3rd attempt at Odysseus poem

Odysseus Before A Window

A trumpet sounds, a heart squeezed between

two dawns, blown by the memories of footsteps

trod on other people’s lawns. Odysseus

visualizes the trumpeter’s thick lips pursed

with pain that needs to be shed, cheeks inflated,

walls trying to protect; a sound produced -

seduces the spaces between the disks of his spine

as he stands naked in the night’s ambiguous shrine –

that calls to mind the last cry of a bull elephant

before the graveyard is reached and ivory tusks

are laid down as tribute to the fallen yesteryears.

It is an implausibly hot night, the air

a lair within his head to catch thoughts

that should have been put to bed.

The heat makes everything unreal.

Trapped before the window - a mast

in the city’s ocean of night - unable to flee

or fight; the trumpet’s sound creates him,

berates him, calls him home

and away again as it pries into his mind.

He grows fearful he might forget the King had become –

decides the epitaph will choose the choices

that cannot be undone; the actions,

thoughtless and destructive, that litter the waves

like the sun-glinting bones of lost sailors.

The city’s colours melt, merge, bend

with sounds, with smells, with memory;

the stars swirling bright attack on the dark,

like that trumpet, gives him heart as he stands in the front

of an open window. The belated breeze hounds,

the brick spits heat, his mind treads old sentences,

merges verbs to nouns, imagines a thousand possible

excuses that are swallowed before the lie is set to flight.

She stirs behind him – he remembers

it was originally her smile, then the way her right

hand twirled her reddish hair; the blouse

spread and the nipple not yet erect, kissed

and as he flared

he surrendered to the call of the beast.

He had hoped this was not a reality

or that this he standing here

was not…

That the picture he had tried to paint

as his life

had become

and the trumpet was soothing

not

The Siren calling him out again.

Will he ever rid himself of the torment

of that mast?

Ever be able not to succumb, as the echoes,

like waves, forever call him

and take him further away from the kingdom,

the children and Penelope’s open arms?