Poetry... Finally!

I write. That's one of the fundamental things about me.

Maybe I smoke and drink, look at girls and drive too fast, but my real vice is in putting pen to paper. Like sand on virgin snow, the lure of metaphor and imagery gnaws at me night and day.

This poem, a work in progress since 1999, takes my love of allusion and myth to edge of mania. If you ain't read The Odyssey, you may not 'catch' all the references, but I think that you'll like it, nonetheless.

Ulysses

Between break beats,
strobes, smoke and sweat,
the dance floor as the wine-dark sea,
my ship tossed on the shore, and
Calypso’s eyes bring me again to my
age of servitude,
reminder of immortal joys
forsaken for mortal life.

Did he ever — by merest chance —
pull Pallas Athena aside,
offer to buy her a Long Island,
ask about his sea-witch Circe?
The swine and the flawless bed,
did these echo through his dreams,
torment him after years of nights
spent in Penelope’s whisper-soft arms?

Did he ever duck into a doorway,
hearing the tick-tick of cane as
Polyphemus, the Cyclops,
bumbled past with his guide dog?
That giant, struggling with Braille signage,
did our hero wistfully recall Scylla and
Charybdis as remorse’s needle-toothed
bite took chunks from the king’s heart?

I hear Agamemnon and Achilles laugh,
Meneleus goads me in this underworld
where I cannot fend off my foe,
specter of the sea-nymph;
no sword rages,
no shield fends
the ghosts that hold me
prisoner far from Ithaca.