Best Homer Poems
There come those nights—you know the sort:
The ones where the moon is a tear-stained cheek, pressed to heaven’s passenger seat window,
Toying with the tides to the rhythm of some melancholy song that only she knows.
She’s lonely, and you know she is, because
You can feel her tugging at your ankles with each pleading surge she pushes ashore.
Homer’s words revive, and the sea is as dark
Beneath Erebus as the bottom of the glass
That you left unfinished at your hotel.
Salt leaves chalky fingerprints up your calves, but you forgive it,
Because how often, really, does the moon have a shoulder to cry on like this?
She’s confessing to you with every rasp of the water,
Lapping over the sand like the bodies of un-shy lovers, and you stand
Quiet in the fading froth.
No voice rises to cut the night as Selene sobs to you on that midnight beach, and
As above, so below, the waves weep;
Stuttering susurrations at your feet, supplications to take you under for dinner
So that the moon may pour you another glass and whisper her finer secrets where your neck
Meets your shoulder:
She loves you, but she can only say it with the silence and the solemn
Murmur of the sea tasting the sand, that rasping language
Older than writing that all the poets know.
But you’re no poet, and you are not living in a Salinger story
Where you see the evil of man tucked away in the shallows, bananas in its mouth,
Compelling you to raise your revolver like a kiss to your temple.
The night breathes, and so do you, surging in time with the surf and the rising—
Falling of that deep chest above.
The silver light, bare of her clouds
Sees you at your whollest, and longs to show you the worlds beyond your own.
She has no concept of drowning—no concept of pressures deep and fragile lungs.
She knows only starlight and starboard, and weightless things that thrive where air cannot.
Lonely, vast, she loves you.
She loves you.
She loves you, she just can’t say it.
He called himself Homer the house cat
And mostly ate tuna with pork fat
After lunch he'd meow
'Nearly upchuck his chow!
And grin like an overstuffed wombat!
Watching Homer struggle
to explain how a god wounded by a mortal
cannot die but may thereafter live with minor pain
and the humor when that god
complains to Jove that His supervision of His daughter
is inadequate and His Love too unconditional
while Diomed (or Tydides)
wreaks havoc on the Trojans and Hector
gives it back (in kind)
anatomically correct descriptions
of spears piercing jawbones and groins
sons without fathers hunting and fishing thereafter
alone. Written
amazingly presciently!
as a metaphor for Vietnam (our war)
forgotten consensually
as this generation slips lazily away
to Hades (or kayaks to the huckleberries)
where the lights are always blue, gentian actually,
supper's served at 4 and former adversaries
pass the heavy hanging time playing pinochle (and pool).
We're selling the house to pay the taxes.
Pallas Athena wars among the men
from the axle of her chariot
and Venus is injured by Diomed,
standing in the field of battle where she never should have been,
in her adorable hand.
What has this to do with Solomon in jail.
Not the Jewish king, a black American male,
same thing.
Your children can be failed at school and marched to war.
You can be taxed and sent to gaol for the honor of it.
anyone lived in a pretty how town.
We have no obligation
to perform the Iliad or read poems and even Homer
considers Achilles effete (compared to Hector)
and Odysseus is wrong even when he's right.
Therefore, modern man explores
the mathematics of circles in coordinate planes and their tangents
(when) (once) (soon)
the secret of warp speed is discovered
expansion of the species will be limitless and permanent.
My friends all dead, Poseidon's gaze falls last
Upon me, broken, clinging to a raft,
He low’rs his fist, and shatters present, past
And future… now a yards-long broken shaft
Is all I have to save me from the sea,
I choke and spit, and swim for shore -- ‘tis near --
Then find the Cyclops swimming after me…
Though blind, he had pursued me; rage and fear
Had made him stupid, and the splintered beam
I grip, I thrust into his open maw
“Poseidon! Next, he dies, or you redeem
Me from the sea, and from dark Hades’ craw!*”
Then falls a sudden calm… Cyclops is gone
I swim to shore – ‘tis Ithaka, at dawn!
_________________
*In the Greek legend, Polyphemus, the Cyclops, was said to be the Son of Poseidon
_________________
2/12/2019
Submitted for: Movie Magic Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Gregory R Barden
Movie: 'The Odyssey', Character: Odysseus
John Winslow Homer
Was known to be a roamer
After painting The Fox Hunt
He put down his brush
And moved to Oklahoma
Would that this poet were in Greece!
Her heart enchanted on its sunlit sands.
Her lover, kissing her porcelain hands.
His eyes, deep, dark as Kalmata olives.
The homes, white, with bright, blue tops.
Her heart beating so loudly, fearing it may stop!
But as the sun sets, she is far calmer.
Her head on his chest, she hears its Greek beat.
Then in Hellenic peace ,falls asleep to it’s melodic treat.
Sappho and Homer, she felt reincarnated.
To pen of love was always her deepest desire!
Deceased ages ago, but love brought back
her pen’s desire!
Dedicated to James
Thank you, dear friend!
8/31/2022
There was a young cowboy named Homer
Who broke bronchos and was a roamer
The girl that he called hon
Said,"When all's said and done,
Those bronchos are breakin' your gomer."
3-10-18
Oh hearken the struggle, life's gossamer threads,
The delicate sway of hope ...
Framed by churning white of Lord Neptune's might,
Faith dangles a slender rope.
Wan maiden, her savior, and a scarlet shawl,
Battered by surf and gale ...
Yet our faceless hero and his capable arms,
As sure as the damsel, frail.
Mostly monochromatic, all its tones of gray,
Save for the kerchief, red ...
While turbulent struggles around them rage on,
We center that shawl instead.
We see not the others who attend the line,
But imagine them nonetheless ...
