Joycespearean Sonnet 76 Why is the state of my verse plump with pride, That old original sin of the fiend? Why do I place my work so far outside, Where love is lost and I lie unredeemed? Why choose to live without the books of life, And run away from your divine domain. When I was born, within me stirred a strife, They knew I was blessed with the mark of Cain. And just in case you look but still can’t tell, I don’t adore this Heaven that you host. My place is not your page

Joycespearean Sonnet 18 Again Shall I compare all my days to Bloomsday? June the sixteenth’s one loopy strange affair, The map and calendar both lose their way, And all time’s now and here is everywhere: The streets of Dublin in 1904, The Greek blue sea three thousand years ago, The Red Brick Alley outside my back door, His time warp twirls the world with vertigo. As measurements and metrics finally fall, And my own private big bang goes ka-boom, And ego spins and splats agai

Homerotic Joycespearean Sonnet 144 I love them, Circe and Calypso both. Unlike those myths these women live for real, With Molly I sleep soundly, bound by oath, While Bella’s scary-go-round makes me squeal. My wife’s a bird who lullabies all day, And introverts my life within her cage, While Circe casts me in perverted play, And keeps me up all night on circus stage. What’s worse, all this has me beyond confused, I can’t tell life from myth or wife from witch, Their bondage a

2026: A Psychodyssey Tell me about a schizophrenic man And show how his Greek mind was truly lost. Was that before or after Troy it ran Amuck, the lives of his men paid the cost. He took delusion’s word as gods’ advice, And sailed off on the oddest of guilt trips, Then added opiates, what’s one more vice To our most epic con man’s many rips? Once the psycho summed up his long path, With nothing left to kill, so no part two. Then came an odd man out who did the math, And summo

Offline Odysseys Go see The Odyssey in a theater, Think on it, talk of it, read about it, Read whatever translation of Homer, Then read another you heard is horseshit. Maybe even learn a few words of Greek, And read that short poem by Tennyson, Tune in to a podcast, be a good geek, Watch The Odyssey of Homer Simpson. And Clooney in O Brother, Where Art Thou, And Douglas, Assante, Fiennes, it’s your choice. Then if you’re prepared to repeat wow, wow, Read the best book, Ulys

Joycespearean Sonnet 144 Two games I play of James Joyce and Will’s verse, Which toy with your boy inversely in turn. But life invades my wordy universe: A devil girl’s love. Will I ever learn? My games were interlaced, but life was not, And since we interfaced, it’s all infused. My demon lover’s just too goddamned hot, Her intercourse has left me all-confused. To win my games involves some homing in, Devotion, discipline, fidelity. But I’m infected with her sweets of sin,

“Uncle Charles, puffing away at his pipe in the outhouse he calls “his arbour” is a Namer, and deserves to have something named for him. So let us designate the Uncle Charles Principle: the narrative idiom need not be the narrator’s.” - Hugh Kenner, Joyce’s Voices Joycespearean Sonnet 18 Shall I repair what Kenner made in err? The Uncle Charles Principle he swung, While Lily’s “literally’s” far more fair Than Wyndham’s rough “repair.” Yet, she’s unsung? Young Lily was at bat