Best Athenian Poems
yogi comes first
my old companion burr-backed hearth-warmed
his peat-dark spring fur shedding summer’s presence
he lies on the fireplace rug squirrel-dream naps
muzzle silvered as a frost-split hickory post
a soft whine mute devotion
shadowing me keeping a keen watch
honest kind sportive soul
glued to my side even in sickness
another briar-choked ridge
to crest
hunter and chocolate lab
and then gurty
sovereign aloof moon-milk calico-born riddle
velvet paws and stealthy grace
a small Athenian goddess of the numinous
who appears vanishes wistful-eyed
moon fragment star-salt morning breeze
she prowls each rooms edge dust-mice
soft-footed serene indifferent
granting affection, rationing light
withheld offered only the queen knows
a small sheathed killer
making the world right
by choosing not to strike
between them household diplomacy
two philosophies sharing sunbeams
a duet of difference
two cultures thickening smoothing
yogi with his fawning tail-drunk joy
gurty with her vigilance her whisker-quiver
reading each moment for oneness
he presses close
she circles observing rubbing
a synthesis of presence
unconditional
i have seen her groom herself
in the soft ritual of sandy-tongue washing
and him pause trustful patient
her calm steadying him
i have watched them soften
the sandpaper-and-silk
collision
become friends family belonging
where the good life abides
night settles
they lie in parallel lives at my feet
yogi breathing his gentle snore
gurty a moon fragment curled in thought
and i smile loosen breathe
mercy can curl or bound
love a dog’s warm flank-heat
a cats purring sovereign gaze
and the small miracle
of both choosing the same rug
in the same
deepening hour
sweet yo-gurt
Plato's Retreat
I want to be just like Socrates,
Grow a long beard and do as I please.
And be asking you allot of questions . . . .
For a Living.
I want to be just like Socrates
And not know for sure
If I'm real merely some altar in Plato's temple.
I want to be just like Socrates
And stand in the forum all day.
In the blazing sun that surround us all
Under the the azure Athenian skies
And philosophize to anyone who bothers to listen . . .
For a Living.
I want to be just like Socrates
Corrupting my youth with a hemlock cocktail
Every Friday night;
2, 4 1 before 7.
I want to be just like Socrates on a Saturday night
Asking you, at the bar:
"What is Justice?"
And where can I score some tonight?
After hours,
Long after the widening sliver of
your mind's eternal dawning.
Nick's descent,
his thoughts neutralized
words that spill out, hobbled
nonsensical
dementia stifles all intentions,
reason eroding
wounded bewilderment
sometimes he slips into Greek
his first language that crosses an invisible
border
self propelled
unexpected
a weightless swim through memory's deepest weeds
once was the warm smell of happiness
once he had his footing
a toughness that knew few limits
warrior worthy,
an emblem of defiance
but things creep beyond the fence of normal
he holds his proud visage still
Athenian brow, marbled composition
complex dynamics to fight submission
a gentle dignity
even as the recognizable world moves
like a mudslide
pressing in
Poem written November 21, 2021 (revised Jan. 1st/22)
Contest: This or That Volume 8
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
It is thy wanton gestures that contrive inside long auburn
curls -
Wherefore to diminish the pleas of a warm, lustful
breeze!
For though gilded rays shall grace all thy sunlit days
Tis Moonstrucks cast beams, your mischiefs,
That did so deceive.
Happily ye wander through Midnights velvet vales...
Thus to bathe in the still of deep glades shimmering pools;
Gently smile as the White Hart confuses at the Nightjar,
Laugh joyfully as he gleefully barks within a Huntresses
muse.
Whence, entwining abouts your lithe-liken limbs,
Enchanting currents that confound upon like curvaceous
streams:-
Flawlessly proportioned, highbred, temperate form
Of palest earthborn Athenian figurine.
And ere those coy sighs should but just once countenance
Mortal compromise
Through your countless ages of fair queens and fabled kings -
Then, at some singular point in trickling sands spatial time,
If my heart beat against thine...wouldst thy charge me astride
Great Pegasusus wings?
So recline thou, betwixt sharp earth and Heavens eternal
skies,
Thoust art serenaded by forlorn winds that forsakenly
Beseech upon your divine name -
For the raging fires of burning stars were lit to blaze
In thine eyes
By thee fearful architect who moulded immortal clay
To thy perfectly sculptured frame!