The artist connects them with the lanyard, strong,
And so intimates their distress.
The distinctive edges and leaf-like waves
Are peculiar to Winslow's style ...
As are the rare stories his paintings tell,
That enamor us, and beguile.
While he traveled afar and painted it all,
And was a celebrated roamer ...
He loved my home state of Maine the best,
And so truly was a HOMER.
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Celebration of Art Poetry Contest", Kim Rodrigues, Judge & Sponsor.
Oh the glory! Of this my story
Upon a colossal, metallic beast
Did I sail, for many a year
Every ocean and sea, seemed the vastness of eternity
My name is Arthur Homer Creed, AKA -“Homie”
Chief Petty Officer, United States Navy
My job, dangerous as it was
Was my one true love.
Director on the flight deck
Of an aircraft carrier
We cruised from Japan to Quebec
The scream of the jet
Was Mozart to my ear,
Adrenaline rush
Newbies full of fear-
But taught them all I did,
To be safe and stay on the grid
To catch a Tomcat became second nature-
And soon, for the novice, a breathtaking adventure.
How I adored the hues of sunset
And the smell of intensity from a jet
Off we sent them,
In the fury of a screaming cat
A hundred miles up they would fly
While we waited to catch them
From a dismissive sky.
“Chief Homie“, my flyboys called me
I was their father, and mentor out to sea
Their only family.
The young ones who were here to serve,
This great battleship,
Only the best did they deserve.
Into ports we swept
Alluring the girls, and scoring some drink,
Then back to the ship we went
Refreshed, relaxed and ready to think.
Onward another month or two we sailed,
18 hours days,
Through high winds and formidable gales.
Then the time came to get serious
There was a threat
The “Old Man” was furious -
F-18’s sent to the Middle East
Dropping bombs
In the name of peace.
Sorties flown day and night,
Blackout ship- we were trying to hide
Manning all battle stations,
This was a defensive action.
Through the bulkhead it came -
Crashing, crushing, killing, exploding
Entire ship, quickly eroding.
This projectile -
Erasing the faces I had known,
My legs, I saw, off were blown-
I grabbed the hatch
To keep
This hell from reaching others,
Up on deck.
Heaving it shut
With all I had left
I got that watertight hatch closed
Then I knew I was dead-
As the water enveloped my head,
I could no longer breathe -
Sea pouring in all around me.
I saved that ship, and those boys
From dying that day-
Or so I suppose,
Because I hear their praises
Sung to me -
In my watery grave,
Under the sea.
A. Green
THE ODYSSEY; HOMER
Perhaps,He'd been dead,caught at the claws of the sea:
The Akhaians had loan him to the whales,a meal.
The battle of troy weighed,threw him out of balance,
Cowardly rugged he'd given in,no longer stance.
Perhaps he'd journey along the route of Pylos,
Or zeus(father of all gods and men),had bethroted him to the Harlot.
Suitors bewitched by penelope's beauty,
drenched in waeve-trick,swimming in folly.
Telemakhos, astound at the ageless effort,
Perhaps his father's return is the dying carrot.
But woah!,Athena(the grey-eyed goddess),had had her way,
Oh see! Odyssey,the forgotten,to Ithaka,made his way!
18:02:23:13:40
With joy and jubilation today,
The strong batter smiled and perspired
As he ran the bases, so greatly admired.
A lesson, though, for poets all.
Just write, must each poem be in a contest?
Much each poem be a blatant conquest?
Is there no pure joy in what we do?
I think there is, through and through.
Personally, I find no joy in being better than you.
It’s a grand gift to show a bit of humility.
Not, “ I am so much better than thee!”
“Being the Star on the Poetry Tree.”
Write to embrace another soul!
Poets, hear me, whether young or perchance, old.
You are loved as is, you see, we need not be sold.
Poetry is not a major league sport.
It moves the soul and touches sparkling hearts.
Far, far too many, forget it really is an art.
6-26-2022
-1-
Of Homer, Iliad And The Fall Of The Mighty Greeks
As the moon repents from its many vague allusions
And the splintered rains never rain upon true imaginations
What are we to think of those fools, plastic imitations
Does bright dew and turnips spring from revolutionary actions
He toys with unrepentant love and celebrated crisis
Begs the grey-cast dawn to organize her princess retreat
While pigs and blinded dogs drink furiously at the oasis
The Greek, smokes final cigar and tells us damn you boys eat
We tread ever onward; dawn stimulates its latent spirit
Ahead lay the great battlefields of the valiant Greek dead
Clouds begin vomiting and blood spurts out from trees near it
Homer ghost comes, cries lets be true to our heroes
instead.
Mighty Greeks fought hundred of battles had heroes in all.
Sad, nobody stays on top, so even the Greeks had to fall.
Robert J. Lindley, Rhyme
Feb 11th, 1971 age 17
Walk-off homers are the thrill of the home team
They rejoice in jubilation, the whole team beams
Friends french kiss friends
Men kiss ugly men
Players touch each other in places unscene
the gods envy us
with a million ways to die-
one only to live
Homer Brunett
1879-1912
You didn’t think it would be easy? Did you?
Life squirms incessantly,
As with the molting snake,
Turning and squeezing into mortal convolutions,
With myriad forgotten episodes
Of human triumph and tragedy,
Of endless drama in the slatted houses;
Life is constantly lurching and lunging, ever forward,
Under those silent indifferent clouds, up there!
But time is the ultimate mind master,
He knows where the switches to the stop gates are.
He knows when to open the field sluices awash!
We foolish human beings inevitably
Get taken by the rushing flood waters,
Get completely swept away by the undertow,
Helpless against the madding confluence,
Ending up as tears on the faces of the bereaved.
This is my final testament and statement!
That of an intelligent dead man!