L - The Beautiful Journey

You lied to me, Ithaca
You promised me golden sun-licked sands,
Delirious cerulean lagoons
frocked with bowing palm fronds,
Gourds of sweet, white milk,
and the wind,
perfumed breaths against my
My salt-lashed face

So I clung on
Though the storms
bent me double
and the wet ropes
coarsened my hands,
I clung on
I braced myself against the sea
and the thick night fog

I believed,
Almost believed,
I saw a star, far off in the blackness,
Guiding me
It lent me
a kind of strength

You lied to me, Ithaca
There is no paradise,
No opened arms await my return
No balm to ease my weeping sores
Even the cracked, barren ground
seems to list and roll beneath
my callused feet,
So long have I been travelling

And as I look around
I see
there is no one,
No one to bludgeon with my pain,
No one even
to witness my crocodile tears,
My clenched fist
or my blood-flecked spittle
soaking into the dust

Not even you
are there to see it
You lied to me, Ithaca
Ithaca, you lied