Tales

HELEN OF TROY

To the man who forgot I am half God before I am a woman, did you really believe that I would not choose freedom, sky flavoured and sea beloved over the prison you kept me in?

Did you really think it was that easy to hold my heart once wed, you could forget me until I was needed? Did you forget that the blood that runs through my veins is ichor not iron? Did it not strike you, Theseus, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Achilles, and yes, even you Paris, that I would always belong to myself first and that is the only reason I would run?

Did no one ever teach you, that when you try to touch a Goddess, when you treat her like she is property, you are playing with divine fire and you and everything you love will burn?

THE RAGE OF ACHILLES

Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles

MYTHOLOGY!

What do you mean!
Zeus
spat
thunderbolts and lightning
and the Gods they walked
about on eggs shells
to the sound of
several sphincters… tightening.

THIS is no MYTH
another lightning bolt
One scorched Ionic Column
the Kracken quaked
The Muses fled
to leave behind a
Hera calm but solemn
Several sheep were roasted
a Ricochet the cause
Hades had his Toga singed
Poseidon lost his draws
Pan left for somewhere Georgie
Persephone for the coast
and Ariel and Mercury
a second delivery post
But Zeus would not be quietened
His words echoed from the roof
THIS IS NOT MYTHOLOGY
THIS IS THE
BLOODY TRUTH!

ATHENA GIRL

Her heart is wisdom skinned
and wit warmed splendor,
the echoes of a war cry holding
its four chambers together.

She rises like Athena
on a night of victory dancing.
She rises like the blood moon
in a sky of a thousand nebulae bursting.

ATHENA

The old Gods may be ash and bone now, but in us they rise anew.

Did you think Athena would just disappear when there were so many little girls she has yet to help become warriors too?

She, the marrow of invention, a story wrapped around the ribcage of every hero who has mastered the art of war.

She, who rewards courage and bravery; when my daughter asks how to fight monsters, Athena is who I tell her to look for.

APOLLO TO ICARUS

Seeing you come to me should be catharsis but instead it takes on the color of murder.

It is because you are the mortal one between us. More beautiful in your emotion, easier to kill.

All that energy inside you as quickly perishable as the entire lifespan of a butterfly.

Maybe this was why I wanted you, I had grown cold with responsibility for the sun.

Destruction was not what I intended for you, but this is what happens to all who follow in my wale.

Ask the sunflower who she used to be, She will tell you she was the mortal who fell in love with me.

This was the difference between ichor and iron. The universe made you closer to itself than us.

The water will take better care of you than me, Let me melt your wings, you belong to the sea.

Now a stillness neitger of us knew before. Now a softness no one can answer for.

<n>Medusa</n> (1892), a painting by <n>Franz von Stuck</n>.

GARDEN WALKS WITH DEMETER

Yesterday in my garden, I met Demeter,
bringing spring roses to bloom whilst I 
was wondering, “How powerful is my mothers
love?”

And she planted a kiss on my forehead
and answered, “When Persephone, my child,
was stolen from me, I plunged the world into darkness,

not a flower was allowed to bloom or grow.
When she returned, I brought the whole earth
back to life, everything bathed in sunshine.

That is what a mothers love can do.
It can bring winter in all its fury,
or summer in all its purity.”

THE SUN GOD

Who else could tame the sun other than a boy of gold born melody-souled and prophecy-tongued.

Poetry in those veins, healing in his eyes, but if he so desired he could turn cities hollow.

The story goes that Midas had a golden touch, but if gold could name itself, it would choose to be named Apollo.

PERSEPHONE TO HADES

You are the kindest thing that ever happened to me, even if that is not how our tale is told.

When everyone else told me I was destined to be a forgotten nymph that nurtured flowers and turn meadows gold,

you saw that the ichor that resides in me demanded its own throne.

You showed me

how a love like purs can turn even the darkest, coldest realm into the happiest of homes.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

They’ve just made love
in a clearing in woods.
She dozes lightly,
naked on the flattened
fragrant grass.

                              Orpheus
rises; he’s restless.
The way she lies there
it’s as if she’s already 
dead-a sight he can’t bear.
And so, without knowing it,
he chooses loss, the one 
sure song.

                              She wakes in time
to see him turn
away and enter the dark
tunnel of trees, humming a tune
he’ll soon put words to.

Myths can’t be
translated as they did in
their ancient soil. We can
only find our own
meaning in our own time.

ATHENA TO MEDUSA

I’ll make you a trade, your beauty
for stone, Your sea-beloved tresses
for venom-filled snakes, your innocent
doe eyes for frigid gaze.

The sea is in the habit of
ravishing what does not belong
to him, talking without consideration.

But, sweet girl, I promise you, 
I will not allow this to be your ruin.
You are sacred, one of my own.