"I am not an Athenian or a Greek,
but a citizen of the world" - Socrates.
Irish and Scottish instrumental music
is one of my favorite.
I have a weakness for oriental cuisines.
I am a fan of Greek and Hindu mythologies.
Most of my neighbors are Arabic.
The library I attend belongs to a Native American.
I am an African who speaks English language.
Different cultures and races color my life!
I am a citizen of the world.
Oh, ancient Greece,
How much you have filled my soul.
The aesthetics of your kind,
Are more than satisfied
By your beautiful eyes.
The epics of grace,
Odysseus and Helen’s sublime face.
The war between two cities,
And a tale of returning to beauty.
The dialectic of Socrates trial,
The Christ before Christ on clouds much higher.
The dialogues devoted to supreme justice,
By Plato’s divine universals.
Aristotle’s poetics devoted to the epics,
And particulars brought by the golden ethical’s.
Sappho and her poetry,
Herodotus and a tale of histories.
The land of marble devoted to democracy,
The Spartan grandeur and Athenian cultured society.
The Oedipus complex brought to Sophocles.
Vengeful acts by Media for adultery.
I sing joy to all the tragedies,
Aeschylus and the dance of the Eumenides.
The Minoan society and the island of Crete,
Greek culture and so much to keep.
Athena the bright eyed goddess of wisdom,
Came of Zeus, our lord of Jupiter.
Juno and her rivals in the kingdom,
Brought us tales of jealousy for the future.
The pre-Socratics of philosophy,
Thales, Heracleitus, and Anaximenes.
The golden verses of Pythagoras,
And the sophist named Protagoras.
Aristotle’s pupil brought grandeur to the dream,
Alexander the great extended the means.
The logic, the literature, and the home of philosophy,
Mythology, and the tragedies, histories of epic poetry.
The things that have been and will always be,
I will always remember the glory that was Greece.
I've traveled from the farm in Indiana, the place of my humble birth,
To places I never dreamed of seeing all around this earth!
On ships, trains and airplanes visiting fascinating ports of call,
And dining in hoity-toity eateries, more than I can ever recall!
I've dined on such exotic dishes as Beef Eterhazy and Athenian Moussaka,
Nasi Goreng, Halibut Cheeks, Paht Thai and Linguine Bugatta;
Linguine Primavera, Mahi Mahi, Lobster Thermidor and Cordon Blue,
Canard a L'Orange, Chateaubriand and savory Fillet of Wahoo!
I enjoyed those epicurean delights, but they'll never compare,
To the simple, wholesome dining on good old country fare!
I salivate thinking about a heaping plate of cornbread and beans,
With a salad on the side of fresh garden picked lettuce greens!
I drool just thinking about a hearty meal of meat and taters,
With stuff fresh from the garden like sweet peas and 'maters,
Home-made oven baked biscuits and heaps of fried chicken.
Ah, the very thought makes my old ticker begin to quicken!
Just to contemplate a repast of Bermuda onions and fried liver,
Gets my mouth watering and sets my old bones aquiver!
May you enjoy your Pate de Fois Gras at the country club;
I'll settle anytime for good old nourishing country grub!
Robert L. Hinshaw, CMSgt, USAF, Retired
© All Rights Reserved
The Real Pheidippides
Athenian messenger Pheidippides
Died 30 years before the birth of Thucydides
Most famous hemerodrome day-runner
Ran a 300-mile ultramarathon stunner
We drive and we sit and we think-talk
And talk-think
The wind blows words out of our mouths before we can
And through our satanic smoke rings
We see:
A small section of the Athenian catastrophe.
Unfolding with the falsely spreading lights…
Our microcosm
(Our safe-house)
You roll the windows up
And the top down
And we cloud gaze..
Out cocoon of heat is a shelter
From everything we are,
And everything we are scared to be...
Only a short while now.
Our cigarettes will run out,
And we will too
Disperse
Back home?
Eyelash wishes won’t save anything now…
You’ll never understand
Naïve little boy.
The Death Of Socrates
What reasoning has brought you to this place
where death destroys your gift of sanctity?
Before the fall of night, and in disgrace
yes, all those hating you, shall make it be;
they'll label you confused right to your end
corrupter of all teachers of the truth
convincing all the world, you have no friend,
and die for untold sins against our youth.
