Songs from Thynias

This morning the voices in my head
escaped, dancing gleely as they sang
like mocking children in the schoolyard,

hurtful bullies, angry as a drunken sailor
long deprived of love or land,
spoiling for a fight.

About the poem

Thynias, for those who didn’t read the Illiad and the Odyssey relentlessly as a child, is the island where the Harpies lived, half woman, half bird, and always thieves, stealing food from the king’s plate every time it was set down in front of him.

And that reminded me of how depression and other false self images so often invade our lives, stealing our happiness, again, and again, like a plague from Zeus. But one we create ourselves.

Tom