"trireme" poems - Hello Poetry

A knife cuts clean the jugular of Greece, Sun-shattered Autumn spurts in breezes, Her face falls like crumpled sails of the trireme ~This is the sound of sinking clouds, mammatus~ The slow tottering head sinks into itself, The arm of once-command lies lengthwise Next to the sea, as waves erase all her form, And the drear and maddened moon in its cage of stars.

0

Oct 27, 2022

Oct 27, 2022 at 7:10 PM UTC

ChrisSaitta

Greece Fell Long Before the Sun

A knife cuts clean the jugular of Greece, Sun-shattered Autumn spurts in breezes, Her face falls like crumpled sails of the trireme ~This is the sound of sinking clouds, mammatus~ The slow tottering head sinks into itself, The arm of once-command lies lengthwise Next to the sea, as waves erase all her form, And the drear and maddened moon in its cage of stars.

8

When you put pigs in charge of Democracy you get pigswill and muck!! playing ***** chess and eating bacon butties unaware of the irony enough said!!..... Within the dialogues of Plato, the founding father of Greek Philosophy – Socrates – is portrayed as hugely pessimistic about the whole business of democracy. In his Book Six of The Republic, Plato describes Socrates falling into conversation with a character called Adeimantus and trying to get him to see the flaws of democracy by comparing a society to a ship. If you were heading out on a journey by sea, asks Socrates, who would you ideally want deciding who was in charge of the vessel? Just anyone or people educated in the rules and demands of seafaring? The latter of course, says Adeimantus, so why then, responds Socrates, do we keep thinking that any old person should be fit to judge who should be a ruler of a country? Socrates’s point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition. And like any skill, it needs to be taught systematically to people. Letting the citizenry vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing to Samos in a storm. Socrates was to have first hand, catastrophic experience of the foolishness of voters. In 399 BC, the philosopher was put on trial on ******* up charges of corrupting the youth of Athens. A jury of 500 Athenians was invited to weigh up the case and decided by a narrow margin that the philosopher was guilty. He was put to death by hemlock in a process which is, for thinking people, every bit as tragic as Jesus’s condemnation has been for Christians. Crucially, Socrates was not elitist in the normal sense. He didn’t believe that a narrow few should only ever vote. He did, however, insist that only those who had thought about issues rationally and deeply should be let near a vote. We have forgotten this distinction between an intellectual democracy and a democracy by birthright. We have given the vote to all without connecting it to that of wisdom. And Socrates knew exactly where that would lead: to a system the Greeks feared above all, demagoguery.

0

Jan 18, 2020

Jan 18, 2020 at 9:30 PM UTC

yenson

Ketchup on bacon...ignoramuses in town....

When you put pigs in charge of Democracy you get pigswill and muck!! playing ***** chess and eating bacon butties unaware of the irony enough said!!..... Within the dialogues of Plato, the founding father of Greek Philosophy – Socrates – is portrayed as hugely pessimistic about the whole business of democracy. In his Book Six of The Republic, Plato describes Socrates falling into conversation with a character called Adeimantus and trying to get him to see the flaws of democracy by comparing a society to a ship. If you were heading out on a journey by sea, asks Socrates, who would you ideally want deciding who was in charge of the vessel? Just anyone or people educated in the rules and demands of seafaring? The latter of course, says Adeimantus, so why then, responds Socrates, do we keep thinking that any old person should be fit to judge who should be a ruler of a country? Socrates’s point is that voting in an election is a skill, not a random intuition. And like any skill, it needs to be taught systematically to people. Letting the citizenry vote without an education is as irresponsible as putting them in charge of a trireme sailing to Samos in a storm. Socrates was to have first hand, catastrophic experience of the foolishness of voters. In 399 BC, the philosopher was put on trial on ******* up charges of corrupting the youth of Athens. A jury of 500 Athenians was invited to weigh up the case and decided by a narrow margin that the philosopher was guilty. He was put to death by hemlock in a process which is, for thinking people, every bit as tragic as Jesus’s condemnation has been for Christians. Crucially, Socrates was not elitist in the normal sense. He didn’t believe that a narrow few should only ever vote. He did, however, insist that only those who had thought about issues rationally and deeply should be let near a vote. We have forgotten this distinction between an intellectual democracy and a democracy by birthright. We have given the vote to all without connecting it to that of wisdom. And Socrates knew exactly where that would lead: to a system the Greeks feared above all, demagoguery.

10

there is a small fire, a flickering light, akin to a firefly lost in the cold mists of night, shining bright where my joy should be. there is a deep well, a profound darkness, akin to a cavern flooded with frigid dark waves echoing eternally to the sound of loneliness. there is a lackluster wreckage, a broken trireme, akin to a kingly one that sailed out of Ithaca, bleeding memories through a gashing wound. there is a rhyme, a shattered syllable, akin to a muffled shout that reverberated throughout those splintered blinks of a forlorn childhood...

0

Sep 24, 2024

Sep 24, 2024 at 4:28 AM UTC

Xororoth

a private odyssey

there is a small fire, a flickering light, akin to a firefly lost in the cold mists of night, shining bright where my joy should be. there is a deep well, a profound darkness, akin to a cavern flooded with frigid dark waves echoing eternally to the sound of loneliness. there is a lackluster wreckage, a broken trireme, akin to a kingly one that sailed out of Ithaca, bleeding memories through a gashing wound. there is a rhyme, a shattered syllable, akin to a muffled shout that reverberated throughout those splintered blinks of a forlorn childhood...

24