delphi ~ where godhood and mortality meet

Goals:
The poems I write in this NaPo thread will most likely be very feminist, very romantic, and either woeful or angry (sorry about that hehe).
I want to write poems I can be proud of that reflect on and tell a few Greek myths. My goal is to reach 15 such poems. I also really want to read the entirety of my fellow yswers #NaPo2025 threads.

table of contents
i. the idea of you: ares to aphrodite
ii. all is not fair in love and war: aphrodite muses to ares
iii. the anemoi
iv. from the pit to the forge: briares speaks (the hecatoncheires and hephaustus)
v. mirror
vi. helen: sand and war
vii. hera: birds and snakes
viii. a cyclops's musings
ix. gaia: a mother on gardens
x. ares: a patron of the amazons
xi. medea
xii. hestia: the hearthfire is dying
xiii. kronos
xiv. the heliades
xv. orpheus on his life before it was poisoned by death
xvi. eurydice: lover turned to poetry
xvii. honeymoon
xviii. aristaeus
xix. between life and death (dying)
xx. orpheus's lament
xxi. chance: orpheus before the underworld
xxii. between life and death: orpheus to, in and out of the underworld
xxiii. orpheus after
xxiv. cyrene
xxv. the curse of calypso
xxvi. a love letter to nymphs
xxvii. daphne
xxviii. broken pride: hera to hephaestus
xxix. hera to zeus's lovers
xxx. the fates
xxxi. the library of alexandria
xxxii. victory: the goddess nike speaks
xxxiii. storytellers

the idea of you: ares to aphrodite
looking into those
kaleidoscope eyes,
how could i ever
not fall in love
with the idea of you?
the idea of you
and nothing more.

all is not fair in love and war: aphrodite muses to ares
ever since the mortals saw us
strolling through battlefields hand in hand,
enamored with pain and lust,
they romanticized us.
look how that turned out for them.

the trojan war made martyrs
out of men who would not have been
household names
otherwise.

i made a mistake
choosing my pride and
needing to prove that
love is best and love is beauty
(love is me)
over objectifying a woman due to her beauty
and creating a war that would slaughter many.

in the centuries we've spent
seeing each other
as friends instead of lovers,
we've deduced that an explosive love
was what we shared,
which is as unhealthy and cancerous
as a charred marshmallow.

the mortals will discover it on their own
when they do not listen to our warnings.
but i will warn them anyway.

all is not fair in love and war.

the anemoi
no one seems to know or care,
but we've been here since the beginning.
silent, drifting, seeing.

few notice us
and even fewer pay us attention.

"look, the gods of tumbleweeds"
"look, the gods of wings"

we have been the gods
of both gentle breezes
and tornado winds.
we have been the wind
beneath the wings of
the birds to help them fly
and the sharp, heavy gusts that
flip the sails of mortal ships
inside-out.
we are every whisper
and every roar
that has ever
ricocheted or rippled
across the cosmos.

yet you do not fear us
and you seldom hear of us.

we are chaos split into four directions,
the four corners of the earth
stretching to reach these splinters
of the universe's explosive beginning.

the sky knows not what he holds
in his feathered, ash-filled hands.

the wind is no less a weapon
than a flower is a flower
or a sword is a sword
or a promise is a promise.

from the pit to the forge: briares speaks (the hecatoncheires and hephaustus)
every stroke of brass against my back,
my knees,
my chest,
my cheeks--
i welcome it,
i breathe it in.
better the sting of this labor i do for free
than the stinging of the boulders
digging into every part of me,
pinning my hands
(my hands, my hands!),
making me feel as though i can't breathe.
her voice haunts me when i try to sleep,
that monster more snake than woman hissing,
"come now, briares...
if you don't face my whip,
your brothers will."
a flash of a wicked smile
in the darkness
we'd grown used to seeing through.
i feel the phantom flashes--
they burn.
i blink, and i'm back to the forges.
hephaestus is kind--
takes us in like we're brothers.
works with us like we're friends.
we are, now.
friends.
and brothers.
while his skin is rough and scar-flecked,
mine is coarse and all scar tissue.
he smiles broadly, and of the forge's fire, he asks,
"briares, don't you feel it?"
of course, brother.
this molten metal soothes
this rough laborer's skin of mine.
yes, i feel it.
freedom.
isn't it lovely?

