Theseus and the Golden Geese

A Work in Progress
19

Donal and Ezra being under contract on set

were just two actors waiting on Rewrite

to send over a new script

as Cleopatra’s funding had just disappeared

all would depend on the new team liking it

So, as artisan actors, crafty professionals

they discussed how would they play it

how to find the right tone that would make a big hit

one where the felon was an anti-hero 

the financier a thief

and the flamboyant American 

would be Glenn Hughes their director

testing the new team’s reaction

for survival depended on financial success

keeping the playhouse full

Comedy trumps True Crime, Tragedy is dull

Satire can backfire

Unable to anticipate what Rewrite would send

oldster and youngster worked side by side

you must keep going, Aphrodite insists

pondering those old fragments that he’s got

that aren’t sanctioned in Homer as decreed

some centuries before when Athens ruled

Jason’s quest for a golden fleece was good 

when Jason led some heroes from the hood

now Richard can retrieve the golden geese

without helping heroes just Ariadne’s leash

it would be fun to start making it new

Ezra Pound to Aphrodite can suggest

making a myth where the Amazons win!

“Would there be a market for that”, she’ll say

“I dislike Artemis let’s not today”.

now that metal money is seldom heard

on marble counters of cafés and bars

where cash registers that chime are antique 

where solitary silence is the norm

we can marvel anyone ever sought

quiet concentration without headphones

in a populous city with no private space

when papyrus was paper and scratch was slate

we can play Nancy Cunard as Artemis

most chaste of the goddesses clothed in gold

as Richard described her writing to Brigit

implying they were just good friends really 

while the jazz age buzzes around Nancy 

Ptolemy commands just short not fancy

in his time shorter poems were the rage

long poems like this one were seldom read

Ptolemy had tired of endless epics

so, poets hid old tales in commonplace 

using age-old formulas made anew

for small handheld scrolls easily unrolled

except Apollonius had in mind

Rome’s growing interest in all things Greek

as he wrote Jason and the Golden Fleece

we’ll write Theseus and the Golden Geese

knowing our best markets will be foreign 

our mutual Ptolemies have forgotten

there is much wisdom in antiquity

even though it has not propinquity

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                     2025