among
the gorgons, wingless congregation,
the effort of matricide with hands washed in menthol
rather than water... with citation of Eumindes
everyone might unearth a pyramid of giza
as source of just divine intervention,
with zeus and the sphinx
(riddle-hound of wisdom), hades
and the cerberus (shadow-grasp of a snail's
heaving hour)....
because who'd wish to encourage
congregations of necrophilia accepted
with over-towering spectacles
of ******* rectangles high up to count
100 levels with only one room
a burial chamber later blinded to
provoke squirting sulphuric toads into motion?
as asked: where are the sneezing beasts
of gesundheit applaud that might encourage
rather than prove to be a Pharaoh's cursing?
i mean, i might just be a tourist rather than
an archaeologist, yawning admiring chiselled marble
into picasso shapes... and i might not be a grave-digger,
but then why leave a dead body with so much
treasure worthy of defending as if you were living?
Feb 29, 2016
Feb 29, 2016 at 11:25 PM UTC
Take your time and write away
Time will come close and follow your skill,
You will forget some and lose some
But, learning will hap and increase mastery,
Flow, you must; Conquer you will.
Again, doubt will ponder thy thoughts
For, greatness happens in increment,
Like language itself, differ through evolution
Your writing too will ensue through exploration.
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 5:27 PM UTC
He ,wounded, lay in no man's land
fearful to crawl fro or back.
He'd wait for darkness to try his luck
and hoped the Huns would not attack.
Something was needed to pass the time
He reached his hand into his sack
Aeschylus, in the original Greek,
He read with pleasure
until night turned black
In the Attic tongue he was well honed
and so he never felt alone.
Dec 20, 2011
Dec 20, 2011 at 10:46 PM UTC
In their time
In their clime
They did
what they could
And it stood
What do we do
In our time
And in our clime?
Will what we do stand?
O fellow poets, have a heart
Be not like Aeschylus
the poet on Greek shores
so distracted and abstracted
he could not see
the lamagayer's missile
aimed at his shining dome
Your poetic heart should be home
singing sweet phrases to scarred clouds
and healing the wounds
from uncaring man's foolhardy actions
Write poetry to make the ocean's heart
heat up and sweat
Make the clouds ravenous
Till they weep upon the earth
and the world becomes a sea of green
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 5:55 PM UTC
-mors vincit omnia
The many old who live alone
must pay attention, take care.
Any misstep might hasten their descent.
Tumble down the lonely steps.
Lie waiting in your own filth,
unable to reach a phone.
What loneliness must attend such a fall?
If only we could choose.
Proud Aeschylus was struck down
by a falling tortoise.
That’s not too bad.
To be hit by a bus while
lighting one last lethal cigarette.
That’s even better.
In bed, at ninety, chugging toward
one, final gasp of ******
Even better yet.
But not in a strange bed hooked up
to noisy, indifferent machines,
poisoned by chemotherapy,
surrounded by terrified
friends and family struck dumb,
embarrassed and uncomfortable,
stunned by their own fears.
Best on your own two feet.
Like a soldier before the bullet.
Like a Viking struck down in battle.
Like you might have even mattered.
But there is no choosing.
Decrepitude is woven in our DNA.
You cannot escape the
inevitable carnage of mortality,
but you can be very careful
where you place your feet.
Feb 24, 2017
Feb 24, 2017 at 6:45 AM UTC
i rather believe in angels
that men
who attribute themselves
a loss of free will
in order to just sell plastician’s extension
of what’s called life by the non-memorable
numberings in equal measure numbings
of what man isn’t given he chose neither devil’s tail
or angelic wings but the monkey’s ********
and guided the 100m metres beyond marathon
for a measure of a chatty shadow allowing sepia
as proof of grey...
flip the ****** coin will you!
flip it!
ah... you won’t flip it...
i’ll marathon myself ready as audience +1 for
the tragedy of aeschylus... sad cosine exhausted...
sad because the fattened actors in numerology
expanded the fate of acting with the actor’s once taken
for plasticians of doning masks to later
adorning man with a fake sexuality on stage
as a forging of forgetting the sexuality of the feminine:
woman cannot fake her sexuality
man can with homosexuality...
but woman cannot fake her sexuality should
our reproduction be usurped and lost...
but isn’t that double homosexuality of
man usurping woman from faking her ***
by acting and...
ah crap... the proof came with inter-racial ***
white girl met brown boy and sang about
a blue-eyed afghani girl in the verse of van morrisson
concerning the stranger who wasn’t a spaniard
but a scandinavian who wouldn’t return the love affair
of the stereotypical phrasing of a book material
to employ a little country in terms of how many metaphysical
spoons were sold counter to the number of soups slurred.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 10:18 PM UTC
Today we remember your legacy through the words Aeschylus
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
Until, in our own despair,
Against our will,
Comes wisdom
Through the awful grace of God."
Jan 18, 2021
Jan 18, 2021 at 7:01 AM UTC
I want to hear you
Speak in Greek,
For it's the language
In which Aristotle
Tried to formulate tragedy.
Aren't the troubles
We sometimes must endure
More the classical variety
In this age of technology,
Yet the Julian you turn to
Is not the Apostate...
I don't prefer any former residence
That I owned along the rain.
Tribulations will drain our coffers
But I have insurance implanted
By way of teal dream in your eyes,
So I'd like to ask you
To not go looking for pain.
Optimism isn't always wasted time.
I'm bearing down on all that binds us,
And I'd wager we're both cultivating
Our gardens now.
Will you stay up with me
Under the lights of the greenhouse tonight?
Color my eyes in to reflect yours
While you collect your concerns below.
Just don't scavenge the pain out of our fortune,
Like I know you could.
I couldn't bear to hear you speak in Greek
While my heart's on the altar.
