A poem on hybris and learning from it

[Zētētēs Lugh'Allein]

OK, this is my first attempt to write a poem since early adolescence. Maybe it won’t get me Laureate lol but I hope you enjoy it.

I inherited a storm

I inherited a storm.
I inherited a storm.
I inherited a symphony
Trying to make ends meet.
I Inherited the works and days of many Hands.
Yet I have next to nothing to eat.
Much less that Golden Age of un-crooked leaders and crypto You promised me.

I am out here crying out,
What do you want from me.
I have practically nothing left but my life.
And They reply,
It is not our intention to take your life.
I just want you to understand.

Understand what?

That without the Gods, Man is nothing.

Alpha

The Eagle clasps the crag with crooked hands
As he has done so many times in the past.
And like a thunderbolt he falls
And rises again to the cue of the Orchestra.

Then the eagle rises too high
On this one meal my brothers handed me.
I complain about how this three day old meat, rice (a-gain) makes me cough, overcooked grains.
It all sticks in my throat.
I can’t even speak.
When I finally can, I curse Furfur,
And tell her to take all these grains
And overcook them in her behind.
These days all I seem to get is stale leftovers.
As I also curse these soup kitchen people,
Why don’t they get real jobs? Do you mind?
Maybe on a farm run by Furfur Agri-Corpse
Yeah, I am sure y’all would be happy there.

But I forgot that I got fed.

Then, I had a wonderful idea.

Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.
Move over up there.
I want some of those leftovers.
No, all of them.
The Hall is now mine
Turn it over, chumps. All of it.

That storm, you told me you were going
To bring on to all those crooks in our great country
I don’t see much progress
I do not thing that You will ever sing to me.
I’m gonna use AI to write my own song, thank you very much.

This winged Cybertruck I smashed the window through
That was a good feeling
For now the pane was gone.
Well for awhile anyway.
Now get ready, up there, I’m gonna smash through.

I will show you a storm, O Great One. Raising my fist in arrogant Marxist revolutionary rage
In my glistening ultra-modern metal cave with high-tech wings.

Elon, show me what we can do.
Show me, as I mount the tower we built
With Silicon Valley RAM and crooked hand.
I raise the arrow to the sky,
Mounted on the latest tech, oh, so high.
I intend to smash Zeus in his face
For all that he has done to me
And claim his Kingdom all for myself.
I will show him.

Beta

Yesterday, this lady at the bus stop
I could swear
She did That Ritual.
I told her, I know you did it.

She asked me, What are you talking about?

Oh, come on, face like the Sun, glistening gold teeth and Supercuts hair
That wins every guy an eternal stare.
I know you did it.
For, every time you open your mouth
You speak
Multi-colored butterflies
And fully-loaded crypto drives
Into the air
To fly.

She just giggled and waved me away.

She waved me away.

And her bus arrived
And I never saw this Inanna in disguise
Again.

And now, up there, You gonna pay.
If I have to claim Your Kingdom for myself.
I will win her back.

I drive my truck full on into the air. Where it lands I do not care
In my rage
As long as it lands firmly near Their table.

I remember Zeus’s blank stare, like, Really, son?
I remember Ma’at giving me that Tichina Arnold look
Like in that still scene in the first season of Everybody Hates Chris.
She mockingly put some of the chocolate turtles
She loves so much
Onto the end of Her scale opposite the feather
With her silent message saying
You gonna get big this way, son, you think?
I don’t think so.
Hybris doesn’t scale.

Most of all, I remember Furfur’s turning her back to me in soul-deafening silence of resentment
As if to say,
I rescued you from their medicine
With all of their Atta-biliable hours
With all of their drugs that do nothing
But supplement the confusion all-around
With all of their built-in confusion
That would have planted you in the ground
And this is how you thanked me underneath your breath
That one clear, crisp, bright, Autumn day
That I, fed, you.

I pause for a while in inner reflection
That I didn’t let last too long
Then I blew her resentment off with a scoff,
I knew all this tech and hardware
Would into the sky and Ruling the Empire move me along.

As I press Cyber un-gas pedal down to the floor,
I arrogate unto myself my adolescent memories and engrams,
Of starving myself in video-game obsession,
Too “busy” playing to stop for even a moment to eat,
These memories and pain I endured
And that I gave myself as gifts
Prove me right and Yourselves wrong.
To hell with your fake meals, un-Goddess,
I say as I un-scale and place in front of my mind’s table,
the memories of legit and crooked meals I ate,
As I recall stuffing my face with Chee-tos and energy drinks
Hours on end playing video games and not coding Python or Pythias,
That requires too much discipline
Sheer indent-tured servitude.

To sheer hell with Saturn’s rings.
I have had enough of them.
Y’all will wear my ring for a change.
One, to rule them all.

And my on-screen map shows I am getting very close…
Waiting with baited breath and line-caught non-GMO fish I ‘lifted from a Wally world, still on my breath…

Gamma

I don’t remember much else when I woke up
Except the day the ER crew told me they had to remove the impaled
Cyber truck door wing from my stomach.
The doctors told me,
You are lucky to be alive.
You bled out so much that we had to get 12 bags of blood into you. We almost lost you.

Someone up there must love you a lot, the Doctor said.

Then the medic had to go, said, Can’t talk to you any more, I’m in a parade.
He muttered to the nurses as he briskly walked away.
(You can’t run in the ER you know.
It isn’t safe):
Diagnosis: hybris.
Prognosis: guarded. Very guarded.
Medication: Seer’o’quell.

I think he will live, to see another day. And many more.
And this time maybe even enter
The Hall. The right way this time, maybe, sir?
You can’t Make a Deal with the Gods, sir.
This isn’t Monty Hall’s old show.
This is the New Hall.

You’ll get the bill in the mail, Doc shouted as he paused at the trauma ward door.
Ambulance. ER docs. Medication. It all adds up. Do take care of it.
Because medical debt, you cannot wave away,
Like that one chance you had
And you let her wave you away.

Because, sir, I heard you mumbling about her while under,
Maybe next time you open your mouth
To get a girl
You will play it a little smarter next time, sir?
Before you get behind that modern-age wheel
You so gleefully un-bought
And tear your life asunder.

I winked and send to the medic as he got ready to move on, to treat the next of hundreds of overheated patients coming in from the big parade,

No worries Doc.
It’s all paid for.
I have the best Health Care plan going.
Maybe I will have to pay out of pocket for now
But I am sure They will reimburse little old me.

They told me so
In my temporarily locked-in dream
As I lay like a patient etherized upon a Table.

And this time, I'm removing this old, kitschy Let’s Make a Deal costume that looks like a Cyber Truck, and doffing this T-shirt that cries in a puerile, Pick Me, Pick Me, so I,

Can fly.