(entry for April 4th)
mirror
to love
and not be loved in turn
is the cruelest situation
one could bear.
and i fear
for those poor, poor souls
that mirror echo's love for narcissus-
mirror it
and nothing more.

helen: sand and war
every fair feature,
delicate like it's
traced in the sand
of this bloodied
beach-turned-battlefield,
curses me,
curses everyone.

war is not fair,
warriors aren't kind.
even those who tell the future
lose their gift-addled minds.

they see my face
before they appreciate my blood.
i am godly, too.
perhaps more than any of you.

i have
cheeks like the apple
that brought about all of this chaos,
eyes the color of the honeyed words
the love goddess poured over paris,
and lips as red as the blood
spilled by men who take
and take
and take.

i am an illusion.
the idea that anyone
could possess me
crumbles away
like lumped-together sand.

i am helen,
and i am not of troy.
i am helen
of the gods,
the demigoddess who
brought out
the worst
in mortals
through war
and desperation.

people think of my beauty first,
but what is more powerful
than stopping a war?
i did not start it, no.
the war was the doing of gods and men.
but it was only upon my safety
that the greeks returned to their lands.
i am nothing
if not powerful.
do not diminish me
to only my beauty.

hera: birds and snakes
i nurture birds,
i nurture snakes,
i nurtured all
for kindness's sake.

i nurtured birds,
i was womanized.
i nurtured snakes,
i was demonized.

i nurtured all,
where did it get me?
my husband hates then soon forgets me.

peacocks, cuckoos-
they're all the same;
wings spread,
songs aflame.
breathe me in and call my name.
fake your pain and gain your fame.

you hate me,
you love me.
you bless me,
you curse me.

why don't you
adore me
anymore?

a cyclops's musings
i think it's funny.
you call us one-eyed monsters
when we're only one-eyed men.
then again, you mortal men
are worse than pigs,
worse than monsters,
more of monsters than we are.
we look it,
but you are it.
if we embodied your spirit,
we'd be monsters in every way.
i'm glad i tend to my sheep
and stay away from you mortals
and your supposed heroics.
i don't doubt i'll be slain in my sleep
for nothing other
than growing my crops,
feeding my sheep,
sacrificing bulls to the gods,
and
bothering no one.

gaia: a mother on gardens
call me a villian,
but all i wanted
was to keep my
children safe.

my husband threw my babies to hell
because he thought they were ugly.
my son killed his father
and ate his children.
my grandson killed my son
and ate his wife.

we mothers are blind
to our children's faults.
we can't control them
any more than we can
turn sugar to salt.
every chance we get,
we'd choose them
over their fathers.
we hate our husbands
and love our sons
even when
they become
another version
of the very man
they first destroyed.

we subject our daughters to horror.
i did the same with mine.
that gentle gardener's heart
turned to ash and flames.
the same happened to mine.
you take too much after me.

don't make
the same mistakes
i did.

tell your daughters
not to let men plant their seeds
in the gardens that are
their hearts and ovaries.
for men will plant the seed
and leave,
only returning
to reap the benefits
of what you've sown.
have tea with your daughters,
talk about plants and soil,
and when men wander in
with lazy limbs and cocky grins,
tell him he does not belong.
"we do not tolerate weeds in our gardens.
get out."

ares: a patron of the amazons
every time i
hear their battle cries, i
glow with pride and
resist the urge to
jump in
and explode with fury
side by side.
they are capable
of destroying demons
on their own.
hand in hand, i watch these girls
turn into women.
they don't let men have a say
in what they do
or how they do it.
and i cannot say
how proud that makes me
to be a male they can trust
when being male seems to me an existence
of being forced to be aggressive, hostile,
and unforgiving.
they teach me
that i don't need to be
the god of male
cockiness and brutality.
i can be the god of human strength in soul,
of justice, of emotion.
i am a patron god of the amazons
and i will delight
in watching them take you down.

medea
every light
that pistons into the darkness
returns
to the breaking points
from which
they split.
every fire,
every intake of air,
every spell latched into my words,
every caress
of the night
against my skin.

i am a granddaughter of helios,
a pupil of hecate.
everyone fears me.
my father, my husband, the gods-
they cower, they tremble, they hide
behind every fixed smile,
every forced laugh,
every defiant, panicked lift of their chin.
they are all hiding.
circe was right.
if i draw them out
(reveal their true selves),
they'd be nothing more
than quivering pigs.

hestia: the hearthfire is dying
always the home, never at home.
always absorbing, never exploding.

taking what they give without complaint
has always been my way of giving.

but there is such a thing
as giving too much.
like a hearth, i try to absorb it.
but i am overwhelmed.

~

i am not blind, nor am i deaf.
i see and hear how they
laugh and whisper.
"yes, the goddess of the hearth.
the goddess of the home.
the goddess of sanctum.
like her mother and grandmother before her,
all she can do is take what others give."
the funny thing is
that i could let go.
how would it feel, i wonder,
to have your safety
turned against you?
to have everything
you thought would protect you
turn on you?
to have the flames
eat away at your home
from the hearth?

everyone comes to me in distress.
i am burnt out at my core.
all that is left
is ash and coal and sparks;
the old sort of magic that makes up dying stars.

~

there is a certain sort of fear
when you feel your hearth turn cold;
a slow realization
that the hearthfire is dying.
the cold creeps out
and unfurls
until
it curls
around your breath, around your throat
and suddenly,
there is no warmth,
there is no light,
there is no air,
there is no peace,
there is no safety.
only cold
and darkness
and danger
and the harshness
that comes
with it all.

kronos
time
is a myth the cosmos tells us
to maintain the illusion of control.
when one sees through this illusion,
one can control the fabric of time
and need not the illusion
the cosmos so mistakenly
attempted to keep in place.