Your good and bad has brought you to despair;
all indecisiveness in what you think,
the crown upon your head, where once was hair
outshines the goblet from which you now drink.
How can you bear the hemlock in such style,
almost as if the world can see you smile?
THE FALL OF ATHENS
Let all the wrath, unmercifully divine,
we have to muster, lead us in our quest,
and bring Athenian rule to be in line,
as sure the gods provide they fail the test,
all in our time, for Lacedaemon rules,
have we not made of man the equal to
the sight of death, upon the plights of fools
resisting all the means that we can do?
Their setting sun has risen in the east,
before the dark, those left will have to burn,
their knowledge is their fat, and only feast,
for all they know, they've yet to ever learn!
Now let the blood to flow down from the hill,
as if the flood has come and made the kill.
© ron wilson aka veebdosa the doylestown poet
Nymphius sits by the shores of the Aegean Sea,
waiting for her lover to return home. This is not
the first time she has done so.....
She always sits on the white, rough sands everyday,
carrying a basket of the best Athenian grapes,
which she and her husband always enjoy
at the dinner table and during pleasure.
Aphrodite always whispers to her heart,
assuring her that her husband is doing well,
liberating Cyprus from Barbarians.
His soft kisses, touch, and sensual whispers
in her ears she misses, as she tightly clenches
to her dress......
1.
In an ahistorical fog:
all the Ways home,
all the signposts,
treacherously hidden
by greedy men and women:
all eyes off the ball:
mere contemptible bourgeois folly.
2.
The rain is unending,
the wind howls,
the flooded river races,
its banks rapidly disappearing
in this darkness at noon.
Laid bare by the flashing, crackling
lightning, the wagon teams and
terrified, shouting horsemen
careen downstream.
Deafening thunder booms rolling.
In the swollen, swirling river,
w/ eyes wide in panic,
the horses kick wildly,
their neighing strangled and
silenced by the dark, rushing flow as
they disappear beneath it.
Both the beasts and the
men are doomed,
but for one of each.
That horseman, cursing,
desperately leaps unto the
back of that horse,
making its way struggling, swimming to the
shoreline, w/ their safety certain,
a horse changed midstream.
3.
The Robot Fighters:
savvy, Western workers
upright and true, foresighted and brave:
like the proverbial "physicians healing themselves"
they throw themselves fervently into
putting their "own house in order" first:
Toppled and wrestled under human control,
each and every evilly spying machine;
all the cruel, unheeding AI
stopped dead in its tracks;
all the poisonous tools of the trade
laid down in righteous protest,
w/ irrepressible Luddite spirit:
Alive, the fearless Machine Fighters
forced into action, wisely not waiting
for irremediable, dystopian 4,000 AD
before making their move.
4.
Greasy grasping fingers:
the fly in the ointment:
usury unchecked.
*****
Curtains, thrown open wide:
the startling, stark light of day:
usurious vampyres scatter,
run for their lives.*
*"The reason why the Persians [sic] were always slaves and always
will be is that they could never say 'No'."
--- Thucydides, ancient Athenian historian and general
i would like to
be a perfect one to
be a Katherine the Great to
be able to
w a t ch the screen as i type but i am n ot
i am unable to watch what i type for fear that it may be
terri f ying that i would look at it and a smell of sedating lavender would overwhelm my goddamn system to see that a
smell of
y ou would overwhelm my system it is maddening that you ta ste like metal that
your tongue is made of bronze- you are not the Athenian I once thought you were, for I am Homer and you are Alexander the Great we have
different values
because I am
Homer and you are Alexander the Great though you believe you are Livy you believe you are
Walt Whitman you believe you are
something new you believe you are something wonderful and you w an t to believe such.
and I want to believe such.
I
I will make you into a poet if that is what you wish.
I will turn your bronze tongue into a paper one I will turn your blood to ink so when it is spilled in battle it is spilled on paper I will turn your iron thoughts to
cloth I will turn your steely voice to the sound of a typewriter i will
do
whatever i must do in order to get you where you wish to be i will
if only you would teach me
to be
a Spartan.
Enduring Symbol
Athenian Monument
Is The Parthenon
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/places.php
The fingers of the sun touched my bed
Breezes from the songs of little birds
I fought like a Spartan my eyes are red
Read like Athenian for my future bread