I killed a cricket on my stairs last night. I felt bad, as I always do when I kill bugs/arachnids, but as I always tell them: "I wouldn't kill you if you weren't invading my house! Stay outside, and I won't kill you (intentionally)!" But I protect my home.
Between going out of town a few times and being sick, my room is a slight disaster. It could be worse, but it also certainly could be better. Yuck. I'm hoping to clean it tomorrow, but honestly, I just don't know if I'll want to. It's supposed to be sunny and beautiful outside.
These two unrelated thoughts I just brought you over to my blog to read led me to think of an epic poem I wrote in high school for an English class. We had just read
Beowulf (which I would read 2 more times before earning my Bachelor degree - apparently it's really important to know this story if you're going to study English), and our teacher assigned us the task to write our own epic poem in the form of
Beowulf. Mine was really good - it was from the point of view of a mouse or bug or teeny person from
Honey, I Shrank the Children, and it followed their exploits around my {at the time, rather messy} bedroom. Years later, I was unable to find the original poem I wrote, which was devastating, because it was really good.
But tonight, a little too late in the evening to be coherently writing a blog post, after 7 days of definitely not sleeping enough, I thought I'd take a crack at writing the 2nd epic poem of my life, based roughly around the same situation. It occurred to me that the poor cricket I had just killed probably lived a full life and perhaps died a hero's death, so I thought I'd hash it out.
I also thought of
the Odyssey, which I've also read a few times at this point in my life (I love my greek mythology, so I wasn't terribly upset about having to reread parts of it time and again). So my epic poem in the line of Beowulf proportions includes a lot of
Odysseyan ideas and allusions.
Keep in mind, this is actually a pretty crappy epic poem. But it got written, so I'm posting it - I won't let all my wasted time on this be lost forever. Also, it's long, and probably unnecessarily so. So don't read it - like, don't feel as thought you need to. Seriously - think about it before you jump in. Because you might never come out...Oh my goodness, I don't know why I wrote this, or why I'm posting it. It would seem nothing exciting is going on in my life right now, so this is the crazy filler you get!
That said, here's my poem. It's entitled:
Epic Poem 2 in the styling of Beowulf, With a Heavy Dose of Allusions to Homer's the Odyssey
Oh Muses, tell me your tale of our hero Cricket
who traversed the land of Bedroom,
also known as Chaos,
finding adventure as he sought out his home.
He had travelled far,
coming from the battle of Rainstorm,
and wanted only to live the rest of his days
in peace and calm.
Yet our hero was still a young lad,
and his time for rest was
not yet upon him.
We find our hero Cricket just after he
escaped the watery fields of Yard,
leaving behind the lifeless remains
of fallen comrades in the ill-advised
attack of the land.
He has found shelter from the cruel fight,
but his haste to find protection has left him lost,
and he knows not what awaits him in Bedroom.
Cricket looks back through the way he came,
wondering where the
harsh, cold westerly wind
suddenly came from.
The wind is strong and pushes him further into
the carpeted desert.
No other sound can be heard above the wind,
so our hero walks on,
with no warning of what awaits him.
But Chaos gives him little time to wonder as
suddenly he comes across a monstrous, sleeping giant!
This
red and black gargantuan, with long skinny tail
and smooth, rolling gait,
is not to be trifled with,
and our hero gives it no reason to stir.
This
Charybdis on land, our hero knows, sucks its
prisoners into its depths, never to be seen again.
Cricket has lost many comrades to this devil,
and he refuses to be another lost soul in its vast, bagless stomach.
Our hero tiptoes past the sleeping giant and finds himself
in open space.
A dangerous place for a stranger in a foreign land.
He seeks safety and protection on a strip of
blue land,
but soon realizes safety does not lie here.
Like quicksand, our hero's feet sink into the soft land,
making walking difficult, so he walks faster, refusing
to let the plush ground slow him down.
Just past the blue land is a
white building, with at least
a roof for shelter for the night, and Cricket fights his way past
the strange ground to settle in this building for the night.
But the morning only brings new wonders,
and new dangers,
and Cricket's life is already half over.
He is not the young bug he once was,
and the foreign land has taken its toll on his body.
Soon after wandering away from his new home a bit,
our hero finds himself facing the twin foes
of Anklesock and Gymshorts.
These fit and strong warriors entice Cricket with
their aroma and protection from the light of day
but as our hero grows closer, he finds his mind
becoming hazy.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears a voice
warning him to beware the scent of Anklesock and Gymshorts.
These dangerous beasts bring him closer with their allure,
and he almosts rejects the voice inside him.
Until he recalls the seductive scent masks its terrible effects.
The
siren scent draws heroes in, but it causes a deep
forgetfulness, so the hero can never leave.
This memory shakes the hazy from Cricket's mind, and
he rushes from these alluring monsters,
not once looking back.
By now our poor hero has grown old.
12 hours to us is a lifetime to this cricket that has
already seen much of the world beyond Bedroom.
He seeks a nice place to end his days, though he feels
a sense of disappointment that the end of his life will not
be in battle;
For a hero in life likes to
end a hero in death.
So Cricket cannot be happy tucked away in a small corner,
slowly waiting for death to come to him.
Instead, our hero seeks one last battle.
A battle with a monster more dangerous than any he's
met with so far.
He knows where he might find an opportunity for
a confrontation with the beast, and he makes
his way to the
steep, rolling hills that
lead to the moorlands beyond this elevated plain.
He sets himself on the side of the first rolling hill
and waits.
The wait is long, but soon our hero spies a shift
in light, an echo of movement.
The vicious beast will soon be upon him.
He trembles instinctually, but pulls at his courage
to keep him brave, and looks in the direction of
the sound.
Suddenly the frightful monster appears!
And the monster sees our hero immediately,
and is quickly armed for battle.
Picking up a nearby
cube-shaped weapon,
the monster positions herself in attack mode.
Our hero Cricket knows his old body can't react quickly,
but he hopes he can anticipate the first blow early enough
that he can mo----
BAM! the monster hits quickly and our hero is knocked to
the bottom of his hill.
But Cricket isn't done fighting and won't give
in easil---
BAM BAM BAM!
The successive attacks are too much for our hero
and the fearsome monster knows it.
With a compassion Cricket hasn't seen in any foes
he's faced before, the monster hits two more times,
acknowledging the wish to put our hero out of his
misery and let him die quickly, in battle, just as he wanted.
Our hero's funeral is quick and quiet, just as
his life had been.
His time has ended, but his story lives on:
the Hero who backed down from no fight,
left no land unexplored,
and lived no day ordinarily.
