Best Thebes Poems
Holographic forms formed life anew.
As colorful lives on walls came true.
These walls that held secrets from the past,
Ancient secrets hushed unveiled at last.
Hieroglyphs now waking with the dead,
Deciphering gold mask upon the head
Of the child King whose scepter he held tight
Which morphed him into manhood overnight.
Treasures that surround him in his tomb,
His afterlife contained within that room.
Unwary of the fate that will befall
Archeologist's lives to one and all,
Of the curse of death soon to transpire,
Destroying fame and dreams of their desire.
King Tut, his wrath now unleashed to defend
Desecration of his eternal end.
© May 29, 2016
Any Poem You Ever Wrote NOT For A Contest -
Poetry Contest
Sponsor Broken Wings
Note: In Thebes Egypt in the Valley of the Kings in 1922
Archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the 3,000 year old
tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun (aka King Tut) When
Howard Carter opened the burial chamber of King Tut
it was the first time anyone had seen the burial chamber of
a Pharaoh, untouched since the Pharaoh's death in 1333 BC,
the tomb was full of King Tut's possessions he would need
in his afterlife. There was thought to be a curse of death
on those disturbing his remains.
Categories:
thebes, destiny, judgement, people,
Form:
Couplet
I am the face of misery
My life, a dissonance of autumn and spring,
The years are written in the same
Lugubrious, nostalgic grey
How can it be the author to blame?
I cannot scream this all away…
Burn nor Bleed this all away…
To Death I am Ordained
Lacuna ever growing
With Velvet sheets of life flowing
Aeons apart of my "royalty"
Under the mask the cannot see...
Can you dispel this tragedy:
Antigone - Epiphany failing
If it must be…
Then just kill me,
(Antigone) sing me out of reality;
I wear this dissonant crown of shame
(Antigone) Of a kingdom's disdain
I hate to be this way... normalcy's bane
(Antigone) Here comes the edict, to blame
The sordid child of Thebes,
This is me,
Antigone
No words of hope
No words of hate
Do I have Lenore to send to me:
The sordid child of Thebes
Caught In the longest nightmare
life - the slowest way to die
I know this is my life
But I'm not under control
under the mask the will see
Just Another Human
If it must be…
Then just kill me,
(Antigone) sing me out of reality;
I wear this dissonant crown of shame
(Antigone) Of a kingdom's disdain
I hate to be this way... normalcy's bane
(Antigone) Here comes the edict, to blame
The sordid child of Thebes,
This is me,
Antigone
If it must be…
Then just kill me,
(Antigone) sing me out of reality;
I wear this dissonant crown of shame
(Antigone) Of a kingdom's disdain
I hate to be this way... normalcy's bane
(Antigone) Here comes the edict, to blame
The sordid child of Thebes,
This is me,
Antigone
Can you dispel my life; this tragedy?
Can you control the storm in my mind?
I'm asking you: can you rid me
Of The Curse of Antigone?
Categories:
thebes, allegory, angst, confusion, death,
Form:
Ballad
--Isn’t She a Daughter of Oedipus?--
Isn’t she Antigone? In search of a fallen prince,
who roams in the battlefield where the corpses of
defeated warriors lie gruesomely in streams of blood.
Isn’t she Antigone? In search of a sibling who was
rejected by a sightless ruined old homeless man at Colonus,
who walks through the middle of a pack of hungry wild dogs
and a flock of huge winged covetous vultures
coming together for laying carrion.
Isn’t she Antigone? For sake of a brother Polyneices’ soul,
who kneels to the ground and moves the earth with her slender fingers,
dragging an armored corpse and covers it with dirt she removed with tears.
Isn’t she Antigone? who risked her own life because of sisterly fidelity,
and, now, thrown into a hole that is deeper than Oedipus’ eye-pits
to end her anguish, a miserable life; to close her abhorrent memories, the horrible ordeals; while hearing a tender, caring voice of a wandering soul from above
“mourn no more, my troubled child
weep no more, my beloved daughter”
Categories:
thebes, allegory, anxiety, brother, death,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
--Who Is That Blind Man?--
I saw a sightless gloomy looking man
and two little girls; walking hand-in-hand
through the deserted field in the dusk.
The man’s eyelids were deeply sunk into
the socket of the eye and lips were quivering
from unknown fear, and even tears stood in his tightly closed eyes.
The little girls closely resemble to the man
were so beautiful and adorable.