And no cruel chaos will devour
you again, choose terror over maiden,
relinquish your human.

And I will turn you into a Goddess in
your own right, a deity of monsters, a
myth that will scare men for all the
years and their seasons.

<n>Apollo di Baia</n> (1993) from the <n>Mediterraneo</n> series, photographed by <n>Mimmo Jodice</n>.

AN INTERLUDE WITH ARTEMIS

The night sky is a wolf’s mouth
today, and Artemis, bathed in solitude,
is on her wild hunt. I meet her by the
silver lake and ask her

about her alone and would she ever
give it up for love. She chuckles as she
gestures to the exquisite forest
“What about love? I have enough

How can any one person compare to
such splendor?
I traded my duties for belonging to
myself, for this wolf wild heart was
not made to surrender.”

PERSEPHONE TO DEMETER

Do you remember what happened
the first time I touched a pomegranate shrub?
Instead of bursting to a full red fruit,
it witted and mottled under my fingers
until you snatched it and brought it back to life.

We both knew in that moment,
I nurtured something in my chest you
couldn’t bring yourself to love.
So you kept me hidden, deep in a forest
where no one could find me,

the darkness an ugliness festering
under this, my pretty nymph skin.
But, Mama, he found me. He saw me
nourish this beast in the woods,
fell in love with the part of me that
no one else could, promised me a land where

I could be a queen and not another version of you,
a place where I could unleash my flaws and fury
without having to disappoint you. They told you
they could bring me back to you, to pacify your anger, so you could bring back the spring.

ARGONAUTS’S VOW

Pushed prow southerly into the golden wind: hurt the eyes: gold pelted water: so looked less far away:

plovers huddling on the tide’s last piece of shore: rise up in brightness: clap wings:

I told myself I’ll go where eagles go: if to brimstone:

my wake a narrow river back to its source in cedar: and when sunlight embera the shore’s soft fleece will be before me.

LESSONS FROM PATROCLUS

I am trying to stop being the ashes that you left behind.

I am trying to remember that though Achilles loved Patroclus, it ended in his death and nothing can change that.

Patroclus loved a man who was too much fire and love cannot heal what burns that way.

No matter the rivera or the Gods or the wars, when someone leaves a burning in your mouth

it is best that they stay g

HADES

Where we go when he closes
my eyes and under what country:
some blue darkness, farther than hell;
a landscape of absence and root and stone.
There are no bodies here, we dream
shapeless dreams-a constant,
cloudless storm.

Mother, I’ll never wake up
from him, I have already travelled
too far. My mouth is the color
of his mouth and his arms are
no longer his arms; they’re mute 
as smoke, as my first white dress,
and the spear of his name, once
ferocious, dissolves on my tongue
like sugar, like birdsong, I whisper it:
Hades.

FOR THOSE WHO BETRAYED NEMESIS

You thought you saw the last of
her when you pushed her into the
darkness crafted from your own 
version of hell.

But you did not realise that down in
the abyss, she would take the parts
you broke in her, and convert them to
swords so well.

She made a rope of her own spine and
threw herself to the surface without the
help of any God.

You can run and hide as far as you want,
amd wish for her to fail. But she tamed her monsters,

they are now her army and she rides
her demons into battle. She is
Nemesis the Goddess of Retribution
and she is coming for you all.

[GREEK]

Be in me as the eternal moods
Of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are-
gaiety of flowers.
Have me in the strong loneliness
of sunless cliffs
And of gray waters.
Let the gods speak softly to us

In days thereafter,
the shadowy flowers of Oreus
Remember thee.

LETTERS FROM HADES TO PERSEPHONE

Tell me losing everything is
what saved you. Tell me you
finally tasted freedom. Don’t lie.
I see it in your eyes. Women lie
to their mothers. Women do not
know how to use their own
voices and resort to things deeper.
Don’t lie to me.

Tell me you loved to destroy.

Tell me you need me. Please.
You are the bones of my spine.
You are the ground beneath my feet.
You are made of deeper stuff than
the earth can give. Admit it; you
are lost without the waiting.

Can you even imagine yourself
in paradise?
Even the daughter of gods must 
know loneliness, must sometimes
want nothing more than to be
trapped in a hell of forevers.
Thank me, you queen.
I’ve given you forever.

SONNET TO HOMER

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind; -but then the veil was rent,
For Jove uncurtain’d Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green
There is a budding morrow in the midnight,
There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou as it once befel
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

PANDORA’S BOX

Loving you was loving war.

When the bloodshes ended,
we couldn’t even recognise each
other, our bodies were maps of
destruction and pain, our faces
the aftermath of an entire
world in ashes.

We were Pandora’s box
personified, it just took opening
it up to realise how deeply
poisonous we truly were
together.

ACCORDING TO GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate beings, condeming them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.