Julien Aklei - Offering to the Gods

do i look handsome in my little skirt to you?
do i look much like a soldier with my heart of baby blue?
& did you ever chance to fancy that you know what I might do
that you know from where my river flows & where it’s flowing to?
men may stake their claim that i have vanished in the night & yet
a magic pair of spectacles could bring me into sight
to where the earth is vast & gentle & a wide wide ocean sways
and all the men who came as captives bow to pray.
on the pearl of circumstance, on the precipice of the odds
we will stand & make our offerings to gods
the story goes that every man is a captive in his heart
that he’s cuckold by the sirens till the winds rip him apart
& even now the name Odysseus brings back the dreams of far & near
& i lift my purple cloak to hide a tear
the men have started whispering that my ship will not return & that
the dust of me will float back in a pink & silver urn & that
that the odyssey is nothing more than the tickle of a breeze & still
they crouch down like leopards planning treason in the seas
on the pearl of circumstance, on the precipice of the odds
we will stand & make our offerings to the gods
i never stopped to wonder of the things you took from me until
i found them in a bottle that was cast upon the sea & then
i reapplied the beauty & the youth of younger years & then
i drank again the succor & the sweetness of my tears.
now that i’ve found my tongue again you are too far gone to hear
of my story of the little boy who broke & shook in fear & how
the goddess found him broken & she rubbed him down with oil & then
he came back as a boy & then he came back as a girl
on the pearl of circumstance, on the precipice of the odds
we will stand & make our offerings to the gods.