Zeus and Aphrodite

The spring equinox approaches

Venus Aphrodite leaps shining
brilliantly from the Western sea foam
and shaking away Neptune's ill-cast net
each night climbs higher into the evening sky

Passing Hermes Mercury she barters
sexual love for a conch shell of metaphors
tactics and strategies   cunning and tricks
weapons for her fight with Jupiter Zeus
lurking in the house of her lover Mars Ares

As his alleged daughter approaches
bristling brightly    Jupiter diminishes

Daughter   return to your husband
end your incestuous affair with Mars

Your thunderbolt makes you our Father
Phallus incarnate from genitals severed
from Uranus   make me older and younger
than you each time I emerge from the sea
Mars arrives from the east    leave

Is that violent   thieving   deceitful scoundrel
going to humiliate you again and again
before I move him from the Zodiac sky

Vanity   temper   and lustful stubbornness
qualities do not enhance your good looks

Ample qualities possessed by you   adulterer
Is the ram your next seduction's metamorphosis

Far from Olympian prying eyes in
the house of Aries   each celestial spring
Mars and I satiate our heavenly lust

You made me marry an ugly boring god

The fight rages    towering thunder clouds
blot the heavens     lightning bolts rapture
the sky   mortals quiver fearfully

In Gemini red Mars Ares bides his time

Podcast: Zeus and Aphrodite

© Elmer Wiens