Poem: Mythology, and Other Lies

Mythology, and Other Lies

How naïve was I to think that Palinurus
could resist Somnus’ call
as he pulled his third all-nighter
at the helm of a wayward ship?
Now, only the genus of the spiny lobster
pays honor to this constellation-seeker,
a pastime relegated to a past time
perhaps thirty thousand years ago
when Prometheus discovered
what we have only known this past century:
the liver, with the succor of ambrosia and nectar
defies absolution
and we might wonder
if Prometheus had not faced such procrustean punishment
what he would have done next,
whether he would have continued such philanthropy
and earned himself a following of clerisy.
Perhaps without his insight, we would never have devised
the procedure we now know as the transplant,
a term that conjures the idea of sexually ineffable bryophytes
and ferns and fern-allies.

I was once told that poesy deigns all else
but sex and the dead,
the kind of prompts that make us think of James Joyce
or Elvis or Tupac,
modern day lessons on resurrection.
Much like mules, we have history,
a history that winds and waddles canyon to crevice
finding itself perched on Parnassus, sacred to Apollo
and home to the homeless
clustered and scattered among the streets
of earthquake and fire, furious and fertile
hailing the tempest-tossed, the wind-swept.