Mythopoetry Scholar

Annual Reflections In Depth Perspectives

Two Poems
"We Are Briareus" & "Oh, Shelley, What Has Happened"
-Chris Paris

We Are Briareus


of hundred hands
  and fifty heads,
of many heads  one voice,
many hands  one labor
fraternal for the common good;

we,  cousin to Prometheus
the defiant one,  the fire giver,
that fire that flamed all liberties,
his same blood coursing our veins,
all descended, we, of Gaea Redeemer,
her Phrygian red cap she bore even then,
she,  as she rose  broad breasted bold,
      mother everlasting  of earth’s
natural Furies, her Furies forever free
our poor mortals have all learned from:
          the oceans,  wind,  and sky
churning—  ocean’s wilding freedom,
and winds canting our prayers a lyric
of justice whistling through our ears,
streaming through our raving locks,
as skies fire our own opaline dignities
the natural in us  of Gaea Redeeming;

We,  Briareus,  who never forget
her Furies,  they scoring our veins,
Furies that raised our anvils defiant
for you, Zeus, on that cheerless tyrant
Kronos who left us bereft of our beauties.

Yet enslaved now by ignominious fate:
upon us cast the trickster, Sisyphus,
his cycles of Time’s accursed miasmas
that frustrate us back to the demi world;
memories, though, we shall never forget
even in the gloom of blackened Tartarus,
our heads bowed, and now in shackles
with the memories of Gaea’s Furies
still coursing through these veins in us,
but many hands tied in empoverished void.

How could you, Zeus, forget us here,
you, whiling away among your petty
discords, your conflicts, your debates
upon Olympus with Hera at your knees
wheedling her selfish desires notorious;
and your glorious progeny, all, do sway
by their charms, they all seduce on high
the lives and fates of mere mortals below;
this as they sip from their goblets of mirth.
         Where  the Dignity.  Befallen.
Yet we hear across Gaea’s deep waters
mortals of Egypt rising a glorious swell,
and tears of adoration our eyes yet do fill:
compassion, and pride for Gaea everlasting.

That cycle—  one tyranny to another
by Sisyphus and his accursed miasma
still with us here, the demi of Tartarus;
it gives us rise of our Furies to attain,
then fall at glimmer of dignity’s fires.
Olympus.  We love  and detest you.

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......Oh, Shelley,
What Has Happened?


It is over.  Prometheus  is dead.
The unimagined has befallen us:
his curse  has been muted,
that gloried defiance of will,
that we who dare not speak it,
rose to Jove’s tyrannical blights
he fells upon us;  thus from fear
and starvation we do not speak,
fear the depths of Jove’s blights
he casts from fiery gold throne;
and, this silence, now hell for us.

 Prometheus,  our Fire Giver,
first chained,  now crucified
on the rocks of Gaea,  mother
who bore him;  and she weeps
with us amidst groans of pining
as darkness falls,  and Jove’s
smug Furies feast upon remains
of our Titan’s crucified carcass,
we at the breech of Jove’s desolations.


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