Best Aristophanes Poems
Be born (or get born if you prefer)
If you are a woman – Give birth
Remember your name when in a foreign land
(If you don't have one make one up)
Breathe only air and at the appropriate time
Drink wine (but not with living fish or gators)
Take walks on the beach (remember feet and sandals)
Open a door with at least one hand
(Close it with another)
Buy security
Read Aristophanes
Borrow a car, (one with gas and a woman inside)
Borrow a woman (Catholic, Jewish or atheist will do)
*Teeth are important
Brush teeth - “yours” and “hers” (use different brushes)
Build a house (one with windows and oceans inside)
Scratch an itch - only using your spouse or lover (Never use your nose)
Put the trash out (starting with your spouse if they are dirty or ugly)
Go to war....with bacteria
Go to peace (found under flower petals and under the covers of night)
Diet and die (but not in any particular order)
Follow this list to Acapulco - another list will follow
Follow that list to its conclusion (never lose it)
*This is a didactic poem. It is also a "List" poem.
What killed Socrates.
a weed or Aristophanes?
What caused an end so dire?
The law or just satire?
The cries of ignorant crowds.
or something in 'The Clouds'?
Thoughts of a “Mid-Dot : (•)”
A couple of centuries back, I was recognized,
marked as mid-dot ; all were mesmerized.
I was most required for all. I was utilized
in literature extensively. But they improvised;
Resulting efforts made me redundant
The authors were reluctant
To use me; I was a burden.
Over years my positions worsen.
My places were occupied by Semi-colon,
Where I used to reign for years. My place stolen.
Each avoided me. I was ignored.
Same mid-Dot whom everyone adored.
Few decades from now, none will ever believe my supremacy.
I, the Mid-dot, the useful punctuation mark of past decades, reined as celebrity.
Waiting for my inevitable death. It is a matter of time only. I have no scope.
Probably, history will remember me for my contribution. I only hope.
~x~x
Note:: In the punctuation system devised by Aristophanes of Byzantium in the 3rd century BC, the end of such a clause was thought to occasion a medium-length breath and was marked by a middot ?•?.
This was only intermittently used, but eventually revived as the ano teleia, the modern Greek-semicolon.
Aristophanes of Byzantium ::He was a Hellenistic Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship.
He also invented one of the first forms of punctuation in c.?200 BC; single dots that separated verses and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until centuries later). For a short passage (a komma), a stigm? mése dot was placed mid-level (·). This is the origin of the modern comma punctuation mark, and its name. For a longer passage (a kolon), a hypostigm? dot was placed level with the bottom of the text (.), similar to a modern colon or semicolon, and for very long pauses (periodos), a stigm? teleía point near the top of the line of text
Aristophanes, my favourite Attic writer,
When he had pen in hand, was a fighter
Politics and poetics: his precious topics
I know not politics, he loved but poetics
Aristophanes, my favourite Attic writer,
Clung this man to clouds I know tighter
For his Clouds disperse all our doubts
But his Birds shroud my eyes with clouds
Aristophanes, my favourite Attic writer,
Men by his pen fly so sky high lighter
His Frogs I hear, Brekakekex croak, croak
My nose now tickles for his Wasps - poke
Jan. 17, 2021 (Originally posted on Dec. 16, 2020)
COMPLETELY YOUR CHOICE (43)any form any theme Poetry Contest
Contest sponsor: Brian Strand
Aeschylus: "Agamemnon"
A man in exile
Feeds himself on barren hope
Yields to fate in time
Aeschylus: "Prometheus Unbound"
Life's hard lesson
Wrong is shameful in the old
Time instructs us all
Sophocles: "Philoctetes"
Words not deeds rule men
Shaped to meet the moment's need
Waging war with fate
Sophocles: "Antigone"
Courage to choose right
And 'gainst harsh reality
Make no compromise
Aristophanes: "Lysistrata"
Poet's plea for peace
Fair breezes speed us onward
Making love not war
Euripides: "Alcestis"
Time will console you
Walk to the end of old age
The dead are nothing
tamed tragedy wept
whooshing wail crept
vying voluptuous trait
callous comedy create
mystic metamorphoses moaned
felon form cloned
like taunted torrent
rustic waves rent
hoisted horizon etched
same spell scorched
and tuned touches
fostering felon form
dark drama danced
into traitorous trance.
'29:03:22:09:17
Note: Dedicated to Aristophanes, the father of Comedy.
Big Crit authorizes any person who has been called a poet in print to
wear an arm-band bearing the Happy Face.
Big Crit decrees that anyone who wins a poetry prize shall in respect of
that honor give all subsequent public readings of his or her poetry
while wearing Groucho glasses.
Big Crit hereby commissions the production of an anthology to contain
every poem ever published in which the internet is referred to, all
copies of which are immediately to be burnt.
Big Crit ordains that henceforth all love poems shall be printed in
mauve ink on lavender paper and all war poems shall be printed in
Gothic type and all poems about poetry shall be printed upside-down
and backwards and all poems about one’s grandmother shall be printed
in black ink on black paper.
Big Crit enacts that from now on the verbal content of all paid
political advertisements shall consist solely of excerpts from the
plays of Aristophanes.
Big Crit orders all those possessing a budgerigar to teach said avian
to recite one line from the verse of William Carlos Williams;
and Big Crit further declares April 25th of each year to be Annual
Bird Bard day, on which the recitation of poetry shall be forbidden
to all but parakeets, so that there may be no ideas but in budgies.
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…to invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph
is a talent worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.
~ Aristophanes, Clouds
Despite the velvet rhetoric and carefully coated
Evasion of the simple truth (what is truth)-
Man’s heart is desperately wicked
And deceitful above all things -
Guile is the blueprint of his tongue
Often spoken softly so we lean in
Grasping to hear the whispered promises of his words
Until whispers evolve into the roar of tyranny
Enslaving both the unwary and not.
Great Questions
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By: The Questionare Extradinare'Coeus of Antecedent
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what is conversment?
is it used to coney or inform?
While in love I made someone fall in love with me,
might at least one of would love the other if we were
ever to be together. Dolus Malus spoke this of whom?
Schoenber and DeBussy ae credited for this?
Introductions are nerve-wracking because they create
immense pressure to make a perfect first impression.
is this First impressions are not necessarily "fake," but
they are frequently inaccurate and superficial Pandora’s
dection was to trick who?
Is "gleípse me perissótero" Aristophanes called"trógontas mouní
an “abominable pleasure,” decribing the raunchy context of
which of his plays?
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BOTH, HIMSELF, Modern Music