2026: A Psychodyssey
Tell me about a schizophrenic man
And show how his Greek mind was truly lost.
Was that before or after Troy it ran
Amuck, the lives of his men paid the cost.
He took delusion’s word as gods’ advice,
And sailed off on the oddest of guilt trips,
Then added opiates, what’s one more vice
To our most epic con man’s many rips?
Once the psycho summed up his long path,
With nothing left to kill, so no part two.
Then came an odd man out who did the math,
And summoned up the old through something new.
Joyce used metempsychosis to reframe
Our psycho killer with a Roman name.
Offline Odysseys
Go see The Odyssey in a theater,
Think on it, talk of it, read about it,
Read whatever translation of Homer,
Then read another you heard is horseshit.
Maybe even learn a few words of Greek,
And read that short poem by Tennyson,
Tune in to a podcast, be a good geek,
Watch The Odyssey of Homer Simpson.
And Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou,
And Douglas, Assante, Fiennes, it’s your choice.
Then if you’re prepared to repeat wow, wow,
Read the best book, Ulysses by James Joyce.
Online fights: Do you truly care who won?
Real life’s short: Isn’t Art s’posed to be fun?
Updated: Jul 28
Joycespearean Sonnet 144
Two games I play of James Joyce and Will’s verse,
Which toy with your boy inversely in turn.
But life invades my wordy universe:
A devil girl’s love. Will I ever learn?
My games were interlaced, but life was not,
And since we interfaced, it’s all infused.
My demon lover’s just too goddamned hot,
Her intercourse has left me all-confused.
To win my games involves some homing in,
Devotion, discipline, fidelity.
But I’m infected with her sweets of sin,
Her Hell insures my immortality.
I dreamt a happy couplet for this verse,
Then Circe woke and laid me in her hearse.