One of the girls who in man’s right turned her face back
and looked over the man and asked:
“Dad, when do we go back to the palace?”
“I really don’t know my dear Ismene,”
the man answered with a deep sigh.
“You shouldn’t trouble your father, Ismene. He had enough trouble
already to guide us to the dear mother queen who died suddenly in tragedy,
while protecting us from the cold, hot, hunger, and even fierce beasts.”
The girl on man’s left blamed on her little sister.
“But I want to go back to the palace,” the little girl muttered.
“Don’t blame on your sister, Antigone! All these troubles are
caused from my own misfortune, but not you or your sister.”
The man kneeled on the ground and embraced two little girls
in both arms and cried:
“O my little princesses; some day you’ll know
why I was wandering in the wasteland far, far,
far, away from Thebes.”
The surroundings were became darker,
and three shadows,
mingled in one eerie sculpture,
slowly diminished in the darkness.
Categories:
thebes, allegory, destiny, father daughter,
Form:
Dramatic Verse
--Who Has no Tomb to Rest His Soul--
After the long, long wandering in the wasteland,
sometimes by the sea where the roaring wind surges
the waters, or times in the highland where the dews chill the bone,
and other times by the marsh where pouring rain lashes the reeds,
Oedipus the blind and ruined old man, led by his dearest daughter,
came to the land of running horseman Colonus,
the land where Theseus reigns.
Woe is the blindness,
strange ground where Oedipus stepped on,
however, was the holy ground of immortal beings,
the ground forbidden to all who are the mortals.
Oedipus, therefore, an impious old man,
the blasphemous king once reigned Thebes,
the shameless one without the eyes to see.
Since the day driven out from Thebes
Oedipus needed a refuge where to lay his worn out body,
where to rest his wandering soul, and therefore, though
unknowingly, he hastily stepped on Holy Land.
Since he was expelled by his own sons and mother’s brother,
Oedipus needed the comforting word that soothes his aching body,
that relieves his troubled heart, and therefore, to hear
sweet music descending from above and echoes
in the grove as the gay spirited birds twitters,
he hurriedly sat on an altar forbidden to the mortals.
The oracle upon Oedipus since his conception
in mother’s womb was a cursed one, a foe to his own father,
the curse Oedipus, therefore, carried from the day of his birth was,
rather than a blessed one the proud heir to the ruler the king of Thebes,
but to become an abandoned child one forced to be a stranger everywhere.
And after the long wandering in an endless desolated land,
though death gave benediction in the night dark as his sight at last,
it did not allow him to have a tomb where his beloved daughters
would be able to dedicate a piece of stone with an epitaph,
the inscribed words of praise to honor him, or to recollect
his sorrowful image before his grave with tears in time to time,
though it may be a painful reminiscence to his daughters.
Alas! the king Oedipus, who has no tomb to rest his wandering soul
even after his death under an evil star.
Categories:
thebes, allegory, anxiety, death, father
Form:
Dramatic Verse
No raised pinnacle marked the place
No pure white limestone shining
Where Ramesses slept looked commonplace
to foil the robbers scrying.
Yet he had moved the earth and sky
this pharaoh disdained all rivals.
His bounty buried beneath the sand
portrayed a life beneath blue skies
his star encrusted tomb ethereal
his Ka rising from Death’s hand.
The hills of Thebes his place of rest
and beneath him his father lay
amongst the great he’d be the highest
his battle standards on display.
He ruled with iron hand on staff
as a Godhead he was portrayed.
Most mighty and acclaimed, no man
was he, who felled the Hittite chaff;
beneath his chariots wheels flayed
the denizens of Egypt’s land.
Worshiped was he in temples true
his semblance graces Abu Simbel
with eyes wide o’er lake so blue
his gaze belays the infidels.
Beside him she, Nefertari
laid claim to a sacred place
held above all others his wife
most renowned for her beauty
a love to last through time and space
may all true hearts pay such tariff.
Categories:
thebes, adventure, allegory, history, hope,
Form:
Ode
The Sacred Band
To those wearied warriors under the white and orange flame
here is a tale that you should listen
of a Sacred Band of men whose ground in blood they did christen—
One hundred and fifty pairs they were…one be lover the other beloved…
their bond forged in both iron and steel—
when the first fell the second would fight as two for the Ending they’d feel…
Many did they vanquish the mighty Sparta most of all—
that pompous elephant, that leathery dog, that wild bird of game,
that watery monster ‘neath rainfall,
and many other name—
a head above the fabled three hundred their passing was just the same—
destroyed by no one less than the Great Alexander
the Angel of Death did this exclaim:
“Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything
unseemly.”
