When Icarus was a little boy
His dad made him many things,
And one day Daedalus gave him
A cunning pair of wings.
They were made of wood, wire, and wax,
And feathers of high grade,
Attached to little harnesses
That cupped each shoulder blade.
Around the workshop Icarus
Would run and flap and rise.
He nagged his father to take him on
Adventures in the skies.
His daddy said, "When we take flight,
Stay well within my shade."
But Icarus was a headstrong boy
And--you guessed it--disobeyed.
No sooner had they left the ground
When the boy went on his own.
His father screamed an angry warning
In a stern, commanding tone:
"Come back, my boy, beware the sun!
Beware its burning force!"
But Icarus, that stubborn boy, kept on
His disobedient course.
Up and upward the young boy soared,
Ever and ever higher,
Flying firmly towards the sun,
That ball of bright hot fire.
You know the rest--the melting wax,
The feathers breaking free--
The headlong hurtling plunge to death
In some Hellenic sea.
Can I make a moral from that flight
And the boy who flew it?
Ah, no, alas, once more I find
Wystan Auden beat me to it.
Corruptio Optimi...
Though classically educated
My mind is gutter-class:
For example I often wonder whom
Midas hired to wipe his ass.
Morality Tale
Her mother had warned her often
In no uncertain words:
Leda, my darling daughter,
Don't hang around with birds.
But Leda wouldn't listen.
She kept acting like a goose
Which led to her attracting
The wandering eye of Zeus.
The rest you know is history--
A theme to build poems upon.
Remember Leda, ladies,
When next you meet a swan.
Kakotechnikon
History is filled with men who have failed
And go unremembered now:
Think of the architect who gave the Greeks
Plans for a Trojan Cow.
Virgilian Advice
The Greeks withdrew.
They left a Horse.
The Trojans laughed
(Out loud, of course).
"We've won the War!"
They danced and sang,
Not hearing Gre-
Cian armor clang.
They slept that night,
Their revels through.
The Greeks emerged.
They slew and slew.
What lesson to take
From gifting Greeks?
Pay close attention
When Cassandra speaks.
Translated from the Attic
"Greek statues...are a reproach to common humanity.
They seem to have no sympathy with us, and not to
want our admiration."
__William Hazlitt on the Elgin Marbles
Do you think they suppose we really like
Standing around day after dreary day
In these cold and drafty museum halls
While crowds of hoi polloi walk slowly by
Pretending not to be taking sidelong looks
At our tits and pricks and our marbly balls?
Do you think they suppose we really like
Having always to be the sly target
Of ten thousand probing, prurient eyes
While pornophilic minds behind them,
Despite all their aesthetic homilies,
Are making technical notes about our size?
These monotheistic barbarian
Repressed northern and neurotic
Fog-begotten sons of frigid English bitches,
Do you think they suppose we really like
Hanging about in the altogether
With never a hint of bras nor breeches?
O. if only a god would come and break
This classical spell of ours, how swiftly
Back to sunny Greece they'd see us rise and fly,
Flashing them selenically one final
Fleeting glimpse of the perfectly dimpled
Demi-globes of our glistening glutei!
