I think my next poetry chapbook will be "hero" themed. Haven't decided whether they'll be exclusively Greek / classical heroes or whether I'll draw them from a wider range of myths and legends. Either way, it might take me a while to get the poems written, since I'm trying to press on with Kharsalus (my interactive fantasy novel, now at 680,000 words and still not close to being finished). But I wrote the first of them, whilst procrastinating in a state of post-workout lethargy.

A few years ago, I blogged about how influential Homer's Odyssey has been on my life. More recently, I read David and Stella Gemmell's Troy trilogy (Lord of the Silver Bow, Shield of Thunder, Fall of Kings), which does a great job of depicting Odysseus as a master storyteller -- something that comes across in Homer, but often not in modern adaptations where they depict the events of The Odyssey as they happen, rather than having Odysseus himself narrate them after the fact. Between that and finally getting round to reading Stephen Fry's Troy, it felt appropriate to begin those hero poems with one about Odysseus.

The Ithacan's Lies

The horizon's a rage of the rocks, sea, and sky,
And his memories churn in the spray of their gore,
Many thousands of stories, the scar on his thigh,
And they're ebbing and flowing with foam on the shore;
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
He is lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.

Did he weave a deception: the lunatic's plough,
When he yearned to escape an agreement he swore?
Or was madness the truth, did his sanity slough
Off a shattering brain into visions of war?
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
He is lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.

Did Achilles once cleave through the legions and fall,
In his armour that blazed with his wrath and his hate,
Or a murdering pirate invented it all
When he dreamed of a man of more glorious fate?
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
He is lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.

Did he scheme up a horse and then hide in its bones,
For the heavens had destined the sacking of Troy?
He remembers a priestess who screamed and her moans,
But in stories there's justice for pillagers' joy;
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
He is lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.

Did the monsters and curses bring doom to his crew,
Now immortal in legends, where heroes belong?
Or did raiding and robbing just slaughter them too,
When that siren ambition ensnared him with song?
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
He is lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.

Did a hero return and reclaim what had been,
In the love of a wife and a crown on his head,
Or else plunder a palace and laugh at a queen
Who still mourned for a husband then twenty years dead?
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
He is lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.

Now the truth is forgotten, the stories still heard,
And they echo in song and in ink and in fame,
In the centuries shaped by the weave of his word,
And the glory that dwells in the sound of his name;
In the wine-darkest oceans that crash in his eyes,
We are lost in the waves of the Ithacan's lies.