"briseis" poems - Hello Poetry

The exploration of womanhood, viewed by a child, who had failed to birth an heir and was auctioned amidst a war, to lay beside the man who Lyrnessus heard before it saw, and felt, before they felt nothing at all. Plucked from childhood to motherhood, failed motherhood, into obedience and slavery, despised by her husband's mother for the absence of life she yearned to grow. Then veiled in a soft pearlescent, that blurred, but did not hide, the reason she survived, and her brothers and husband did not. Her barren belly proved a blessing when the girls in tents sprouted kleos from their swollen stomachs, to carry the son of foreigners, bloodthirsty for their native home. These girls, they are just girls, brainwashed by glory and trauma, carry children that will slaughter their brothers of blood, in the name of a woman seen only as a measurement of egotistic revenge. And what of Briseis? Aristos Achaion, they cried. To them, he will always be: the best of the Greeks, even after Apollo favours the hand of Paris and forges fate to impale the accidental hamartia. What is her legacy? Aristos Achaion, they cry. As the boy who carries his blood rises from the fire and carries forward after his father's body hit the ground.

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Nov 28, 2018

Nov 28, 2018 at 4:01 PM UTC

mariadt

The Girl Homer Left Behind

The exploration of womanhood, viewed by a child, who had failed to birth an heir and was auctioned amidst a war, to lay beside the man who Lyrnessus heard before it saw, and felt, before they felt nothing at all. Plucked from childhood to motherhood, failed motherhood, into obedience and slavery, despised by her husband's mother for the absence of life she yearned to grow. Then veiled in a soft pearlescent, that blurred, but did not hide, the reason she survived, and her brothers and husband did not. Her barren belly proved a blessing when the girls in tents sprouted kleos from their swollen stomachs, to carry the son of foreigners, bloodthirsty for their native home. These girls, they are just girls, brainwashed by glory and trauma, carry children that will slaughter their brothers of blood, in the name of a woman seen only as a measurement of egotistic revenge. And what of Briseis? Aristos Achaion, they cried. To them, he will always be: the best of the Greeks, even after Apollo favours the hand of Paris and forges fate to impale the accidental hamartia. What is her legacy? Aristos Achaion, they cry. As the boy who carries his blood rises from the fire and carries forward after his father's body hit the ground.

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The sweat streaming down my eye brow Looking at the arrow in my ankle that was shot by Paris' bow Oh my briseis, please don't cry My shield and spear are always yours as i point it at the sky Zeus, you have blessed me with immortality but oh i am cursed All my life i've been killing men for another's thirst Finally my chains have been broken, i can breathe This cold feels nice, my sword at last in it's sheath

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Nov 6, 2020

Nov 6, 2020 at 4:00 AM UTC

AceLione

Argonaut

The sweat streaming down my eye brow Looking at the arrow in my ankle that was shot by Paris' bow Oh my briseis, please don't cry My shield and spear are always yours as i point it at the sky Zeus, you have blessed me with immortality but oh i am cursed All my life i've been killing men for another's thirst Finally my chains have been broken, i can breathe This cold feels nice, my sword at last in it's sheath

8

V. the ballad of briseis my heart is of the flesh of figs, and that which i cannot touch: grainy sweet garnet nectar pretty to behold but easy to bruise no god shall speak for me, briseis for this fig-heart, like the heart of man craves art as it does god and though i know you not by name, but only pseudonym: blood, words, and love, we are kindred souls i'd like to believe that we are cut of the same cloth hewn of the same mound of clay (or cast into the same iron, i suppose for we became one another's anchor the day we met) i once told you, my dear briseis, that if you taught me symbiosis i would teach you love for you found pragma in philosophy cold markov's blankets freud's ego, plato's cave whereas i found pragma in alchemy's poetry chekhov's gun freud's neurotics, plato's human it means nothing. the alchemy lies beyond the chemicals, beyond the seed and the egg, beyond our festivals of atonement, beyond my prima materia and your unfulfilled magnum opus it lies in simple interdependence, the oceans, the heavens, the forests, the deserts, the storms, the famines, the herds of wildebeest, the colonies of ants, the beady dew on the spider web and the purling river shallows, our acrid mouths yearning for mother's milk, the boy who makes us cry at night, the fiery logs roaring against the cold air, the hoot-owls and the faces on the wall (our skeletons never did stay in the closet) bathed in that slow, hideous wonder those interplays of love and symbiosis as i drown and die in reverie once more pray that the stakes may be forever higher that i find those eternal elysian fields so long as our achilles lives to fight again we are more alike, than you or i would ever dare to admit, briseis so humor this fig-heart: hold me and tell me that it'll be all right