Don't you see that I was always
Absolutely a dowry for the taking
And I was tarnished every time?
I never thought that I too
Was worthy of love.
I never knew that there existed
The magnitude you achieve,
Which is why I never want to read
Your magnitude in the context
Of seismologic destruction.
I couldn't bear witness to your holy carnage...
But **** you'd be good at it.
Aeschylus would weep at the fact
That he never wrote it in detail.
You would speak in Greek
With your own added touch.
But it's all in speculation
That I don't want to live to see.
Oct 5, 2015
Oct 5, 2015 at 6:00 PM UTC
/funny... the thing about the minotaur in a maze... the minotaur never faces the torero... a labyrinth does not allow for a charging bull impetus... how would a typical bullfight look like between a bull and a torero in a labyrinth? probably less... fame-arriving of the torero... with the spectacle in claustrophobia... the dead bull in both instances... but less... the concern for "heroism" on part of man... unless the lost man seeking answer, exit, end of the labyrinth... and the head of a bull atop a body of man... able to charge, zig-zagging!
no offense, but none taken,
but i sometimes prefer rye
to a french brioche, sometimes...
not always...
but i sometimes do...
who was that m.d. who wrote
a book about *** differences,
having reread the lord of the flies,
revealing the "male" reading
"habits" of: bypassing the narrative
elements in order to get to
the dialogue? ****** didn't
cheat and read only
Aeschylus?
*bounds decreed eternally;
else would heart outstripping
tongue
cast misgiving to the winds.
now in darkness deep it groans,
brooding in sickly despair,
and no longer it hopes to resolve
in an orderly web these
mazes of a fevered mind*
(prior to clytemnestra)...
straight to the dialogue!
so much for the male
concern to mind the narrative
and bypass dialogues...
or a: focus for a need to
make it: pivoting.
bothersome attention to mind...
who knows what is
dialogue and what isn't
narrative, and how many people
sometimes are permitted
to appear, disguised as narrator...
no wonder then,
the taught scenario of solipsistic
narration, shying away from
the guillotine...
but if a doctor,
skips past the descripite bits of
lords of the flies chasing dialogues...
you sure he should be trusted
with a human anatomy?!
no, i'm pretty sure i never
ever not finished a book...
however tedious...
last time i checked it too me
2 months to finish a book...
but i did... not that it was boring
or anything,
but it was, to me...
the corner stone of the subsequent
2 months... meaning?
within the 2 months i had other bricks
or lay down,
the book itself?
a corner i orientated my
two months against...
as a way to digest time...
enongate it when necessary,
and shortening it when concerning
a "necessary" pivot...
**** a doctor rereading
the lord of the flies disclosing he:
passes the descriptive narrative
segments to get to the narrative?!
could have been a Shakespearean hafiz!
this is not even peacocking...
it's only making available what's
made ready...
what is...
closer than the sun,
to cradle a mind and revel in disclosing
it, to: another.
Jun 7, 2018
Jun 7, 2018 at 8:30 PM UTC
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate,
I've information rhythmical, poetical and lexical,
I know the poets of our land and quote their plays historical,
From Macbeth to Much Ado, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with rhythm hendecasyllable,
I understand assonance and refrain octosyllable,
About pentameter theory I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the style of poet Edward Hughes.
I'm very good at couplets and at blank verse very fabulous;
I know the seventy-one plays ascribed to Aeschylus:
In short, in matters rhymical, poetical, and lexical,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
I know our poem-history, Caedmon's Hymn to Chaucer's works;
I can cite bards' acrostics with volatility in my vocal box,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In dialect ionic I can cite Semonides of Amorgos;
I can tell undoubted Aratus from Aristeus and Sophocles,
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.
Then I can write a decasyllable as a dactyl or tetrameter,
And tell you ev'ry detail of soliloquies in Shakespeare:
In short, in matters rhythmical, poetical, to elloquate,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
In fact, when I know what is meant by a "septet" and a "sestet",
When I can tell at sight a literary from a prose effect,
When such affairs as odic and idyllic I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely 'to be or not to be' by Dane "Hamlet".
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern rhymery,
When I know more iambic than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I'm audacious, vexatious and dilatory
You'll say a poet laureate has ne'er been so conciliatory.
For my alliteration knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters rhythmical, poetical and etiquette,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
May 3, 2021
May 3, 2021 at 11:44 AM UTC
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate,
I've information rhythmical, poetical and lexical,
I know the poets of our land and quote their plays historical,
From Macbeth to Much Ado, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with rhythm hendecasyllable,
I understand assonance and refrain octosyllable,
About pentameter theory I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the style of poet Edward Hughes.
I'm very good at couplets and at blank verse very fabulous;
I know the seventy-one plays ascribed to Aeschylus:
In short, in matters rhymical, poetical, and lexical,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
I know our poem-history, Caedmon's Hymn to Chaucer's works;
I can cite bards' acrostics with volatility in my vocal box,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In dialect ionic I can cite Semonides of Amorgos;
I can tell undoubted Aratus from Aristeus and Sophocles,
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.
Then I can write a decasyllable as a dactyl or tetrameter,
And tell you ev'ry detail of soliloquies in Shakespeare:
In short, in matters rhythmical, poetical, to elloquate,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
In fact, when I know what is meant by a "septet" and a "sestet",
When I can tell at sight a literary from a prose effect,
When such affairs as odic and idyllic I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely 'to be or not to be' by Danish "Hamlet".
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern rhymery,
When I know more iambic than a novice in a nunnery
In short, when I'm audacious, vexatious and dilatory
You'll say a poet laureate has ne'er been so conciliatory.
For my alliteration knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters rhythmical, poetical and etiquette,
I am the very model of a modern poet laureate.
Jul 26, 2021
Jul 26, 2021 at 8:15 AM UTC