Troy Poem by Winston Lu1

The legend of heroes would be for naught
If not for the chosen one for which they fought
Enchanted beauty with subtle charms
Unintentionally entrapping relentless desire
For those faltered in yearned bliss of succumbing arms
Yes those of stoic hearts in heated battle
Yet turned soft in lust of un-quenching fire
Oh you hold fast against broken tides of advancing peril
Yet fall to those subversive obsessions that never tire
This sad and fateful story of man's design
That though Furies toil in man's wistful fate
Often does each individual's happiness
Rely on coincidence that his stars align
Though boy and girl seek imagined bliss
Contending ambition caste grey shadows
Of hopes men both great and timid miss
That would be champions choose their path
To charge, to crash, in moment's hesitation they fall
Gladly thrown upon rebounding great white walls
Built with effort by hands of gods
That mock mortal hopes surmountable, tall
For fate spends meager pity on men
Who seek solace from their own design?
That stirs young passion in rampant haste
While lay desperate psyche to uneven waste
What impulse drives these would be knights
Is it lust for mere beauty's allure?
Or in the riddle is there something more?
Perhaps in some men there lies a thirst
A slow burning fire that flickers in their mold
No this infernal flame refers not to desire
But to man's vice in ambition and of greed
That unfulfilled hunger that sustains dire need
Do some seek release from their god given sketch?
Relief from urgent need for labor yet remain unfulfilled
Desire transmuted to desperation willed
Not merely to look upon great beauty
But to long for solace in gentle touch
That might smolder man's own design
A willing trade of the wanton self
For an emblem to place upon a hearth
These men in secret desire to be tamed
Of wild unwieldy impulses that consume inside
So at the time when they return as dust to earth
Their hopes, their dream were more
Than ill spent illusions that spent away
And grievously sapped away their days
The tragedy of stories exist in the hopes
That heroes knew grasped and foreseen
Become but a final fleeting dream