94. Romanticism

Fire.

Fire all around.
Burning out of control.
Riots and revolutions began in Europe once again.
Some feared the French Revolution,
Beheadings,
Napoleon.
The poets and artists wanted people to strive for the best.
To be the best.
Mill wanted freedom and liberty.
They needed equality.
The passionate, romantic, fiery wish to bring back the old ways.
The days of the noble savage.
The days of dreaming with the Greeks in groves of olive trees.
The puffy shirts of Shakespeare.
Selling souls with Faust in goblin markets.
No more of this revolution.
No more of this industry.
We should look back and push forward
Like Janus on the Roman coin.
Always looking to the future.
Always looking to the past.
Never in the present.
The present is too terrible.
What good can come of it?
So two forces push and pull
Like that steam train trying to get started.

53. The Rise of Macedon

After the war

Greece fell into turmoil.

Ares,

Athena

All of their allies

Fought for dominance.

Brother against brother.

Greek against Greek.

Ares sold out his countrymen

For a small victory.

Athena was angry for that.

Zeus did nothing to help.

He knew what was coming.

Fate told him a great man would come

To settle everything.

For years the gods made war

As people in the north

Watched.

They called themselves Greeks too

But they looked down on the barbarian southerners.

They had problems of their own.

There was fighting in their land.

Their neighbors gave them problems

While they were in the midst of a civil war.

They were in trouble

A king named Phil arose

To fulfill the prophecy Fate bestowed on Zeus.

Climbing over the fighting and paranoia

Raising his own army

Defeating his neighbors

Uniting the people.

When his work was done in his own land

He looked to the barbarians to the south.

“These stupid men,” he said.

“They need to be taught a lesson.”

“They know nothing about civilized life.”

So pointing his sword he said “Onward!”

Marching south to still the warring gods.

40. The Trojan War

A bloody battle soon ensued

On the plain of Illium.

The Akhaians came one thousand fold.

To take the city and her gold.

Curses and plagues flowed through the Greek camp

As gods played with mice and men.

The weakness of their great champion

Wasn’t only his heel.

Bloody stalemate caused red waterfalls

The fell to Hades’ land.

Pyres burned day and night

Because of the week foot’s stubborn ways.

Achilles, the man with fragile heel

Pouted in his tent

Because his precious trophy was taken away.

He stayed there

Like the man of marble that he was.

Even with his brothers’ cries

He just wouldn’t break.

But then the cracks began to show

When his Petroklos

Was carried to Hades’ hated den.

“Alas, Poor Petroklos!”

They cried in torment.

“Hero to us all.”

“While ours was pouting in his tent”

“Only he answered his brother’s call.”

So Achilles went

To challenge the horse trainer Hector.

“No prayers from you to me.”

He said as he desecrated his body.

Achilles dragged Hector across Illium’s great plain

Never once to let up

Priam’s pleading went unheard

So the gods had to intervene.

Achilles relented.

They had their funeral pyre.

It was an arrow from the Trojan prince’s hand

That helped him follow Hector down to that god-forsaken land.

A crafty island king and his wooden horse

Brought the city’s final end.