The Blood of Odysseus

PART 1 - The Past is War

The past is war,
a heel upon the necks of men
while blood cascades
like summer rain,
upon these rolling sands.

And we that lead,
what crowns our heads but slaughter?
sowing seeds to stony ground
to harvest pyres of ash,
from streams of ice and fire.

So who was I?
No lord of war set on this land
my artifice, my sleight of hand
set hungry sails to home,
the past is war.


PART 2 - Visions of Home

We make our way through storming seas of fire,
The gods of men spit fury from their sky,
Each promised land another rock of ire,
Each haven harbours one more way to die.

Now those that we deny reap human lives,
To them, just pieces in the game they play,
How cursed am I, the one that yet survives,
To find myself returned to home one day.

A leaf adrift on waters of the flood,
To Ithaca the vagabond returns,
To claim a bounty washed in idle blood,
And warm my hands within it as it burns.

These twenty harvests past my tragedy,
Sing me, o muse, a song of savagery.

PART 3 - Yet Still They Sing

To die one day as all men must
in tombs of stone or beds of lust,
a life described, a prophecy fulfilled.
And from the veil these ghosts of war,
step out upon another shore,
to sing once more of how our blood is spilled.

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