Odysseus in a Mental Hospital

[rowens]

               Odysseus in a Mental Hospital

                         "Louise holds a handful of rain tempting you to defy it"
                                                                                      B. D.


On psychotropic drugs,
fat as Achilles' anger,
would P. even want me,
faithful as she
is, I am broken.
Circe and Calypso couldn't tame me,
maddened by their labors,
the breasted man in Hades saw
this life clearly than my
eyes and mind or Lyra tongue
could . . . Watch these movies.
We watch movies till bedtime,
and listen to tales of a cerebral prophet,
something like an oracle,
that through the mind of a daemon,
whose life and death are read written without words,
tells our lives are a cave
and blinded, like I blinded that poor fool,
only we see dreams splattered
like my companions' brains upon the wall,
that I were to think P. only a vision
still young—though I know she's true,
nor do these stories seduce me.
Some skinny dunce plays his music
to us from a tiny box, in claims
too to be visions.
What I could do to his box
and his head, I'm told to keep to myself.
But if I never come,
P.'s long faith be her vain,
then would I be as strong and faithless as her?
I am a master of my enemy,
the ocean, the rock hard waters of my walk;
they say, my long walk home.
These visions in sound, they wish to simple me.
Could they be mine? These Eastern wisdom
springing a Western trap?
In a place like this,
what can I know?

[billy]

not sure of the lie break in line 4. i like how this is about ody being mad if nothing more than the fact he pretended to be mad to stop entering the trojan wars. i also like the use of p instead of penelope. it brings her into a modern realm. there's a goodish mix of myth and modern that the reader can be mistaken if they felt it was a real Odysseus in the nuthouse.

[rowens]

I, and someone pointed it out to me, the line, Visions that you hear. That line was weak, and so unnecessary. And as a poem as a poem, it is a weak line. I thought about it before I posted it. That's how obvious it could be a blemish. But. In my head it helped the rhythm. And told that this Odysseus found the visions that you hear contemptible and odd, odd and contemptible. That it was a weird thing to him.
And it is in these places where you should most often choose poem over character. The form is the overall thing, and character is mere and then utter eccentricity. And that's not the only odd line.

And the real Odysseus or not, like lots of movies these days, where it seems ridiculous. And it is.
But the hint of twist that it after all is. Even though there's no reason to think so. The cute hint of a ridiculous faith.

I was confronted with lines near the end. Eastern ideas seep into contemporary psychology, western. OM all is one, to spring can, and here maybe is, escape from a trap and to set a trap.

And whether it's him or not, it's somebody.

[rowens]

I was making a thing of poems to send out, to try to get published. I've put most of my latest poetry in it. But I left this one out. I also left out One Star in Sight and Three Night Songs. I just keep finding flaws in them but can't bring myself to change them. Does anybody else feel that way? You know you could make it better, but you really don't want to.

[billy]

yep, i think most of us have poems like that. there's has to be a point where we say enough, it's done. unless it's an obvious piece of shit