(04-19-2022, 04:18 AM)CRNDLSM Wrote: I saw a post on Twitter:
Princess Bubblegum wearing
Marceline's T-shirt, holding
hands and cuddling, several
men commenting how nice, wishing
for similar relations.
They couldn't understand why
all the trans-women wanted a 10-year follow-up on them.
ayyy
Psappho today is the better known
for being a woman and being in love with women
but here is a secret we ancients kept
that you moderns have forgot: the one she loved the most
was I, Alcaeus, a man.
For who heard her sing on the streets of Mytilene
that could sing back? Who dared to exchange petitions
with a goddess?
Alas! that our songs could only be written down
and not on stone. Alas! that most of what's now known
of my beloved Psappho
is how much she loved her kind,
as if most women should only receive much less.
For while she loved most the one who could return her love,
second only to me were the women of Lesbos:
Atthis and Gongyla, once-innocent Megara
and sinful Andromeda,
even Anaktoria whom she compared
to an army of horse, to an army of ships,
and to the face that pitted them all
against each other. She loved me most
for I alone among men would let her love
as she would love, for I myself would love
as she would love. For I was Psappho to her Anaktoria.
Tenderness and depth of feeling
were the virtues by which she loved. In my youth,
I prized most what my brothers, true men all,
prized most: adventures out on sea,
the death of tyrants, and filling painted cups
with strong wine before day's end. The gods would be honored,
I thought, not by the weaving of crowns
but by the forging of trophies.
Forgive me my folly, O heaven! For how many mariners
leave their wives and children to weep
when the sea inevitably triumphs
over their ships? For who is a greater tyrant to a man
ruling iron-fisted his fellow men
than all men over all women? For who was deified:
Theseus, thrown off a cliff when fickle Athens
forsook him as their king, or Ariadne?
Like my fellow men, I heard her sing
without listening, watched her stroll through the country
with her beauty buffeted by companions
who gathered flowers behind her, and thought
only how I wished to be her man. It was by grace
of deathless Aphrodite
that enough of me came to listen
when I heard her weep for lost Anaktoria.
"I would rather see her lovely step
and the motion of light in her face", she went
and all Mytilene seemed to burn
in the funeral pyre that consumed Anaktoria
who'd died far from home. O honey-smiling Psappho,
when we lived I was the more esteemed
though my throat were the pipes of Pan
to your lyre of Musagetes. Now, the Alcaic
refers only to dead forms of verse
while the highest form of love
you shared with all the women of Lesbos
and me, alone among men,
is named after you! For when my mule-eared kind
heaped praises on the cavernous grandeur
of my music, you heard the woman
it nearly swallowed. With whispers,
you raised her head. With caresses,
you drew her out. With kisses,
you were the woman at the center of your circle
and I was the woman at the center of you.
And so I was forgotten
out of shame; and so you were remembered
only to be mocked
except by those women who, like you and me,
at all times find themselves
near to being swallowed. O Melichius,
Cytherea, and you gods named Nomius:
be their ally.
about as hard to write as the Theodora one, but definitely more fun xD