[For their place will never be with those timid souls who know neither victory
or defeat.]
Because they fell Daring Greatly…something all should wish to meet
The Sacred Band
By
Gabe Shelly
9/26/’13
(The Sacred Band of Thebes was a small army of selected soldiers, consisting of 150 pairs of lovers and beloveds, who formed an elite fighting force in the 4th century B.C.E. They were annihilated by Phillip the II of Macedonia in the battle of Chaeronea.)
Categories:
thebes, football, hope,
Form:
Free verse
He didn’t have a native land,
therefore, he had no reminiscences of any sort,
neither good nor ill, other than reckless killing
at the battlefield where he was compulsorily taken into
and deployed to fight unwanted fight: the legend of warmhearted provisions provided in the name of el Cid Rodrigo Diaz De Vival
to the foes is only the beautified story of Castile.
The Faithfulness that even risks own life for fidelity is
though lonely one’s heart’s desire, he knew not the friendship
for he lived the life without a friend other than ghastly cry of tottering, collapsed, crawling and mutilated bodies of neither to call the enemies’ nor friends’: the beautiful friendship that of Pythias and Daimon is
the drifting clouds above the Sicily, it is the fancy of dearest wish,
the concocted tales that to honor the tyrant of Syracuse.
He didn’t have a home; therefore, he doesn’t know what is the love,
other than the deep wound of maternal love he saw at the battlefield;
the grief that of an old woman who was holding her slain son in her arms
with absent-minded, who was washing the blood off
from the slaughtered son’s face with tears: it is the horrifying myth
of Persephone who can only able to have a stillborn child.
It is the dark shadow of the daughter of Demeter who goes back and forth
along the other side of Styx counting days till spring is to come.
He didn’t have wife, therefore, he lived his life without knowing
what is the intimate love, other than touch of a foreign woman
who sales long kept chastity for a loaf of bread in the gathering darkness;
who weeps alone in the ruin at the roadside where
the cannonade booms to deafen the air: it is the shadow of the curse
on Oedipus who though able to solve the riddle of Sphinx
able not to flee from the irony of life. It is the damnation on the king of Thebes, who roams in the darkness led by two tender aged daughters.
Categories:
thebes, dark, death, lonely, myth,
Form:
Free verse
Seven is the great number
two times seven is even greater,
Niobe lost all fourteen.
Niobe once was a proud woman
not because she was an Olympian
nor for her beauty excelling to Leto.
Although Niobe was queen of Thebes
the mighty city-state Amphion rules,
she forgot she was a mortal.
Niobe saw the crowd gathering
to honor goddess Leto and her only two offspring,
she irritated and dispensed them with anger.
Atop Mount Cynthus, the mortified goddess
spoke her indignation to her children nevertheless,
and they darted through air on chariot.
When their chariot alighted on the city’s gateway
Apollo drew a bow to drive Niobe’s sons away
to the darkness where Hades reigns.
Each time an arrow pierced Niobe’s son
the mother cried out with great sorrow
in the pool of blood her sons shed.
When Niobe’s heartbreaking grief was overwhelmed with anguish
the mortal’s curse went against the immortal goddess for death wish,
in not of extended miserable life, but for graves where sons lie.
However, Niobe’s death wish fell upon her daughters instead,
she cried, “spare me one, and death be mine to cease this heart’s dread,”
before her appeal ended alas, the last one sank to the earth lifeless.
For Niobe buried all her proud children
in her bosom without a tomb stone,
the heap of her condensed grief became a mass of rock,
the great stone.
The stone is, though, totally lifeless
her never-ending grief well up as renewed tears,
and her tears will continuously flow to the ocean
until the day Cynthian Mountain would erupt to become ashes.
Categories:
thebes, daughter, grief, mother, myth,
Form:
Narrative
From Garden of Eden through Thebes
A dream was built of an Adam and an Eve
Of it the bone of an Adam, comes that of an Eve
A helper, the name giveth to her by the most High.
And to forget not to share with the same tongue,
The fruit of life, full of grief and glee.
There begin from the beginning, the rituals called kiss.
Whither thy kiss for me to build my dream?
A dream envisioned on a solid rock of Gibraltar
That which cannot become grime in the wind.