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Jan 19, 2021

Jan 19, 2021 at 11:57 PM UTC

wrens_musings

iliad, a poem | no. 5

V. the ballad of briseis my heart is of the flesh of figs, and that which i cannot touch: grainy sweet garnet nectar pretty to behold but easy to bruise no god shall speak for me, briseis for this fig-heart, like the heart of man craves art as it does god and though i know you not by name, but only pseudonym: blood, words, and love, we are kindred souls i'd like to believe that we are cut of the same cloth hewn of the same mound of clay (or cast into the same iron, i suppose for we became one another's anchor the day we met) i once told you, my dear briseis, that if you taught me symbiosis i would teach you love for you found pragma in philosophy cold markov's blankets freud's ego, plato's cave whereas i found pragma in alchemy's poetry chekhov's gun freud's neurotics, plato's human it means nothing. the alchemy lies beyond the chemicals, beyond the seed and the egg, beyond our festivals of atonement, beyond my prima materia and your unfulfilled magnum opus it lies in simple interdependence, the oceans, the heavens, the forests, the deserts, the storms, the famines, the herds of wildebeest, the colonies of ants, the beady dew on the spider web and the purling river shallows, our acrid mouths yearning for mother's milk, the boy who makes us cry at night, the fiery logs roaring against the cold air, the hoot-owls and the faces on the wall (our skeletons never did stay in the closet) bathed in that slow, hideous wonder those interplays of love and symbiosis as i drown and die in reverie once more pray that the stakes may be forever higher that i find those eternal elysian fields so long as our achilles lives to fight again we are more alike, than you or i would ever dare to admit, briseis so humor this fig-heart: hold me and tell me that it'll be all right

66

VII. mitosis i... i love him and i will pay with fire and brimstone maybe i’ll realize that the plot arc of my life doesn’t really make any sense anymore that i don’t know where i’m going (i never really did) and i’m falling i’m ******* falling the potter's wheel lays in disuse the clay has cracked much like ourselves crazed in the heat of our crucible the teacups are but shards and no golden lacquer remains to mend, to smooth sharp edges we cherish things until we can replace them "fragile, handle with care" i didn’t test in an inconspicuous spot i didn’t reset to factory default i didn’t come assembled but i didn’t come broken either we were dealt the cards before we even knew we were players and i cry for innocence had, and innocence lost innocence misplaced, and innocence taken my nightmares lathered in sterile surgeon cyan after all, we lobotomized machines could never feel what pleasures lie, in those frosty windowed wards! arched backs, bucked hips gossamer cauls of flesh unwillingly broken bulimic hearts, skinny love i need not drink but the viscous milken nectar of our lust what pleasure, achilles! what pleasure? what pleasure is there in the supplication of sutured flesh? iphigenia, astynome...briseis— flesh blemished, removed, replaced housing haunted souls heracles, phaethon, oedipus, icarus... are we too consigned to eternal song, that bitter deathless death, like our tragic forbearers? our glory, our hamartia lies only in our love, philtatos when wisdom brings no profit to be wise is to suffer the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted quell your arrogance mitotic spindle my name means glory to the father and i am the prodigal son all is equal in the chaotic omniscience of mitosis, of death, of entropy, of war we? we are indivisible.

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Jun 25, 2021

Jun 25, 2021 at 11:14 PM UTC

wrens_musings

iliad, a poem | no. 7

VII. mitosis i... i love him and i will pay with fire and brimstone maybe i’ll realize that the plot arc of my life doesn’t really make any sense anymore that i don’t know where i’m going (i never really did) and i’m falling i’m ******* falling the potter's wheel lays in disuse the clay has cracked much like ourselves crazed in the heat of our crucible the teacups are but shards and no golden lacquer remains to mend, to smooth sharp edges we cherish things until we can replace them "fragile, handle with care" i didn’t test in an inconspicuous spot i didn’t reset to factory default i didn’t come assembled but i didn’t come broken either we were dealt the cards before we even knew we were players and i cry for innocence had, and innocence lost innocence misplaced, and innocence taken my nightmares lathered in sterile surgeon cyan after all, we lobotomized machines could never feel what pleasures lie, in those frosty windowed wards! arched backs, bucked hips gossamer cauls of flesh unwillingly broken bulimic hearts, skinny love i need not drink but the viscous milken nectar of our lust what pleasure, achilles! what pleasure? what pleasure is there in the supplication of sutured flesh? iphigenia, astynome...briseis— flesh blemished, removed, replaced housing haunted souls heracles, phaethon, oedipus, icarus... are we too consigned to eternal song, that bitter deathless death, like our tragic forbearers? our glory, our hamartia lies only in our love, philtatos when wisdom brings no profit to be wise is to suffer the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted quell your arrogance mitotic spindle my name means glory to the father and i am the prodigal son all is equal in the chaotic omniscience of mitosis, of death, of entropy, of war we? we are indivisible.

65