Kiss causing tongues to speak off known languages
An arrow that ruffles and travels through the taste bud
I am a dreamer in search of a kiss to heal my maw sour
Just drop it . . . and off I go to build up a dream in the sky.
Conceptualized for a lady called Tobi,
In the mad quest to have a kiss to build a dream on.
Categories:
thebes, allegory, devotion, love, passion,
Form:
Free verse
Greece you are waiting for me.
With white speechless marbles
within the August heat.
With sullen and loveless areopagites
carving my name on sea-shells.
Hypereides, you liar.
Praxiteles, oh so blind.
You Xenocrates, son of the *****.
And me that I was thought
I would return bearing banners
to rebuild your Thebes.
A roar under the earth.
Ashes in the wind.
Athens rises in the sky
and charges against me.
Why should I be afraid?
Why should I run for a shelter?
No!
I don’t want you to cover my eyes.
I want to see the terror in yours,
when after the execution
you’ll find me at the exit,
waiting for you
with a molotov cocktail in my hands.
Categories:
thebes, art, depression, fantasy, history,
Form:
Lyric
COLLOSUS RIDDLE
Watcher of Thebes, your watch has made me want.
I bring you death--Oedipus.
I proclaim,
the very solving of your mysteries.
Now cast yourself to Hades, your beauty fails.
You sphinx; hast not your buxom bared for me
where others suckling fed of hemlock's taste,
but now you must repay each soul you felled.
Die *****.
© RON WILSON AKA Vee Bdosa
the Doylestown Poet
Categories:
thebes, africa, earth day, riddle,
Form:
Rhyme Royal
Bias, one of the Seven, take up neither (when the Persians arrived) an arm
such glorious like the Seven for Thebes,
nor a book full of wisdom of now.
No.
There is a talk he said, “Omnia mea mecum porto”,
as every beggar says and left (in
hidden)
the burning and in ruins turned town.
There is a talk he bought (I wonder what with) the lasses,
who (maybe) the Spartans had taken for their slaves. And he sent them back as daughters.
I even don’t want to think. Omnia mea mecum porto.
The future is theirs with their fathers in
disgrace.
Yes.
He had died before the court passed sentence
(so just) on the chest of the child.
And he says, “For all good thank the
gods”.
*All that's mine I carry with me – Latin
Categories:
thebes, philosophy
Form:
Free verse
homelands / husbands / playing house / strands
& strings of horses behind strangers lounging
un-belonging to Thebes of Sevens or women,
depending on how you slice matters, as a perspective
as a twisted bark of favors
sneaky is a wooden gift donkey at a garden gate
overbitten hinge with ten front teeth, grinning
hidden from you looking into it, questioning
its motivated patience rolling up in wait—
weighted with sweat-salted men huffing
inside an oaken belly chewing tight lips, they be-lying
trojan claims of apple cake philanthropy, a ready hoof
as a broken wood tooth busted off in breaching trollop
secretly hiding a picked body of men
beckoning their silent armies to bolster a side
there lies in its midst a flatulence of language
no fox lays a stake on the hole—
protecting its skulk in prevention of domestication's leash
as all before have done, better a murder
of crows than shifting troops proving
stud horses hiding should be stabilized
as leashing foxes having lost the lead
chasing a venery— manufactured hare meant for horse
plot-plottering hooves against his own wood
stoking a smoke-show inside a swollen belly
raking at the gates to get out of the agreement
of being,
for being part of the picked body, scrutinized
for pulling short to remain quiet at the dying chaos
of the rattling sounds from a losing side
Categories:
thebes, extended metaphor,
Form:
Free verse
Canonical, orbit, elliptical, prodigal, crown
come back to me reasons and signs and be found in these
Stardust, Sirius, be the scourge of Thebes and of the Sirens of Hades on their knees
But not to service their own but to hide and be weak in thee
The Papyrus reeds wallow in the wind
the fowls skip amongst the mirages,
in the dirge of passion wind dale
in swoon in unfair/fare play in khartoum
In the hands of the divine to scale
Fields, through which the herd drives in dew
and weather it in his due well, oxen and Ewe
The sea flows out of the shore into undersea caverns of mines
The sun comes out from the horizon,
and gemuinely shines
the "sun is my light, and is at your door"
the moon and sun united, light ignites akin forever more
The sun shines from below and rises above like a Phoenix of radiating love
the moon and sun united, satellited relays moonlighting this trove
Categories:
thebes, abortion, adventure, allegory, animal,
Form:
Rhyme